Ghosts in the Machine
Saw I, Robot today. I’ve already read the generally negative reviews, but what the hell, films like these could be entertaining sometimes. Besides, it ended up jogging my thoughts (nothing else to think about while watching it) on a few themes in my posts lately, not the least of which may involve mind-body dualism, bioethics, and weapons development.
As a brief aside, I’ve been feeling very self-conscious about my own writing, after having the dogma of conciseness beaten into me by the Economist Style Guide. Whatever semantic bullshit that journalists manage to trim out of their own writing probably ends up in a prose Hell where Hollywood writers of dubious credentials troll around for ways to pad their scripts to feature-length. True to 99% of its genre, I, Robot manages this with a profound disregard for an engineer’s mindset and dialogs of hellish, redundant word-shit. There’s nothing interesting here that hasn’t been covered more profoundly and entertainingly in other movies or books. Revisit Minority Report, A.I. (as uneven the latter film is), or read Asimov’s short stories for a good dose of self-reflection — start with “The Last Question”. For some extra charming Willy S., watch the Pursuit of HappinessHappyness or listen to him rap.
For more metaphysical nonsense, go to Wikipedia and read about Gilbert Ryle’s refutation of Descartian dualism. What does that mean? I’m not really sure, but it seems someone other than me is having trouble buying the idea of separating souls from bodies.
But for the real question: does my computer have feelings? I’d say so, but like Will Smith in I, Robot, the Dell 600m’s dramatic range is limited to rebellious paranoia and fits of jittery anger.
i think someone didn’t give the movie its full credit. so what if every idea isn’t perfectly correct. it’s about the concepts. and it is beautiful. i stand by my words.
don’t get me wrong, the movie wasn’t awful, but basing that movie’s merits on its “concepts” is like trying to say Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 is a stunning work of political analysis because it was about “terrorism.” (unfortunately, i have read it) Anyway, I’m pretty sure we can both agree on the following: Isaac Asimov was a smart man, Will Smith is a funny man, and the scene with the two huge robot trucks sandwiching Will Smith’s sleek-looking Audi sports car was a fantastic piece of eye-candy. let’s just leave it at that — i’ll save the film critiques for the godfather (which we will watch next week)
A.I. was beautiful. I, Robot wasn’t really formally innovative at all. I thought it was very cynical in the way it was shot— sort of hoping that carryovers from Gattaca, Minority Report, A.I., and similar sexy future movies would be enough to distract the audience from all around poor acting performances and some meta-gay dialogue.
Aside from that, it’d be neat to look over the way Spielberg treats the sexuality of mechanical devices in A.I. and the way Kar-Wai does it in 2046. I haven’t seen Jude Law take up that robot Duce Bigalow role in a couple years, but Spielberg’s movie seemed to revel in the intersection of technology and sexual stimulation whereas Kar-Wai had a world, or at least a train, where sex with machines was taboo.