ANDROID ANXIETY: UNDERSTANDING ROBOT-HUMAN CONFLICT IN

CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION

Kate Campbell
CINE 392: Cinema and Psychoanalysis
2 May 2014

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I. Introduction
Cultural critic Vivian Sobchack defines science fiction film as a genre that emphasizes
actual, extrapolative, or speculative science and the empirical method, interacting in a social
context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion, in
an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown.1 Arguably, no unknown has captivated
humanity more than the workings of the mindespecially the nature of consciousness. Artificial
intelligence and the self-operating machine have maintained a dominant place in human mythos
since antiquity, reflected in the Greek tales of Pygmalion and Galatea and the Chinese Liezi.
Western intellectual history, following in the Cartesian tradition, has found its epistemological
roots in the mind-body problem. And in the twentieth century, the human simulacrum has
become codified in fiction as the robot, android, and cyborg.2 As modern science increasingly
converges upon actualizing this long-standing legend of artificial creation, literature and film
continues to reflect humanitys preoccupation with this question of a man-made being possessing
all the capabilities of its maker.
Beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the early 2000s, science fiction film
demonstrated a heightened captivation with self-operating machinesno doubt a response to the
unparalleled technologies developed during the golden years of artificial intelligence, as well
as advancements such as neural prosthetics and the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996. Indeed,
several seminal works of this time focus on the robot as a sentient being, one that often lives
among the humans who created it. By this point, robot fiction had established a consistent set of
narrative conventions that defined the genre:

1. Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), Ch. 1.
2. Pamela McCorduck, Machines Who Think, 2nd ed. (Natick: CRC Press, 1979), 5-7.

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The story is told again and again, almost unchanged. Robots are better than human or
worse than human. They are unfeeling but kind, or unfeeling but loyal, or unfeeling but
able to follow orders. They are supremely ethical or unable to judge right from wrong. Or
they are emotionally sensitive, shy, super-intelligent beings, whose physical difference is
represented as a debilitating deformity.3
Playing upon these generic conventions, science fiction films of the late twentieth and early
twenty-first century introduced the android, a being characterized by its remarkable likeness to
real humans, extraordinary physical capabilities, and, most importantly, murderous intent and
ethical apathy.
In forming my argument, I shall explore this theme of anxiety in two films: Blade Runner
(1982), dir. Ridley Scott, and AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), dir. Steven Spielberg. Ostensibly,
Blade Runner embodies the antagonistic attitude towards artificial intelligence described above,
while AI provides an optimistic portrait of machines living among humans. Blade Runner, based
on Phillip K. Dicks 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, tells the story of Rick
Deckard (Harrison Ford), a retired special operative known as a Blade Runner, whose former
job was to hunt down replicantsgenetically engineered robots created to be virtually
indistinguishable from humanswho return to Earth from off-world colonies in order to expand
their limited lifespans. Deckard, detained by his former supervisor, reluctantly agrees to leave
retirement to track down and kill a group of recently escaped Nexus-6 models hiding in Los
Angeles. AI focuses on David (Haley Joel Osment), a hyper-realistic Mecha child created with
the capacity to love the people who own him. David is purchased by Monica and Henry Swinton
(Frances OConnor, Sam Robards), a couple whose terminally ill biological son has been
cryogenically frozen.
Despite its seemingly positive premise, AI ultimately encounters the inevitable opposition
between man and machine that comprises the central focus of Blade Runner. As David becomes
3. Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets. (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2003), 261.

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increasingly aware of the limits of his artificiality, he sets out to become a real boy worthy of
Monicas love. Despite the myriad robot films produced between 1970 and the early 2000s, I
have chosen to focus on these films for their depictions of antagonistic man-machine
relationships and, more importantly, their overarching reflections on the nature of the human
condition. Though both films explore robots as a threat to humanity, both Scott and Spielberg
find much to condemn in humanity itself.
II. Playing God, Cheating Death: The Search for Organic Immortality
Though depictions of self-operating machines have existed within myth and legend since
ancient times, the term robot formally entered the public lexicon in 1920 by way of Karel
apeks play Rossums Universal Robots (R.U.R.). Replacing the anachronistic automaton,
apek derived robot from the Czech word robota, meaning enforced labor, which itself stems
from rab, or slave.4 We see this labor-driven motivation for robots conception in both Blade
Runner and AI, in which robots outwardly exist as economic resources: in AI, natural disaster has
eliminated a large portion of the human population, and robots serve to repopulate the earth in a
way that consumes no resources beyond those of their first manufacturer; in Blade Runner, the
Tyrell Corporation develops replicants to perform otherwise hazardous off-world slave labor.5
But behind this economic need lies an even greater, though not always consciously
recognized wish: human immortality and the survival of the human species. The implied end
goal of robots is not just a sustainable labor force unrestrained by the physical limits of the
human body, but total man-machine integration that will allow humans to sustain themselves
indefinitely in much the same way as robots. Neither film explicitly states this underlying
objection; however, the very fact that the robots depicted are created to be virtually
4. Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets, 260.
5. Steven Spielberg, AI: Artificial Intelligence. (DreamWorks Pictures, 2001).

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indistinguishable from man provides deeper insight into the purpose of their existence.6 Indeed, I
will establish that the motivation for robotics as a field derives from mans fundamental desire to
achieve immortality and combat the struggle between competing life and death drives as
described in psychoanalytic literature by Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists.
Mans search for immortality proceeds from the tension between the competing drives of
Eros and Thanatos, described at length by Freud in his 1920 work Beyond the Pleasure
Principle. In previous writing, Freud identified the existence of the sexual drive, Eros, which he
hypothesized as the source of all human behavior. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud
introduces his twin theory of the death instinct (Todestrieb), later called Thanatos by Willhelm
Stekel.7 This death instinct describes the tendency toward self-destruction and the return to an
inorganic state, while the life instinct pushes man toward survival and the creation of larger units
of organic material; these drives, present in all organisms, compete against each other within the
individual until mortality finally prevails and the organism expires.8 Nevertheless, Freud
observed some exceptions to this universal trend toward death: bacterial organisms, or germcells, work against the death of their living substance, and succeed in achieving immortality
through reproduction. Additionally, he saw an apparent instinct toward perfection in human
beings, one that inspired man to continually strive toward self-improvement.9

6. Though the robots of AI do possess an unlimited lifespan, I find it necessary to note that most replicants
of Blade Runner canon do notthe Nexus-6 models are specifically stated to possess a lifespan of only four years.
Nevertheless, the film contains references to several life-expanding experiments using human genetic material,
implying that efforts to prolong the replicants existence are motivated by a greater goal of human immortality.
7. Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 218.
8. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle. (New York: Liveright, 1950), 36.
9. Ibid., 42.

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Herbert Marcuse further explores this instinct toward improvement in Eros and
Civilization, discussing the social and metaphysical implications of Freuds theory. Freud
hypothesized that man constructs civilization upon the inhibition of his primary instincts, and
that this inhibition in turn leads to societal progress; as Eros strives to preserve being on a larger
scale to satisfy the life instincts in its struggle against Thanatos, it creates culture.10 However,
progress eventually leads to increased sublimation and controlled aggression as man strives to
repress these drives. The growth of civilization facilitated by man sublimating his primary
impulses into the enhancement of power and productivity is counteracted by the persistent
(though repressed) impulse to come to rest in final gratification. Ultimately, Eros weakens and
the destructive forces of Thanatos are released.11
Man, therefore, creates robotsspecifically robots in his own imagein order to
displace this continued conflict between Eros and Thanatos onto an external object, a defense
mechanism meant to prevent this struggle from leading to self-destruction or outward acts of
harm against other humans. By alleviating, however imperfectly, the tension created by these
competing drives, humanoid robots prevent the limiting of human progress that would otherwise
occur if repression were permitted to increase any further. Not only do robots serve to displace
this conflict, but they also satisfy the fundamental conscious and unconscious will to assert
power over nature that Marcuse describes as the precedent to all modern technology.12 Man is
thus permitted to play God, satisfying the egos desire for dominance, while relieving the
tension between Eros and Thantos and seeking a repository for desires of immortality.

10. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents. (London: The Hogarth Press), 59.
11. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 107-109.
12. Ibid., 110.

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Spielberg alludes to this phenomenon in the opening sequence of AI, in which Professor
Hobby (William Hurt), director of robot manufacturing company Cybertronics of New Jersey,
introduces his plans to create a robot capable of love. A skeptical team member voices her
concerns: If a robot could genuinely love a person, what responsibility does that person hold
toward that Mecha in return? The director in turn replies, But in the beginning, didnt God
create Adam to love him?13 The implications of this exchange become profound when
juxtaposed against Freuds writings on the death drive and civilization:
Long ago [man] formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience, which he
embodied in his gods. To these gods, he attributed everything that seemed unattainable to
his wishes, or that was forbidden to himToday he has come very close to the
attainment of this ideal, he has almost become a god himselfMan, has, as it were,
become a kind of prosthetic god.14
In this, we see the underlying dynamic of domination and submission that motivates robots
creation at play, continuing the slave aspect inherent in apeks coining of the word robot.
Robots will help man achieve immortality, indeed, but just as God created Adam as obedient to
him, humans create robots to be obedient to them.
III. If You Meet Your Double, You Must Kill Him: The Robotic Uncanny15
Despite the necessary role of robots in displacing the fundamental tension between Eros
and Thanatos, robot fiction demonstrates time and time again that the relationship between man
and machine cannot remain true to the model of a loving God and his creation: this connection
invariably turns antagonistic, resulting in humans desiring (and acting upon) aggression or
impulses toward destruction against their robotic counterparts. In order to determine the roots of

13. Spielberg, AI.

14. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 28-29.
15. Johan Grimonprez, Double Take. (Brussels: Zap-o-Matik, 2009). This essay film deals specifically with
the uncanniness of the doppelgnger through the lens of the rise of domestic television and the Cold Wars
commodification of fear, depicting the paranoia that ensues when Alfred Hitchcock meets his double.

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this aggression, we must once again turn to psychoanalysis, specifically writings on the uncanny.
Introduced by Ernst Jentsch in 1906, we might understand the uncanny as something unknown or
frightening that was once familiar; indeed, the German word for uncanny, Unheimlich, reveals
this. Its antonym Heimlich contains a dual meaning: it refers both to what is secret and to what
is familiar.16 Thus, Unheimlich implies that which was intended to remain secret has come into
the open, originating from something familiar and now obscured by its revelation. Jentsch
originally hypothesized that this feeling of strangeness or repulsion arose from the intellectual
ambiguity caused by not knowing whether something was animate or inanimate.17 Freud later
adapted this concept in his own essay The Uncanny, expanding Jentschs definition to say that
the uncanny encompasses anything we experience in adulthood that reminds us of earlier states
of psychic development, of aspects of our unconscious life, or of the primitive experience of the
human species (i.e. the castration complex and Oedipal narrative).18
Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori adapted this notion of the uncanny for modern
technology, and his 1970 essay The Uncanny Valley has become crucial to conceptualizing the
intersection of robots and aesthetics. According to Mori, as robots become increasingly
humanlike in appearance and movement, human empathy towards robots increases; however,
once robots too closely resemble humans, their verisimilitude causes this empathy to suddenly
transform into revulsion and fear. He specifically uses the example of a severed prosthetic hand
to illustrate this emotional reaction:
Some prosthetic hands attempt to simulate veins, muscles, tendons, finger nails, and
finger prints, and their color resembles human pigmentationBut this kind of prosthetic
16. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny. (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), 132.
17. Ernst Jentsch, On the Psychology of the Uncanny, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 2
(1996): 8.
18. Freud, The Uncanny, 154-155.

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hand is too real, and when we notice it is prosthetic, we have a sense of strangeness. So if
we shake the hand, we are surprised by the lack of soft tissue and cold temperature. In
this case, there is no longer a sense of familiarity. It is uncanny.19
Mori represents this phenomenon with a graph that plots hypothetical human emotional response
against various iterations of the anthropomorphic robot (Figure 1). Two extremes lie at either end
of the graph: the industrial robot, at its origin, and a healthy human being at its rightmost point.
Mori measures emotional response toward both moving and still objects, positing that motion
(generally considered a sign of life) amplifies this reaction. He describes the sudden drop
between the two highest points of empathy the uncanny valley.20

Figure 1. Masahiro Mori, The Uncanny Valley, 1970. Reproduced in Dartmouth

Undergraduate Journal of Science (2009), http://bit.ly/QJg5d6.

19. Masahiro Mori, The Uncanny Valley, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 19 (2012): 34.
20. Ibid., 36.

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It is critical to note that at the bottom of each uncanny valley is a figure associated with
death (a corpse and a zombie), which indeed reflects Freuds original writings on the subject:
To many people the acme of the uncanny is represented by anything to do with death, he
writes, the primitive fear of the dead is still so potent in us and ready to manifest itself if
given any encouragement.21 Though Mori himself claims not to know why these feelings of
strangeness arise, he hypothesizes that they may be crucial to humans self-preservation.22
This aggressive response to the robot as a simulacrum of a living human being plays out
quite gruesomely in AI. When Davids human brother Martin (Jake Thomas) returns home,
miraculously cured of his illness, tension begins to build between the siblings as both fight for
their parents attention and care. The beginnings of this uncanny reaction become apparent as
Martin convinces David to cut off a lock of Monicas hair while she sleeps; their parents, startled
by David standing over their bed with a pair of scissors, start to fear that their artificial son has
begun to develop the ability to hate. Upon Martins return, the Swinton family can no longer
ignore the uncanny feelings evoked by Davids presence, projecting onto him their fear of his
understated, yet highly disturbing, otherness. Monica soon abandons David in the woods to live
as an unregistered Mechaunable to destroy him for his human likeness, but unable to accept
his eerie, almost but not-quite-natural, differences.
Monicas abandonment in turn facilitates perhaps the most extreme example of the
uncanny valley effect in both AI and Blade Runner. Eventually, the forsaken David is captured
and taken to a Flesh Fair, where humans stockpile old or obsolete Mecha for destruction. This
premise seems innocuous enough at firstafter all, we destroy cars, computers, and other
outdated machinery in much the same way when they no longer serve our purposesbut closer
21. Freud, The Uncanny, 149.
22. Mori, The Uncanny Valley, 35.

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analysis reveals the truly sinister nature of this event. Flesh Fairs exist not just as factories for
destruction, but as public spectacleswhat David Sterritt calls iconoclastic orga-orgies
where crowds gather to watch robots melted by acid, fired out of canons, and torn limb from
limb in celebration of paranoid hates ability to make the superannuated, annihilated icon into
the transmuted, invigorating icon through the very act of its obliteration (Figure 2).23

Figure 2. Crowds gather at the circus-like Flesh Fair to watch the destruction of Mecha.

Within the context of the uncanny, it is clear that robots elicit an uncanny response from
humans due to their function as Doppelgngers, or doubles. Freud describes the double as a
figure originally created as insurance against the extinction of the self, or an energetic denial
of the power of death resulting from the primary narcissistic phase experienced by all humans
in early life. Once man surmounts this narcissistic phase, however, the double instead becomes a
23. David Sterritt, Spielberg, Iconophobia, and the Mimetic Uncanny, New Review of Television and
Film Studies (2009), 5.

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harbinger of death and a primary source of the uncanny.24 We see a similar phenomenon
reflected in the creation of humanoid machines: the robot, once constructed in pursuit of
immortality, thus becomes an uncanny reminder of mans inevitable path toward death. In its
mildest form, this feeling of uncanny manifests itself as mere repulsion (such as Martins
rivalrous attitude toward David); in its most extreme, however, the uncanny becomes a source of
violence and destruction, actualized in the response we see depicted in robot films. Victoria
Nelson describes the robotic simulacrum as an evil twin, or the repository of all that humans
refuse to acknowledge in themselves.25 In an enthusiastic denial of deaths inevitability, man
projects this unpleasant quality onto his artificial double, thus fostering aggression and distrust.
IV. More Than Flesh and Blood: Mans Emotional Condition
The Flesh Fair of AI plays a critical role in helping us understand this fear of robots, not
just for its celebration of humanitys eagerness to destroy and torture Mecha, but for its
consideration of what separates humans from machines. Spielberg emphasizes the similarity
between man and machine when a little girl sees David stuck in the holding pen and believes him
to be human. Others around her think so as wellindeed, an x-ray scan must be performed to
conclusively decide that he is artificial, not flesh and blood. When the crowd sees David brought
into the ring, his lifelike appearance and childish image stuns its members into silence. Though
the Flesh Fairs ringleader (Brendan Gleeson) attempts to convince them of his purported
hostilityWe know why they made himto steal your hearts, replace your childrenthey
nevertheless become visibly disturbed when David cries out for help, arguing that Mecha dont

24. Freud, The Uncanny, 142.

25. Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets, 262.

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plead for their lives (Fig. 3).26 Through the crowds disturbance, Spielberg questions the belief
that humans are differentiated from robots by their ability to show genuine emotion. Unable to
fathom that such an emotional display could be the result of artificial creation, the crowd
redirects its fury back toward the ringleader, rushing into the ring to attack him and let David go.

Figure 3. The Flesh Fairs previously ferocious crowd shows visible distress upon hearing
Davids pleas for help, interpreting his self-protection programming as a mark of his humanity.
This scene demonstrates an especially salient aspect of Freuds writing on the uncanny
what he describes as a fear of the evil eye. Freud writes that anyone who possesses something
precious fears the envy of others; in turn, they project the envy they would have felt in anothers
place onto the other person.27 What is feared in others is thus a covert intention to harm, which
we see in AIs depiction of Flesh Fairs as a primary motivation for human hostility against
26. Spielberg, AI.
27. Freud, The Uncanny, 146-147.

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robots. Drawing upon this fear of harm, both AI and Blade Runner manipulate Freuds argument
to reflect upon the emotional condition of humanity in the wake of robotic creation.
The anxieties depicted in AI and Blade Runner specifically center on the machines
alleged lack of humanlike emotional capabilities. In Blade Runner, humans distinguish the
otherwise identical replicants (derogatorily known as Skinjobs) from themselves through the
use of a Voight-Kampff test, an advanced form of the polygraph machine that bases its human
diagnosis on the ability of the test subject to produce an empathetic response (Fig. 4). Scott
demonstrates the Voight-Kampff test at work in the films opening sequence, wherein a test
administrator questions a man on such things as where he lives, if he likes his apartment, and
other seemingly banal details of everyday life. Once the test reaches a question about his mother,
however, the test-taker immediately becomes violent, drawing his gun and shooting the
administrator. Through this scene, Scott establishes that replicants, lacking memories and
emotions, are (seemingly) unable to produce humanlike empathetic responses.

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Figure 4. The Voight-Kampff test measures empathy through physiological responses such as
pupil dilation.

The Voight-Kampff test reappears when Deckard performs it on a Tyrell Corporation

employee named Rachael (Sean Young). While Deckard eventually concludes that Rachael is
indeed a replicants, it takes him well over one hundred questions to do soeven though a
normal test only takes twenty or thirty. It is then revealed that Rachael in fact does not know of
her status as a replicants because the Tyrell Corporation has invented a way to implant artificial
memories into new replicant models in order to suppress their violent responses; Rachael herself
has the implanted memories of Dr. Tyrells niece. Rachael later appears visibly distressed when
Deckard implies that she possesses false memoriesshe honestly cannot determine that she has
been artificially manufactured. Here, we see that Rachael exists as a prototype of a new effort to
bridge the gap between robot and human: by implanting replicants with false memories, Tyrell
Corporation grants them an emotional capacity disallowed by their previous design. What was

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once considered the ultimate dividing line between man and machine crumbles in this face of
this new potential for feeling.
From this we see that man fears the robot not just as a harbinger of organic death and a
reminder of the limits of mortality, but as a threat to his ability to assert his will over nature and
maintain the egos desire for subject/object domination and submission that forms the basis of
human behavior. What once decidedly separated man from machinethe ability to produce
emotionsbreaks down in both films as the artificial beings show emotional displays just as, if
not more, potent than those of humans. In AI, Professor Hobby specifically grants David the
capacity to love; when juxtaposed against Spielbergs depictions of human relationships
throughout the film, we understand that Hobbys creation is meant to remedy the deficit of love
that exists among human beingswhat Sterritt describes as a technologized future that has
preserved its physical existence at the expense of its spiritual strength.28 Representations of love
in AI epitomize this spiritual weakness: when Professor Hobby introduces his proposal for a
loving robot, members of the audience argue that such creations already existreferring, of
course, to sex robots such as Davids eventual companion Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).
Spielberg even calls into question the strength of a mother's affection for her child
recall that when the Swintons' biological son returns home, Monica finds herself unable to accept
both sons equally. She wholly redirects her maternal affections toward her organic child and
rejects his now superfluous surrogate. Following his expulsion from the Swintons' home, David
devotes his existence to searching for the Blue Fairy of The Adventures of Pinocchio, convinced
that she will transform him, like Pinocchio, into a real boy worthy of Monica's love.

Blade

Runner also depicts the weakening of the man-machine divide. Tyrell states that replicants,
though not originally created with emotional abilities, could very well develop such capacities
28. Sterritt, Spielberg, Iconophobia, and the Mimetic Uncanny, 6.

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over time, thus necessitating their limited lifespan as a "failsafe device" against such mental
maturation.29 Even in instances where replicants have been created with emotions (such as
Rachael and her implanted memories), the process is strictly controlled so that replicants remain
placated and willing to submit to human authority. Later, however, Tyrells promise against
emotional development in Nexus-6 models proves incorrect, as the rogue replicants show
genuine caring for one another and, eventually, humans. Scott demonstrates this phenomenon
most prominently in the final fight between Nexus-6 leader Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and
Deckard. Upon finding the lifeless body of fellow replicant Pris, Roy appears visibly
distressedhe cries over her corpse, smearing her blood onto his face and howling in mourning
(Fig. 5). In his last moments, Roy extends this compassion toward his human enemy, sparing
Deckards life before his own runs out. Before dying, he reflects upon the memories and
experiences that have shaped his brief existence in what philosopher Mark Rowlands calls
perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history, displaying the humanlike
characteristics that have developed in spite of his artificial roots.30

29. Scott, Blade Runner.

30. Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher at the End of the Universe. (London: Ebury Publishing, 2005), 234.

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Figure 5. Roy mourns the death of fellow replicant Pris, showing that he has developed
emotional capacities faster than Tyrell anticipated.

Scott contrasts the overwhelming empathy displayed by Roy Batty against the sinister
neo-noir cityscape of future Los Angeles, where humans lead a cold and impersonal existence
(Fig. 6). Rick Deckard embodies perhaps the most extreme example of this man-machine
disparity, as Scott suggests that Deckard could be either human or replicant himself. The film
provides several clues that Deckard may not be what he appears: most notably, Deckards
apartment contains only outdated or discolored photographs (suggesting artificial memory
implantation), and when Rachael asks Deckard whether he has passed the Voight-Kampff test
himself, she receives no answer. By causing audiences to question the true origins of Deckard's
existence, Scott prompts viewers to reconsider what it means to be human. Both Blade Runner
and AI display that the anxieties of death that motivate human hostility towards robots centers
not just on loss of organic life, but fear that robots will ultimately overpower mans emotional
abilities and supersede humanity both physically and emotionally.

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Figure 6. The Los Angeles cityscape remains dark throughout the film, lit only by neon
advertisements and spotlights. Through its neo-noir aesthetic, the city reflects the misanthropic
nature of its inhabitants.

V. Beyond Science Fiction: Redefining the Human

My discussion thus far has largely dealt with the realm of fiction alone, but I believe it is
just as, if not more, critical to consider the issues explored through AI, Blade Runner, and
numerous other robot films within the domain of real world possibility. Having illuminated the
primal anxieties surrounding organic and symbolic death that motivate mans fear of and
aggression toward humanoid robots shown in the science fiction films of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first century, I wish to return once more to the question of what these films
represent: if science fiction can be understood as a litmus of public response towards scientific
advancement, how does the fear depicted in android films implicate the rapidly growing field of
real world robotics?

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First, we must acknowledge that this fear exists not only in fiction, but in reality as well:
several experiments have demonstrated that the uncanny valley hypothesis introduced by Mori in
the 1970s does indeed hold true when actual humans are faced with artificial simulacra. Ongoing
research at the University of California San Diego and California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology shows that uncanny robots produce a reaction
of perceptual conflict between the brains visual and motor corticeswhen expectations for the
robots appearance and motion seem incongruent, the human mind exhibits a negative response
to the machines.31 In an attempt to avoid the uncanny valley in robot design, some
neuroscientists have suggested that we avoid making machines so clearly in our own image at
all, but I argue that this proposition overlooks both the inevitability of continued simulacra
production and the already pervasive reliance on humanoid robots within fields such as
biomechanics, service, and entertainment.32 Instead, we must focus on finding ways to remedy
this uncanny response and overcome its fear-driven origins.
Though creative visionaries of the mid-twentieth century such as Arthur C. Clarke and
Stanley Kubrick predicted the appearance of machines with intellectual capabilities comparable
to, or even exceeding, those of humans by 2001, the science of robotics and artificial intelligence
clearly has not advanced rapidly enough to realize these prophecies. Nevertheless, scientists gain
deeper understanding of the workings of the human mind at an unprecedented rate, and it is
hardly unreasonable to think that a robot similar to the replicants of Blade Runner or the Mechas
of AI could exist within the next fifty yearsin fact, scientist Ray Kurzweil argues that human-

31. Mark Brown, Exploring the uncanny valley of how brains react to humanoids, Wired UK, July 19,
2011, http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/19/uncanny-valley-tested.
32. Chris Gaylord, Uncanny Valley: Will humans ever learn to live with artificial humans? The Christian
Science Monitor, September 14, 2011, bit.ly/1pUY0sg.

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level machine intelligence will become a reality by 2029.33 Given these possibilities, science
fiction becomes an invaluable tool for measuring how fictional fears of robots might materialize
in the future and how we can best circumvent these fears when the fabrications of today become
a reality of tomorrow.
By now it should be well understood that robots have an undeniable effect on the human
psyche, forcing us to consider the physical and emotional limits of humanity and calling into
question the very definition of what it means to be human. Indeed, the trends that have continued
to emerge within science fiction since the 1970s provide evidence of these existential
considerations. In her 1997 addendum to Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film,
Sobchack considers our evolving conceptions of humanness as reflected within the science
fiction film, tracing its development as a referential genre in conjunction with the evolving
technological and cultural landscape of the 1980s and 1990s. Most prominently, our relationship
with technology has fundamentally changed: devices such as cell phones, televisions, and
computersonce elite objects limited to financially privileged members of societyhave
become popular commodities that comprise an almost overwhelming aspect of our daily lives.
National identity concedes to a new consumer identity, one that increasingly defines man by his
relationship to electronics. And previously held ideas of hierarchical distinctions between
surface/depth, here/there, center/margin, organic/inorganic, and self/other begin to break
down.34
Sobchack argues that an especially salient ramification of our changing technological
atmosphere is a reframing of how we understand the human body:

33. Susan Schneider, Science Fiction and Philosophy. (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 203.
34. Sobchack, Screening Space, Ch. 4. Because this book is a Kindle edition and lacks pagination, I have
provided chapter numbers in lieu of page numbers.

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Throughout the last decade, even our bodies have become pervasively recognized as
cultural, commodified, and technologized objects. This is a phenomenon women and
advertising agencies have long been aware of, but it now more globally informs a society
obsessed with physical fitness. In the last decade we have come to idealize the human
organism as a "lean machine"sometimes murderously "mean," sometimes aerobically
"perfect," and nearly (and yet never) impervious to that temporal bodily "terminator":
death.35
Inundated by technology in every aspect of our existence, we have come to conceive of our
bodies not as natural or of the earth, but as artificially createdafter all, if a mechanically
engineered limb can seamlessly integrate itself into the organic bodys electric feedback system,
how different can the two really be? In identifying the underlying physical similarities between
our machines and ourselves, we create a new conception of the human body that invariably
influences our relationship with our artificial simulacra.
The scope of this re-imagining of humanity exceeds just the physical realm.
Contemporary science fiction demonstrates a previously unprecedented trend of robot figures
seeking emotional fulfillmentrecall Davids quest for his mothers love or Rachaels visible
distress at the notion that her memories and feelings might be fabricatedand a dedication to
depicting these machines as figures that embody Tyrell Corporations motto of more human
than human.36 Through these narratives, filmmakers challenge emotions as a uniquely human
quality, questioning the assertion that possession of emotional capacities provides the ultimate
delineation between man and machine.
As a result of this evolving definition of humanity, a new mode of representation has
materialized alongside the android: that of the cyborg, a figure that epitomizes the unification of

35. Ibid. Sobchack devotes a significant portion of this chapter to discussing the interactions between
science fiction and capitalism, primarily within the frame of Frederic Jamesons writings on postmodernism;
unfortunately, she fails to lend the same credence to gender. For further reading on female bodies, capitalism, and
technology, see Donna Haraways A Cyborg Manifesto.
36. Scott, Blade Runner.

22
man and machine in one being. Nelson describes this trend as the subjectivization of the
simulacrum, or the literal merging of the human and non-human within the autonomous
simulacrum itself. Quoting N. Katherine Hayles, Nelson identifies a novel conception of the
human body much like the one Sobchack details in her own writing, one that:
privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a
biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of
lifeconsiders consciousnessas an epiphenomenonthinks of the body as the original
prosthesis we all learn to manipulate[and sees] no essential differences or absolute
demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism
and biological organism.37
In recent years, the cyborg has become a viable social and political identity outside of science
fictionorganizations such as the Cyborg Foundation seek to promote the use of cybernetic
devices as a fully integrated part of the human body and establish legal rights for those who
identify as cyborgs.38 However, the cyborgs envisioned by science fiction display a level of manmachine integration beyond just possessing one mechanical body part. While Sobchacks model
of the reimagined human suggests a blurring of the boundaries between organic/inorganic and
man/machine, the cyborg obliterates these hierarchical distinctions completely, personifying
what Lydia H. Liu calls the Freudian robot. A Freudian robot, in Lius words, is any
networked being that embodies the infinite feedback loop of human-machine simulacra,
rendering any differentiation between the two impossible.39 Ultimately, cyborgization seeks to
eliminate any divide between the organic man and his inorganic simulacrum, abolishing
human and robot as distinct categorizations of existence.

37. Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets, 269.

38. Neil Harbisson, Cyborg Foundation. http://eyeborg.wix.com/cyborg.
39. Lydia H. Liu, The Freudian Robot. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), Ch. 1.

23
Cybernetic scholars such as Liu often describe the dissolution of organic/inorganic and
natural/artificial boundaries as complicating the man-machine relationship. But rather than
problematizing the possibility of cyborgization and the increasing convergence of human and
robot, I believe this development provides opportunity for us to mollify our deep-seated aversion
to humanoid machines. In becoming one with his robotic simulacrum, man might succeed in
defeating the death drives organic and symbolic manifestations and placating what Sterritt calls
profound insecurity bred by human failures and inadequacies.40 Nelson identifies the cyborg as
representative of God, the externalized soul, and the Divine Humana unification of the
qualities man sees in himself and desires in machines.41 By surmounting the destructive forces of
Thanatos, man could enjoy unrestricted growth of culture (in service of his instinct towards
perfection) and gratify the egos ultimate desire for dominance.
Of course, this proposition requires us to consider whether such a positive man-machine
relationship is possible at all, given the limiting and potentially violent powers of our preexisting
fear. Let us return once again to the question posed by Professor Hobbys audience in the
opening sequence of AI: can man come to love a robot? In her essay Love, Guilt and
Reparation, Melanie Klein identifies a constant interaction between love and hate, as feelings of
love and tendencies toward reparation develop apropos and in spite of the aggressive impulses.42
Just as the baby simultaneously loves his mother for satisfying his needs and hates her for failing
to fulfill them, humans idealize the robot as a tool for satiating the conflict between Eros and
Thanatos and reject it when its uncanny likeness reminds us of death. Science fiction film

40. Sterritt, Spielberg, Iconophobia, and the Mimetic Uncanny, 6.

41. Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets, 269.
42. Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation, Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921-1945.
(New York: The Free Press, 1975), 306.

24
provides a mechanism of phantasy building by which we can imagine the satisfaction derived
from robots existence and act out our aggressive phantasies of destruction. Klein additionally
describes the process of reparation, specifically that mans ability to satisfy this tendency
depends upon his capacity to identify with another.43 Through the creation of emotional robots in
film, we create the possibility of identification and encourage acceptance of our artificial
simulacra.
For now, the possibility of cyborgization remains limited to the fictional realm.
Nevertheless, science fiction provides a valuable tool for navigating the potential technological
configurations of the future and our physical and emotional relationship to these advancements. I
argue that cinematic depictions of our fear of artificial creation functions as a method of working
through the anxieties spawned by technological development and our subsequent questioning of
previously held notions of humanity and its hierarchical delineations. Cinema acts as a robot
itself, our own artificially created and controlled life form onto which we project our real world
hopes and fears and attempt to reconcile our conflicting emotions through the screen. By
understanding robot narratives as representative of human experience, it becomes clear that both
the positive and negative qualities we have conferred upon these fictional machines align with
those things that we desire and dread in ourselves. In their depiction of emoting machines,
Spielberg and Scott sought not just to explore the future possibilities of artificial intelligence, but
also to underline the current insecurities that man feels in response to his perceived inadequacies.
If we succeed in comprehending the basis of these fears, we might come to see fictional robots as
a mechanism for reconciling our underlying psychical conflicts.

43. Ibid., 325.

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