Journal Report : Round 2

The two articles from the journal Film Philosophy I have chosen to write about for this round of blog posts are When Robots Would Really be Human Simulacra: Love and the Ethical in Spielberg’s A.I. and Proyas’s I, Robot by Bert Olivier and A Cyborg’s Testimonial: Mourning Blade Runner’s Cryptic Images by R. Pope. I have chosen these two because both of them question what it means to be human. Olivier and Pope both use philosophical arguments and psychological theories to make a critical analysis of each films’ leading cyborg characters. It should be mentioned that within the plot of the films, David, Sonny, and Roy Batty are androids, not cyborgs. Their cyborg statuses are dependent on their blurring of the line between human and technology which exists in the film’s theory.
A.I. is a futuristic Pinocchio. David, the robot on a journey to become a real boy, encounters many challenges to the human/machine boundary. This article collects the philosophical ideas of what makes us human and then applies them to David to establish his cyborg identity. Olivier first describes David’s fear of death or non-being. He references Heidegger’s Death Analysis which states that in order to fear non-being one must have a sense of being. This sense of being, however, is only identified by facing the prospect of one’s own non-being/death. David’s fear of his own death confirms his ability to identify his being as a self. Olivier then addresses David’s love for his ‘mommy’ and his desire for her love in terms of Lacan’s definition of love as love of ones own ego. Lacan declares love is narcissism, and that desiring love is desiring your own ego. Olivier proposes that because David is so desperately seeking his mother’s love that he must have a human ego.
The second half of this article then applies some theories of Kant and Sartre to Sonny, the robot of I,Robot. Kant posits that guilt is a manifestation of ethical capacity, ethics being a human trait. But in order to feel guilt one must have the freedom to choose to do wrong. If one had no choice then one would not feel guilty. Sonny feels the guilt of his ‘father’s’ death, this guilt then necessitates the existence of free will. This free will further blurs the line between human/machine and established Sonny’s cyborg identity.
Lastly, R. Pope’s article discusses Roy Batty, of Blade Runner, and his cyborg identity in a similar way. It discusses his fear of death/non-being and the importance of his memories. It also elaborates on the catch-22 of the human-technology dynamic. In short, Pope argues than technology, as a tool, is under human control. But as a tool it is detached, separate from us and therefore beyond our control. And most importantly, using the crypt concept of Derrida, Pope arrives at the conclusion that humanity has no meaning, that assigning meaning to humanity is impossible. What makes us human, and in the context of the film what makes Batty human, is the appropriation of humanity. It is the act of being human, the striving toward the ideas of humanity, and the belief that we are human is what makes us human.