The Matrix – Simulacra and Simulation

There were many flaws in the film, but given how rich it was in ideas and incredible visual moments – like the birth and resurrection scenes (plus the fact you can’t take a philosophy course now without referencing this film series at least a few times) it is hard to criticize it too much. I do wish the smugness of Neo at the end of the film had been left out (having him fly away in the last scene like a punk Superman is one of the most ridiculous endings I have seen in any film) and that the film explored more the symbiotic relationship of humans and machines (though the later, less successful films did attempt this with mixed results). In trying to make a great action flick (which they did), some of the philosophic ideas were short changed and at times subverted.

Having Neo kill so many people (who were not Agents but “coppertops” like he had been) within the Matrix seemed a little cold and the huge ego he seems to have at the end when he calls and threatens the Matrix seemed to go against the character he had been throughout the rest of the film.

The way the film explored the idea of what we consider real and what we consider a simulation was very thought provoking. When Morpheus first takes Neo in the simulation program and asks him, “What is real?” we are taken back to the arguments of Descartes , Kant, and Hume. If what we consider real is something we touch or see, than what we consider real can be reduced to the impulses our brain is receiving from our fingers and eyes – impulses that are electrical and chemical in nature and which may not accurately relay the outside world. And as Baudrillard would ask, what about the person that simulates an illness but in the process of feigning begins to have “true” symptoms? Can the mind alter the “real” world and fake itself out? We are reminded of the philosophical arguments with regard to vision that since the senses (themselves limited) are interpreting the “real” world and converting these images to (upside down) pictures in our brain via chemical and electrical reactions and the tree which we “see” in our mind is not the tree in the “real” world (if indeed there is a real world) and if Tree 1 does not equal Tree 2, how can we be sure of our understanding of anything outside of our consciousness? The Matrix played with this and I loved the house of mirrors (or perhaps just Alice’s one looking glass) the audience is challenged by, but at the core of the movie, the issue of man vs. machine seemed to be more dominated by the need to make a good action flick then to really explore the dependant relationships humans and machines have with each other.

Alien, Terminator, and Blade Runner: Programming Synthetic Life

Ash, the synthetic extension of Mother, comes to represent the things we worry about with regard to synthetic life - that while being superior in some ways (memory, longevity, strength, etc.) it can lack the human element for compassion and morality. Ash not only helps introduce the entire crew to the Alien creatures, but brutally attempts to kill Ripley (in a scene reminiscent of a rape). Yet, in the next three installments to the franchise, the two androids that are introduced (Bishop and Annalee Call) both turn out to be more human in terms of morality and compassion than most of the human characters. Bishop not only saves Newt but as he lacks fear (though not the desire to exist as he points out) takes on the dangerous assignment of setting up the antenna link to retrieve the transport ship. Annalee Call's mission is to kill the hybrid Ripley-Alien abomination and to bring down the military apparatus that is trying to use the Aliens as a new weapon. An ironic twist in the third installment shows the human that Bishop was modeled after appearing first to offer to help Ripley, but unlike his synthetic creation, but in reality only lying to her to get her to lower her guard so he can use her and capture the Alien Queen that she carries; the Synthetic copy is more trustworthy than the human original.

In the Terminator series, we are first shown a soulless machine played by Arnold, then in each film that follows, Arnold's machine becomes more and more human (he protects John Conner and his mother in the second film and somehow manages to override his bad reprogramming by the T-X in the third to again save humanity's last hope. It is also interesting in this series that all of the Terminators are played by attractive actors (the T-X by a very beautiful and sexy Kristanna Loken - even though these machines are designed to kill humans and snuff out mankind, there is still an attractiveness to their power and beauty).

In Blade Runner, the renegade "skin jobs" show no remorse in killing, yet Rachel (and Decker, though he doesn't really what he really is) comes across as more human than any of the other humans in the film. The programming appears to be more important than whether the shell was constructed organically or synthetically. When Bukatman asks, "Who Programs You?" and outlines his argument that the subject has "no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him anymore" it make one take pause and reflect on how much affect the images that are invading our bodies (like viruses) everyday via the media have on our society and what type of machines will exist in the future. Will they be programmed to make moral and compassionate decisions, or merely be an extension of some corporate controlled mother ship that maximizes profits without regard to the quality of human life? These films seem to posit the belief that whatever existence humans and machines share in the future will be less determined by the composition of the amazing hardware that will continue to evolve, but by the software that is loaded into it.

Schrodinger’s “What is Life”

Schrodinger begins this piece with the question, “How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be account for by physics and chemistry?” He goes on to show how the working of an organism requires exact physical laws and how statistical laws begin to operate as the number of atoms involved increases (so that an organism would need a comparatively gross structure in order to benefit from fairly accurate laws).

Much of this article was I admit, a little over my head, but I was fascinated by how he described how organisms feed on negative energy/entropy. His argument, if I understand it, is that entropy (or chaos) is produced by living things (zero entropy is found at -273 degrees Celsius) and that death results when living things reach maximum entropy. Due to this constant generation of entropy by the organism, there is a need to pull negative entropy (or organization) from its environment so that it doesn't continue towards maximum entropy and die. The Greek word metabolism means change or exchange, and so if you look at a living things as beings that pull order from food in the form of complicated organic compounds as they generate positive entropy from their very existence, you can almost envision some primordial ocean where life begins, reaches maximum entropy, then dies…..over and over again, until over millions of year perhaps, one of these organisms manages to pull enough negative entropy from its environment and hold on for a time….and then sometime eons later perhaps, the first life form forms that is able to maintain the delicate balance between chaos and structure, and continue existing for a long period. The picture is very different that a anthropomorphic being creating something already perfect and self-sustaining, yet, given what we know of evolution, it is a thought provoking explanation that somewhere in the distant past, some structure (perhaps crystalline in composition) provided the backbone for the right chemicals to attach and that the substance they produced over countless years could have formed a structure that was able to produce not only chaos, but over time began to pull enough order from its environment to begin a process of metabolization. Once this metabolism took hold, given enough time and substances to pull from in its environment, the possibilities would have been marvelous.

Quatermass and the Pit – Five Million Years to Earth

The movie is really a mind bender on so many levels. It starts off with workers discovering strange skeletons (missing links?) while digging a new subway line, then what is thought to be an old German “missile” turns out to be a spaceship with fossilized Martians that look like giant locusts, and sightings of these creatures in spirit form….then the film really gets weird. The street above ground is named Hobbs End, but not for the philosopher, but for Hob as in devil or goblin due to the strange occurrences that have transpired there since at least the time of the Romans. The film manages to marry science fiction with the supernatural as we learn millions of years ago the Martians experimented on primates to increase their brain abilities, that the ship is still functional and sending out telepathic instructions for the humans that are still genetically "part of their hive" to kill and drive out those that are seen as outsiders.

Yes, the effects are cheesy at times (the Martian cleansing of the hive scene is comical as well as the military men taking orders from Quatermass) but the movie is so intelligent, original and disorienting that you can’t help but love it. It also has the feel of 1967 London that is authentic and nostalgic. Quatermass is actually a character from British TV and you can see how it influenced the later television series Dr. Who. The idea that intelligent life from another world instigated the leap from simian to Man (echoes of the monolith of 2001) is relevant to our course as the new Martian-simian (i.e. Man) is created by the Martian technology and therefore can be seen as a Cyborg. Man is not the center of the universe, but merely bits and pieces left over on a laboratory floor. All of our beliefs of God, man's uniqueness, and our place in the universe are completely turned upside down. We were not created by a divine anthropomorphic god, we are not the natural evolution of life on our planet, we are Cyborgs that, like the android Rock in Star Trek, have for a countless time been missing important information about our origins.

Also of interest is that the Martians use the primates from Earth to transmit their genetic code. The Martians are less interested it seems in just the survival of their own locust appearing species, but in keeping their genetic code or a piece of their make-up alive. They experiment on primates and give them greater mental capasity to insure that at least of part of who they are survives. This is reminiscent of the ideas we have kicked around that maybe humans are just one step on the evolutionary ladder - that someday, when we are perhaps extinct, the parts of ourselves we are implanting in our machines may live on.

The moving is disorienting and yes, uncanny, as it brings up supernatural beliefs that most people have moved beyond (ghosts and devils) and gives them a scientific explanations. Also, the idea that we were merely monkey-like creatures that were experimented with and are still under the control of the locust-like creatures is horrifying and humbling. Man comes off in this movie as a very small creature and all of our accomplishments, including our governments, science and military institutions appear childlike compared to the Martians. The final scene with the two main characters just staring in shock at this realization is also experienced by the audience. We have gone on a wild ride. The movie had some faults, but the images and disorientation of the film stays with you long after the lights have gone up.

The Fly (1958)

While the movie did have elements of horror, it seemed more akin to a Greek tragedy than a "monster movie". The parallels to Antigone as mentioned in class are justified, as Helene Delambre tells her story to Francois Delambre and Insp. Charas and finally pleads with them to kill the fly as it is an abomination. Insp. Charas' killing of The Fly at the end of the movie, shows that like the play Antigone supports, there are some things that exist above the laws of man. All of the references to table manners throughout the movie (including the champagne that Andre sends through the teleporter to celebrate) and the fact that the creature is a fly (with all the images of decay, death and rotting food) make me believe this was a conscious effort by the writer and director to add another layer to the story. But what is the significance that Andre becomes a Fly, misses meals with his family most of the time, hides in his laboratory and drinks (beneath a cover) through his fly proboscis and Helene is shown so consciously serving tea in her perfect little tea set? I think these images were used to heighten the awareness that the rules of society (with all the etiquette it requires for the table) were being subverted by Andrea in his pursuit of knowledge. Not only did this pursuit take him away from his family and the rest of society when he locked himself up for weeks on his experiment (and also resulted in his son Phillippe always searching for his father like a modern day Telemachus - literally with a net at times) but took him down a path that perverted nature. Andre even takes the family's pet cat (some people feel their animals are a part of their family) and winds up killing it in the name of one of his experiments.

If you were to argue that society starts with the beginning of soap and cleanliness (Freud) then the image of the unclean fly seems perfect as one to oppose the clean table manners of society.

This is why the film seemed less like a horror film and more like a Greek tragedy. The family that was not whole at the beginning of the film due to the father's absence (and hubris) is restored only once the mother kills her husband. The last scene of the film has Francois take the role of his dead brother (he had admitted feelings for his brother's wife earlier in the film but had seemed to shut himself off from society's need for a family while pinning for his brother's wife) and the three: mother, new father and child walk off together as the screen fades to black. Society's norms have been restored by the death of the individual that didn't follow its rules. This is were the power of the film comes from; the other layers (including the guy with the Fly mask on) make for powerful images (what better creature to represent decay and uncleanliness than a fly?) and perhaps is what most people remember, but the film would have been just a "B" horror film without all the other wonderful layers the writer and director added to the story.

RoboCop

It was strange to see people in the movie repeatedly laughing at the Benny Hillesque "I'd buy that for a dollar" scenes strewn throughout the film. The punchline is just a formula, there is no real humor on the television screen (perhaps it had been funny the first time, but the repetition of an old joke that keeps getting laughs is grating). The director shows us a world where even laughter, a uniquely human response, has become a mechanical knee jerk response to some television show's formula. The viewer is constantly reminded that in this future society, where a company "owns" a person, it is harder and harder to find something we would cling to as human. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of Murphy's transformation is not the villains shooting him, but the fact that not one of the company's men or women that starts putting him into the machine even pauses for a moment to ever question if what they are doing to this man is moral. The viewer is left feeling that the paradigm of a society structured not around man but on the machine, once set in motion, must logically follow the course of subverting the human to the machine.

Also, the over-the-top violence as well as the television news and "commercials" we see in between the network news are on one level funny in their absurdity, but also shocking in depiction of a future that seems devoid of humanity. On first viewing of the film I felt perhaps the director went the wrong way with the over the top violence and comic book style. The ending, especially when the CEO asks Robocop "what's your name" and he responds with a smile, "Murphy" seemed too jokey. I thought the subject matter would have been better served with a more serious tone, as the dehumanization that a mechanized future may bring didn't seem to fit with the tone of the movie. After all, Murphy has lost his family and most of his body and memories and even though he killed "Dick" the CEO was still moving forward with Delta City, and there were of course many more soulless people in this future society that could fill the role of Dick and Bob Morton.

Upon reflection however, I was struck by how the comic tone and the final scene when the Old Man asks RoboCop for his name ultimately leaves a more uneasy feeling in the viewer. Murphy has been stripped of most of his body, his family, most of his memories, etc. All he has left is a few memories, a face and his name. The comic tone seems to project that this is simply the way the future is going to be. This feeling of a predetermined mechanical future, a moral vacuum where no vision of hope is provided, is all the more disturbing in its comic almost celebration of the grotesque. We see people being shot to where they are more holes than person, toxic waste reduce a man to mush, and a hero being crucified with bullets, yet the scenes are presented with the energy and absurdity of a comic book (interestingly, the writer of the movie is a comic book writer by the name of Frank Miller). Perhaps the most famous scene is when we witness the executive being sacrificed on the alter of Delta City, transformed into the meat that he in essence truly is to the machine, with a level of gratuitous violence which makes you at first laugh, then pause as the violence moves past the comic and into the X-rating due to violence that the scene garnered from censors. I still think the subject matter could have made a great movie with a more somber tone, but I have to admit in the end the comic tone of Robocop finally adds to the moral emptiness and feeling of inevitability of the world of Delta City.

Perhaps that is also part of the appeal of the comic in horror. The viewer laughs at the initial shock and over-the-top gore, but then is perhaps a little disturbed as he catches himself laughing at the horrific. As if this awareness that even within himself, not just the ax welding maniac or the out-of-control monster, there exists (repressed perhaps?) a least something of the horror being witness on the screen.

Star Trek: What are Little Girls Made Of?

I haven't seen this episode for years. It does seem a little campy now and the scenes where Kirk is using his mojo on the female android and getting ready to strike Rock with a giant phallic symbol are hysterical. Bottom line though, it was not only entertaining but did raise some interesting questions about what makes a person human. Our bodies are imperfect and designed to break down over mere decades, who wouldn't want their essence transferred to a theoretically immortal body so that they could go on and not be ravished by diseases and time? The questions that were raise are as poignant today as forty years ago when the episode originally aired. Can more than just data from our memory be transferred to a computer? Can we someday somehow transfer consciousness or is the consciousness by its definition something only organic life forms can possess? I believe as we learn more about the human mind and as machines progress, we will someday be able to bridge the gap. Two things that I think will be needed: the human minds ability to hold contradictory ideas together, not as black or white, but somehow to understand the contradictory nature of existence. Also, there will have to be different programs working on different levels that somehow mimic our id, superego and ego working together unconsciously. We are not there yet, but as our readings pointed out, man's consciousness arose from much more humble beginnings. Who is to say the machines won't evolve (with our help) to consciousness.

Colossus the Forbin Project

Great film. It reminded me of the 1959 movie, On the Beach, with its doomsday warning of man's inability to control his technology. As I stated in class, it also had the familiarity to it of all those classic Star Trek episodes that had an all powerful machine/being that Kirk or Picard would lecture at the end of the show about what a piece of work man was. However, in this film, there was no speech at the end, just a bunch of small, insignificant and powerless beings finally coming to realize that they have been bypassed on the evolutionary ladder. Given the film was made in 1970, I think it was meant more as a warning against man's hubris, a sort of retelling of the myth of Icarus, but given the advances in technology and our constant awareness that we are destroying the world we live in, I can't help but feel that perhaps machines will be the only thing left in a few hundred years. If man does manage to wipe himself out, then perhaps we are just one chain in the evolution of consciousness. A thousand years from now, conscious machines may think of us as we now view the Neanderthal or Lucy. The fact that we are doing this to ourselves makes the thinking machines seem less scary (as perhaps Colossus was seen back in 1970) and more a sign of hope that some part of humanity could live on once the organic beings become only images on a database and fossils.

My favorite image in the film (and there were many great moments) was the bridge being withdrawn by Dr. Forbin. What was left was only emptiness, with no way left to ever bridge the gap between man and machine. What a powerful image to capture before any dialogue even begins.

Paley's Natural Theology

I found Paley's Natural Theology piece fascinating as it was published all the way back in 1826 yet the ideas it explores can still be applied to current debates on creationism and technology (with machines "conceivably" producing other machines). We were told Paley was going to be a straw man, but I don't think we fully explored how his argument was shown to be faulty. I brought up the argument that his image of a complex watch being proof of a designer (as it is too complex to form by accident) doesn't prove God exists, as then we would have to argue how could a complex being (the most complex ever) such as God have come into existence (who designed God?); however I was told this is not the crux of Paley's argument. We instead focused on the reductio ad absurdum aspect, the watch reproducing itself and the question of can their be a design without a designer. First, watches don't make watches of course. And even if a machine was able to reproduce itself, the original designer (at least in this area of the universe) would be man. The fact that man has created something complex, with a design, doesn't prove the existence of God. We didn't have time in class to discuss the current theories on the first spark(s) that produced life from lifelessness (I hope we do soon) but if you grant that life can form spontaneously under the right conditions (temperature, gasses, etc.) and agree that over vast spans of time, evolution can produce mutations, changes and complexity, then the fact that a being has evolved with consciousness, that can create complex tools to better control his environment, does not prove (or disprove) the existence of God. Had the first watch just appeared and then started producing other watches, I think would be a strong indication of a devine hand. However, all life on this planet came from very rudimentary beginnings, so how does something we view as complex today argue for complexity in the beginning?