Gaby Wood’s “Edison’s Eve: a magical history of the quest for mechanical life” will provide the history of automata and the public’s reactions of the creations. It will also provide interesting examples of automata that will help back up arguments of the question of where the source of fascination for automata comes from. Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny” will help explain the reactions of both the spectators and creators of the machines. In Wood’s words, the term “the uncanny” describes “the feeling that arises when there is an ‘intellectual uncertainty’ about the borderline between the lifeless and the living” (xiv-xv), and this will be one of the tools in clarifying my arguments and explanations throughout the essay. The movie “Hugo”, directed by Martin Scorsese, will provide me an illustrative way of depicting my argument as its plot is formed around an orphan boy named Hugo obsessed with completing an unfinished automaton left by his father. The fact that the book “The invention of Hugo Cabret” written by Brian Selznick was inspired by a broken automata of the Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet and the process of fixing it and “bringing it back to life” validates the feelings portrayed through Hugo. “Automata and mimesis on the stage of theatre history” by Kara Reilly and “The Human Touch: towards a historical anthropology and dream analysis of self-acting instruments” by Allen Feldman will also facilitate greater understanding of the subject.


Hugo. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz and Christopher Lee. Paramount, 2011.

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