Posthumanism Through the Lense of Cinema Main Menu Posthumanism Through the Lense of Cinema

I, Robot (2004)

42493
Although this film was made in the early 2000s, the story takes place in the year 2035 in Chicago. It is interesting to note that the film is imagined to take place 12 years from now, reflecting how in the 2000s, we were already projecting the hope and fear associated with technology as it was advancing quite rapidly. Del, a police officer, is scared and hates robots. He is reluctant to use them even though they have been programmed to follow the three laws of robotics. Police Officer Del takes charge of an investigation following the scientist's death who created the robotics and the three laws. The policeman suspects that it is not a suicide compared to common beliefs but that it is a murder by a robot when he finds an unusual robot at the crime scene. The robot doesn't follow orders and is part of the new model of robot that is supposed to be distributed in the city. So, in the movie, we follow the technophobic policeman who discovers the uprising of the robots against humanity and against the other robots that do not follow the three laws of robotics. One way that the movie illustrates how robots are present and are part of society almost as much as humans are that after the realization of the new robots, there will be one robot for five humans, which makes that robot occupy 20% of the population. Here, I offer a scene analysis which showcases how this movie asserts the domination of robots over humans.

The film follows a somewhat stereotypical narrative with robots taking over the world. It comes from the cyberpunk genre, as the film imagines an urban city dominated by technology. However, I believe that the film hides deeper themes, such as “SF complacates the naive conception that it is futuristic storytelling. Instead, its stories defamiliarizing us to our present” (Carbonell 155). As technology takes more and more place in our daily lives and becomes more and more advanced, concerns about its surface, Braidotti explains this phenomenon as “there is another fundamental problem with the residual humanism of the analytically posthuman attempts to moralize technology and sideline experiments with new forms of subjectivity, namely their over-confidence about the moral intentionality of the technology itself. More specifically, they neglect the current state of autonomy reached by the machines. The complexity of our smart technologies lies at the core of the post-anthropocentric turn that will be the theme of the next chapter” (Braidotti 43)

Moreover, what is more, stress-inducing in the movie is the fact that a robot develops a particular subjectivity. It was created not to obey the three laws of robotics, meaning the robot has free will. Then that's exactly what's stressing as with humanism, the human is the central race, and it is distinguished by its ability to have subjectivity. The film's title is a good indicator of the subjectivity that a robot will develop. The "I, Robot" reminds me of what René Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am," to distinguish human beings as the only race able to think logically and then be conscious of this ability. On the other hand, the "I, Robot" use of the pronoun "I" suggests that the robot is self-aware and that it, too, is capable of logical thinking, which directly contradicts the belief that humans as the only thinking species.

Although the film tries to remove us from the human at the top of the hierarchy, the remarks of the policeman Del towards the robot recall racist terms. In fact, Del is described as technophobic in the film, so it is interesting to see how racism is expressed in this film. The film's narrative is deeply tied to race and the post-white imaginary. The binaries between the races, humans and robots, create a form of otherness that makes the other disturbing. Therefore, this racist ideology is projected in the film to represent the separation between robots and humans. The robots are all shown with white faces, and Brayton draws a parallel between white terror and the robots, as "whiteness is sometimes considered a threatening and colonizing presence" (Brayton 75). At the same time, the main character, Will Smith, who has an apparent aversion to robots, is a black man. Thus, in the movie, we compare the fear of the colonized and the minorities of the white colonizers with the fear of the humans, who fear that robots might take over. However, racism seems to be reversed in the movie as it is a black man who has prejudice over robots that are purposefully made white. I do not think the movie's primary goal is to show the reversal of racism, which reflects the fear of other species but rather showing “the robot’s desire to overcome an oppressive identity may offer a critique of white supremacy” (Brayton 75).

So, the film tries to show the possibility of living with technology even if the main character, Del, is entirely against it, he, the policeman, couldn't be fully human. He is a cyborg as he has a robotic prosthesis that starts from his ribs, right lung, and whole arm. Even if he doesn't want to live with robots, he is part robot, dependent on this technology, as one of his vital organs is robotic. This fear of robots and technology is perhaps part of the idea that this is a "body invasion" (Schmeink 21). However, even if the robots are still present at the end of the film and leave the human population but remain grouped, the technology in Del's body never leaves. Thus, it is an example of how the future can be a hybrid of technology.
 

This page has paths:

  1. I, Robot (2004) Scene analysis Diliana Proulx-Castro
  2. Posthumanism and Cinema Diliana Proulx-Castro

Contents of this tag:

  1. I, Robot (2004) Scene analysis

This page references: