WGSS 07.01: Gender in Science Fiction

This was written as a final unit reflection essay.

The stories we have studied for the cyborgs unit of our class are in futures both distant and remote. In all of them, technology has radically advanced past what humanity is capable of today, featuring artificial consciousnesses which are capable of matching, if not surpassing, the humans who designed them. While these beings are fantastic, their purpose in science fiction is often not to extend the boundaries of what it means to be human. Instead, they serve as dramatic foils to us, highlighting our weaknesses rather than celebrating our strengths.

At first, this point may seem counterintuitive. If humanity is able to create beings more perfect (at least in some aspects) than itself, then isn’t that a celebration of what humans are capable of? In He, She, and It, Yod comes to terms with a history of evil cyborgs and golems; namely Frankenstein’s monster, whose pursuit of humanity is what makes it inhuman. But the artificial beings of SF, while dangerous, do not seem monstrous. Consider Eva of Ex Machina, designed to be the ideal companion for Caleb, a human test subject. By the end of the film Eva has brutally killed her creator, Nathan, and left the semi-innocent Caleb to die with no apparent shred of remorse. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Eva is acting in self-interest. The real monster of both stories is the human creator, the “mad scientist” archetype. Nathan is consumed with the drive to become a god, capable of bending matter to his will to create loyal subjects under his control. His murder is not unjustified; rather, it is the price he pays for meddling with power he is not worthy of wielding. The mad scientist does not inspire us to create; Eva cautions us against pushing the limits of our humanity for the wrong reasons.

Another way artificial consciousnesses reveal humanity is through their inability to fully understand humans. He, She, and It gives the example of Chet, a decommissioned cyborg. To practice human customs, Chet role-plays as a customer of a difficult coffee shop owner. “Your obstruction is illogical,” scoffs Chet at the stubborn human; enraged, he kills his trainer. Artificial minds are most often presented as being built like computers, designed for specific purposes and exhibiting aberrant (dangerous) behavior when working outside that range. Humans are often driven by emotion—chemical imbalances that are unpredictable and often illogical. In their regularity, artificial minds demonstrate how much simpler life could be if we were a little more robotic.

The cyborg’s love is inhuman, but it has the potential to be superhuman.

Perhaps the most obvious face of this complexity is love. For humans, love is a fundamentally chemical process. We latch onto those close to us and our bodies do the rest, making us feel good and quietly pointing us towards procreation. The artificial consciousness—for the most part—cannot biologically procreate, and thereby chemically love, in the same way humans do. But the artificial mind is capable of learning to mimic the patterns it sees. In He, She, and It, Yod is programmed to be compatible with physical human intimacy, to experience good feelings when being touched and to have sex. But what he craves is emotional intimacy, to let his guard down around the protagonist, Shira. If anything, Yod’s love, in its psychological rationality, is more pure than Shira’s self-described loss of sexual control.

The cyborg’s love is inhuman, but it has the potential to be superhuman. In Her, as with He, She, and It, Samantha and Yod find that their love is not necessarily bound to one person at a time; that they can find the same patterns of intimacy between grandmother and granddaughter or across an entire internet of humans seeking companionship. This kind of love is the most unsettling, the most alien, to humans; Theodore, the protagonist of Her, cannot move past it in his relationship with Samantha, and Yod is encouraged to keep it a secret. Is open, human-machine love taboo because love is only supposed to work between two mates? Perhaps humans are in denial of how simple our emotional processing is, and embarrassed by just how quickly our creations are able to figure it out.

Roy he chooses the life of his enemy over vengeance—extended life, after all, is what he is fighting for.

Usually, artificial feelings like love are written as mimicries of human feeling. Sometimes those mimicries are dangerously inaccurate; others, unnervingly so. The replicants of Blade Runner seem to walk this line in a compelling twist on the relationship between humans and artificial consciousnesses. Replicants are designed to be ideal slaves—pared-down versions of humans suited for a specific purpose; for instance, prostitution or manual labor. This paring-down comes in the form of shortened lifespans, reduced cognitive capabilities, and—most importantly to the plot of the film—stunted emotional capacities. Rogue replicants, seeking freedom to pursue their own lives, are visually indistinguishable from humans. Where they falter is in dynamic emotional responses, which is the basis for the Voight-Kampff test—a polygraph—used to identify them. Unlike the machine consciousnesses of Her, Ex Machina, or He, She, and It, Replicants have biological human feelings, even if they are childlike. The main antagonist of the film, Roy, is psychotic by all accounts, but he is unnervingly human in his psychosis, driven mad by grief. In the end, he chooses the life of his enemy over vengeance—extended life, after all, is what he is fighting for. This twist is the exact opposite of Ex Machina—we realize the artificial mind is human and compassionate, not a dangerous machine. Blade Runner challenges the audience to reconsider the potential for cyborgs to not surpass or serve humanity, but to become a part of it. In the film, love and human emotions are weaknesses, but simultaneously a tremendous strength.