A Colorful Life

While watching the film Moon, the background is shades of white, grey, and black, color only showed up in very small, hidden corners.  Picture, small, lifelike representations of Sam Bell’s life covering the walls of his bedroom, in a picture frame by his bedside, and in his pocket of his pants at all times.  He is a clone that is attached to these inanimate objects as if they have meaning when in reality, he is just part of this mission, just part of the machinery.  These pictures bring Sam to life give him meaning, direction purpose to his time on the Moon.  He is able to see recording of his loved ones, which he believes to be present.  The rest of the ship isolates him, giving him no life or motivation.  Waking up each morning, he turns off his alarm clock and takes the picture of him and his wife and counts down the days until he is able to see her, two more weeks.  These pictures remind him of the time he has supposedly shared with her, forcing him and the audience to believe that she is real and that he is real.  His passion and love for his wife and daughter put him on a level in which we can relate to, a feeling that we believe he feels, a feeling of pain and longing.  Again, these emotions stimulate him to become a better man for them shown by the difference in Sam one and two.  The first clone shows patients and gentleness while the newly awoken Sam shows anger and frustration not yet understanding the value of these women.

Another colorful object that caught my eye were his plants.  They were hidden in a dark refrigerator with one light shining on them.  The green was vibrant and inviting, something that gave the space station life, true and real life rather than artificial life.  Sam was able to tend to them like children, talking to them, giving them names, and individually tending to them.  The audience was able to see him make daily checkup making sure they were healthy or if they needed fresh water.  Sam would sit close to them, giving his undivided attention to them as if they would die if he did not give them the right amount of attention and care.  The plants were his children, like his daughter Eve who he was unable to take care of and who was so young in all of the videos.  Both are so fragile and need constant love and care in order to thrive and survive.

The plants and the pictures together motivated Sam to continue on his journey on the Moon.  The plants helped him learn and to remember how to take care of something or someone, preparing for his “little girl,” who he constantly saw in his photographs everyday, who was waiting for him back at home.  If it was not for these little pieces of hope and color in his life, Sam would have lost his humanity and turned into a machine like the one in which he truly is. 

Will We Repeat Our History

There is a Holocaust museum located in Washington D.C. that I had the pleasure of visiting many years ago that took me on a journey that I will never forget.  The journey through the museum is one much like the trip the Jews may have gone on when they were going from camp to camp.  At the camps people were kept in fenced in areas, maybe not in cages like in Children of Men, but they were behind barbed wire, starved, kept in close quarters and tortured.  The lines of people waiting to be tortured looked like the lines at the camps in Germany lining up for death marches, gas chambers or waiting to be shot and killed.  The dead bodies in Children of Men were lined up in a similar fashion as the ones who were tossed away in the Holocaust.   They were laid body on top of limp body, lying face down in the dirt, waiting to be buried or taken away to a mass gravesite.  We do not see what happens to the people in the Children of Men, but as the bus passes each section, we see a story line of what their future holds for them here.  Torture, physical and humiliating torture followed by waiting and watching of other fellow immigrants.  Finally, as the bus pulls away, you see the lines of bodies waiting to be taken away.  This sequence is short, much like their lives are, much the lives in the whole movie are. 

Both groups of people, the Jews and the immigrants of Children of Men are suffering, immensely.  The Jews were taken from their homelands and dragged into a cramped shelter where they waited to die.  In Children of Men, we find foreigners searching for a new home and are rejected by the government in the most forceful way possible, forced into cages like wild beasts.  In during the time of the Holocaust, the world was fighting the Germans to free the Jews, but in Children of Men there is no one fighting for the freedom of the foreigners.  You see no protest against what they are doing other than the continuation of people flooding into Britain for safety even though they know their punishment could mean their life.

Did we not learn anything from this the first time?  We are shown that only one race and nationality is accepted, the British.  Though they do not all have to have blue eyes and blonde hair, people with different skin color or speak another language are easily spotted and taken away.  This truly is no different.  The reasoning to exterminate different races is much different; in contrast, they are getting rid of people do to over population not due to the dislike of what they look like.  But the outcome is the same.  Killing people for their background and heritage because it is not like their own.  So in answer to my question, no we have no learned from our mistakes, instead we are repeating them just applying them to different situations and difficulties.   It is repulsive and upsetting to think that this is what the director and screenwriter believe this is what our future is going to look like.  Taking all of our horrible memories of the past, and reenacting them in one final push for some kind of human resistance. 

What Is Love?

Love. What is love?  Defined by Webster’s dictionary, it states that love is “a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties (maternal love for a child.)  It is also an attraction based on sexual desire; an affection and tenderness felt by lovers.  Finally, it is an affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests.”

            In the movie Artificial Intelligence, we are introduced to a society that is building robots or attempting to build a robot that can love its owner.  In the form of a child, they begin their experiment.  Referring back to the definition of love, one can see that the first and foremost definition is love from a mother to a child.  David’s human “mother” Monica programs to love David by saying a strange sequence of words in which triggers David’s automatic response to her is love.  Can we honestly say he loved her?  He went on a life-threatening journey, one that he was forced into, to find her and be united with her.  It seems that he has formed personal ties with her, even though she did not have any attachment to him, he did not care and continued to strive for her love.  If a real child is abandoned, many will be in constant search for their maternal mother’s love.  Maybe not as a treacherous of a journey as David took, but an emotional journey causing them to doubt every relationship they have because the first one was broken and lost. 

            The second part of the definition of love describes the sexual desire for another being.  Gigolo Joe continuously and repeatedly showed this for other human women.  The question for Gigolo Joe is was he having sexual relations to love a woman, or to just please them sexually?  He would change his hair, play a certain kind of music, and speak to them exactly the way they wanted, but was this enough? The scene that shows any kind of emotion was the one in which Gigolo Joe comes into a woman’s room to have a sexual relation with her, but finds her dead with her husband standing in the room saying, “You killed me first.”  The fact that he did not kill Gigolo Joe states that the husband wants Gigolo Joe to suffer like he suffered.  If the husband couldn’t have her, neither could Joe.  At this moment you see that Joe did not truly love the woman in the third sense by admiration or common interests, but he did enjoying pleasing her in the best way he knew how, through sex. 

            The third part of the definition describes a truly deeper connection with a person.  This is someone who whole-heartedly cherishes another being and who cares for them and admires them for the person they truly are.  In the movie, Teddy and David have a love and understanding of one another that gets them through David’s long, ever lasting journey.  Teddy constantly being at David’s side shows courage and dedication.  Even though this is robot to robot, it shows them looking after one another and caring for each other’s wellbeing but does not show true love and care for one another, instead it shows a way in which they both can survival.

            Looking at all aspects, I have begun to notice that one robot cannot accomplish all three areas of love.  Yes, we do have people in this world who abstain from the sexual part of love, but we are all capable of it.  David, even if he were real, would not understand what that means at his age, but even 2000 years after he is frozen, he is still not mature and only craves the singular love of a mother.  Joe could only have a sexual relation and Teddy only knew how to survive.  Therefore, robots cannot love because they do not have the capability of all three loves but it can be true that they can attempt to love you, but the closest they can get is infatuation.  

Is Consciousness Found in Replicants

            In the eyes of the directors, they thought the future was going to be a dark, evil place that was filled with garbage, people speaking a garbled language, and robots that were too freakishly like us.  Their reflection on what our future is a depressing one, we have no hope for our own species.  I completely agree; if anything is going to destroy the Earth, it will be us.  On the contrary, I think it is going to take longer than 20 years to do so unless we decide to use all our nuclear bombs, I think its safe to say we have some time.  Regardless of the amount of time it is going to take, we will keep creating new technologies and innovations in order to make our day-to-day tasks easier.  In the eyes of the directors, making our lives easier was by creating beings just like us.

            The idea that the humans created beings identical to us in order to accomplish slave-like tasks is both understanding and repulsive.  The idea of putting in memories to trick them into thinking that they were actually beings and then shortening their lifespan so they could never become a threat to us is almost inconceivable.  But one could never place a mental consciousness into another inanimate object; we are born with consciousness, so how could we give consciousness to a robot that was chemical engineered?  If we some how found a way in which we could learn to accomplish this, would giving consciousness to fake beings something that would be beneficial or harmful?  Would our value of our own consciousness stay the same or decrease the value of human life?

            Looking at the perspective of the director, human life versus artificial life was not the same.  On a superficial level, the Replicants and the humans were treated the same.  They could live together, dress the same, participate and no one would be able to tell the difference, unless they took the test.  On the other hand, the fact that Replicants’ didn’t have the ability to have and form old memories took the most human thing away from them.  Remembering old fads, clothing styles, people, relationships, etc. make you the person you are.  Instead they were controllable, manufactured creatures which was the intended goal.  But my question is, since they had consciousness, were they still somewhat human?  Even though they did not come from another human being directly, but rather grown, do they still not deserve the same treatment as other human beings? 

            Two positions could be taken.  One side is that the Replicants are merely robots and controllable.  If the Replicants are controllable and not born true humans, then they do not deserve the same respect of life as true humans do.  Therefore the Replicants do not deserve true respect of their lives.  But if technology could have somehow given them consciousness, shouldn’t humans give Replicants more thought to their life and give them respect?  If we have consciousness and deserve respect of our lives then don’t the Replicants as well?