Robot Ecology and the Science Fiction Film by Telotte J. P.;

Author:Telotte, J. P.; [J. P. Telotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

That repeated comparison of two quite similar—and persistent—versions of this figure suggests a consistent level of doubt or worry that still attended this popular image of the robot. It is as if the Robby type, for all of its lingering popularity—and indeed, it would continue to surface in various film and television texts for more than a decade, although increasingly as a kind of nostalgic signpost—had managed to mollify our anxieties about such robots, and particularly about their electronic brains, only partially or temporarily. We might note that just a few years after Lost in Space left the air, another sort of electronic aid, human caretaker, even a seemingly interested friend to man, the HAL 9000 computer of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), would inexplicably go berserk, killing off most of the astronauts it was supposed to support on their mission to Jupiter. And shortly after, Westworld (1973), along with its sequel Futureworld (1976), would depict its theme park robots (or audioanimatronics), figures that had been programmed to provide any sort of pleasure park visitors might desire, similarly developing unexpectedly violent tendencies and simply killing off the guests. Despite their human seeming, even a constructed sexual appeal in the Westworld/Futureworld figures, something of the uncanny and disturbing spirit of these robots simply refused to be dispelled.

Jane Bennett, in her influential work on what she terms the “ecology of things,” has described a similar sort of troubled human response to the natural world today. Following the lead of Bruno Latour, she notes how even as “the modern self feels increasingly entangled—cosmically, biotechnologically, medically, virally, pharmacologically—with nonhuman nature,” and even as that “commingling has … become harder to ignore,” there remains a human tendency to pull back, to reassert “the boundary between culture and nature,” as well as “machines” (Vibrant 115), as if all that is not human can have that same uncanny effect on us. Although the wondrous electronic brains of these robots, either when properly programmed or simply through extended human interaction, would, as we have seen, allow them to serve as playthings, companions, protectors, comic foils, even “friends,” there lingered that sense of “boundary,” whether because of the robot’s very nature or, as Bennett might suggest, because of a human inability to embrace “the intimacy of the human and the nonhuman” (116), to recognize our similarly “living” nature.

As films like Westworld, Futureworld, and the similar The Stepford Wives (1975) already forecast, the robot of the sf cinema would, as Robby’s once-dominant image began to wane, increasingly challenge that notion of boundary. Largely abandoning that figure’s “comic rotundity” and playful aspect, it would gradually assume a new, more pointedly anthropomorphic form. Although Robby, like his tin-can predecessors, managed an amazing longevity, although the image remained remarkably faithful to its original visual conception, and although it was fecund enough to inspire similar types (not just Lost in Space’s Robot, but a host of other brainy figures, including the title character of The Colossus of New York [1958], John of Planeta Bur,

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