Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

2010

……………………………………………..

Ondřej Liška

Table of Contents

1. 
   Introduction 5
   
2. 
   Analysis of The Uncanny Valley and its Comparison with The Uncanny 8
   
3. 
   Analysis of Films 18
   
   1. 
      Analysis of Blade Runner 18
      
   2. 
      Analysis of Bicentennial Man 23
      
   3. 
      Analysis of I, Robot 30
      
4. 
   Uncanny Valley in the Selected Films in Cultural Context 36
   
   1. 
      Evaluation of Analyses 36
      
   2. 
      Uncanny Valley in Blade Runner in Cultural Context 45
      
   3. 
      Uncanny Valley in Bicentennial Man in Cultural Context 48
      
   4. 
      Uncanny Valley in I, Robot in Cultural Context 51
      
5. 
   Conclusion 53
   
6. 
   Works Cited 56
   

Science-fiction books and later films have always been widely read or seen by people. The biggest reason for that is probably the fact that science-fiction allows us to escape into different reality, to imagine living in a world that is different from ours. But to provide haven or relaxation is not the only role of science-fiction books or films.

Many science fiction films ask “What if something has happened or will happen?” and in these cases as Bruce F. Kawin in his essay Children of the Light says:

science fiction allows us to explore our evolution and to begin the creation of the future, something it accomplishes both in cautionary tales of the dangers of technology and in adventurous celebrations of human capacity and resourcefulness. It opens the field of inquiry, the range of possible subjects, and leaves us open. (Kawin 337)

In other words, these films can rise questions or issues that we could or will encounter in the future and they either allow us to discuss the available options or provide them themselves.

However, the issues that are present in the science-fiction films are not always connected directly to the future. Sometimes they address an issue from the past so that people can learn from it for the future.

This particular issue is quite widely present in science-fiction films because contemporary developments in robotics are already heading towards human-like robots. Today most robotics expositions exhibit robots that can mimic human expressions. But roboticists today often deal with the problem that robots' appearance elicits distrust or a sense of eeriness among people.

A roboticist named Masahiro Mori investigated this issue. He created a theory called Bukimi no Tani which was translated as The Uncanny Valley. In simplified terms, the theory says that the more a robot resembles a human, the better the reaction of humans is until a certain point where the reaction drops to negative values (Mori). The negative value is the so called uncanny valley.

Many scholars who dealt with the uncanny valley theory linked it to Freud's essay The Uncanny. Bukimi no Tani was even translated as uncanny valley because of “its psychological resonances to 'The Uncanny'” (Pollick). However, the scholars do not go into further detail about the similarities or differences of the two theories. ¹

However, in order to apply The Uncanny Valley on the films, it is first needed to explore Mori's theory and compare it with Freud's in order to explain properly why the use of Mori's The Uncanny Valley provides better results.

Therefore the first part of this thesis focuses on The Uncanny Valley and its exploration, followed by a comparison with Freud's The Uncanny.

The second part of the thesis focuses on close reading of the selected films – Blade Runner, Bicentennial Man and I, Robot – with implementation of Mori's The Uncanny Valley. These films have been chosen because the issues raised by The Uncanny Valley are present in them. This part will also discuss the meaning of the issues raised by The Uncanny Valley in the selected films.

And lastly in the third part of the thesis the analyses will be evaluated in order to place the issues raised by The Uncanny Valley in the films within the context of the American society.

2. Analysis of The Uncanny Valley and Its Comparison with The Uncanny

Although The Uncanny Valley was published in 1970 and it has been dealt with in the field of robotics, it has not been much explored in other fields. There are only few essays dealing with the valley outside the field of robotics such as In Search of the Uncanny Valley by Franck E. Pollick¹ and as Bar-Cohen et al. say in their essay Mirroring Humans:“proponents merely cite films such as The Polar Express, saying that such depictions are unappealing and so prove the theory“ (Bar-Cohen).

Since these essays do not explain why the depictions are unappealing, and, in fact, they do not explore the issue almost at all, it is needed to consult The Uncanny Valley itself, discuss the way it works and what outcomes does it suggest.

In The Uncanny Valley, Mori says that he has “noticed that, as robots appear more human-like, our sense of their familiarity increases until we come to a valley“ (Mori) and he supplies a graph that illustrates his theory:

a
Fig. 1 The Uncanny Valley

nd he provides several examples in order to explain how the theory works:

Recently there are many industrial robots, and as we know the robots do not have a face or legs, and just rotate or extend or contract their arms, and they bear no resemblance to human beings. Certainly the policy for designing these kinds of robots is based on functionality. From this standpoint, the robots must perform functions similar to those of human factory workers, but their appearance is not evaluated. If we plot these industrial robots on a graph of familiarity versus appearance, they lie near the origin (see Figure 1). So they bear little resemblance to a human being, and in general people do not find them to be familiar. But if the designer of a toy robot puts importance on a robot's appearance rather than its function, the robot will have a somewhat human like appearance with a face, two arms, two legs, and a torso. This design lets children enjoy a sense of familiarity with the humanoid toy. So the toy robot is approaching the top of the first peak. (Mori)

In other words, the more the robot resembles a human being the better the response is.

After the first peak lies the uncanny valley. In the valley there are “beings” that evoke a negative sense of familiarity among people. Mori uses examples such as a zombie, a corpse or a prosthetic hand but any robot that is close to a human but is not accepted by people falls into the valley – robot's like Sonny in I, Robot, Rachel in Blade Runner or Andrew in Bicentennial Man.

Bar-Cohen et al. in their essay titled Ethical Issues and Concerns provide an explanation why something can fall into the valley:

The explanation for this phenomenon is that if an object is sufficiently nonhumanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will stand out and easily be noticed, resulting in feelings of empathy. However, if the robot looks like 'almost human,' then the nonhuman characteristics will stand out, leading the human observer to the feeling of “strangeness.” (Bar Cohen Ethical)

This explanation provides a reason why robots fall into the uncanny valley and it also provides a situation when the robot does not fall into the valley.

The robot falls into the uncanny valley if its characteristics are not well-balanced with the people's expectations and if the robot is to avoid the valley, the characteristics must be kept in balance with the people's expectations. And if the robot is already in the valley and wants to transcend it, it must find the balance.

As for reasons why things fall into the valley, Mori provides an example of a moving mannequin.

Mori first describes a prosthetic hand that can move its fingers. He says that “this hand can move in a way that causes some healthy people to feel uneasy. If you shook a woman's hand with this hand in a dark place, the woman must be shocked!“ (Mori). The main reason for the uneasiness lies in the fact that people have some picture of prostheses and their abilities and the fact that they do not tend to move by themselves is one of them. When the hand moves, it challenges this picture and creates an uncanny feeling.

Mori then continues by saying that “since these effects are apparent for just a prosthetic arm, the strangeness will be magnified if we build an entire robot. You can imagine going to a work place where there are many mannequins: if a mannequin started to move, you might be shocked“ (Mori). As in the case of the prosthetic hand, people have a picture of mannequins' qualities or abilities and movement is not a part of the picture. If a mannequin had started moving, it would have challenge the image and create a feeling of uneasiness.

Many articles/essays that deal with the uncanny valley often echo Freud's essay The Uncanny. They say that, to provide one example, “the term 'uncanny' refers to a famous notion introduced to psychology by Ernst Jentsch in 'Über die Psychologie des Unheimlichen' (On the Psychology of the Uncanny) from 1906, which was taken up by Freud in his essay 'Das Unheimliche' (The Uncanny) from 1919” (Misselhorn 104). But none of these essays actually investigate in what way is the uncanny valley actually similar to Freud's uncanny.

An essay by Frank. E. Pollick In Search of the Uncanny Valley illustrates this well. Pollick in the essay links Mori's The Uncanny Valley to Freud's The Uncanny but the only reason he provides for doing so is “its psychological resonances to 'The Uncanny'“ (Pollick). He does not state what the resonances are; he also does not provide any source that would explain what led him to the conclusion.

Therefore it is needed to compare Mori's The Uncanny Valley with Freud's The Uncanny in order to provide reasons why Mori's The Uncanny Valley is applied in analyses of the films and not Freud's The Uncanny.

In the first part of The Uncanny Freud tells the reader that whichever course of investigation he chooses (semantic or exploration of examples), he “can say that both these courses lead to the same conclusion – that the uncanny is that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar.” (Freud 124) Of the three films that this thesis will explore it is true for all of them. The uncanny can be explained in terms of familiarity, of something that is known to people.

In Blade Runner, humans have trouble differentiating replicants from humans and they need to apply time consuming tests in order to find out whether the object of the test is a replicant or a human. This echoes confusion of people, when they cannot tell what is what and when the barrier between two things becomes blurred.

In the case of I, Robot, everyone perceives robots as a common thing until one robot breaks the three laws of robotics which are a norm for robots in the society. That echoes turning against norms and thinking on one's own.

In Bicentennial Man, the director of the robotic company that created Andrew says that they did not market their upgraded versions of robots of Andrew's line because of a negative response from people - “a growing fear that robots would make human work force obsolete” (Bicentennial Man 46:11-6). That echoes problems with unemployment after industrial revolutions and cheap labour force. In all these films some sort of familiarity keeps the robots in the valley.

The uncanny in these three films can also be explored by Mori's The Uncanny Valley in terms of familiarity

People in these films share the same historical background with us so they are familiar with the issues such as unemployment due to technological advancement. They project this familiarity of the issues on the robots and it creates a conflict: the robot suddenly does not correspond to their view or expectations of the robots – expectations like obedience, helpfulness and others.

There is one more similarity between Freud and Mori in case of the uncanny. After Freud examines the semantic meanings of the word unheimlich ( generally translated as uncanny) he comes to the conclusion that the frightening unheimlich derives from “what is concealed and kept hidden” (Freud 132). The unheimlich or uncanny is then caused by something that should not have surfaced but it did.

That is similar to Mori's valley in the sense that as long as the robot resembles a human in appearance the reaction towards him is positive as long as his qualities not inherent to robots are not apparent. But when those qualities surface, he falls into the valley. I, Robot illustrates this nicely. As long as the robots only imitate people in appearance but they do not show any human qualities, they are accepted by people. But when they start showing them, people get an eerie sensation from them such as Dr. Calvin who becomes uneasy when a robot asks her if she can repair it because it “would be better … not to die“ (I, Robot 49:06-11).

Up to this point, Freud's The Uncanny can be used for analysis of the films as well as Mori's The Uncanny Valley. But further on, Freud provides reasons of why something is uncanny and these reasons do not apply to the three selected films. Furthermore, Mori sometimes takes some issues raised by Freud in The Uncanny as commonplace and thus Mori's theory and issues that are connected to it are more up to date.

One such reason can be found at the beginning of the second part of Freud's The Uncanny. Freud says that one of the sources of uncanny is “doubt whether an apparently animate object is alive and, conversely, whether a lifeless object might not perhaps be animate” (Freud 135). Freud investigates this issue mainly in terms of a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann - the Sand-man. While in the case of the story Freud questions whether the doubt of animity is a source of an uncanny feeling, for Mori movement and animity among artificial things are already a part of the uncanny valley. As an example he provides a robot with artificial facial muscles:

In the World Expo held in Osaka this year robots displayed more elaborate design. For example, one robot has 29 artificial muscles in the face to make human-like facial expressions. According to the designer, laughing is a kind of sequence of distortions and the distortion speed is an important factor. If we cut the speed in half, laughing looks unnatural. This illustrates how slight variations in movement can cause a robot, puppet, or prosthetic hand to tumble down into the uncanny valley. (Mori)

For Mori then it is variations in movement that created the uncanny effect rather than doubt whether an object might move.

This point is illustrated in Bicentennial Man. When Andrew asks for an upgrade so that he can show more emotions, the director of the company says that they did some experiments, but had to stop with facial expressions because of a negative answer from the public. Since for most expressions some knowledge of feelings is required, the robots most likely failed because they did not know the feelings and therefore they could not perform the expressions properly which led to them creating an uncanny effect.

Freud's doubt whether an object (a robot in this case) might move does not apply here simply because people are used to lifeless objects which move by themselves. Most of the films containing robots after all take place at a time when robots are widely used.

As regards the doubt whether an animate object is alive, Mori does not have to discuss it because Freud's examples like waxwork figures, dolls and automata had already been surpassed at the time Mori published his article by robots with an inherent level of liveliness. Today, let alone in the science-fiction films that include robots, robots are already taken as alive to a certain degree.

In this regard, Freud's essay is rather outdated because in 1908 when The Uncanny was published the idea of today's robots whose movement would not be restricted as that of dolls and automatons was quite unfathomable.

Another source of uncanny Freud deals with that could be linked to issues explored in science-fiction films that include robots is the double. However, Freud deals with the double in terms of “the appearances of persons who have to be regarded as identical because they look alike” (Freud 141) and its manifestations such as when “a person may identify himself with another and so become unsure of his true self+ or he may substitute the other's self for his own” (Freud 142). In other words there is a fear of one's replacement. But in Freud's view the replacement happens in terms of an individual's self rather than an individual's role. I, Robot provides a good example.

In I, Robot the main character Del Spooner suggests a commercial for the robotics company:“You can see a carpenter making a beautiful chair and one of your robots comes in and makes a better chair twice as fast. And then you superimpose on the screen: 'USR... shittin' on the little guy'“ (I, Robot 13:30-47). To that the CEO of the company answers:“Huh. I suppose your father lost his job to a robot“ (I, Robot 13:47-51). The robot in this scene represents replacement in terms of working force but not in terms of replacing someone as such, as a double of that person. Therefore the issue of the double is not relevant and the question of replacement can be explained rather in terms of familiarity and not complying to an expectation.

Another issue that Freud addresses that is often present in science-fiction films is the issue of immortality. Freud says that “the acme of uncanny is represented by anything to do with death” (Freud 148) and others. He explains it in terms of the inability of people to accept death. In case of robots, a robot's immortality reminds people of their own mortality and thus reinforces their sense of uncanny. However, this issue can also be addressed in terms of Mori's uncanny.

An immortal robot does not age and therefore his appearance does not change. Since humans change in time and the robot would not, there would be a sense of eeriness around the robot and it would fall into the valley. Of course that has one problem – appearance. What if the robot is designed in a way that does not permit change through time, i.e. from metal? In that case that robot would not be subjected to the uncanny valley because of immortality. The robot would still look too much like a machine and machines are expected to last. It is the robot in Bicentennial Man and the robots in Blade Runner in whose relation the issue of immortality is raised – because they are indistinguishable from humans by sight. They are the ones with limited lifespan or the ones that acquire it. There is no immortality issue mentioned in case of I, Robot – the robots there are metallic.

The explanation for that is that the metallic robot in I, Robot still looks too much like a machine and therefore he is expected to last a long time. The robots in Blade Runner and Bicentennial Man appear human and if they would not age or they would keep on living for ever, they would be breaking a picture people have about them.

Therefore, the fear of death through a robot's immortality is present only if the robot is challenging some set of ideas about the robot. If Freud's use of immortality was applied, the robots in I, Robot would have to address the question of immortality as well.

In general, Freud investigates the uncanny in terms of “under what conditions the familiar can become uncanny and frightening” (Freud 124) and what is uncanny and why. However, his analysis of uncanny as something being known to us does not apply to the films in many cases. It is rather Mori's The Uncanny Valley that applies to the films with its analysis of the uncanny as something that does not correspond with our expectations. Mori also focuses rather on what can drag something into the uncanny in order to provide suggestions on how to avoid or transcend the valley.

As the second part of the thesis will prove, Mori's reason are closer to the issues in the selected films because they do not deal with the questions why robots evoke an uncanny feeling in humans but rather on how to transcend the uncanny and that is the reason for choosing The Uncanny Valley for analyses of the films rather than Freud's The Uncanny.

Now that The Uncanny Valley has been explored and the reasons for choosing it over Freud's The Uncanny have been stated, the analyses of the films in which the uncanny valley is present can be done.

The film Blade Runner portrays a dystopian Los Angeles in the year 2019 in which organic robots called replicants, who are visually indistinguishable from humans, are manufactured. The replicants can be differentiated from humans only by applying an empathy test; a test whose role is to provoke emotions in the subject. Since replicants should not have emotions, they should fail the test.

The use of replicants on Earth is banned, and replicants are used exclusively for dangerous, menial or leisure work on Earth's off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and “retired” by police special agents called “blade runners.”

In the film a group of recently escaped replicants is hiding in Los Angeles. A retired blade runner, Rick Deckard, is taken to the police chief Captain Bryant and made to accept the hunt.

When Deckard agrees to hunt the replicants down, he is shown a footage of a replicant suspect, Leon, killing his empathy test interrogator. During the showing Bryant tells Deckard that the replicants attempted to infiltrate Tyrell Corporation, a company that created them. Deckard asks him why the replicants would risk coming to Earth. Bryant wants Deckard to find out, but he does provide a suggestion:

Bryant: They [replicants] were designed to copy human beings in every way except the emotions. The designers reckoned that after few years they could develop their own emotional responses. Hate, love, fear, anger, envy. So they built in a fail-safety device.

Deckard: Which is what?

Bryant: Four year lifespan. ( Blade Runner 14:25 -15:00)

Bryant suggests that they came back because of their shortened lifespan, a suggestion that later proves to be right. But Bryant also explains here why the empathy test works on the replicants.

The empathy test measures emotional response. The replicants do not acquire emotions because their lifespan expires before they could be able to acquire them. Since replicants lack emotions, they cannot project them during the test and they fail it, which resolves in them being branded replicants and being marked for “retirement”.

This piece of information proves to be crucial for it is the basis of the uncanny valley in Blade Runner because this assumption, this image of a replicant as something that cannot project emotions, is soon challenged.

When the briefing is over, Bryant sends Deckard to Tyrell Corporation because there is a replicant there and Bryant wants Deckard to “put the machine on it“ (Blade Runner 14:53-4). In other words, to test it via the empathy test.

When Deckard arrives to Tyrell Corporation, he is greeted by Dr. Eldon Tyrell, founder of the corporation, who should take Deckard to the replicant suspect Deckard is to test. But before Tyrell does that, he asks Deckard to show him the test: “I want to see it [the test] work. (…) I want to see it on a person. I want to see a negative before I provide you with a positive“ (Blade Runner 17:37-44). The person to be tested is a woman named Rachel.

Deckard puts her to the empathy test, which takes a long time to conduct. When he is done, he tells Tyrell:“She's a replicant, isn't she?“ (Blade Runner 20:42-5). Tyrell agrees with him and he is content with the fact that it took Deckard much longer to reveal that Rachel is a replicant than it usually does with other replicants. Deckard suspects that it is because Rachel does not know that she is a replicant and asks Tyrell why Rachel does not know that she is a replicant. Tyrell explains that:

Rachel is an experiment. Nothing more. We began to recognize in them strange obsession, after all they are emotionally inexperienced with only few years in which to store up experiences which you and I take for granted. If we give them the past, we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and in consequence we can control them better. (Blade Runner 21:10-33)

Rachel then was provided with a past and therefore she does not know she was created as a replicant. Furthermore, the past allowed her to attain her emotions much faster and therefore she is able to project them and at least puzzle Deckard during the test. That is why it takes Deckard “more over a hundred“ (Blade Runner 20:55-8) questions to realize that Rachel is a replicant as opposed to usual “twenty or thirty“ (Blade Runner 20:52-4) questions.

At this point, from Deckard's perspective, Rachel falls into the valley. Deckard has an image of what replicants can and cannot do. One of these things is the inability to project emotions. But Rachel shows some emotional response which does not correspond with Deckard's image of replicants which is based on a distinctive line between humans and replicants which is based on an inability to project that emotional response. Rachel then falls into the valley because she violates an image Deckard has.

When Deckard gets home after the testing, Rachel is there, waiting for him. She tells him:“You think I'm a replicant, don't you?“ (Blade Runner 30:53-6) and in order to prove that she is not a replicant, she shows him a photography from her childhood to prove that she has a past unlike replicants and therefore she is human.

The photography becomes here an important symbol because it represent one's past. However, in the case of Rachel it is an ascribed past.

There is one more type of past introduced by a replicant, and that is a created past. Leon created some photos as well. He created them in order to provide himself with proof that his past is authentic.

Both of these kinds of past threaten the perhaps only guarantee of authenticity of memories. If evidence of memories can be faked, the memories can be faked as well and if memories on which many feelings are based cannot be proved to be authentic or false, it becomes almost impossible to differentiate between a human and a replicant.

When Deckard sees Rachel's photography, he infers its authenticity because he knows that Rachel is a replicant and therefore the photography is fake. But the photography nevertheless deepens his uncanny feeling about Rachel because her defending herself as being human only contradicts his view of replicants: replicants know what they are. When Deckard infirms Rachel's evidence of the authenticity of her past, she leaves.

After this meeting, the next time Deckard sees Rachel he takes her to his home again and there she admits she realized that she is a replicant and she also shows that she knows that she is in the uncanny valley. That is apparent from her actions at Deckard's home. She watches Deckard's photos, plays the piano and lets her hair down. The photos are the proof of past, in her case her fake past, which would brand her a replicant which cannot project feelings but that is challenged by her showing an emotional response to the situation by playing the piano. And her letting down her hair represents her wish for a change because her look is quite different after she lets down her hair.

Deckard has a few options here. He can kill her as a blade runner, because she is a replicant that represents a threat – she has acquired emotions to a degree that can allow her to pass for a human. Or her can pull her out of the valley. He chooses the second option.

He pulls her out of the valley by making her provide proof of authenticity of her feelings: by having sex with him. The feelings that arise during sex are immediate and they are not based on memories. Thus if she is able to show feeling during sex, she can transcend the valley for him and become an authentic human being.