“Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's
technical resources while maintaining the property system. The destructiveness
of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate
technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to
cope with the elemental forces of society.”
-- Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)
One of my
favorite movies ever made is Brad Bird’s The
Iron Giant. In the animated film, a giant Soviet robot lands in a small
town in Maine and is befriended by a young boy. The boy, Hogarth Hughes,
teaches the Iron Giant that the robot is more than what he was created to be –
the robot is not a gun, but whoever it chooses to be. And, over the course of
the film, the giant chooses to be Superman – a hero rather than a villain. The
film gives the robot agency to leave its sinister roots.
 |
| The Iron Giant meets Magritte. |
Integral to the
plot is the paranoia and general fear of Soviet technology during the Cold War.
During the Cold War, Americans’ greatest fear was that the USSR had technology,
particularly weaponized technology, greater than that of the United States.
This fear speaks to what Benjamin discusses above; that industrialization,
which has bled into all aspects of life, including war, has not been used to
its potential of providing good for mankind.
I also find it
interesting that, according to Dr. Vesna’s lecture, “robot” comes from “robota”
in Slavic languages, which means “laborer.” The origin of the word, paired with
the Iron Giant’s own Slavic origin, suggest a correlation in how laborers are
often poorly treated and compensated to ensure capitalistic gain and how
robotics and other means of war are produced with little thought of future
implications to ensure imperialist gain. Furthermore, the use of robots to replace people, just as the Iron Giant replaces soldiers, is usually a product of faster, cheaper labor rather than a means of actual technological progress.
Benjamin, Walter. The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008.
Print.
Polo, Susanna. "This Is
Not a Gun: The Pop Culture Art of Jason Liwag."This Is Not a Gun the
Pop Culture Art of Jason Liwag Comments. The Mary Sue, 29 Apr. 2013. Web.
13 Apr. 2015.
Vesna, Victoria. "Robotics
+ Art." UCLA, Los Angeles. 4 Apr. 2015. Lecture.
First image: http://static.rogerebert.com/redactor_assets/pictures/5406099acd3b56bbca00021a/Iron-Giant-Superman-1024x500.png
Hi Martina! Didn't know you were in this class! Cool!
ReplyDeleteI love The Iron Giant as well, and was happy to learn more about its historical context. The humanization/personification of robots really interested me as well, and I thought it was super interesting how you talked about the Iron Giant gaining agency by his friendship with the boy. The development of artificial intelligence may actually make this possible soon. I also liked your development of the idea of robots as laborers, stemming from the Slavic root word. With the rise of artificial intelligence, I believe that there will arise a moral dilemma in robot labor. A "dumb" robot can be worked as long as possible with no issue, but an "intelligent" robot may desire a break or want to stop working for some reason. It will be interesting to see how these functions (friendship and labor) will intersect in the future. Thanks for your thoughts!