The movie Be Right Back left me with an eerie feeling. They basically brought back the dead for their own enjoyment. Sure, she had emotional motives for doing so and he was robotic, however they made a mechanical attempt at recreation of a once living man. They recreated his mind and body so that she would not have to deal with the trial of her grief anymore. But, this whole attempt backfires.
I felt the uncanny valley was more then dived into with this movie, for the better part of 45 minutes viewers were sitting right at the bottom of the dip. To feel brought in by similarity and repulsed by difference was clearly seen. The phone calls and messaging deeply attracted her to Ash 2 because his social media self would most likely be very similar to how he was on the phone and texting. This is because both of these are instances of him communicating out of real life. In her hysteric emotional state I feel like this turned into a kind of snowball effect in regards to her attraction to Ash 2. However, as her snowball, of texting and calling him, gets bigger the uncanny "clone/ robot" is like a brick wall that stops the snowball of attraction in its tracks. This happens because she wanted Ash, in all of his perfect Ash-like qualities ( as in Ash was the most like Ash intrinsically). However, the machine couldn’t give her the Ash she wanted because of his limited chest of knowledge about Ash in the real world. This is why the scene of her wanting him in a sexual way was so very awkward and disturbing. He didn’t know what Ash was like sexually, so when she expected him to know and started to make him touch her this caused confusion.
I feel as though the uncanny valley plays a sort twisted game with the human mind. The way I see it is that when a person’s mind views something uncanny it gets the feeling that whatever it is, is saying that it could cross the line into normality, however it refuses and stays just on the edge. So mentally your brain tries to force it into realism but obviously fails and is then repulsed by its ability to stay just out of the reach of acceptable. This gives us that creeped out feeling. Its as if your brain is getting annoyed that the object in question would get that close but not cross into regularity.
1 comment:
This is a really great summary of the story, but I disagree with you on one thing: Ash #2 possessed the social side of Ash #1. Ash #2 seemed to have no clue of the social side of Ash #1. In fact, Ash #2 followed or either waited on Martha the entire time. This tells you that he was not fully self-aware until she brought him to the cliff and demanded him to jump. But, the point about the snowball effect is very understanding.
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