We all grieve differently when we lose someone we love. Some grieving methods are healthy and others are unhealthy. Some of us keep memories through pictures or letters or even old voice mails they left your before they were gone. In the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back" Martha gets the chance to talk to Ash after he died suddenly, and the majority of us would act just like she did for the chance to talk to our lost loved ones.
At first Martha refused to chat with the digital Ash. She thought it was too weird and creepy, but all of that changes when she finds out she is pregnant. She then gives in feeling the unbearable need to tell Ash about his unborn child. Chatting does her some good but then she moves onto phone calls. Eventually she has an android version of Ash compiled from his online posts, pictures, phone calls, and emails. But is this nearly perfect simulation of Ash a good way to deal with her grief?
There was never the illusion that this was the real Ash. Even android Ash never tries to say that he was the real Ash but he "aims to please" Martha by being exactly what she wants However, what she wants are the good memories of Ash. When we re-read a letter from someone we love or look at a picture we recall a memory of them that keeps them alive in a way. The android Ash, however, is a new being that will have his own experiences and is only nearly perfect. Soon Martha isn't sure what she wants out of android Ash. She wants his imperfections and the perfect memories. The fact is that for a moment she thought she was getting the old Ash back and the new Ash will never be able to fill that hole.
At the beginning of the episode Ash talks about how after someone died in his family his mother removed every picture of them and put them in the attic. Not surprisingly that is were the android Ash ends up. I think when android Ash ends up in the attic is when Martha lets go of the old Ash, realizing the android will never be a perfect simulation of Ash just a mobile memory. The android can't cross to the other side of the uncanny valley and he never intends to but Martha enjoyed the simulation until it was too close but still not enough. Her grief intensified because she never dealt with her grief and then she had deal with the grief that she almost got him back.
1 comment:
I agree that the way Martha dealt with her grief was, in a sense, normal, up until the Android Ash. Very often, people wish just to hear their loved ones voices again. But remembering someone and having their actual physical presence are two separate things. While Martha first dealt with her grief in that she wanted a sense of closure so that Ash can know he would be a father, it later spirals into a mess of not grieving at all. She didn't move on. She was stuck with old memories of Ash that were compiled into the android that later made its own memories.
Post a Comment