In the episode "Be Right Back", Martha loses the love of her life, Ash, in a car accident. This was all so sudden, she could not cope, she mourned him at the funeral. That is where she was introduced to technology that allowed her to communicate with her boyfriend Ash. This technology gathered all of her boyfriend's posts from his social media pages and converted into artificial intelligence. This was very convenient because Ash 1 was constantly using his phone. Anything Ash 1 said and did was now formatted into an automated text, then into voice, that reacted as if it was the original Ash. Martha used this as a means of grieving. However, this flipped once she got obsessed with it. She took him on hikes and freaked out when she dropped her phone. In my opinion this started getting unhealthy for her well being because she was only holding herself back. Instead of moving on with her life she stepped up and got an actual life size Ash. This helped with her short term pleasures, as proven, but affected her in the long run. She started noticing how this droid had little relevance to Ash 1. When on social media, we tend to post the "happy" moments in our life. In this case, so did Ash 1 therefore, Ash 2 did not react with emotions, not much other than content, but rather than by what it was programmed to according to the videos/posts from Ash 1. This affected Martha because she wanted Ash 2 to react for himself, but instead she had to tell him what emotions/actions to portray. This goes to show that this form of technology is not to be fully trusted because humans have flaws, we make mistakes and learn, sometimes. Ash 2 was too perfect and did exactly what Martha told him to do, most of the time, and never fought back. This angered Martha because Ash 2 did not fulfill her expectations. She was hoping for an exact replica of Ash 1. It was not until later in the movie where she realized she made a mistake in accepting Ash 2 and now she had to deal with it along with her daughter. I do not know if the daughter knew that Ash 2 was a failed "duplicate" of her dad but whether she did or not it could of gone both ways for her. On one hand, it was good to have Ash 2 because she at least knew of what her father looked like but, on the other not because he wouldn't be a father to her in terms of raising her. Not only that, but since Ash 2 was nothing like Ash 1, the daughter didn't have a clear representation of her dad's qualities.
To conclude, technology is advancing so rapidly that this is something we might have to decide in future situations like so. Although it may cause a sense of relief or satisfaction to be able to say goodbye one last time to a loved one, it's not something I'd personally do because I can see myself attaching to it to the point that letting go would not be an option.
2 comments:
I like that you saw the small positive side of things when saying that the daughter would see her father would look like. I agree with you because you seem to have an open mind about things. Even though ideas in this film seem foreign to us, I think that we still need to try and understand the characters's feelings in respect to their era. Do you think that overtime things between her and Ash 2 improved? Or why else would you explain her keeping him after all those years?
You are right in terms of it being different time periods, for all we know this could be very common amongst them and everyone else. She kept Ash 2 just for the simple fact that she could not get rid of him so I believe that over time she did mourn properly and came to conclude that Ash 2 was what it was, an experiment. Who knows, if in fact this was common, they probably even came up with something that deactivated them once someone was ready to let go.
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