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Sunday, April 1, 2018

Where do we draw the line?

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The film Be Right Back is about a couple, Margaret and Ash, who are in the process of moving into Ash's old childhood home. As Ash goes to return the rental van to their past town, he dies, presumably because of a car accident. Of course, Margaret becomes very desolate from the sudden loss of her husband. However, during the funeral Margaret's friend approaches her about a new program that allows people to converse with deceased loved ones online. Margaret's friend, Sarah, says she used it when someone close to her died. **Margaret is at first disgusted by the idea, but when she finds out she is pregnant with their child, she responds to the email that "Ash" sends on her computer. The more she communicates with this online persona of Ash and the more information she feeds him--the more it becomes like the original Ash. As the film goes on, Margaret becomes very attached to this Ash-like system. This was especially evident when she dropped her phone mid conversation with "Ash" while leaving the gynecologist. She became frantic and basically had a panic attack at the sudden loss of of contact with it. I believe at this point she had become very attached and dependent in communicating with this computer Ash, so to prevent something like this from happening again, she signs up for a trial to receive an android Ash.

When Margaret first received android Ash, she was weary at first. She did not trust it, especially since it looked almost exactly like the original Ash. This is similar to a concept we discussed in class--Mori's hypothesis of the uncanny valley which basically says when a robot is too human, we become attracted and repulsed by it at the same time. This is evident in the beginning when she has sexual relations with android Ash, and towards the end of the movie when she distances herself from the android Ash.

When android Ash first "awoke", his personality was a mere shell of original Ash's which I think actually helped Margaret be able to differentiate betwen real Ash and fake Ash. However, android Ash has the ability to learn new concepts and adapt to situations like real Ash would. The more and more he began imitating real Ash, like when he began begging to not have to jump off the cliff, the  more his personality and character becomes human-like. With the android's ability to learn just like a human where do we draw the line? When it was begging to not jump off the cliff, was it really fake or did it truly learn the human emotion of fear? In the end of the movie, Margaret clearly drew her line. She didn't allow the android Ash to live normally as if he were original Ash. She kept it in the attic upstairs, and had certain times she and her daughter could visit with it. She was able to distinguish between her deceased Ash and the android Ash despite their similarities.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

I definitely agree with Sam on drawing a line in this issue. this question must come up and there must be a line drawn or else chaos could be faced at a latter date.