Love，Woman，Robot

Weekly Thoughts on THE WORLDING PRACTICE OF SPECULATION

Human-Robot love is a very regular theme in sci-fi films. I picked two identical films Her and I Am Your Man, discussing about their similarity in digging true love, and most important their difference in gender perspective, which arouses thoughts about moral disciplines in intimate relationship between human and woman robot.

Both two films holds a pessimistic attitude towards the so-called love created by cloud computing and machine learning. In the future tech giants could design a perfect lover for individuals. In Her, the artificial intelligence Samantha has such a sexy and gentle voice, she not only helps the protagonist arrange everything in life but also gets every joke the protagonist tells. The humanoid boyfriend Tom in I Am Your Man even has an appearance and character totally satisfies the heroine’s fantasy. While the ending is sad, The freshness of the robot’s company passed soon and the loneliness lasts long. What is the definition of love? Coding can’t get an optimal solution.

The biggest difference between Her and I Am Your Man can be inferred from their names, the two films talked about human-robot love from a totally different gender perspective. The protagonist in Her finally leaves Samantha because Samantha is no longer his own. While in I Am Your Man, the heroine leaves Tom because she does not want him become her “personal belongings” . I Am Your Man subverts the previous science fiction narratives that almost all take women as virtual sex and love objects, and expresses the attitude of modern independent women towards robot love. Even though the robot boyfriend is handsome, gentle and considerate, the heroine, who is a scientist, still chooses to refuse the robot boyfriend's company after being attracted to him. She gives her own definition of love: Love cannot be accurately calculated, and what is true, complex, subtle and imperfect is love. It is also a kind of respect and kindness to the robot’s “free will”.

Katheleen Richardson, director of the Campaign Against Sex Robots believes that pornbots can be the substitutes for relationships with women, which would contribute to isolation, harm and violence for women. She also discussed about how 100 years of science fiction movies, books and comics has groomed society that women can be made to satisfy men’s sexual needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spn1Yu3jBjY

I think that is the issue that we should pay attention to in the speculative narrative about human and robots, we need more sci-fi films like I Am Your Man, speaking the female voice and do not let male again become the dominant role in the upcoming future.