Artificial Intelligence: Misogynistic futures without women

Warning! This post if full of spoilers of the 2001 movie AI, which, if you haven't seen yet, you really don't need to. It is looong and cheesy, and oh boy does Spielberg have mommy issues! Send him to therapy please. Anyways, here is the rambling:



Reproducing without women has been a constant nightmarish fantasy of white men, and it could be read as the underlying motivation under the whole project of scientific discourse under European enlightenment, AKA the philosophical and political project of white men to demonstrate their superiority and thus the need to exclude women and men of colour and non binary folks from political power. And, as is expected, rampant sexist jokes and representations abound from the beginning of this 2001 Stephen Spielberg's movie. 

A.I. Artificial Intelligence revolves around a white man's project of creating a (white) child who will be able to love. Yes, a futuristic Ghepetto. The creepiest part, he is conceived as the replacement of the scientists dead child, and it is later offered as a replacement for the dying boy of a white couple. Significantly, at the beginning of this overwhelmingly white film, a Black woman (who tokenistically stands as proof of a post-racial society again) in the "board of experts"or whatever raises the question of the ethics and responsibility of humans in reciprocating the love to the machine.  

The plot becomes a bit more Freudian as the perfect white mother in her perfect white life becomes the love object of the robot white boy, and then the "real" boy comes home. The story of Pinocchio becomes the metaphor for the little robot's desire of becoming human. If only I could be what mommy desires, a human boy. But he/it doesn't, and he/it is discarded into an A.I. dumpster.  Jude Law comes in. "Mecha" ones ("mechanicals" as opposed to "organics") are sex workers too and he/it is one. And since robot boy was an emotional labour service robot (a "boy" for a white woman to love) they have something in common. 

Turns out that outside this perfect white middle class future we have seen, lies a dark reality of half broken mechas who look for discarded pieces to rebuild themselves. Discarded mechas obviously stand for the "invisible" racialized labour that cleans bathrooms and windows, picks up fruit and so that white flawless world can exist. Similar to the broken toys in Toy Story, they can be read as representing the marginalized, exploited, broken, non-unitary subjects of state and colonial violence (I wrote about them here). As their  bodies break down, they are still exploited as props for gorey spectacles, where they are dismembered for the human audiences amusement for Flesh Fair: A Celebration of Life. A spectacle as sordid as Pinocchio's experiences with low life characters in the fairytale. The Wizard of Oz is used as another reference as both robots embark on a quest to Dr. No, which they mistake for an oracle. As they both try to find Blue Fairy, the fairy tale is mixed up with a Blue Fairy escorting service. 

He finds his creator, the doctor explains that as the first robot able to love and desire, even to feel jealousy and hate. The resonances with Frankenstein are obvious. The real monster is the human that created the monster, the aberration. He has now created x number of robot boys exactly like him. His unique subjectivity replicated endlessly in a capitalist fashion and marketed as "David: At last a love of your own." Horrified robot boy jumps into the ocean in an attempt for suicide. But he can die as an organic human does. He remains in the bottom of the ocean, the ruins of Disneyland's Pinocchio's ride provide David with his real life encounter with the Blue Fairy, that mythical, non-reproductive female figure who is able to make him into a "real life boy". He lies there for x years, until the future alien civilization finds him and grants him with a desire (yes, just like the fairy!). Seriously, this movie gets creepily Freudian with incestuous fantasies as the last desire of our post-apocalyptic Pinocchio is to spend one day with his mommy. And boy, their last encounter is like a romantic almost sexual relationship. Ew! So anyways, women (with or without uteri) seem to be only a symbolic function of masculinity, that is, the opposite through which these fragile masculine subjects can exist. 

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