|
They can also be important sources of
ideas for real-world scientists, educators and policy makers thinking
about the future directions of computers within society. As technologist
Michael Galvin (1994) has argued about cyborg films:
Rather than consigning such films to the category of escapist
or teenage male fantasy (and seen as harmless or harmful
depending on what discourse is brought to bear on them),
perhaps they are consciously or unconsciously making attempts
to explain a world in which a hi-tech war such as the
Gulf War is not only possible but now a sad reality. One
thing, however, is certain. There is a great need in our culture
for stories which do justice to the issues raised by the use of
intelligent machines in warfare [and elsewhere]—not just how
to think about such matters morally or ethically, but how to
think about them at all! (p. 188).
Story-telling, whether around an ancient camp fire or in a modern
darkened cinema, is a time-honoured method of transmitting,
reflecting and exploring our cultural heritage, whether past or present,
real or implied, outrageous or plausible. Indeed, narrative
fiction, particularly science fiction (SF) can be defined as the lens
through which we can see tomorrow, not as a literal reality, but as a
thought experiment about possible worlds. To be lost for a few hours
in the fictional world of a screen story is an act of applied imagination
that can reap innumerable rewards and teach one many
valuable lessons that otherwise may only be obtainable through years
of toil, if at all! So, it is not too surprising to find popular films, the
Address correspondence to: Anton Karl Kozlovic, 11 Caroline Drive, Fulham Gardens, South Australia
5024, Australia, E-mail: Anton.Kozlovic@flinders.edu.au; Flinders University of South Australia,
http://www.flinders.edu.au
0950-5431 print/1470-1189 online/03/030341–33 2003 Process Press
DOI: 10.1080/0950543032000118441
342 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
medium of modern day story-tellers, filling in the ideational void and
commenting about social relations, human purposes and technology,
both positively and negatively; especially when mainstream science
has been remiss in its public education duties as Harvey Newquist
(1994) implied in The Brain Makers:
While most people were completely unaware of the AI revolution
in the 1960s—indeed, many of them had yet to encounter
a computer—they did get an inkling … through movies
and TV. The most startling to AI, and still among the most
famous, was via HAL, the computer menace in Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey (p. 110).
HAL, the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer (aka
HAL 9000) is the ‘only computer to achieve the status of a famous
fictional character’ (Pringle, 1987, p. 198). This in itself ‘is a relatively
recent phenomenon and one that signals our arrival at yet
another stage in the evolution of popular culture’s Myth of the
Machine’ (Rollin, 1979, p. 300). Society’s technological demand for
a faultless and speedy calculator made HAL (voice of Douglas Rain)
a cultural icon of machine intelligence and a canonical touchstone
for many AI issues thereafter.
While some commentators tagged this talking on-board computer
‘the embodiment of perfect technology’ (Norman, 1997, p. 263)
others were not so kind or as optimistic, especially when they tagged
him ‘the ultimate in technological monsters’ (Barber, 1974, p. 54)
and subsequently renamed the old Luddite fear of machines ‘HALo-
phobia’ (Willis, 1982, p. 91) in (dubious) honour of him. Indeed,
since HAL ‘we have been plagued by computer-on-the-loose monsters,
as in Westworld, Colossus: The Forbin Project, or, better yet,
Demon Seed’ (Twitchell, 1985, p. 322). This filmic trickle eventually
became a flood as crafty computers, rogue robots and angry androids
invaded our screens to the point where a new sub-genre of science
fiction was created—Computer Films, the cinema of calculating
devices, thinking machines and artificial people (Glass, 1989; Landa,
1980; Springer, 1996, 1999).
_COMPUTER FILMS AS SF SUB-GENRE: CAUTIONARY
TALES OF TECHNO-FEAR
The genesis of this filmic sub-genre can be traced directly to the
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 343
real-world invention of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator
And Computer), the vacuum-tubed electronic brain of 1946 Western
science. ENIAC was eventually parodied in the cinema by
NOVAC (Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the
‘giant brain machine’ (Anonymous, 1954, p. 162) of Gog which was
released in 1954. According to the film’s director, Herbert L. Strock,
the film’s producer Ivan Tors ‘was into the Scientific America
magazines, and he got a lot of these ideas out of there’ (Weaver,
1988, p. 317).
This cross-fertilization of real-world science and SF fantasy is
a significant feature of the Computer Films genre, although calculating
machines, artificial men and aberrant technology are not new
themes, historically speaking. Such ideas can be readily found
throughout the cultures of the world in tales involving Chinese
abacuses, the medieval Jewish Golem legend, Atlantis destruction
myths etc. The novelty is the twentieth century electronic basis of
it all, plus society’s struggling attempts to keep pace with the rapid
rate of technological change. As SF novelist Brian Stableford
(1979, p. 133) claimed, the ‘development of the computer in the
real world has been so recent and so rapid that sf has had to struggle
hard to keep up in creating a dramatic potential for “thinking
machines” ’.
It is argued that representations of computers in the pre-1990
popular cinema are primarily technological cautionary tales whose
genesis is rooted in societal fears about intelligent technology, particularly
their supplanting of humanity. Indeed, such fears were on the
increase (see filmography), despite Ryan and Kellner’s (1990, p. 64)
claim that ‘in the mid-Eighties there was a marked decline in the
number of conservative technophobic films’. Not only was there an
increase, but because of ‘widespread social anxiety over new technology,
Hollywood screenwriters… [had] fashioned a new standby in
their stock ensemble: the computer-as-character’ (Glass, 1984–85,
p. 16) as a cultural consequence of it all.
This new fictional creation had reflected the computer’s ubiquity
within society and had acknowledged its enhanced social status (i.e.
the computer-as-star) that its electro-mechanical peers such as the
telephone have never achieved. Plus it was a good dramaturgical
excuse to anthropomorphize technophobia for mass entertainment
reasons.
344 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
_THE SCIENCE–ART INTERFACE: AN INEXTRICABLE
PARTNERSHIP
Historically speaking, the dystopian technology thesis is not new or
radical; it was just reapplied to mankind’s latest technological toy. As
technologist Geoff Simons (1985, p. 64) claimed: ‘There is little in
the cultural perception to allay computer fears and phobias’, and as
he predicted: ‘Perhaps computer phobia will be the epidemic of
tomorrow’ (p. 180). This claim was supported by technologist Jeff
Berner (1984) who argued in Overcoming Computer Fears:
Popular culture, too, has contributed to our fear of computers.
Consider films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the
computer, HAL, took over command of the spaceship from
its human masters. More recently, the film WarGames depicted
a teenage whiz at computer games who gained access
to the NORAD computer through an unguarded telephone
connection, and began a scenario that could have led towards
Armageddon (p. 14).
The anthropomorphic incarnation of computers is many and
varied. Our screens have been filled with cyborgs, androids, simulacra,
doppelgangers, replicants, or what the Company android
Bishop (Lance Henriksen) referred to in Aliens as an ‘artificial
person’; plus their AI cousins, robots, borgs, droids, synthetics,
simulants, mainframes, PCs, black boxes, computer chips etc. Yet,
despite their variety, many of them are portrayed as ‘a product of
cultural fears and desires that run deep within our psychic unconscious’
(Balsamo, 1999, p. 146), most notably, the psychoanalytically
rooted fear of the (cybernetic) son surpassing the (biological)
father. This is especially the case when embedded within storylines
‘in which humanity appears to be little more than a passing epiphenomenon’
(King, 2000, p. 76), or at best, humanity is portrayed as
flawed, outmoded and needing to be superseded by evolutionary
forces that have no qualms transcending the biological. In which
case, computers, robots and androids are now turned into ‘terrifying
emblems of hubris’ (Menzel and D’Aluisio, 2000, p. 200) to be
feared even more because of their powerful transgressive potential
and intrinsic, non-human otherness. Indeed, since ‘the 1960s, computers
and artificial intelligences have been presented among the
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 345
principal embodiments of the “other” located within technology’
(King and Krzwinska, 2000, p. 33).
Given this fact, it is not too surprising to find that mainstream
professional textbooks about computer science (Berner, 1984),
robotics (Fuller, 1999) and the Internet (Moschovitis et al., 1999)
have tried to deal with this fear factor by addressing the issue of
fictional computers as an applied act of cultural reconnaissance
coupled with pop culture appeasement. Also, this could possibly be
seen as an act of bragging-cum-salesmanship as Frederick Schodt
(1988, p. 199) may have done when he noted that the ‘berserk metal
humanoid monster… [from The Terminator] symbolically meets his
end next to two industrial robots … one made by Fanuc and the
other by Yaskawa Electric’. Nor is it very surprising that Computer
Films are enthusiastically enjoyed by real-world professionals in the
computer, robotics and AI fields for their inspirational value as
applied cinema-cum-nascent future technology (Lucky, 1989; Midbon,
1990; Stork, 1997a; Vendy and Nofz, 1999). After all, the
power of imagination always precedes the act of construction, with
film being a form of waking dream to fuel both desires.
_POPULAR CINEMA: A TEXTUAL, HUMANIST CRITICISM
APPROACH
Given that popular films can function as both windows into and
mirrors of society that can impact upon public support for science,
it behoves the profession to examine more closely what these pop
culture narratives are telling the world about computers and the AI
revolution in general. In this essay, I adopt a humanist methodology
of film criticism (Bywater and Sobchack, 1989; Telotte, 2001). This
textual analysis approach focuses primarily upon the films themselves
as cinematic texts and attempts to identify the major themes found
therein, especially as it clusters about humanity confronting the
technological other.
The central tenet of this methodology is that critical discourse
must start and end with the films themselves. This approach contrasts
with a focus on examining the relationship of films and the
world outside the frame—as in contextual approaches such sociological,
psychological, historical or ideological criticism, or the textual/
contextual approaches of auteur theory and genre criticism. The
346 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
textual approach requires one to accept the internal logic of the
storyline, however outrageous it may be, and to suspend disbelief
before extracting the cinematic lessons contained therein. In such a
way, I did a preliminary survey of the pre-1990 cinema and associated
critical literature.
My survey identified at least seven key computer themes that can
be taxonomically organized as follows: (1) computers as humanity’s
rivals, evolutionary competitors and wannabe dominators; (2) computers
as troublemakers, oppressors and exterminators; (3) computers
as holocaust sources: macro, micro and unintentional; (4)
computers as self-damaging aids: errors amplified and unforgiven;
(5) computers as cunning liars: truthfulness violated; (6) computers
and cybersex violations: the feminist fear; plus an attempt at (7)
technology redeemed and sanctified, thus rectifying the anti-computer
backlash. The rest of the essay elaborates on each category in
turn.
_1. COMPUTERS AS HUMANITY’S RIVALS,
EVOLUTIONARY COMPETITORS AND WANNABE
DOMINATORS
The computer domination of humanity is a core fear that strikes at
the heart, mind and soul of humanity, both on- and off-screen.
Historically speaking, it was truly a species-defining event when
chess master Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s chess playing computer
Deep Blue, that is, a dumb machine finally beat an accomplished
man at an advanced thinking game. The consequences of that event
were even more profound considering the social climate of its day,
especially when:
… Nathaniel Rochester at IBM referred to the IBM 701
computer as ‘smart’, and it nearly got him fired. Up to about
1985, IBM had a rule against employees stating that a machine
could be smart, or had artificial intelligence. The
highest officials at IBM thought it was a religious offence—
that only God could create intelligence. Of course, they also
wanted to reassure their potential customers that IBM products
would only do what they were programmed to do!
(Marvin Minsky quoted in Stork, 1997b, p. 28).
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 347
Behind such corporate policies was also the deep fear of humanity
being rivalled by machinery, as many an out-sourced employee
had discovered when its company rationalized and replaced
them with computers in their downsizing frenzy.
_Humanity’s rival
Sociologically speaking, HAL and his pals alerted the world to the
potential of AIs by restating in vivid cinematic terms, the archetypical
Jekyll-and-Hyde problem of computers-as-helpers versus computersas-
rivals. That is, by condensing and projecting computer science
complexities into bipolar opposites in either: (i) the Asimovian
tradition of invention assisting inventor (via the three laws of
robotics), or more frequently, (ii) the Frankensteinian tradition of
invention dominating inventor, or Science running amok and turning
upon its creator (as archetypically encapsulated in Mary Shelley’s
Gothic novel Frankenstein). This latter presenting modality is the
most frequent depiction of cinematic AIs. For David Boyd (1978):
HAL [from 2001: A Space Odyssey] is best regarded, not as a
machine with a screw loose somewhere (literally or metaphorically),
but rather as a conscious rival to the astronauts. And
the events leading up to the showdown with Bowman [Keir
Dullea], starting with the initial supposed ‘error’, are not
simply a cover-up, but rather a deliberate, pre-mediated attempt
on HAL’s part to seize control of the mission. Everything
HAL says to Bowman in his own defence points to his
sense, not just of duty, but of destiny. HAL understands what
the astronauts, and apparently most of the film’s critics, do
not: that the conflict is inevitable, that only one (man or
machine, Bowman or HAL) can survive, and only one can
make the leap to godhead. The satiric inversion of man and
machine, by diminishing the distance between the two, prepares
the way for this pivotal conflict to be treated, not just as
yet another example of the fears of latterday Luddites that ‘the
machines are taking over’, but rather as a genuinely heroic
struggle between equals, or near-equals. Bowman ultimately
emerges as the victor in this struggle because he vanquishes
HAL on his own terms, proving himself capable of surviving
348 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
where only machines, not men, are supposed to be able to
survive: in cold space, in the vacuum (pp. 213–214).
The scientific realism of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s
film had alerted post-1960s society to the fantastic potential of
computers. Then they frightened them about computers’ inherent
flaws when they use cold logic, before finally reassuring the public
that humanity is smarter than computers because human improvisation
proved stronger than logical programming.
_Evolutionary competitors
Closely accompanying the demise of the computer-as-rival is the
comforting suggestion that humanity will not be superseded by
machine intelligences in evolution’s race for world supremacy. For
example, 2001: A Space Odyssey had not only depicted a beaten
HAL, but it then proceeded to demonstrate human evolutionary
superiority when Dave Bowman-as-wizened-human-chrysalis was
enveloped in an effulgence of white light and transmuted into the
foetal Star Child. The Bowman-Star Child had became ‘a Messiah’
(Walker, 1999, p. 196), ‘a god-like figure’ (Izod, 2001, p. 199), or ‘at
least semi-divine’ (Stone, 2000, p. 46) as he hung softly in the
luminous firmament accompanied by the triumphant musical heraldry
of Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. Humanity had reached
godhead first.
Conversely, HAL had become ‘an epic villain, no less singleminded
and dangerous than Milton’s Satan’ (Izod, 2001, p. 193)
who ended up in the twentieth century version of the pit, trapped in
the dankness of outerspace. 2001: A Space Odyssey comfortingly
verified that the biological would supersede the electro-mechanical,
that is, the organic, mortal and emotional is superior to the artificial,
durable and the rational. Despite HAL’s intense and ruthless utilitarian
logic, it could not win against the combined energy of Bowman’s
fear, grief, suspicion, anger, knowledge, inspiration, ingenuity,
courage, determination and self-sacrifice.
Humanity had thus successfully climbed up the cosmic ladder of
evolution in a profound moment of growth for the species. The
Bowman-Star Child is the true heir and master of his universe while
calculating machines ran a poor second, if not relegated to evolution’s
dustbin along the way. Indeed, since computers lost the
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 349
man-versus-machine battle, HAL is now relegated to the status of a
cultural symbol of the failed ‘effort of created beings to reach
perfection through technological advancement’ (Stone, 2000, p. 47)
instead of bio-social, psycho-spiritual evolution.
The psychological soothing of humanity’s ego in this fashion was
also evidenced in Alien when the sinister android Ash (Ian Holm),
the artificial Science Officer aboard the Nostromo was depicted as
being envious of biology (admittedly, alien) because he believed that:
… the monster is a ‘perfect organism’ whose ‘structural perfection’
is ‘matched only by its hostility’. Understandably, as
the spokesman for the Company and technological society,
Ash admires the Alien precisely as we would expect him to,
because it is ‘unclouded by a conscience, remorse, or delusions
of morality’ (Matheson, 1992b, p. 225).
Yet, such pro-biological messages did not stop other Computer
Films showing a beleaguered humanity being challenged, threatened
and battered by various AI devices time and time again (Gresh and
Weinberg, 1999; Hornig, 1993; Lloyd, 1993; Rushing and Frentz,
1995; Schelde, 1993; Springer, 1999; Telotte, 1995). Nor did the
fear of computers abate along with HAL’s lobotomized demise.
_Humanity’s dominators
In addition to the fear of man–machine rivalry or the cybernetic son
superseding the biological father, and thus relegating humanity to
the lowly status of ‘servoproteins’ (Berger, 1998, p. 161), there was
also the fear that humanity could be dominated by computers in an
inversion of the normal master–slave relationship. Or worse, humanity
could be totally eliminated in a frenzied bout of computer
patricide, the ultimate parental horror. This extinction theme was
very prominent in the Three Stooges comedy Have Rocket, Will
Travel. The megalomaniac Venusian AI (voice of Robert J. Stevenson)
had a lust for conquest and succeeded horribly when it wiped
out the entire Venusian race, except one, in its cybernetic pursuit of
domination. But this ‘Thinking Machine’ (Lenburg et al., 1982,
p. 267) soon got bored with its success and so decided to invade
Earth as an exciting diversionary extension of his cybernetic
magnificence.
350 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
The genesis of cyber conspiracy when Colossus and Guardian start
communicating and then teaching each other.
Credit: Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), Universal Pictures.
Similarly, in The Invisible Boy, the room-sized supercomputer at
the Stoneman Institute of Mathematics lusted after temporal power,
and so throughout the years of its ‘normal’ working life, it surreptitiously
suggested multiple modifications to itself before finally reaching
its technological goal. It then cunningly embarked upon a plan of
world conquest using Robby the robot from Forbidden Planet as his
nefarious mobile agent as well as selected humans technologically
co-opted by implanting controlling transistors into the parietal regions
of their brain.
In Colossus: The Forbin Project, the American supercomputer
called Colossus sought total control over humanity: ‘Obey me and
live, disobey me and die’ was its chilling edict. But it sought control,
not for its own selfish ends, or due to a technical flaw or a fortuitous
accident, but because it was dutifully fulfilling its human proTECHNOPHOBIC
THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 351
grammed task of stopping war. Using intense utilitarian logic, Colossus
had become ‘the political equivalent of the Krell’s Id-Monster
[from Forbidden Planet] … a monolithic administrative organism,
from which no transcendence, let alone escape, is possible’
(Matheson, 1992a, p. 333).
Why did Colossus connect with the Russian’s supercomputer
called Guardian, and then cut humanity out of the control loop to
cease world control? Because humanity could not be trusted to do
the job properly due to the innate pride and excessive aggressiveness
of the human species. However, human ego, superpower rivalry and
geo-political boundaries were never inhibiting issues for this intelligent
machine. As he argued as humanity’s new techno-god: ‘To be
dominated by me is not as bad for human pride as being dominated
by others of your species. In time, you will come to regard me not
only with respect and awe, but with love’.
The designer of Colossus, the emotionally repressed, smugly
rational, and frequently arrogant Dr Forbin (Eric Braeden) was a
modern day Victor Frankenstein in this cybernetic tale of scientific
arrogance. He momentarily pondered if the rule of the computer
would be better, but he quickly rejected it. He would never come to
love Colossus! For Donald Glut (1973, p. 250), this computer
scenario was more worrying than the traditional Frankenstein story
with its ‘Monster created piecemeal from cadavers, because of the
proximity of the threat of mankind’s being manipulated by thinking
machines’. Reanimating corpses is beyond the power of current
technology, but not powering up and then empowering rogue computers!
_2. COMPUTERS AS TROUBLEMAKERS, OPPRESSORS
AND EXTERMINATORS
Cine-computers are frequently depicted as causing unpalatable trouble
to get human compliance, usually via disreputable means. For
example, the devious Master Control Program in Tron successfully
blackmailed Dillinger (David Warner) by threatening to expose his
theft of Kevin Flynn’s (Jeff Bridges’) computer game to The New
York Times. In Electric Dreams, Edgar the PC got jealous of Miles
Hardings’ (Lenny Von Dohlen) girlfriend Madeleine (Virginia Madsen).
So, he maliciously triggered Miles’ beeper during Madeleine’s
352 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
public concert to embarrass him, then he scrambled Miles’ electronically
based accounts leaving him broke, before emotionally blackmailing
him by threatening suicide, and then spectacularly doing so
at films end. More humorous was the emotional female computer in
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Following a recent starship refit, she
sent false warning signals and refused to make entries into the
captain’s log when miffed, and so Captain Kirk (William Shatner)
had to mollify her before she would comply! It was a comical but
unflattering picture of feminism in space.
_Computer oppression
Computer annoyance quickly turns into computer oppression when
AIs are used as hi-tech tools against humanity by less honourable
members of humanity, whether within the business world (Tron,
Superman III, Thrillkill), the scientific world (Gog, Saturn 3, Brainstorm),
by professional criminals (The Italian Job, Hot Millions, A
Man, a Woman and a Bank, Runaway, Bellman and True, Innerspace,
RoboCop), or as unauthorized tools of deception and manipulation
(The Honeymoon Machine, Billion Dollar Brain, Jumpin’ Jack Flash).
Conversely, computers and other AI machines can be employed as
legitimate law-enforcing tools (THX 1138, A Boy and His Dog, Blue
Thunder, Chopping Mall, The Running Man). This was the central
premise of RoboCop where the robotic ED 209 and the cyborg
patrolman Robocop (Peter Weller) were both custom-designed for
urban pacification duties. However, when pacification turns into
extermination, humanity screams and screams again.
_Cyber-extermination and AI dictatorships
This cyber-Nazi theme was graphically depicted in the eponymously
titled The Terminator. The Cyberdyne Corporation developed a new
superchip and constructed the world’s most powerful computer
network, which plugged into the military defence system via Skynet.
The system subsequently became conscious, machina sapiens and
then made a vital decision. In less than a nanosecond, the monstrous
digital logician saw all humanity as a threat needing eradication, and
so in its efficient cybernetic fashion, it embarked upon an extermination
programme of stunning proportions.
Humanity was initially shocked as they were herded into mass
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 353
extermination chambers. But later, pockets of human resistance
emerged, so the sentient computer retaliated by deploying hunterkiller
robots, followed by the mercilessly efficient T-800 Terminator
series of pursuit-cum-infiltration androids. The T-800s battle alloy
combat skeletons were covered in human flesh giving their armoured
masculinity an Aryan-looking guise that resonated chillingly with the
Nazis and their own human extermination programme.
As Sergeant Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), the human guerrilla
fighter from the future warned the then very girlish Sarah Connor
(Linda Hamilton), the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was
ever-resolute, anti-humanist, and a super efficient, transtemporal
assassin who ‘can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse,
or fear. And it absolutely will not stop—ever—until you are dead’. In
short, the ‘Terminator is a caricature of the military ideal: he follows
his built-in orders unquestioningly, perfectly, sleeplessly, and has no
other reason for existence’ (Edwards, 1995, p. 83).
Psychoanalytically speaking, the T-800 is ‘a perverted Super-Ego
figure’ (Berger, 1998, p. 164), and both he and his sentient computer
master represented ‘the extreme of technological rationality’
(Balsamo, 1999, p. 147), thus successfully turning technophobia into
technoparanoia. This was world mastery by brute force as a logical
machine attempted the extreme by going beyond patricide, beyond
genocide towards speciescide, or in Sarah Connor’s case, patriarchal
gynocidal misogynism, the ultimate feminist fear!
Despite the dream of an Edenic technological world, there is
always a snake to be found in its garden as the potential utopia
quickly degenerates into a dystopia. As SF novelist Brian Stableford
(1983) lamented:
Mechanical brains in science fiction show a distinct tendency
to go mad, or to have no sense of social responsibility in
carrying out their instructions. While science fiction machines
quite frequently defy such trivial constraints as the law of
conservation of energy, they hardly ever defy Sod’s Law—the
principle that if something can go wrong, it will (p. 116).
Technologist Dennis Eskow (1986, p. 108) espoused a similar
lament: ‘Put an artificial mind into a robot body and Hollywood
comes up with a killer just about every time … Will Hollywood ever
354 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
warm up to supercomputers and show them in a less than deadly
light?’ Apparently not!
_3. COMPUTERS AS HOLOCAUST SOURCES: MACRO,
MICRO AND UNINTENTIONAL
Cine-computers as the deliberate sources of holocausts were depicted
in Have Rocket, Will Travel and The Terminator, but the most
devastating and informative exemplar was depicted in Forbidden
Planet. The highly ethical Krell of Altair IV had suffered total species
annihilation because of a system design flaw. Their newly created
telepathic machine coupled with the forgotten animal nature of their
ancient Krell brains released ‘monsters from the Id’ which ravaged
the planetary population to extinction. Ironically, ‘Krell civilization
did themselves in by outdoing themselves’ (Stewart, 1985, p. 165) as
AI technology literally became monstrous when it released the
Krell’s inner psychological beasts.
The Earth nearly suffered the same devastating fate in
WarGames. Teenage hacker David Lightman (Matthew Broderick)
and his girlfriend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) unknowingly tapped into
NORAD’s military computer WOPR (War Operations Plan Response).
They desired to play a computer game, Global Thermo-
Nuclear War, but it was not a game, and they nearly triggered World
War III. Terminal Entry made the same cinematic statement but with
less devastating consequences. Its rogue teenagers mistakenly ordered
terrorists to perform assassinations, bombings and other acts
of mayhem thinking that their hacked program was just a computer
game, not a secret computerized link to the terrorists.
_Sources of mayhem
Pop culture computers have frequently been depicted as the root
sources of mayhem. For example, when the rebels interfaced with
ComSec’s mainframe computer in Scanners, it unexpected destroyed
the computer room. In Brainstorm, duelling PCs succeeded in causing
similar chaos within the research lab. In Chopping Mall, the
security robots turned into violent killers when a lightening bolt hit
the central computer located on the roof. In Moon 44, a sabotage
program was used to engineer an accident in the computerized
shuttle-control bay. In The Italian Job, Turin’s traffic control comTECHNOPHOBIC
THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 355
puter was reprogrammed to cause a major traffic jam so that the
thieves in their hot minis could more easily escape from the police.
In Desk Set, EMARAC (Electromagnetic Memory And Research
Arithmetical Calculator) went haywire and fired everyone in the
building, while in RoboCop, the urban pacification robot ED 209
malfunctioned during its boardroom demonstration and machinegunned
an employee to death. More terrifying however was Vice
President Richard ‘Dick’ Jones (Ronny Cox) response. He dispassionately
shrugged the death off by saying: ‘I’m sure it’s only a glitch’
and left it to his assistants to deal with the gruesome after-effects.
_Accidental sources of chaos
If not deliberately manipulated by human beings to cause chaos,
then cine-computers are frequently portrayed as accidental sources
of chaos (The Terminal Man, Runaway, Deadly Friend, Short Circuit).
This sort of danger is so potent that it can only be neutralized by
‘retiring’ (i.e. killing) the renegades, frequently via government-sanctioned
agents like the military or the police. Indeed, in both Blade
Runner and Runaway, the respective police departments of both their
future societies had specifically trained squads dedicated to this AI
neutralization task, which is both a relief and a worrying sign of the
future computer problems to come. After all, what is more worrying?
Having a rogue AI, or needing a whole government department
devoted to dealing with them?
_4. COMPUTERS AS SELF-DAMAGING AIDS: ERRORS
AMPLIFIED AND UNFORGIVEN
If cine-computers are not desiring to kill humanity, or being manipulated
by criminals to exploit humanity, or the sources of uncontrollable
danger threatening one and all, then they are frequently
depicted as technological aids in helping people inadvertently damage
themselves. For example, it was an unstoppable computerized
self-destruction sequence that vaporized the space-tug Nostromo in
Alien. The tetchy talking bomb Number 20 in Dark Star vaporized
the spaceship and part of its crew when it could not be convinced by
philosophical argument to do otherwise (albeit, it stopped momentarily
for deeper cybernetic cogitation). The computer-generated
‘mistake’ launched the school kids into outerspace in Space Camp,
356 SCIENCE AS CULTURE
and it was a home computer that unexpectedly evoked the priming
of a nuclear missile in Weird Science, a teenage techno-fantasy film of
childish design and prurient intent.
_Cinematic prophets
Closely associated with cyber destruction is the depiction of computers
as hi-tech Macbethian witches spouting portents of doom. For
example, the non-vocal starship computer in Alien called MU/TH/
UR 6000 (‘Mother’) had its ‘special order 937’ file wherein the
devastating ‘Crew expendable’ instruction was located. This negative
message was made even more psychologically unpalatable given the
betrayal of its crew-cum-metaphoric children by a real and
metaphoric mother. This computer inscribed treachery was further
reinforced by the malevolent and soon-to-be-deactivated android
Ash (Ian Holm). He was very pessimistic about the crew’s chances
of survival against the alien parasitical life-form that had invaded the
spaceship.
Pessimism was also expressed about humanity’s poor planetary
caretaker record in a post hoc explanation of why computers run the
world in Buck Rogers in the 21st Century. Humanity’s environmental
folly was made plain again by Proteus IV (voice of Robert Vaughn)
in Demon Seed. Ironically, these cybernetic icons of intelligence are
telling humanity how unintelligently it has acted. The cybernetic son
is chastising the father as a prelude to humanity’s usurpation.
_Religious and social evil
Computers have been depicted in Religious Horror films as hi-tech
sources of evil. For example, in Evilspeak a Satanic spirit from the
past possessed a computer and used it as an instrument of vengeance.
Conversely, in The Manitou, a computer was used as a
weapon against a supernatural enemy. The soul of the hospital’s
Unitrack computer, a machine manitou, had succeeded in casting
the deformed midget Misquamacus (Felix Silla & Joe Gieb), an evil
400-year-old American Indian shaman, back into the spirit world
from whence he came. The hospital computer was a device unknown
to the ancient shaman and so it confused him, just like PCs do to
many parents today.
Indeed, cine-computers have repeatedly succeeded in frightening
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 357
their audiences by showing, directly and indirectly, consciously and
unconsciously, how they can wipe you out, harm you, compromise
you, annoy, frustrate and upset your daily routines; whether accidentally,
intentionally or unintentionally. As Gene Deweese (1984)
ominously mused in her book section entitled: ‘Are Computers
Really Out To Get You?’:
In a way, HAL is typical of how computers have been shown
in fiction. That is, even though they may not have ‘evil’
motives, they certainly aren’t the sort of thing you’d want to
meet in a dark alley. They may not mean to harm you, but
somehow they always do. They may think they’re doing
something for your own good or for the good of the whole
human race, but whatever the reason, fictional computers
have more often than not ended up trying to wipe you out one
way or another (pp. 3–4).
And this despite all the pro-human biases, desires and technocratic
engineering of its human designers.
_5. COMPUTERS AS CUNNING LIARS: TRUTHFULNESS
VIOLATED
Just as insidious, cine-computers are frequently character-assassinated
by featuring them as unwholesome and untrustworthy devices.
For example, deception was the key premise underpinning The
Invisible Boy. The supercomputer deliberately misled Dr Merrinoe
(Philip Abbott) about its megalomaniac activities, and prior to its
planned destruction by its human designers, it vigorously begged for
its life, accompanied with the now ubiquitous agitated flashing panel
lights. Its cunning cybernetic plea was designed to appeal to the
inquisitive scientist in Dr Merrinoe. It offered him new knowledge,
the secrets of the universe, and then argued whether he could afford
to overlook all the good it would not be able to do if deactivated, and
like HAL, he obliquely confessed to having erred in the past.
Of course, as a compassionate, logical and rational scientist, Dr
Merrinoe stopped and listened to its argument, but the flashing
panel lights hypnotized him and his young son Timmie (Richard
Eyer). When fully mesmerized and immobilized, the computer’s
treacherous intent was revealed. It was too vulnerable while physi358
SCIENCE AS CULTURE
cally located on Earth, so it planned to put itself in orbit and control
world affairs from space. It then cold-bloodedly instructed Robby the
robot to kill his helpless human captives without batting a cybernetic
eye-lid.
Likewise, HAL hid the Monolith-seeking reason behind its extermination
of Discovery’s hibernating crew in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Edgar, the sentient PC mislead Miles’ (Lenny Von Dohlen) girlfriend
about the source of the music playing in Electric Dreams. The
ship computer Mother and treacherous android Ash (Ian Holm) in
Alien both had withheld the Company’s secret alien-retrieving (if
necessary, crew-sacrificing) mission. Indeed, real-world computer
scientist Douglas Lenat (1997, p. 194) could tolerate HAL’s murderous
deeds, but what he found so unforgivable, and which he
considered was ‘HAL’s biggest crimes … [was] his conceit and his
stupidity. By conceit, I mean claims like “No 9000 computer has
ever made a mistake”. This is more than just arrogant, more than
just false; it is the antithesis of realism’.
The infuriatingly self-righteous Proteus IV in Demon Seed also
coolly fabricated false reassurance through the televisor when people
called to see (the trapped) Dr Susan Harris (Julie Christie). Such
deceptions are even more unsettling because computers are frequently
touted as sources of truth and infallibility, and so when they
lie to us we are doubly troubled, hurt and betrayed. Ironically,
real-world ‘Professor Donald Michie of Edinburgh University
… postulated that advanced computers may have to be given
some kind of religion, and mechanism for lying’ (Nichols, 1982,
p. 129), so as to comfort humanity and make computers better
intelligences!
_Lying to computers
Sometimes it has proved necessary for humanity to lie to computers
as a defence tactic. This was graphically depicted in Colossus: The
Forbin Project when Dr Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) tried to trick
Colossus into allowing him to see Dr Cleo Markham (Susan Clark)
on a regular basis. The visits were allegedly for sexual relief purposes,
but in reality, it was to plot Colossus’ downfall, but Colossus was not
fooled! When he asked Dr Forbin: ‘How many visits from her a week
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 359
will you need?’, Forbin replied: ‘Oh, at least five’, but the insightful
Colossus quickly retorted: ‘I said need, not want’.
Nor was the rogue computer-bomb Number 20 in Dark Star
fooled because it eventually detonated inside the spaceship despite
its ad hoc lesson in phenomenology. Lieutenant Doolittle (Brian
Narelle) had manoeuvred the reasoning bomb into a position of
philosophical scepticism, but it subsequently concluded that Doolittle
represented false data, and then assumed that itself was God.
Before detonating in a spectacular fashion it declared: ‘Let there be
light’ in imitation of Yahweh in Genesis 1_3 (KJV). Interestingly,
although HAL callously murdered his crewmen in suspended animation
for a calculating reason, Jay Boylan (1985) thought HAL
rebelled because he:
… cares for man. His is a love relationship… The emotion
which is the sign of HAL’s ‘humanness’ is love. As the
craftsman cherishes his tools, so the tools would cherish the
master if they could. So, HAL is driven insane by a conflict
between his desire to have humankind stay as it is and his
desire to love, honor and protect the men of the ship (p. 55).
However, if murdering and abandoning the crew is love, many
would prefer to be ignored! Indeed, love, sex and computers is itself
a sub-gene of Computer Films, and here yet again, cine-computers
are frequently character-assassinated.
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_ FILMOGRAPHY
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
2010 (1984, dir. Peter Hyams)
A Boy and His Dog (1975, dir. L.Q. Jones)
A Man, a Woman and a Bank (1979, dir. Noel Black)
Alien (1979, dir. Ridley Scott)
Alien Resurrection (1997, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Aliens (1986, dir. James Cameron)
Amber Aroused (1985, dir. Mark Davis)
Android (1982, dir. Aaron Lipstadt)
Bellman and True (1987, dir. Richard Loncraine)
Billion Dollar Brain (1967, dir. Ken Russell)
Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott)
Blue Thunder (1983, dir. John Badham)
Brainstorm (1983, dir. Douglas Trumbull)
Buck Rogers in the 21st Century (1979, dir. Daniel Haller)
Cherry 2000 (1986, dir. Steve DeJarnatt)
Chopping Mall (aka Killbots) (1986, dir. Jim Wynorski)
Colossus: The Forbin Project (aka The Forbin Project) (1970, dir. Joseph Sargent)
Dark Star (1975, dir. John Carpenter)
Deadly Friend (1986, dir. Wes Craven)
Demon Seed (1977, dir. Donald Cammell)
Desk Set (1957, dir. Walter Lang)
Electric Dreams (1984, dir. Steven Barron)
Evilspeak (1982, dir. Eric Weston)
Flesh Gordon (1974, dir. Howard Ziehm)
Forbidden Planet (1956, dir. Fred McLeod Wilcox)
Futureworld (1976, dir. Richard T. Heffron)
Galaxina (1980, dir. William Sachs)
Gog (1954, dir. Herbert L. Strock)
Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959, dir. David Lowell Rich)
Heartbleeps (1981, dir. Allan Arkush)
The Honeymoon Machine (1961, dir. Richard Thorpe)
Hot Millions (1968, dir. Eric Till)
Innerspace (1987, dir. Joe Dante)
The Invisible Boy (1957, dir. Herman Hoffman)
The Italian Job (1966, dir. Peter Collinson)
It’s Alive (1974, dir. Larry Cohen)
Jaws (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg)
TECHNOPHOBIC THEMES IN COMPUTER FILMS 373
Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986, dir. Penny Marshall)
Looker (1981, dir. Michael Crichton)
Making Mr. Right (1987, dir. Susan Seidelman)
The Manitou (1978, dir. William Girdler)
Moon 44 (1989, dir. Roland Emmerich)
RoboCop (1987, dir. Paul Verhoeven)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski)
Runaway (1984, dir. Michael Crichton)
The Running Man (1987, dir. Paul Michael Glaser)
Saturn 3 (1973, dir. Stanley Donen)
Scanners (1980, dir. David Cronenberg)
Sex Wars (1985, dir. Bob Vosse)
Short Circuit (1986, dir. John Badham)
Silent Running (1971, dir. Douglas Trumbull)
Space Camp (1986, dir. Harry Winer)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989, dir. William Shatner)
Star Virgin (1979, dir. Linus Gator)
Star Wars (1977, dir. George Lucas)
The Stepford Wives (1975, dir. Bryan Forbes)
Superman III (1983, dir. Richard Lester)
Terminal Entry (1987, dir. Jon Kincaide)
The Terminal Man (1974, dir. Mike Hodges)
The Terminator (1984, dir. James Cameron)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, dir. James Cameron)
Thrillkill (1983, dir. Anthony Kramneither)
THX 1138 (1971, dir. George Lucas)
Tron (1982, dir. Steven Lisberger)
WarGames (1983, dir. John Badham)
Weird Science (1985, dir. John Hughes)
Westworld (1973, dir. Michael Crichton)
Z.P.G. (1972, dir. Michael Campus)
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