The word robot comes from the Slavic Czech Robota which means hard work, serf labour, forced labour and servitude…
There are several films which places self-aware, artificial intelligence (A.I.) at the heart of its story. This normally culminates the A.I. attempting to protect, destroy, or enslave their human creators. The plot of The Avengers: Age of Ultron is just the latest in a long line of films which focuses on a self-aware robot wreaking havoc. Most films which feature A.I. and robots have an underclass of service droids/machines that are designed to serve humans, and that ultimately rise up and take control. What does this all mean? Underneath the grittiness of the plot, the stunning visual effects and action scenes lay several important themes. The dystopian future depicted in the novels, and later, films could be perceived as warnings about the future of humanity, lessons from the past, and how social constructs are designed to make the majority of humanity a compliant and docile work force.
Michael Crichton’s 1973 film, Westworld, is set in a futuristic landscape, where a robot populated adult theme park offers people the vacation of a lifetime. Tourists can choose between medieval World, Ancient Rome and Greece, and the Wild West. The A.I. robot population must obey every command of their human masters. Due to a malfunction, they become aware of their situation and set about killing as many people as they can. There is a definite slavery allegory at work in this film, which sees the abused, overworked robots mutiny, kill their human captors and run amok. On occasion, transported African slaves would escape their bonds and kill those on board. The 1997 film Amistad is a perfect example of this and certain similarities can be seen in the two films. An underclass exploited for the pleasure and profit of their superiors.
Isaac Asimov wrote several science fiction stories about robots, even coining the term “robotics”. Many of his tales were published in 1950 in I, Robot where he sets out the rules and ethics which govern robots. These are known as The Three Laws of Robotics. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the first law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.
The 2004 film, I, Robot, focuses on robots taking these laws to their logical conclusion. The laws state that they must prevent injury to human beings; this leads to the conclusion that humans must be protected from their own destructive nature and be stopped from harming themselves. The Robots take control purely for humanities own protection and form a type of “nanny state”. This vision of the future with mindless drones doing all the grunt work, never questioning the establishment highlights the present day situation for many people. However, when the robots do go against the grain they are vilified as destroyers of a harmonious society. This is an obvious nod to how society works today. When workers go on strike, the establishment accuses them of being disruptive before relenting ever so slightly. However, strikers are seen by the establishment as the villains in most of these cases which is rather telling.
I, Robot 2004 – Will Smith is suspicious of the docile workforce.
There are many more films in this genre which have themes of slavery and subservience running through them. Blade Runner and Terminator, for example, feature a class of machines that pose a threat a threat to humanity. Even Jurassic Park has some of these elements, and considering it was written by Michael Crichton it can hardly be surprising. This means that Westworld and Jurassic Park are essentially the same film and plot. A theme park’s creations escape/malfunction and try to kill humans. If you think of society as the theme park, we are the exploited exhibits that occasionally rebel and the politicians and aristocracy profit from our misery. Apologies for the hammering home of this point.
The themes explored in these films have startlingly similarities in many others, Amistad as previously mentioned. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film Spartacus we see a group of captive men, forced to train, live and fight as gladiators. They are slaves to a brutal master and eventually break free of their bonds before taking on the might of Rome. The film is based on true events from the Third Servile War in 72 BC which have also been recreated to stunning and creative effect in the TV series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand. If we tweak the position of the tread upon just a little then we can see how these themes can show up in other titles. Films such as 1984, Equilibrium, and V for Vendetta all feature an overarching control system, whether through fear of reprisals or drugs, the society is controlled and behaves like docile sheep, unthinking and uncriticising of their rulers. Replace the human society with robots then we can see how Westworld, I, Robot, Terminator and Blade Runner can be interpreted as allegories for a past, present and future society.
I am sure there are many other films which fit this hypothesis but I felt that it would have been overkill to go over them here.
Peace and love fellow human.
James Owens 