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Rather than respond to earlier posts which I feel are missing the point...The movie is not about mecas, aliens, robots vs. humans, or any of the preadolescent drivel thus far put forth. The movie is about the arrogant, self-indulgent, destructiveness of adults in general, and parents in particular. The meca framework is only there to allow for the creation of a child who has no ability to utilize the normal development of ambivalence of his attachment as a defense against the absurd selfishness of his parents. His mother wants a lump to love her, his father wants her happy so he'll get some. Giggolo Joe had it right when he said, "she doesn't love you, she loves what you do for her." Even the William Hurt character, who we might superficially observe as a power hungry, self-centered Bill Gates of robots, is really a pathetic loser trying to fill the empty hole of his own loss by creating his dead son over and over again. And for those who think the last sequence was overly long and boring, it was structured this way for a purpose. We sit for 30 minutes watching David wait 2000 years. And what does he get after all of his (and our) waiting when the beings (and who cares who they are?) find a way to give him his mother back for one day? He gets the most profound message of the film. Even then, he must not let his mother know that she has only a limited time with him, because is will confuse and upset HER. Upset her for Christ's sake! Even then, after 2000 years of waiting, the child takes care of the parent, who never took real care of the child.
Follow Ups:
My take on A.I. has some similarities to yours, as I didn't jive much with the technology arguments and I watched the film in three steps.1. I started with the film's opening question: "If you create something capable of loving you, are you morally obligated to love it in return?" The answer, I thought (for both myself and Spielberg), was: "Yes, of course!" From that point on, I watched the film from David's point-of-view.
2. Then I asked: Are humans capable of that kind of unconditional love?" The unfortunate answer: No. This was the big test of the first two acts of the film and the humans flunked miserably. David's mother rejects her adopted child too readily to protect her natural child (and the father never connects with him). David is a hunted outcast and cannot be comforted by a nanny robot. David's creator is more interested in David as a scientific milestone, which does nothing to give David a sense of uniqueness and self-worth.
3. Then I asked: "Can humans justify creating such an entity?" or "Is there some moral justification for David's existence?" If not for the final act, I would have answered: no. In an indirect form of redemption for humans, it is only David's technological successors who give him the love he needs, albeit a limited and qualified one. David's existence is an unfortunate casualty of the process of creating these successors. Why is it limited to one ideal day by the space-time mumbo jumbo? I don't know. But maybe it means that these future beings aren't all-powerful, omniscient, and god-like. If they achieved God-hood, then why would they continue to seek out knowledge (they want to know what the humans were like) and strive for improvement in their own existence, or as Randy Bey wrote below, "Where's the motivation?".
Or maybe I just wasted $7.50 seeing "E.T." all over again, damnit!
> > "If you create something capable of loving you, are you morally
> > obligated to love it in return?"this I think is a very deep question, that would be pretentious to answer, especially in the settings of this movie. How can a mother love a robot the same was she loves her son when the robot melts in front of her face after eating foods, and the has his electronics guts open up to get fixed? How can the people of today society have the capacity to answer such a question?
Spieldberg attempts to answer this questions because most people think they have answers for it as it is indeed a very interesting question. That is where Spieldberg excels: touching hearts of the masses; and that's why he is so rich and famous. He is also a great director.
One interesting consequence of this movie is that today we question the worthiness of advance technologies, medical or otherwise. Some people argue that such technologies may be harmful in the hand of criminals and so on and so forth. Here we have a situation when technologies are successfully implemented: when David ask, "please turn me into a real boy", he is a real boy as far as human emotions are concerned (wonderfully portrayed by Osmone); a robot can't move emotions the way he does. So basically they successfully make a perfect robot; everything was perfect; the robots didn't take over the world, etc...And yet there's dilema. This's a great attempt by Spieldberg to show that we must be really careful with our actions...
However, he cheated... He took a present-day mother, put her in a 30th-ish century living with robots, showed the results to present-day audience, and hoped to make his points with this quick sleight of hands -- masterfully misdirected with appeals to emotions. His weakness is his slight bias, in this case towards the machines; he undoubtedly roots for the mechas. This is a big difference between him and Kubrick.
So although its not a perfect movie, its still a great one.
Again, I contend that within the context of the story, the use of robots is only a vehicle to explore the issue of how children are treated by adults. Sure, SS has sent a message that we must generally be careful with our actions (global warming for one), but the profound message is more specific to what happens to the children. If he's "rooting for the meca's", it's really, again, only a metaphor for identifying the real victims of adult human narcissism and greed. And one of the things we know from research and data is that a statistically significant percentage of victims become perpetrators, as do most of the human adults in the film. The William Hurt character, the mother, the father, the guy who killed his wife, the fans at the Flesh Fair, are all narcissistic perpetrators, to one degree or another.
> > "If you create something capable of loving you, are you morally
obligated to love it in return?" < < Why would it be pretentious in any way to answer this question? It's probably the whole premise of the story. Of course we are morally obligated. We take on the obligation every time we choose to deliver a new being into the world. And for the most part we fail miserably at fulfilling our obligation. By the way, my face looked just like David's every time my parents made me eat liver.
I will again put forth my conviction that most of the complaints of structure, technological incongruities, and such, are ways we can distract ourselves from the painful truth of the story. It's just a simple story about how, if parents could create the perfect child, they would still find a way to screw it up.
I will again put forth my conviction that most of the complaints of
structure, technological incongruities, and such, are ways we can
distract ourselves from the painful truth of the story. It's just
a simple story about how, if parents could create the perfect child,
they would still find a way to screw it up.
That's a way to look at it, more specific than what I pointed out. As in any good story, there're many ways to look at it.
> > "If you create something capable of loving you, are you
morally obligated to love it in return?" < <Why would it be pretentious in any way to answer this question? ....Of course we are morally obligated. We take on the obligation every time we choose to deliver a new being into the world.
This is not quite the same. We are talking about robots. Still, the problem is in "the obligation to love". Some feel obligated to love their children; others just do. For me, its funny to have love and obligation hands in hands. I dont understand that. Do you? Do you think that we can presently answer questions about love? If so, great. If not, isn't it pretentious to assert having the mentality and understanding of such an advanced society to answer questions about love, espcially to the machines that we create . Isn't it pretentious to ask 'when God created the atoms, do we expect him to love them back'? Love or any type of hormone-induced action requires the specific mentality, lifestyle, understanding, together with a bunch of other mysterious things to even begin to hope to understand. How many here couldn't figure out why their daughters fall in love with a seemingly complete loser?
Spieldberg did a great job of underscoring the problems, but he gave answers for them too.
If he's "rooting for the meca's", it's really, again, only a metaphor
for identifying the real victims of adult human narcissism and greed.
My point here is that this shows Spieldberg's weakness. It seems as though there's a need for him to provide an answer, to have a proof to his thesis. When theyre too difficult, he forces them. Kubrick would still have forced the issue, but instead put it on the table and said, 'heres your problem deal with it'. But thats why Spieldberg is so beloved; he reassures so eloquently what most already believe; we feel mentally satisfied and agreeable after watching him.
There is nothing outside the text, which serves the same function as a Rorschach test in evoking your unresolved conflicts. I still contend that you feel melancholy when you touch yourself. I think you can take it from here. And please, no more transference -- you claim to be a pro.
Good job.
Boo hoo! Mine did too and I *liked* the stuff!clark
Me to...mum gave it to us when she thought we were sick (skip school to get liver). Cooked in a vinegar sauce with parsley accompanied with boiled new potatoes.(Looks at watch...)
For those who have not seen the movie, read no further. Alan had some spoilers, here will be more.I like your idea and can agree with much of it. However, I believe this idea could have been implemented in a much more satisfying manner. Specifically, again, I refer to the final half hour of the movie, which is a structural mess.
Specifically, pulled out of the air are virtually omnipotent beings, but with extreme limitations which are apparently imposed strictly for dramatic purposes. They can recreate a human, given DNA, and the bear remarkably has a strand of hair. This much I can swallow. But then, nonsensically, comes a rap about the space-time stream which means that this human only has one day to be alive. Can there be any justification for this beyond the Spielbergian desire to evoke tears? It is arbitrary and manipulative. There are so many ways that this final meeting and parting could have been arranged that would not have felt like plot manipulations pulled completely out of the air. That is how it felt to me. That is why the emotional ending fell flat for me.
yeah that part was lame. With relatively modest suspensions of disbelief the movie is plausible till they start spouting that kind of voodoo mumbo jumbo.Could have made a more plausible scene if they dropped the DNA aspect, forgot the hair, and went for "vibrations encased in inanimate objects" angle which is plausible at least from what they have learned about stones.
Then mix in a little holographic trickery ala Superman's ability to "see" the past via distant photons, and bingo! a far more acceptable premise than the lala crap they tried to feed us.
I do not mean to run this into the ground, I just think it is interesting and I had more thoughts.From the sarcastic tone of your reply, you seem to be implying that since this is sci fi/fantasy, it is all far-fetched and any quest for plot consistency is unimportant.
I would like to draw a distinction. Typically, sci-fi/fantasy postulates a situation, which may be extremely far-fetched. In this case, it is the building of a machine capable of love. The story then explores the implications of this situation. The original situation may be totally unbelievable, such as the many switched life fantasies that are made, but if the story uses the situation intelligently, disbelief is willingly suspended.
This is not the same as a deus ex machina ending. The classic example of this is a man, menaced by a villain. The villain is walking down the street, a safe falls from the sky and kills him, and the man lives happily ever after. This kind of thing is not dramatically consistent.
Now in A.I., you have an almost classic deus ex machina. Beings are brought in who are not gods, but who may as well be, for their powers are god-like. At this point, anything at all can happen. Spielberg's choice is a sentimental reunion, but it really could have been anything. It could have been time travel or construction of a new world or whatever. Once you have an ending that depends on the power of godlike beings, the rules of the story are out the window.
So it was not strictly the sentimentality I criticize- it is really the structure. Ultimately it is not satisfying.
Compare this to the Princess and the Warrior. A flawed movie, but structurally organized with a symmetry and beauty which makes it satisfying as a whole and rewarding to consider after leaving the theater.
The John Williams music welling up, the voice-over...had Kubrick made this movie, it would not have ended like this. I had checked out at this point, but 2 good hours are more than most movies offer, with ideas to boot. I just did not like the ending that's all.
I for one, was struggling to understand why Spielberg did it the way he did, I think you may have hit it on the head. The last 30 minutes felt awful, but I couldn't believe S.S. would make it so for no reason other than a "happy" ending as many critics suggest.You are right about Hurt's charactor of course, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else.
Finally, I was wondering why the robot's abilities (which I would have imagined were great- communicate digitally with other machines,greater strength, etc.) were not captialized on or even revealed. Now it is obvious!
Why won't this thing let me post no message?
Wow, I for one am sure honored to have a person like you tell all the people that posted on that earlier thread how pedantic and "preadolescent" our thinking was. It must be hard for you to be among such stupid people, huh?
You bring up some interesting points, especially the ones about the machines (both the boy and Joe) that are forced to be the self realized servants of arrogant self absorbed humans, but also a few that make me scratch my head and think your mom must not have hugged you enough. Seems like you carried a bit of baggage into the theater with you.
The fact that the beings are (probably) the descendants of the boy is fascinating. It's like us finding the missing link. It ties in with the "searching for ones self" theme of the film and ties it all up at the end.
The more I think about this movie, the more I forgive it's smarmy Pinoccio ways.
He brought some ideas to the table. Deal with them.clark
.
Yeah, he brought ideas to the table and good ones, but he brought them with a condescending and eliteist attitude and tone.No one likes to have their ideas be called "preadolescent drivel". No one deserves to just let that slide.
Well kid, sorry to have to break this to you in this way but mom didn't hug any of us enough, that's the movie. It's also my business. So whatever I brought into the movie is only further supported by my day to day exposure to the results of the way parents treat their children. Read your Alice Miller. But I'm not sure you're pedantic, maybe just well defended.
Alan, its like so obvious that you wanted to kill your father and sleep with your mother. You are so not over your Oedipal stage. You want to slay the dragon (SS) and thereby be the phallus for your mother. Ok, you'll be alright now that you know.
Don't forget your Haldol tonight.
When you feel your own nipples, does it make you meloncholy?
Melancholy. M-E-L-A-N-C-H-O-L-Y
Alan,
I'm no head shrinker, but being 40, most of my peers have kids and yes, I am saddened by how many parents raise their kids these days, ignoring them emotionally and then overcompensating for that with material items. Then mom and dad lay blame on all the external stimuli like TV, movies and video games when the problems start with kids that have no values- something that needs to be taught at home at a very early age. I realize that's simplistic 2 sentence explanation of a much more complex subject, but I don't have the time or inclination to go deeper.But
Saying mom didn't hug any of us enough is way off the mark. Your experience consists of seeing the bad cases every day. Pretty heavy baggage. There are also plenty of parents taking care of their kids heads, raising them with ethics, discipline and a value system. WIth all due respect, it seems like you're so close to this subject that you saw this as the main point of the film and I think that it was only a small portion of the story.
Cheers,
Troy
All I can say is that my personal and clinical impression of families is that the worst of them are destructive, and the best of them are a neurotic mess. The "hugs" thing is just a metaphorical way of stating that, again in my opinion, nobody gets the childhood they deserve. (Besides, how did this get to be my thing, you started it with the mommy didn't hug me enough comment.) In further thinking about the David character in A.I. he exhibits exactly the neurotic neediness that pretty much all of us have. But we're humans, we develop physically and intellectually, but to some degree never emotionally and we act out our neurotic neediness in adult ways. David was not provided the capacity to develop beyond his childish neediness. He's stuck in it. Why? Because we (adults, parents, society) MADE HIM THAT WAY! The movie is simply pointing this out. You're right, the excuse that problems are generated by the external stimuli is simplistic crap. Those of my cohort saw more violence on TV in a week than kids today see in a month.One other point about the movie. Many have made the biological son of the couple out to be the villan in the movie, and take issue that it's a cheap shot by SS. The kid is clearly not the villan, he's just a regular human child on his way to adulthood, learning all the tricks from his parents and the culture. And the ending isn't about tear jerking, it doesn't matter who the aliens are, how they got there, who they decended from, or any of that. As I said in my first post, it's only to remind us that, in the end, it's always about the parents, it's never about the kids. Who cares about the format?
I think the reason why we have this disagreement is more our difference of philosophy than anything else. Sorry, but I think you give parents too much credit. I think the culture gives parents too much credit. But then, the culture is parents, and what are they gonna say...I suck? In fact most of my work is not with "bad cases" but with families that would be seen by outside observers, neighbors, fellow church goers, as healthy models for the community. And they're a sick neurotic mess.
Good discussion though, despite what Dr. Freud says. Sorry if I went at the quality of the previous posts the way I did. Just a little pissed off I guess. I am, after all a fellow needy neurotic adult. I was made that way.
Alan, I enjoyed your comments about A.I., even though I haven't seen the film. Those comments made me want to see it, despite some negative reviews. And, as a general matter (and as a parent of 3), I think kids are getting the short straw in the US today in ways that were not true when I was a kid 40 years ago. As I am sure you would agree, money is not a substitute for "face time"; and, what I see among many affluent families is that kids get money from their parents but not much attention. However, I attribute this, not to any neurotic characterstic of families, but to a gradual movement in the US to celebrate gratification of the individual's needs over the group's needs, however you define "group". This seems to have begun, (gulp!) in the 1960s.However, I am interested in your observation that "the best of them [families] are a neurotic mess."
Two questions:
1. By what (or whose) standards are they a "neurotic mess" ?
2. What (or who) is it that validates those standards?
My own observation as a non-professional is that families are a "mess" in the sense that they are extremely complicated, exhibit tremendous variation from sample to sample and thereby defy easy categorization. Why are they a "mess"? Because family membership is not a matter of choice. Although husbands and wives choose each other when they get married, I think we all agree that 10, 20, 30 years later, both partners are different people. And, of course, relataives are a fact, not a choice. A child does not choose her parents, and vice-versa. So, families are an act of will. They exist because their members have decided to make them exist. Necessarily, that involves a patchwork of emotional improvisation, as the family members do what they can -- and what they have to -- to get along with each other.
Certainly for the intellectual, whose tendency is to want to organize things into manageable classifications and categories, this is inconvenient. But, to my mind, "neurotic" is a negative value judgment; and inferring "neurotic" from "messy" is not self-evident to me. Most people -- who are the products of families -- manage to function in the societies in which they are born with reasonable success.
A final point that, I confess, always annoys me. At least in the popular mind, the goal of pyschiatry seems to be to have people who are "well-adjusted." Certainly, if I were choosing dinnertable companions or a group with whom to spend a weekend at the beach, I would want them to be well-adjusted. They might also be crashing bores.
The "well-adjusted" imperative ignores the fact that many, many persons who have made significant contributions to society in all fields of life were not at all "well-adjusted"; and some of them, probably by your definition, were/are "neurotic." I'm not at all sure I would want to do without them.
In my mind, "well-adjusted" may also be a synonym for "mediocre."
Neurotic Bruce.
Bruce,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on my various ravings.To address your two questions:
1. By what (or whose) standards are they a "neurotic mess" ?
You caught me Bruce. I am a plagiaristic theif. The term "neurotic mess" and the concept that the "bad" families are destructive and the "good" families are "just a neurotic mess" comes from Colin Ross,MD of the Forest View Mental Health centers in Richardson, TX and Grand Rapids,MI. Ross is an internationally recognized specialist in the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders, and also dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder). His clinical perspective is virtually unchallenged as being on the leading edge of treatment for these disorders.
2. What (or who) is it that validates those standards?
All I can say about this is that it is Dr. Ross' personal clinical impression taken from anecdotal evidence from his years of practice. There are certainly no "neurotic mess" clinical studies, or "neurotic mess" data available to support such a contention. Although Dr. Ross is an ackowledged authority on the above disorders, I'm sure that many would disagree with his perspective on families. Not me though.
The "bad" cases are repugnant to you. I'm sorry your toilet training made you hate your own feces. You are going to be fine Alan. :)
...'til you're out of school before evaluating the damage?
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