(Continuation of Robot Essays & Posts. Thanks go to everyone who replied to my previous post. This portion was far harder than I thought…we'll see if it makes sense. Refer to quotes and posts by Age, Exegy, Off-kilter and ponygirl, also Rahael gave me the idea to discuss Daryl.) There is an addendum I did not include in the original posts - based on an idea posed by Age.
Spoilers to Grave!
Last August, my boss gave an impromptu instruction session on management techniques. The crux of his little lesson was the perfect manager had the same responses and abilities as a robot. Perfect. We seem to be obsessed with the word perfect. I remember reading an interview with SMG about the musical and how she didn't want to do another one without lots of practice because she is a perfectionist. She isn't happy unless it's perfect. The perfect performance. The perfect weight. The perfect image. The perfect world - a world of plasticine images and smooth lines.
This is a popular theme in science-fiction. Robots, the perfect automatons would control society in a better manner than humans, because those nasty chaotic emotions wouldn't get in the way. The Terminator was about the robots killing off the humans, because they felt the humans were a disease on the planet. Matrix followed a similar idea. Then there's the Japanese Anime and Magna novels where people are combined with robotic parts to make them more durable, able to withstand anything. The Japanese magna and anime sci-fi concentrate heavily on avoiding apocalypse, the results of nuclear war, and the negative results of technology. The anime film Ghost in the Shell falls into this category.
Several years ago while I was wandering around Wales persuading innocent villagers to tell me folk stories, I shared a ride with two military guys - serving time in Italy. I believe they were army but can't remember. Anyway we got to talking and they told me that in the military - you aren't supposed to think, except to the extent that you can understand and obey orders. The perfect solider they told me was a robot, someone who would back you up without question. You needed people who would climb a hill and race into a firestorm, possibly getting killed in the process. If the soliders questioned their commanders, we'd have mass chaos. In boot camp, he told me, we're taught to obey, our ego is stripped away, until there is just a grub, a solider, obeying orders in its place. The perfect robot. Or at least that's the intent. But suffice it to say, life doesn't work that way. We're human, we feel and it's awfully difficult to ignore emotions when it comes to things like killing other human beings or getting killed yourself.
So wouldn't it be wonderful if we could create the perfect solider? A robot to fight for us? And why stop there? How about the perfect cop? The perfect fireman? The perfect student? The perfect worker? The perfect teacher? The perfect actor? I remember in grade school, we theorized that in the year 2001 - our teachers would be robots or computers. And just a few years ago, with all the advancements in animations and digitization, it was theorized that soon we would no longer need human actors. Robots could do everything. And they'd be better at it than us, because after all they didn't have our problems, they didn't possess what Freud would have called the id. No need for comfort, food, shelter, love, sex or joy. Automatons. Perfect.
1. Adam, Daryl, and Frankenstein
In Btvs, Professor Walsh through the use of Skinner-like conditioning techniques, medical science and technology attempted to create the perfect group of super-soliders. She started small with Riley and the Initiative soliders, then built her way up through chipping demons like Spike, and finally the creation of Adam. Professor Walsh's motivation is simple; she just wants to make the world a better place and to be God. She even calls Adam and Riley her sons. Her creations. She's a bit like Dr. Frankenstein in the Mary Shelley novel of the same name.
In Frankenstein - the protagonist, Dr. Frankenstein believes you can create life from death. He believes by doing so, we have conquered death. Shelley wrote the novel shortly after she miscarried her first child. Tormented by dreams of giving birth to a monster or having her dead child brought back to life, Shelley wondered what would happen if we tried to circumvent nature and create life from death. The results were chaotic. The resulting Monster destroyed everything Frankenstein valued. This reminds me of Professor Walsh, who like Dr. Frankenstein strives to show the scientific world that she can harness the chaotic forces of nature to create a super-solider that will obey her orders. The perfect solider. Instead she creates the perfect monster: Adam, who like Frankenstein's Monster, kills her, destroys her reputation, and her soul.
This is not the first time Btvs has explored the Frankenstein theme. In Some Assembly Required, (Season 2, Btvs) a high school science nerd resurrects his dead brother, Daryl, from the grave by piecing together dead body parts. Like Frankenstein's Monster, Daryl wants a mate. Both Frankenstein and Daryl are lonely creations, outcastes. They remind me a little of Spike in Season 4, after Harmony has left him and he's forced to fend for himself. All three are outcasts due to the interference of science. Spike had a role before; he was Mr. Big Bad Vampire and part of demon society, a dark warrior. Now, with the chip, he's a neutered vampire that no one takes seriously, except the demons he pummels for fun. Daryl also had a role - he was the football hero. Then he died. And now he's been brought back to life and is alone. A monster. His brother did it supposedly out of love, playing god. Similar to Dr. Frankenstein who attempts to resurrect his dead wife after the monster kills her. Walsh to her credit, or discredit, had far less personal motivations. (This could also be paralleled with Willow who decides to bring back Buffy and later Tara. Willow is as arrogant as Prof. Walsh and Daryl's brother, believing she can play god with natural rules.) But back to Daryl, who wants a mate. And not just any mate - he wants a mate just like him with Cordelia's head. So his brother attempts to construct one, just as Dr. Frankenstein constructs one. But has a change of heart when he has to kill someone to complete the task. Frustrated, Daryl takes over and tries to do it himself. Fortunately Buffy stops him before he can kill Cordy. In Some Assembly Required - the creator once again has to deal with the chaotic desires of his creation. The boy's best intentions - to bring his beloved brother back to life only result in corrupting his brother's memory and everything his dead brother touches. His attempt to create something better, to cheat death, only causes more death and destruction. Just as Professor Walsh's attempt to cheat death and harness the forces of chaos only results in more chaos and death. Nature refuses to be controlled.
Like Daryl and Frankenstein are pieced together from corpses, Adam is revealed to be pieced together from numerous demons and humans and technology. A hodgepodge of medical and technical science. To the extent that the human part of Adam no longer has an identity, no longer exists, he becomes something new, just as Daryl and Frankenstein have. All three creations challenge their creators' vision, intent on following their own paths. 'We are not just tools to be used at your whim,' they seem to declare, going in the opposite direction from their creators' vision. Instead of being their creator's perfect child, a reaffirmation of life, they become monsters or reaffirmations of death and destruction.
2. Riley, Spike and Robocop
Riley, Walsh's second son, is the reverse of Adam, the good "perfect" son. Of course Riley isn't a monster, he's a man who has been feed drugs and conditioned over time to follow Prof. Walsh and the dictates of the organization that recruited him. Riley is already the perfect solider, created not by biology or technology but by behavorist conditioning. Riley is the result of "psychology". Super-strong. Smart. Follows orders without question. Sees the world in the black and white shades that the military and Prof. Walsh painted for him. He like the "Adam" in the Eden Story, avoids partaking of the tree of good and evil. He prefers the nice comfortable orderly world he inhabits. He does not want to follow his own initiative, he'd rather follow the government's or if you like the PTB's dictates, it's easier.
Riley reminds me a little of RoboCop, ( played by Peter Weller). In this film, a good cop (Murphy) who played by the rules, followed the system, and gave his life up for his partner in a bust gone bad, is co-opted by a huge corporation and turned into Robocop, a technological wonder of steel, computer chips, and human tissue. At first, Murphy has no problems with this, believing it is for the good of the public, then slowly discovers the corporation's nefarious ends and also what he has had to give up to become the perfect solider. He can no longer see his wife and child. He is in a word dead to them. He no longer requires human comforts: food, shelter, comfort, sex and love. I re-watched a section of Robo-cop II recently, in this section - Murphy's wife is suing the corporation and police force for what they did to her husband, who they insist is dead, but he still is visiting her as Robocop. The corporation pulls Robocop in and in a lengthy interrogation session conditions him to believe that he is not human, that he has no feelings, that he has no wife. That his primary purpose is to serve the law and nothing else. He must be the perfect solider. Outside life mustn't interfere with that in any way. Who he is and what he does is no longer dictated by him but by the organization he serves.
Riley tries to be the perfect solider, even gives his superiors the benefit of the doubt when Walsh attempts to kill Buffy. He doesn't trust Buffy's account of this event, even after he sees evidence of Walsh's culpability with his own eyes. (Goodbye Iowa) Riley is so conditioned by Walsh, that he can't quite believe she would betray him not until the evidence is made painfully real. In fact after Adam kills Walsh, he believes Buffy may been responsible for the Professor's death. His friend, Forrest, certainly believes it. It isn't until Adam appears on the scene and tells Riley that Walsh drugged him repeatedly over time and had big plans for them both that Riley begins to break with the establishment. Poor Riley, corn-fed farm boy joins the military, does well, gets promoted, only to have some crazy Professor use him as a psychology experiment.
Psychology experiments. The man is turned into a machine not through medical science but through psychological conditioning, through the breaking down of his defenses. The Manchurian Candidate is a classic example of psychological conditioning. The film starring Lawrence Harvey and Frank Sinatra is about a man who is conditioned to kill government leaders with post-hypnotic suggestion and drugs. His mother learns of his conditioning and uses it to manipulate her way into politics. In the end it backfires on her just as Professor Walsh's behavioral conditioning backfires. Riley doesn't do what Prof Walsh wants any more than Lawrence Harvey does what his mother wants. The difference, in Btvs, the good doctor uses drugs and behavioral modification chips instead of hypnotic suggestion. As Spike states at the beginning of Primeval, when he discovers that he, Adam, and Riley have chips, "Oh, I see, it's chips all around."
Riley isn't only conditioned by drugs; he also has a chip in his chest controlling his behavior. If he gets out of line, it will immobilize him. Professor Walsh thought of all the variables. Riley is the mad professor's unwilling lab experiment. The tragedy? Riley volunteered, he willingly subjected himself to the good Professor's tutelage but he did not subject himself to her lab experiments. She did that without his knowledge. So it's not his fault right? It's not his fault that he becomes her lab experiment, that he gets co-opted by the military, that he almost becomes something he hates. He's not culpable for the things the Initiative does.
In one of Age's posts (I think it was in reply to Exegy's Burial of Buffy), Age stated the theme of Season 4 was all about taking the "Initiative" in our lives, choosing our own course instead of having someone else choose it for us. Does Riley? In one episode, Riley tells Buffy he's not very good at gray, he prefers the black and white organized world of the military where people told him what to do. Buffy counters that while it is difficult to chart your own course it is worth it and he has options. He can either go back to the military or he can use what he's learned and find a way of fighting demons on his own. She had to make a similar decision when she broke with the Watcher's Council.
Unlike Robocop's Officer Murphy, Riley has choices. He is human, not a robot, not held back by technology. He can and does remove his behavior modification chip in Primeval and for part of Season 5, actually does attempt to chart a course away from the military. When his toxins are removed in Out of My Mind, he is no longer the super solider. No outside force has an influence over him. He is his own man. He can chart his own course. Officer Murphy in Robocop remains encased in his robotic armor, his choices dictated by those who created him. His attempts to break free are emotionally and morally scarring. He remains an outcast from his own kind, sort of similar to Spike. Spike tries on numerous occasions to remove his chip but he can't. It is permanently encased in his skull; forced removal could render him a vegetable.
In Season 4, Spike and Riley are closely paralleled. Both get chipped. Professor Walsh attempts to control both of them. Both become her unwilling lab experiments. She wants to turn both of them into a type of super-solider. (Well maybe just one, the other might be more of a dissection, but you get the point.) Both escape this fate. And both momentarily join Adam in his cause. Adam bribes Spike with the possibility his chip's removal while he uses Riley's chip to coerce him into participating.
This on-going parallel between Riley and Spike reminds me a lot of a Psych 101 course I took and hated in college. The course consisted of teaching a small, rather cute rat to run through a maze. To get the rat to run through this maze, we had to condition its' responses. The whole class was about how we can condition certain behavioral responses. In the case of the rat, if it ran in the right direction - it got cheese, if it ran in the wrong direction it received a small shock. Spike is given a chip that reinforces negative conditioning, it is technically speaking an electronic leash. What it does is change the course of Spike's existence. The chip makes it impossible for him to hurt a living creature. He can hurt demons as he discovers in Doomed, apparently the government doesn't consider demons living. He can also pick flowers or stomp on grass. But he can't hurt humans, dogs, kitty cats, rats, etc as far as we know. Riley receives positive reinforcement from his conditioning. He does the right thing, takes his vitamins - he gets super-strong and is promoted. Goes off his meds, breaks with the government - he becomes weak and kittenish.
Poor Spike. After the installation of the chip, he attempts to bite Willow and slay Buffy. Instead Buffy ends up saving him from the government. He does eventually adapt to his situation, becoming an informant for the SG. Occasionally fighting demons for them on the side. But in doing so, he has become an outcaste to his own kind. In the same episode that Riley leaves the Initiative, Spike is thrown out of Willy's demon bar. Both are forced to leave the worlds they knew, that they were comfortable in, and seek a new path.
Of the two, Riley eventually reverts back to the old one. For a while he follows Buffy's path as the demon hunter, until his super-strength is removed and she begins to shut him out of that portion of her life. Notice he's not charting his own path here, he's just following Buffy's, he has in effect switched from the Initiative's path to Buffy's "slayer" path. Unfortunately, Buffy isn't cooperating - as early as Buffy vs. Dracula, she leaves him out of her demon hunting duties. And in the beginning of Out of My Mind, Buffy is upset with both Spike and Riley for helping her. And Riley still has his strength at this point.
Instead of charting his own course, Riley has merely jumped from being the "perfect" solider in the government's initiative, to being the "perfect" boyfriend. And to his credit, he is the "perfect studly boyfriend" - at least in the beginning. Always provides that shoulder to cry on - whether she wants one or not. Always there to help with the demon slaying - whether she wants him to or not. Always supportive. All he wants from her is to feel needed. To have her lean on him. To be her project as she is his. Riley doesn't know any other way to treat her. As Graham puts it, "Oh so you're the Mission's true love? You used to have a mission Riley." For Riley, life has no meaning unless someone else sets the rules, boundaries, and of course, the mission. He likes following orders, being the "perfect robot".
Spike on the other hand, does not. He is after all a demon. And a particularly odd one at that. Adapts to the situation as it arises. And charts his own haphazard course. In Off-kilter's post, 10,000 methods of Spike, she paints the picture of a demon who doesn't give up. If plan A doesn't work, he'll try plan B to get what he wants. It's actually sort of inspiring to watch. And very different from Riley - who tries to set his own course, falls on his ass, and reverts back to the safety of the army, with its clear rules and boundaries. (*Quick disclaimer - I am not saying "our" military creates automatons or is an easy path in "our" world, we're talking about "Jossverse" metaphors here. Fantasy world guys not real world. I have the utmost respect for the real men and women who choose to serve our countries.)
Unlike Riley who goes with the flow, tries to be the "good" son, Spike fights it. He reminds me of A Clockwork Orange's Alex - making the most of the conditioning in his brain. Conditioning does have an effect on him - he reacts to the positive and negative stimulus of those around him like Pavlov's Dog (the dog who learns not to push the lever if it shocks him). If I can't hit humans, I'll hit demons - he thinks. Not because it helps humans, but because it gets rid of the violent energy coursing inside him, suffocating him. Spike doesn't want to be the perfect robot, he doesn't want to be held by someone else's strings. He desires to be in charge of his own destiny. His self-loathing erupts when he finds himself at the mercy of someone else's. Riley on the other hand prefers to be safe within the confines of the organization, the organization's solider or puppet. His self-loathing erupted when he was alone, purposeless. (See OOMM - Into the Woods, Season 5).
3. Kendra, Sam, The Buffy-bot and Ghost in the Shell
Speaking of puppets on strings, I recently rewatched the anime film, Ghost in A Shell. The film is about a cyborg girl (Major) who is defined completely by her job as the perfect operative for a secret organization. The "ghost" in the shell - refers to the computer generated soul inside the artificial body. Or real soul generated by the human brain harvested and placed in the body. The Major isn't sure which. At one point in the film she asks: "What if I'm not real? What if what I feel, who I am is all just based on how I'm treated by those around me?" She aches to exist outside other's constructs of reality. This reminds me of ponygirl's comment under my previous Robot Metaphor post, which asks - am I treating those around me as real or just as constructs of the reality I've imposed on them? Is who they are based on me?
Is who we are and what we do based solely on others' expectations of us? Their emotional programming? Are we, like the Major in Ghost in The Shell - tools for others bidding?
In Btvs - Kendra is the "perfect" slayer. She even has the slayer handbook. Follows it rigidly. When she was a child, her parents willingly gave her over to her Watcher. She never saw them again. Nor did she date boys or develop friendships. You aren't supposed to - she tells Buffy. Emotion weakens you. Emotional ties compromise you. You must work alone with only your watcher as your guide. This is similar to the First Slayer in Buffy's dream in Restless - we are alone and the slay is the only thing that is important.
Kendra's speech, her habits, even her reactions to people are almost robot like. She feels anger and embarrassment, but pushes these emotions aside, as not important. Vampires should be killed, regardless of souls. Emotion weakens you. Life is dictated by the books she's studied. It's telling that Giles mentions in What's My Line Part II, that even though he had a handbook, he knew it wouldn't work for Buffy. Buffy refuses to be the council's puppet. She refuses to turn off her emotions or follow the dictates of some handbook. Or be destiny's fool. Buffy refuses to be just "the slayer". While Kendra believes that being just "the slayer" is her destiny. A destiny which results in Kendra' death, and as Kendra would probably put it - as it's supposed to. Slayer dies. New one born. Happens all the time. And usually before 21. What does Spike tell Buffy in Fool For Love? "Your friends, mother, little sis, tie you to this world…without them you would have died long ago." He may be right, Kendra is easily taken out by Drusilla in Becoming Part I.
The Major in Ghost in The Shell, like Buffy, does not want to be just a puppet, she seeks to know herself and seeks to know the world outside of the network she is a part of. Just as Buffy seeks to know more than just slaying and the network she's a part of. Both eventually break with that network or organization, both suffer a type of death by doing so. The Major merges with another computer program or ghost and in doing so is freed upon the net, grows up, becomes more than just a "ghost" in the shell or as she puts it "an individual based on computerized memory." The other ghost or "puppet master program" that she merges with, tells her that "all things must change in a dynamic environment, to remain as you are limits you." Buffy seems to see this as well, by making the choice to jump from the tower of her adolescence, she is free to literally emerge renewed from the earth's womb as an adult. She makes the choice to jump. Not her watcher or the council who no doubt would have ordered her to kill her sister instead. Buffy jumps to find her own destiny, just as the Major jumps into another program to find her's. By dying both are resurrected to a new life. They don't necessarily choose this new life, the Major finds herself in the robotic body of a child and Buffy has to break out of her coffin. But both choose to continue to struggle forward, better for the experience.
Left behind after Buffy's jump, the Buffybot, remains unchanged. Continuing to fight Buffy's fight as Willow programs her to. Continuing to repeat phrases from her old sex programs to Spike. Even those programs aren't completely wiped out. She states inappropriate but charming quips that are reminiscent of Kendra. She treats Dawn as the nice little sister, unchanging in her attitude towards her. And admires Spike's washboard abs and brain as she did before she changed owners. The "perfect" little robot. Except for one teensy problem - like Kendra, she is easily killed. She can't adapt to new situations or live outside the box. If she gets injured, she goes to her programmer, when her programmer or mother abandons her, she is destroyed so that her ex-lover is left rumbling through the wreckage, mourning her loss while her surrogate sister gently tries to close her eyes. The Buffbot's death is as painful as Kendra's because neither reach their full potential, yet it is just as inevitable. Without the ability to grow beyond the boundaries of a reality constructed by others - we are doomed to be squashed by the changes and turmoil the world unleashes on us. In the Buffbot's case, it's the pirate demons who tear her apart like a little boy ripping the arms and legs off his sister's Barbie doll. They treat her as the toy she so accurately plays. In Kendra's case, it's Drusilla, Drusilla with all her lovely dolls, that kills Kendra, seeing Kendra as just another wind-up doll she can knock aside.
It is ironic that a Watcher created Kendra and Willow - a would be Watcher re-programmed and gave new birth to the Buffbot. Both the Watchers and Willow desire to control their world. They do so by finding and training slayers or in Willow's case programming a robot and bringing Buffy back from the dead. Like Professor Walsh, they mean no harm. They want to make the world a safer better place. But as Giles tells Prof. Walsh in A New Man, the Council in Helpless, and later Willow in Flooded, such control comes with an incredibly high price. Nature cannot be controlled. It must be respected.
Which brings us to Sam, the missionary turned solider. Sam is an interesting character. Like Riley she has been raised by organizations that adore rules and order. She is first the "perfect" missionary, then the "perfect" solider, and finally the "perfect" wife. Missionaries historically go into uncivilized areas to exert order. They believe, somewhat arrogantly, that they are civilizing the people, they are providing them with a set of rules to live by and thus bettering their lives. History does not always look kindly on the results. Novels such as The Poisonwood Bible, At Play in the Fields of The Lord, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness all discuss the chaos created by well-meaning missionaries, who arrogantly believe they can tame what they deem to be the wilderness. The women innocently view themselves as saviors, unaware of the destruction they wrought on the people they wish to civilize. This is Sam in As You Were.
In AYW, Sam hero-worships Buffy, comparing her to Santa Clause, which Anya told us was actually a child eating boogy man in THE BODY. Buffy is similarly compared to the boogy man by Forrest in Season 4. A mystical unexplainable force, outside the boundaries of reality defined by Sam and Riley's organizations. When Buffy and Sam discuss Riley's break with Buffy, Sam tells Buffy, there are no bad guys here. It was good you let Riley go. It took him a year to get over you. (Implying that Buffy was outside his reality, his league?) Better to be with no guy than the wrong one. These sound like platitudes, designed to make Buffy feel better, but result in the opposite. But Buffy can't help but love Sam. Sam is perfect. Kind. Comforting. She tells Willow that Willow has succeeded in doing something few can accomplish, give up dark magics. Charming Willow to exchange emails with Sam, a woman she swore she'd hate on Buffy's behalf. Xander receives advice on how to take pictures at his wedding, seeing Sam and Riley as the Perfect Marriage, which he, Xander, can only hope to live up to. But, as Exegy points out on numerous well written posts regarding AS YOU WERE (and Exegy - forgive me if I misquote you- don't have any copies in front of me, so going by memory here), these messages from Sam and Riley are comforting yet also slightly robotic and clichè. The Scoobies see Sam and Riley as the ideal, but if you look closely, you'll see the helicopter they leave in does not go up but across. Sam and Riley do not go to heaven. And their words are just platitudes similar to April's comforting clichés. "Darkness before the dawn…lemons make lemonade…the wheel turns, your up your down, your still a wonderful woman…" Do these words really matter when the meaning is hollow behind them? Riley knows nothing about Buffy's life. He doesn't even know she died to save the universe.
Riley and Sam get their mission, their strokes, their sense of reality not from themselves but from the organization they are with. As Buffy states - "do you get dental with that?" Apparently so. They also have gadgets, guns that misfire, and safe houses. It seems to be the perfect life - but is it? Is it just an illusion? Made of plasticine and kelvar and cool gadgets? The perfect world seems perfect from the outside, but if we dive inside it, we'll discover all too quickly how hollow it truly is.
4. Warren, Willow : the Warrenbot & Buffybot
No Robot Metaphor analysis would be complete without discussing the Warrenbot and the two people associated with it. Warren and Willow - very similar, two characters who hide themselves behind electronics and magic. They remind me of the Wizard of OZ, no not the title, the little man behind the curtain, the little man who put on such a big show for Dorothy and her friends, nearly scaring them to death. Don't pay attention to the man hiding behind the curtain the scary creation on the screen tells them. They do and reality changes. Like the little man, Willow and Warren are afraid to be seen as they are. They'd prefer to show something else to the world instead. Both are guilty of the same fatal flaw, they want to hide.
From the second episode of Season 1, Harvest, we see Willow hacking into a computer to get information on the city's sewer system. Willow is constantly hiding behind a computer. In I Robot You Jane - Willow is spending more time with her computer than her friends, preferring the company of the emails that drift across it. Later in Season 6, after Willow gives up magic, we see her once again hiding behind the computer - pulling out useful information on the geeks. Warren likewise hides behind a computer. Behind gadgets. He always has. It's safer than real people. Gadgets he can control. It's fitting that he uses a gun to kill Buffy, it's another man-made gadget. A gadget that Riley and his soliders use and Buffy states is never useful. Apparently it's more useful than she realized.
When Warren wants to escape from Willow's fury - he builds yet another gadget. Just as Willow reprograms the Buffbot to protect the inhabitants of Sunnydale from the demons. Neither gadget works. They are both limited. Willow easily destroys the Warrenbot and furious by his attempts to evade her, sets out with even more purpose to kill and torture him. I wonder if he would have been better off if she'd found him on the bus? The Buffbot leads the demons directly to Willow, breaking up her spell and almost getting her killed. Neither gadget worked as intended. Both were declared lost.
Warren and Willow are not content with interpreting their own reality, they want to interpret everyone else's as well. They want to control their world. They want to impose their will on it. Make it like it is in their heads. Just as Dr. Frankenstein, Professor Walsh and the corporations behind Robo-cop and the Ghost in the Shell wanted to control theirs. But what world are we living in when everything is mechanized and plastic and perfect? The world of Riley and Sam? Or the world of Professor Walsh? Do we really want someone else to dictate what we should feel? How we should do our job? What to aspire to? Do we want to become robots? Is it really so wonderful being perfect? Do we really want a perfect, mechanized world?
Thanks for reading…finally ran out of ideas on this one…LOL!
Thoughts? Feedback? Getting bored of me yet? Yep - feedback whore, I admit it.
: - ) shadowkat
Addendum: In conversations with people on the ATP board and via email - I came up with an additional insight regarding robots and Ghost in The Shell. In the film Ghost in The Shell, the main character (Major) who is literally a ghost in a robot shell is told to merge her consciousness and soul with another program, in doing so they will enter a vast network of programs and gradually become we as opposed to I and be a part of the world at large instead of forever isolated from it as individual programs. If a robot is akin to what Freud described as super-ego - that morality based on knowledge alone and no emotional ties, then where does that leave us as human beings? Well, it has been suggested that morality as a construct of society alone with all its legal boundaries and rules isn't all that effective. What is to prevent us from breaking them? Fear of imprisonment? Are we worshipping at the alter of knowledge and by doing so, by being overly self-conscious of our fate and our existence, becoming in effect robots, no longer in contact with the very thing that makes life meaningful? (Paul MacDonald addresses some of this in his essay on Myth, located at the Fictionary Corner of www.atpobtvs.com.)
What we need is balance. To neither be entirely super-ego or id. To neither be all about obtaining knowledge or doing without it. It is good to reflect on our experience, but if that is all that we do - then we no longer have the experiences to reflect on. And if we do too much reflection - we lose the meaning entirely. There are times that words limit the meaning. There are times that meaning or experience can be felt more fully and keenly without words or reflection. And these times must be treasured. Morality based on legal rules, societal constructs and knowledge alone becomes eventually meaningless. And we become automatons following these rules - much like the Buffybot or even Riley in Btvs. But without morality, without caring for each other - seeing it as nothing but rules - we become like Spike, Willow and Warren - amoral or immoral emotional powderkegs. So how do we know? Spike answers this question for us in Seeing Red. After the attempted rape - it is difficult to determine who is more upset, Buffy or Spike. Spike seems utterly and completely tormented. He can't even drink a glass of vodka without shattering it. He rails at Clem asking what it is that he is feeling and tries to gouge the chip in his head out as if that is the route cause. Prior to this - the reason he goes to see Buffy, is his pain at having hurt her by sleeping with Anya. I think we all agree that Spike is by definition amoral, legal rules mean nothing to him, he certainly doesn't care about the dictates of society - to care he'd need a soul - right? It's the chip that keeps him from hurting living things and it's his love for Buffy that keeps him from hurting her. But why does his love keep Spike from hurting Buffy? We take it for granted that it does, but have we ever thought about why? It does because when he hurts Buffy, he hurts himself. Killing Buffy would destroy him. Just as failing to save her in The Gift, threatened to destroy him. He states in Intervention - that he would die before letting Glory find out about Dawn because it would destroy Buffy, and he couldn't live knowing she was in that much pain due to him. In a sense, and this is truly ironic, Spike's reasons for not hurting Buffy are far truer and far more moral than Buffy's for not killing Warren. Spike's don't come from laws or society, they come from the heart. Now extend this to why Giles gives Willow the magic at the end of Grave - to link her with humanity's pain, his view is to give her a reason not to hurt humanity or the earth by realizing that if she does so, she hurts herself. This is why only Xander could stop her, not Buffy. Buffy throws rules and order and society at Willow. Xander throws love and if you hurt me, you hurt yourself. Don't you see - if you take down the world, you must take me first - and all you do is hurt yourself more?
We are part of each other - far more than we realize. When we hit or kill or maim, it is like bruising a portion of ourselves. The reason not to hurt each other is far simpler than we think - we shouldn't do it because it hurts us. When we give and help each other - we help ourselves. We are our neighbor. We are all part of each other, the earth and the universe. The problem with focusing too much on laws, theories, science and knowledge is we start to isolate our being in armored technological constructs and risk losing the very thing that makes us human, that makes us connected that makes us - us.
And I think Btvs gets this across both with Adam - who is disconnected from humanity and demons. As well as all the other robot metaphors throughout the years. It's like the choice the rogue program gives the major in Ghost in The Shell - you can either die isolated in that shell, limited or merge with me and become part of the universe. Which would you choose?
