Week 3 Arts & Robots
Andrea Streips
This week, Professor Kusahara's lecture on arts and robots enabled me to view robots from two completely different cultural lenses. The industrialization of the US and Japan that Professor Kusahara lectures on demonstrates how robots have been integrated in both US and Japan, but in two completely different ways. She states how America portrays robots as evil or scary, while in Japanese movies, robots are usually portrayed to help and are illustrated as even cute or cuddly (Robotics MachioKusahara 1). The history of robots in America has always been based off the idea of man vs machine and are depicted as destructive machines throughout American films. Benjamin Walter delves into a loss of aura, focusing on the progression of time and explaining how aura is the originality that cannot be reproduced (Walter, 1936).
The Japanese, on the other hand, illustrate robots as a device that can actually better the community as a whole. Robots are viewed as cute child-friendly machines that can be purchased as a cute stuffed animal for a toddler. In the west robots were created as a "response to the mechanization of labor", where science has been a huge influence for the harsh metal appearance of robots(Robotics pt 1-3). In the beginning of Kusahara's lecture, I found it interesting how the design of robots began in theater, but the industrialization has influenced the Japanese and American culture to integrate robots in their society for polar opposite reasons.
I began reflecting to see if I could think of any American film about robots that are illustrated as, "cute, cuddly, and friendly" to see if there is an interconnection anywhere. The only movie I could think of was Wall-e. Wall-e, the cartoon that was released in 2008, is about a friendly robot who is designed to clean up waste on the earth and falls in love. The theme of the movie is about the purest form of love and many of the characters don't even have voices. Even though Wall-e has characteristics similar to the Japanese robot, the appearance still embodies an American robot. Wall-e is cute, but has more of a harsh appearance. Overall, it was very interesting to see how the innovation of the industrialization has paved the way for robots, but still stemmed from the art of theater.
Citation:
UConlineprogram. "Robotics pt1-pt3". Youtube. Youtube, 16 April 2012. Web.
UConlineprogram. “Robotics MachikoKusahara 1.” Youtube. Youtube, 14 April 2012. Web.
Walter, Benjamin. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1936. Web.
"History of the United States Industrialization and Reform (1870-1916)." Theusaonline.com. The USA Online. Web. 17 Apr. 2015
Wikipedia.org "Wall-e" Online. 7 March 2009. Web.
Hi Andrea,
ReplyDeleteIn your post this week, I think you bring up some very interesting points. You are right: robots have had such an important role and influence on our lives, yet in the West, we characterize robots as monsters. I think this may be due to the fear of Western workers who thought they would lose their jobs to the robots and therefore painted them in an almost evil characterization. I think the Japanese view of robots may be because of their very favorable look on industrialization that stems back to the time that the Japanese empire modernized to become a global, imperial force as opposed to a colonized land. There are not many American films that paint robots in a very positive light as you said. Another one that I can think of is I, Robot, but even in that film, the robots do turn on the human race (although they do so out of the desire to help the humans). It will be very interesting to see how these ideas about robots change in the future and how this change in ideals is expressed via cinema and art.
Hello Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your take on WALL-E, as I agree that it encompasses both the Japanese and American ideas of robots. One recent movie to also look at would be Big Hero 6, which is definitely a Japanese-culture inspired movie, but was made by the American Walt Disney company. In the movie, the principal robot is Baymax, a doughy and lovable robot that, as you have described in your section about Japanese robots, is designed to help people. The movie was well received in the US, so maybe we can expect to see more movies of the same genre in the coming years. Obviously it was a child's movie, but it may signal more cultural overlap between US and Japanese robot media than we previously though. That being said, I am confident we will always have destructive, post-apocalyptic robot movies here in the US (Terminator Genysis comes to mind).