Replacing the Real World

Photos of Guy Henry being morphed into Peter Cushing (as Grand Moff Tarkin) for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

In 2016, I watched a plasticized (CGI) version of Peter Cushing playing Governor Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—twenty-two years after the great Peter Cushing had died.
Actor Guy Henry was used for Cushing’s body and voice; but the CGI turning him into Cushing wasn’t perfect—especially with skin texture.
I’ve long been a fan of Peter Cushing so seeing a weird mixture of the two actors on the screen—neither Guy Henry, or Peter Cushing—was very sad.
Ever since Rogue One, I’ve been interested in the idea of film studios using an actor’s persona, years after the actor is able to perform.

I’m not sure how many directors and film studios would say (on the record) that they agree with Director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) that actors are “cattle.”
Actually, Hitchcock said that what he really meant was that actors should be willing to be “utilized and wholly integrated” into a director’s vision.
(He was also quoted as saying that “Walt Disney was smart for making his actors out of paper since he had the luxury to tear them up when he didn’t like them.”)
I’m sure that Hitchcock would have loved CGI, and I think the impulse to create performances using special effects, originates in this viewpoint—that actors are simply “tools,” rather than collaborators.

Actors dying during shoots has thrown a wrench into film productions.
In 1936, 26-year-old Jean Harlow was working on two films—Double Wedding and Saratoga—when she died from a gallbladder infection that became septic.
Double Wedding had just begun, so her footage was discarded, and the role was recast.
However, 90% of Saratoga had been filmed, so all Harlow’s remaining scenes were filmed using two actresses—one for her body (shot from the back), and another for her voice.
45-year-old Tyrone Powers had the title role in Solomon and Sheba (1959) when he had a heart attack—hours after a strenuous dueling scene (for which he did eight takes).
Yul Brynner was quickly offered the role of “Solomon.”
The Crow (1994) was about two weeks away from being finished, when young star Brandon Lee was accidentally shot on set.*
A body double (with Lee’s face digitally added), was used to complete the film.
Veteran actor Oliver Reed was filming The Gladiator (2000) when he died of a heart attack off set.
Director Ridley Scott altered the plot, and used a body double plus CGI, to complete filming.
According to IMDb, dealing with Reed’s death added about three million to the 100 million film budget.

Before CGI, genre actors (like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) endured long, painful hours in make-up chairs—endangering their health, and (perhaps) making old age harder to endure.
Today, in the Avatar movies, “performance capture”—green dots on the actors’ facial muscles—is used to turn actors into the Na’vi race.
Buddy Ebsen was set to play the “Tinman” in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, but—after aluminum dust in the facial make-up made him seriously ill—he lost the role.

Kim Hunter in the make-up chair for the first Planet of the Ape film (from 1967).

Kim Hunter was so claustrophobic that she found the application of prosthetics intolerable.She needed a daily Valium to play intelligent ape “Zira” in 1968’s Planet of the Apes, 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and 1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

Alan Cummings, with a make-up artist, during filming of X-Men United. (The character "Nightcrawler" decorated his blue skin with “angelic tattoos.”)

In the early days of CGI (2003), Alan Cummings was “Nightcrawler” in X2: X-Men United.
Cummings still sat in a make-up chair for five hours per day.
However, removing the caustic blue facial makeup was painful, and injured his skin. 

Christian Bale in 2002 (before losing weight for 2004’s The Machinist), and after losing 63 pounds for the role.

Besides turning actors into fantastic creatures, CGI also changes the appearance of actors in less extreme ways—making them older, younger, weigh more, or weigh less.
Film franchises are filmed over long periods of time.
If special effect artists didn’t de-age or age the actors, the directors would need to recast.
Robert DeNiro gained sixty pounds to play an elderly “Jake LaMotta” in 1980’s Raging Bull.
Christian Bale lost sixty-three pounds for 2004’s The Machinist.
(A little CGI would have gone a long way in not forcing these actors to put on, or lose, so many dangerous pounds.) 

Old effects in original Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" on the left, and redone effects on the right.

Another issue about special effects is that they are always improving.
In 2006, Paramount redid all the special effects in the original Star Trek TV series—replacing star ship miniatures and painted backdrops with CGI.
The 79 episodes looked great for a while, but now  (in 2023) the revised effects look quaint.
Should artists update the effects in Star Trek every ten years, in order to keep up with the technology?
It’s unlikely that Paramount would make back the money.

Both the real and "reel" Barbara Jean Trenton (Ida Lupino) react to someone entering her private screening room in “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine.”

Writers have long been fascinated by the idea of living on in the artificial world of movies (be they celluloid or digital).
In the 1959 Twilight Zone TV episode “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” Ida Lupino played “Barbara Jean Trenton”—a famous actress who chooses existence in her celluloid past.
In the 2013 film The Congress, a film studio buys Robin Wright’s acting persona, and uses the digital “Robin” for a science fiction franchise called Rebel Robot Robin.
(In a scene in The Congress, “Robin,” her lawyer, her agent, and the studio CEO debate whether her contract should allow science-fiction films.)
True to the Isaac Asimov books, the main character of Apple TV+ and Asimov’s Foundation (2021-2023) is a digital recreation—Dr. Hari Seldon (with Jared Harris playing both the real and digital, Dr. Seldon).
In this genre TV series, mathematician Dr. Seldon dies in the year 12,069, but 34 years after his death—and for generations after—his digitized recreation interacts with his followers.
(Season Two of Foundation will premiere on July 14th, 2023.)

In summary, I think it’s fine to use technology to modify actors, or use them in roles they’ve chosen...as long as it’s with their consent, and the limitations are spelled out.
Using CGI and performance capture saves performers from spending hours in make-up chairs, as well as makes unnecessary the health risks of putting on extra pounds, or dieting to starvation.
It’s also OK (with the consent of the heirs), to complete scenes in a movie, in the event that the actor is incapacitated.
(In that situation, I would hope that the heirs had final approval on the new scenes.)
However, I would draw the line with using digital images of an actor, to “create a role,” or to sell a product, after an actor has lost the ability to give consent.
Some actors may choose to sign contracts before they pass on, but I believe the wonderful Robin Williams had the right idea.
Williams made sure legally that his likeness could not be used until 1939—twenty-five years after his death.
100 years would be preferable.

*According to The Hollywood Book of Death, by James Robert Parish, “when the gun was reloaded after the close-up shot [of Brandon Lee], the metal tip had remained behind the gun’s cylinder. When the blank went off, it was speculated, the explosive force propelled the dummy tip through the gun barrel and lodged it in Brandon’s body near his spine.” (Brandon Lee was the only son of martial artist and film actor, Bruce Lee.)

Censorship—Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Societal Titanic

I was born in the early 1950’s—known as an era of conformity.
Yet, I was allowed to check out books on the adult floor (with my father’s library card) from middle school onward.
I remember checking out Ralph Ellison’s 1952 book Invisible Man—confusing it with H.G. Well’s science fiction classic—and being so distressed at one scene that I felt the book was burning my hands.
A few years later, I checked out James Joyce’s Ulysses (an under the counter book), and found James Joyce as difficult to comprehend as Ralph Ellison.
Reading books that are “too sophisticated,” doesn’t contaminate children, or make them grow up faster.
When you have no context to understand content, it simply goes over your head.
Your primary beliefs about life are instilled by your parents, and (although neither of my parents graduated from college), my parents always encouraged me to read. 

Another book that confused me was our Family Bible.
What could “her flowers be upon him” (Leviticus 15:24) possibly be describing?
Why did men have multiple wives?
Why was it so wrong for a woman to stop two men from fighting by touching a man’s “secrets” (Deuteronomy 25:11)?
What could Ham seeing Noah’s “nakedness” mean?
Actually, I don’t recall asking my parents for answers to these questions.
I was too embarrassed.

During my high school years, our textbooks didn't contain much material about the Reconstruction era, slavery, or even why the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War.
My high school history department filled in the gaps.
One of my history teachers told us about Ku Klux Klan activity in northwestern Indiana (when he was a child), and lynching.
Another teacher talked about discrimination, and why using derogatory terms for ethnic groups was wrong.
The head of the department explained that the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War for economic reasons, not just to prevent the spread of communism.
(Thank you, gentlemen of the history department.
You weren’t afraid of doing your jobs, and preparing your students for life.) 

The Florida state legislature’s “Stop Woke Act” states that media specialists should avoid any material that may provoke feelings of “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” in children.
However, there’s no accompanying research proving that children experienced guilt after reading Florida textbooks, or that this “distress” would damage children.
Why would learning about discrimination, or Black history, inspire feelings of distress?
Obviously, the Florida law is just a smoke screen for trying to control societal change.

Cover of Grimm's Fairy Tales, published around 1922.

The original children’s stories—fairy tales—were designed to cause some “psychological distress” in children.
In “Hansel and Gretel,” a witch is baked alive in an oven.
In the original ending of “Little Red Riding Hood,” both the grandmother, and the child, are eaten by the wolf.
Until Disney Studios created their versions of “The Little Mermaid,” the mermaid always died at the end.
There’s a long history of using folk and fairy stories to both entertain children, and teach moral lessons.
However, after Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963, it took two years before public libraries would place the picture book on their shelves.
Although the book was about children mastering feelings of jealousy and fear, media specialists considered the book too scary for children.

Until the late 1700s, children—poor children, at least—were just considered inexpensive sources of labor.
Then, around 1790, the Romantic movement began, and the Western world began to view children as “pure and untainted beings”—at least those lucky enough to be born in wealthier families.
It’s in this era that brother and sister, Charles and Mary Lamb,* co-authored Tales from Shakespeare (1807). This collection of twenty stories—derived from twenty Shakespeare plays—was intended to be “appropriate for young people.” The first edition sold out, and it’s been in print ever since. Kathy Watson’s biography of Mary Lamb states that when there were plot issues “that might seem indecent for young people, she [Mary] simply changed them.”
(Charles and Mary Lamb never found life partners, and lived in “double singleness” for most of their lives.)

During the early 1800’s (says Kathy Watson), children’s literature was an “interesting battlefield” for “philosophers, churchmen, teachers, and parents.”
It was a battle between “romanticists” (like the Lambs) and “educationalists,” like Sarah Trimmer (editor of The Guardian of Education, a periodical published from 1802-1806).
Trimmer mistrusted fairytales—because they were frightening and worked “too powerfully upon the feelings of the mind.”
This “media specialist” was especially disdainful of “Cinderella,” because that story “encouraged a disturbing love of finery.”

Cover of Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, a British edition.

Almost 150 years later, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham (1895-1981) wrote Seduction of the Innocent.
His theory was that seeing violence and sexuality in comic books caused delinquency in children.
(His ideas resulted in the Comics Code Authority.)
I wonder what Dr. Wertham would think of the Disney channel, or the fact that superhero films are the top film franchises worldwide?

Cover of a British edition of Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

Any discussion of censorship wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451—the science fiction classic about people fighting against a totalitarian government, that sets fire to libraries and suppresses ideas.
(The title refers to the temperature at which book paper catches fire.)
A passage reads: 

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. . .

Those who want to “protect societal values” by not reading books, and those who want to “promote inclusivity” by deleting words from books, are both rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
According to the American Library Association, there were 1,269 demands to censor library books in 2022—the highest number in over 20 years, and nearly double the 2021 demands.
Publishers are changing the word “fat” to “enormous” in Willie Wonka—instead of just adding a good explanation of Roald Dahl’s “world view” in the front matter.
At the same time all this censorship is going on, several states have changed voting laws so less people can vote, and a United Nations report (June 12, 2023) stated that there has been ”no improvement in biases against women in a decade.”
Changing a few words in classic books, and banning “progressive” books, will not create societal change.
In order to make real change, we need to look elsewhere.

*Mary Lamb (1764-1847) suffered from mental illness. In 1796—ten years before she co-wrote Tales from Shakespeare—Mary stabbed her mother to death in a fit of rage. Her brother Charles became her caretaker, and she was his housekeeper, for most of her life. Two biographies—Kathy Watson’s The Devil Kissed Her, and Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s Mad Mary Lamb—tell her story.

“Woke” or “Anti-woke”: What Does ChatGPT Say?

I wanted to clarify (in my own mind) what it means to be “woke” or “anti-woke,” and how censorship relates to both concepts.
While it’s hard to agree on what these words describe, many are convinced that they’re either one or the other.
First, I wrote about 500 words.
Then, I downloaded ChatGPT, to see where the app took me.
To my surprise, ChatGPT was useful.
The ChatGPT text was as dry and colorless as expected.
Moreover, the essays were full of platitudes, and contained falsehoods.
However, ChatGPT did offer some ideas that I hadn’t thought of.

When I asked ChatGPT to define “woke,” I received an essay saying (in part) that:

To be woke signifies a deep commitment to social consciousness and active engagement with systemic injustices. . . and a willingness to challenge the status quo. 

The significance of being woke lies in its potential to bring about meaningful change, fostering a more inclusive, equitable, and just society for all.

When I asked ChatGPT for a definition of “anti-woke,” I received an essay saying that:

Being anti-woke represents a rejection of what critics perceive as the dogmatic and stifling aspects of the woke ideology.

It emphasizes individual responsibility, intellectual diversity, and the importance of free thought and expression.

While acknowledging the existence of systemic injustices, the anti-woke movement encourages a more nuanced and balanced approach to social issues . . . and open dialogue.

When I asked whether censorship was an issue on the political right or left, I received an essay saying that:

Censorship is not inherently a political right or left issue, but rather a complex and multifaceted dilemma that intersects with various ideologies.

While the political right may often advocate for censorship to protect societal values, the political left may prioritize censorship as a tool to combat discrimination and promote inclusivity. 

The ChatGPT response to my request for an essay on “culture wars” was mere gobbledygook.
It ended with the sentence: “Only through a commitment to mutual respect and a willingness to confront these issues head-on can the United States move towards healing and reconciliation.”
Well, that’s completely useless!

I would disagree with the ChatGPT definition of “woke” in several ways.
“To be woke” doesn’t always mean “a commitment to changing the status quo.”
Often, it just means being a bit more open to societal change.
“Woke” people are usually more open to erasing words like “master bedroom” from their vocabularies, using personal pronouns in their email signatures, and being more aware of microaggressions.
Often, it only means that the “woke” are more willing to face uncomfortable information, and learn from history.

I would also argue with the ChatGPT definition of “anti-woke.”
While “being woke” is perceived by the anti-woke as dogmatic, it’s difficult to figure out which beliefs are actually in contention.
It’s as if the perceived attitudes of self-satisfaction in the woke, are more distressing than their actual ideas.
“Collective guilt” and “cancel culture” came up in the ChatGPT essay, but I’m sure that only a small percentage of “the woke” feel guilt.
Further, the woke are more likely to cancel people on their side, than the anti-woke.
(Think of comedian Kathy Griffin and former Senator Al Franken.)
I also wonder what percentage of the anti-woke “acknowledge the existence of systemic injustices,” or desire an “open dialogue” (as suggested by ChatGPT).
Overall, being anti-woke may only mean that you are unhappy with the speed of, or existence of, societal change, or that you find “woke” people annoying self-righteous.

I was very happy with the ChatGPT response on censorship.
Saying that the political right wants to “protect societal values,” while the political left wants to “combat discrimination and promote inclusivity” just about sums it up.
However, everyone has their own thoughts about what our societal values should be, which words are good or bad in promoting inclusivity, and whether “words” are important in this task.

Front cover for the paperback version of Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (published under the name You Asked for It by Popular Library in 1953).

Back cover for You Asked for It.

President John F. Kennedy was a big fan of the James Bond spy-thrillers (oddly called “Jimmy Bond” on this back cover).

However, JFK likely read the hardcover versions.

In order to “promote inclusivity,” the publisher of the late Ronald Dahl recently produced two different versions of James and the Giant Peach—changing “Cloud-men” to “Cloud-people” (among other changes) in their Puffin version—and keeping “Cloud-men” in the classic Penguin version.
The spy-thrillers of Ian Fleming, and the mysteries of Agatha Christie, underwent a similar process.

Lobby card for Gone with the Wind with house servant Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) tying the girdle (or stays) of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh). Hattie McDaniel received an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, for playing Mammy.

Combating racial, and other types of discrimination, through “sanitizing,” or even cancelling works, isn’t new.
I remember debates in the 1970’s about whether 1939’s Gone with the Wind should be banned.
Disney’s 1946 blend of live-action and animation, Song of the South,* isn’t considered “appropriate in today’s world,” and hasn’t been seen on home video legally since 1986.
Some Warner Brother cartoons (like “Herr and Hare” and ”Daffy-the-Commando,” produced as propaganda between 1941-1945) were restored and rereleased—along with a lengthy disclaimer—in 2008.
(Volume 6 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection.)
However, some of the more racially-insensitive 1930’s and World War II cartoons (for example, ”Tokio Jokio”) will likely never see the light of day—at least, legally.

Meantime—in order to ”protect societal values”—U.S. school boards are removing classic children’s books (like Charlotte’s Web and A Wrinkle in Time) from their school library shelves.
(I mention Charlotte’s Web and A Wrinkle in Time because these were two of my favorites.)
I looked up why one parent group proposed removing 1952’s Charlotte’s Web, and the parents disliked characters dying, and thought that “talking animals” were “disrespectful to God.”
A Wrinkle in Time (1962) was criticized for “promoting witchcraft.”
I have fond memories of both books.
I remember my 4th grade school teacher, Mrs. Simmons, reading Charlotte’s Web aloud to us.
(I adored Mrs. Simmons.)
I checked out A Wrinkle in Time from our public library during the 1960’s, and ended up reading every other book I could find by Madeleine L’Engle.

Is it “woke” to buy a children’s book like 2005’s And Tango Makes Three—a story about two male penguins who help raise a chick together—in order to foster a more inclusive society?
Is it “anti-woke” to ask that And Tango Makes Three be removed from your public library, so that children won’t be influenced to accept homosexuality as normal?
In the end, I agree with those who support parents not allowing their children to read certain books, but not the right to deny librarian-approved books to others. 

Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit cover.

It’s believed that Beatrix Potter based her Peter Rabbit stories on Uncle Remus.

*Song of the South was based on the once well-known Uncle Remus stories. The folklorist/author was Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), a white journalist. Harris wrote down the Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox tales after listening to African folk tales told by former slaves—primarily, George Terrell. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution (11/2/2006), Disney Studios purchased the film rights for Song of the South from the Harris family in 1939, for $10,000—the equivalent of about $218,246.76 today.

Truth Versus Truthiness

Only those born before 1980 are considered digital natives.
I’m classified as a digital immigrant, because I was born around the same year as the Ferrante Mark I—the world’s first general-purpose computer.
I grew up in the days of rotary phones and three TV networks, and I didn’t own a personal computer until the early 1990’s, when I purchased my first OS6 Macintosh. 

I went through a phase when I played games on my Mac, but I only liked clue-finding games.
I never devised an avatar, or played computer games with people around the world.
I met my husband at an office for freelancers—where people could get their resumes typed and use drop off boxes—not via Hinge or Tinder.
My only avatars are the sticker emojis I made on my iphone, and the self-portrait I cobbled together from ready-made choices for Facebook.
My favorite Apps are IMDb, the FoodNetwork, YouTube, and Goodreads—sites where I can look up information or be entertained, not communicate with others.
I’m definitely a digital immigrant.

Most of the science-fiction I read is old—very old.
I enjoy rereading authors that I first read in the 1970’s—among them, Isaac Asimov, Primo Levi and Olaf Stapledon.
Authors have been discussing the ideas of whether artificial beings should be legal “persons,” or whether artificial intelligence will supersede humans, for a very long time.

In order to broaden my horizons, I decided to read more recent science-fiction, and I happened upon The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang.
According to Wikipedia, Chiang isn’t a digital native either.
(He was born in 1967.)
However, he’s won four Nebula Awards and four Hugo Awards; and he writes philosophical science-fiction—my favorite category.

Just as Karel Capek invented the word “robot” for his 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), Chiang invented the term “digient” for “digital entities.”
In The Lifecycle of Software Objects, digients are virtual pets created as past-times for wealthy customers, who are then expected to parent them.
The novella is the story of two central characters (Ana and Derek), and their digients (Jax, and siblings Marco and Polo).
At the beginning of the story, Ana and Derek both work for a company that creates and sells digients.
After the software company goes bankrupt, Ana and Derek opt to take over the care of their favorite digital entities, so that their cherished entities may “live.” 

Chiang deals with both psychological and philosophical issues in The Lifecycle of Software Objects.
The principal subject is raising and educating the “infant” digients.
He further mentions that digients are equipped with “pain circuit breakers,” so they’ll be “immune to torture,” and thus “unappealing to sadists,” bringing up the fact that sociopaths will still be a societal problem in the near future.
I especially enjoyed the message board sequences in which obviously “bad” parents grouse about their “bad” digient children.

At one point in the story, the digient siblings, Marco and Polo, ask to be “rolled back” to an earlier point in their “lives,” because they’re unable to resolve an argument.
Is it right for “daddy” Derek to allow this; or should he force his “children” to work out their own disagreements, so that they may grow emotionally?
Later, Marco and Polo ask to become corporations, or legal persons.
Should Derek permit this?
Is it child abuse to separate a digient from its’ friends, and fan clubs, or to alter its’ programming so that it can become a sex slave?

Scene of Robbie the Robot disabling the weapons of  “Doc” Ostrow (Warren Stevens) and Commander Adams (Leslie Nielsen) in 1956’s Forbidden Planet.

In Chiang’s novella, Ana disagrees with a company that wants her to help train a digient that “responds like a person, but isn’t owed the same obligations as a person.” [Italics mine.]
This scene reminded me of two TV series in which androids/robots are traumatized—The Orville (2017-?) and Westworld (2016-2022).
In season two of The Orville, we learn about the history of the Kaylons—a society of sentient artificial lifeforms (created as slaves) who exterminated the biologicals who created them.
In Westworld, the first season begins with human-like androids being the prey of depraved humans, but by season four it’s all-out war between androids and humans—that seems to end on earth in the same result as on planet Kaylon.

The central question is whether it’s ethical to enslave a sentient being—be it a virtual entity, robot, android, or human.
Is enslaving non-biologicals just as wrong as enslaving a fellow biological?
In a world in which human life is less important than money, is it senseless to worry about the treatment of virtual or robotic creatures?
After all, while many of us say we believe in fair play, unselfishness, and truthfulness; almost no one thinks we should carry through with these beliefs in our daily lives.

Scene of Charly Burke (Anne Winters) talking to the Kaylon Isaac (Mark Jackson) in The Orville episode “Electric Sheep.”

People can justify any bad action, as long as it makes them feel better.
We can justify not paying back a loan because the lender has more money in the bank than the lendee.
We can justify breaking laws, because other people are more corrupt—the classic pot calling the kettle black.
Few believe that the way to build a life is to be honest and truthful all the time.
Some of my favorite novels on this subject are not science-fiction.
(I recommend two Fyodor Dostoevsky novels—The Idiot, and Demons, also titled The Possessed.)

Because people can justify any bad action, the erosion of generally-believed truths is quite dangerous for society.
A 2016 Sanford study* came to the conclusion that digital natives are unable to judge the credibility of online information, or distinguish between an advertisement and a news story.
The inability to tell truth from truthiness (on the web) is also evident in digital immigrants—perhaps, more so.
In a world where we have no generally believed truths, and we only believe what we want to believe, how is an organized society possible?

We first heard the word “truthiness” on The Colbert Report—Stephen Colbert’s mock news show (which aired from 2005 through 2014), in which he portrayed a far right news personality.
In Colbert’s book America Again (2012), the same character satirically discusses voter fraud (page 165) and goes on to recommend ending voter fraud by ending voter registration (page 166).
Little did anyone think in 2012, that 10 years later, in 2022—40% of us would believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate, or that later several states would actually pass laws making it harder to vote.

Ultimately, the most important conflict is not one between digital natives and digital immigrants, right versus left, the intelligentsia versus average people, or even “woke” versus “anti-woke.”
Instead, I think that the most crucial divide is between people who want to try and seek out truth and reality in this confusing world, and those who prefer living in their cocoons.

*”Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning,” by Sam Wineburg, Sarah McGrew, Joel Breakstone and Teresa Ortega (2016) the Stanford History Education Group.

Robots and the “Truth” of Reality

A scene from one of the first productions of R.U.R. (London, 1921)

I recently read Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. (first performed in 1921), and can’t help but draw analogies from R.U.R.—the first story about robots— to The Matrix film series.
R.U.R. is short for Rossum’s Universal Robots, and Rossum was the last name of the two scientists, who created synthetic creatures* built from organic matter who look identical to human beings.
The purpose of the robots is to act as servants to humanity.
Capek (1890-1938) called his play a “comedy of science.”
Basically, the artificial creations revolt, and this results in the extinction of the human race.

R.U.R. has three acts plus an epilogue, and the play is set in the years 2000, 2010, and 2011.
The location is a robot factory, on a remote island.
At the beginning of the play, robots have become cheap to produce, and are available for work all over the world.
Gradually, robots are taking over all human jobs. The main characters are:

• Miss Helena Glory, lovely daughter of the robot factory’s President, and secret representative of a group (the Humanity League) that wants to rescue robots from slavery,
• Harry Domin, the factory General Manager, who keeps Dr. Rossum’s secret of robot creation in his office,
• Dr. Hallemeir, Head of the Institute for Psychological Training of Robots,
• Dr. Gall, the top experimental scientist, who wants to create more and different types of robots,
• Radius, an experimental robot that works in the factory library, and
• Alquist, the Head of Robot Construction.

The robot Radius (Patrick Troughton, with arms raised), in the BBC's 1948 live production of R.U.R.

The play is obviously a comedy, or a parable, because motivations are unclear, and some plot lines simply don’t make sense.
Why does Helena accept Harry Domin’s marriage proposal, and remain on the island?
Why does Helena put her goal of ending robot slavery on hold for ten years?
How is Rossum’s secret formula for creating robots so easy to destroy?
How is Radius able to lead a robot revolution from the island?
Could there be a communal robot brain?

In Act One, Helena visits the island (ostensibly, to tour the factory), but her purpose is to save the robots because they may have souls.
Poor Helena is naïve, and she can’t distinguish robots from humans (to the general amusement of her hosts).
By the end of the first act, she accepts Harry Domin’s marriage proposal, and at the beginning of Act II, she is living comfortably in their apartments.
It appears that she has given up her goal of saving robots.

It's fascinating that in Capek’s vision of 2000, we’ve already entered the era of “truthiness”—the quality of something being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.
Domin explains to Helena that the world’s text books are simply propaganda—“the schoolbooks are full of paid advertisements and rubbish,” and the outside world has been deceived as to the true story of the origins of the robot underclass.

The audience learns in Act Two that much has happened in ten years.
Human workers, in an attempt to keep their jobs, began killing robots, and governments (motivated by greed) reacted by giving the robots weapons, and allowing robots to kill off humans by the thousands.
Humans have become sterile, and no children are being born.
Essentially, humans are becoming more like robots, and robots are becoming more like humans.
Robots now outnumber humans 1,000 to one.
Helena commits two pivotal actions in act two:

1. she prevents Radius from being killed (sent to the stamping mill) for insubordination, and
2. she destroys the only two copies of the secret formula for creating robots.

It becomes apparent in Act Two that the robots are planning a revolt, and Harry Domin proposes a counterattack—the creation of nationalistic robots.
In Domin’s vision, factories in different countries “will produce Robots of a different color, a different language.” 

They’ll never be able to understand each other. Then we’ll egg them on a little in the matter of misunderstanding, and the result will be for ages to come every Robot will hate every other Robot of a different factory mark.

However, humans are unable to activate this plan, because they simply don’t have enough time.
In the third act, Radius leads the other robots in killing all the humans on the island, with the single exception of Alquist.
(One executive actually tries to tempt the robots into not killing them with stacks of money, but his attempt is futile.)
Alquist is kept alive in hope that he can reconstruct Rossum’s formula, and create more organic robots.

The Epilogue takes place one year later, and Alquist has been unable to make any progress in his assigned task.
No other humans have been located on the planet, and eight million robots have died.
It’s predicted that within 20 years, all robots will die.
However, it’s revealed that before he was slaughtered, Dr. Gall (the lead science for the factory) had secretly created two special robots—a male robot named Primus, and a robotic recreation of Helena.
These robots have been sleeping for a couple of years, and they visit Alquist in his lab.
Unlike other robot models, they dream, and feel love for each other.
They protect each other from being dissected by Alquist—who considers them to be his last chance to figure out the secret of robot creation.
The last lines of the play are:

Primus (holding her): I will not let you! (To Alquist.) Man, you shall kill neither of us! 

Alquist: Why?

Primus: We—we—belong to each other.

Alquist (almost in tears): Go, Adam, go, Eve. The World is yours.

Helena and Primus embrace and go out arm in arm as the curtain falls.

Similar to the story of R.U.R., in The Matrix saga, there are two separate societies—biologicals and synthetics—and they battle for survival.
However, while in both stories, the synthetic beings win, they do not kill them in The Matrix stories.
Instead, mechanicals use humans as power sources to keep the world running.
In a way, The Matrix is R.U.R. turned inside out.
In The Matrix, humans are the slaves and the mechanical beings hold the cards (the reverse of what is initially true in R.U.R.)

Neo (Keanu Reeves) awakening in a pod in The Matrix.

In R.U.R., it’s the robots who are sent to the dissecting labs, and constructed in the factory (where their flesh is made in kneading troughs, brains and livers prepared in vats, and nerves spun in spinning mills).
In The Matrix trilogy, it’s millions of humans in pods who exist in the harvesting fields, where their bodies provide energy so life may continue.

Neo (Keanu Reeves) looking at a row of human battery pods in The Matrix.

Just as Dr. Gall proposes that they “introduce suffering” to the robots as an “automatic protection against damage,” in 2003’s The Matrix: Reloaded, the Architect reveals to Neo that the Oracle discovered that “Humans needed to be given a choice” in order to survive psychologically. (Actually, humans are only given the illusion of choice.)

Another similarity is that the synthetics feel far superior to the humans in both stories.
In a conversation with human Helena (in Act Two), Radius tells her: “You are not as strong as the robots. You are not as skillful as the robots. The robots can do everything. You only give orders. You do nothing but talk.”

Poster from a WPA production of R.U.R. (1930's)

Both stories contain an “Adam” and an “Eve.”
In The Matrix, it’s Neo and Trinity.
In R.U.R., the couple is Primus and Helena.
In The Matrix: Reloaded, the Architect tells Neo that his five predecessors were designed to develop an attachment to fellow human beings.
However, Neo is an anomaly; he has developed an attachment to Trinity.
In R.U.R., Primus and Helena can hear each other’s thoughts telepathically, and are entranced by the sun rising, and the sounds of birds singing.
The question remains: Does it really matter whether either couple is “real” or “synthetic?”

* Capek derived the word “robot” from a Slavic word for “forced labor”—“robota.”
Today, a creature made from organic material would be described as an “android,” and only a truly mechanical creature would be termed a “robot.”