Androids and Anxiety
Film 301
3-25-09
Joe Brady
Science fiction films are too often looked at as being merely entertaining fantasy, when in truth they are more than anything a reflection of our own society and an examination of its downfalls. In the same sense, science fiction films often employ an android/robot/replicant character to raise questions pertaining to the value and nature of human life. In this essay I will analyze and compare two films in an attempt to show how both films deal with the issue of human reproduction in the face of the android/replicant threat.
A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006, USA) is a film set in a not-to-distant future in which addiction to a powerful illegal drug has become an epidemic. The film follows undercover police officer Bob Arctor as he infiltrates a small time drug ring in an attempt to find information about the origin and production of this deadly drug. However, as Arctor gets deeper undercover he develops an addiction to the drug himself and suffers severe brain damage as a result. As Arctor’s mental state rapidly deteriorates he becomes less and less conscious of his decisions and is increasingly unable to discern real life events from his imagination. The film finds the character of Arctor shifting from the strong male lead role to a mindless replicant as a result of his drug use. As Arctor’s mind slips away from him his personal relationships begin to dwindle as well, most notably his romantic association with a drug-dealing companion of his named Donna. As Arctor becomes more replicant than human he is unable to connect with Donna, whom he’d had romantic feelings for. Donna’s refusal of Arctor signifies the disconnect that lies between the human and replicant. The replicant character is unable to possess emotion, and for that reason has no interest in the opposite sex.
The romantic interest in science fiction film can be read as the saving grace of humanity. Romantic feelings between male and female characters allude to physical aspects of the relationship implying that through sexual intercourse and reproduction humanity will continue.
A Scanner Darkly shows us how a man is dehumanized by his abuse of drugs and ultimately that the widespread use of this drug poses a threat to humanity and its continuation. Likewise the film THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971, USA) introduces us to a world where human’s have been stripped of emotional attachments through government prescribed medications specifically to quell sexual urges and the need to reproduce.
Sedated, uniformed, humans devoid of personality or desire inhabit the world of THX 1138. These people are also policed by faceless android officers who are controlled by an all-seeing government. The film’s main character, THX, is an assembly line worker whose job is to build the police androids that keep him oppressed. His female roommate is woman named LUH, who consciously stops taking her medication and likewise substitutes placebos for THX’s medication. As a result of LUH’s actions the pair begin to experience genuine human emotions. This newfound emotional attachment to one another generates a desire to flee from the controlling city-state in which they live. However, they are arrested before they have a chance to escape.
The pair gets arrested because they had sexual intercourse, which is illegal in their world, and also for not taking their medications. The government had witnessed these transgressions because they constantly monitor all human activity. THX is taken to a prisoner limbo where there are no real entrances or exits. He stays here until he and another prisoner attempt to escape. They are aided in their escape when they meet another man who had previously been a hologram dancer. As the men make their escape through the framework of the city THX attempts to find LUH, only to find that her name and number had been reassigned to a fetus in a laboratory, signifying that the LUH he knew had been killed.
THX’s eventual escape from the confining superstructure of his home is culminated by the shot of him as he stands in the shadow of the sun for the very first time. This image offers hope at the end of a long, trying journey, and can be related to A Scanner Darkly’s similarly positive ending. In the case of both films the main character ends posited to save humanity, as we know it. However, neither film offers a typical Hollywood in the romantic sense.
Arctor’s failed relationship with Donna in A Scanner Darkly seems to have been sacrificed for the greater good when it is revealed that Donna was an undercover police officer and that Arctor’s addiction was set up as part of a larger investigation into the Substance D phenomenon. Yet, Arctor, though a pawn, is still poised to be the savior. In THX 1138 the THX character emerges as the sole mind liberated from a world oppressed by their own technology. He alone represents new life and the promise of a future.
A female presence is missing from the solution that either film offers. The male leads each represent a Christ-like savior to carry the world forward. Each of the men is alone in their discovery and liberation. Which means we must ask how the world is to continue without the possibility of reproduction. The main character in both films ends a sexless messiah, yet the real possibility of a future does not exist without a woman to assist in the re-population.
In both instances the medicated human is sedated and controlled by a power designed to keep them that way. These entities maintain a power structure in which the human is stripped of emotion and desire in an attempt end the forward progress of civilization, a civilization entirely based on the reproductive act of sexual intercourse. It is strange then that these films themselves maintain a similar power structure by making the their heroes lone men.
There are certainly religious implications in the theory of one single man as humanity’s savior. Most major religions ascribe to the idea that sex is something less than holy, an animalistic ritual. It is treated the same way in these films, in a sense. Also the women are marginalized at best, and presented as unnecessary to salvation. Considering the context in which both films were created it is easier to understand this influence. Both the film THX 1138 and the novel from which A Scanner Darkly was adapted were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was a time when women were still generally not given the same opportunities that men were. Though the women’s liberation movement was making large advances at the time the influence is not seen on these works authored by men.
Judith Newton writes:
“this attenuated fantasy content evokes anxieties, and especially white, middle class male anxieties,”(1)
These narratives were both produced by white males at a time when America was still very much a patriarchal society. Therefore it can be inferred that these anxieties stem from the need to maintain gender roles and the power structure in place at the time. Insuring that there will be a place for future representations to be presented in a similar fashion.
Endnotes
1. Judith Newton, “Feminism and Anxiety in Alien”, Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema (Verso, 2000) pg. 87
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