A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Prompt 12

I think Cronenberg using the idea of violence and pleasure as the means of infection is an interesting method. In today’s (or 1984) society, violent crimes are often associated with sexual acts. Often times someone is sexually abused AND physically abused, which is kind of played on, not to that extreme, but by Max and Niki’s sex scene. He is physically hurting her while they are having sex. And sex is also alluded to later on in the movie through heavy breathing from the cassette tape, then Max kills Convex. Cronenberg was pointing out how violence and sexual promiscuity in today’s society is infectious. According to The Disaster Center, US crime rates have been on a steady rise since the 1960’s. Both sexual crime and a variety of violent crimes have nearly quadrupled since 1960, as if an infectious disease. As society technologically advances and grows, society subsequently becomes more violent.
I think that the issue of violence doesn’t necessarily complicate the argument, but rather focuses it or goes hand in hand with it. Technologies affect on the body produces violence. There’s a fine line between how far is too far for that relationship, because it will ultimately create chaos.

In Artificial Intelligence we see the same argument of what truly makes you human, as we saw with AIs in Neuromancer. In Artificial Intelligence we are presented with the idea of this little boy, David, having all the physical attributes of a human and the ability to love like a human, but not physically being human. He has the longing to be loved in return and to become human so that this can happen. In Neuromancer we see this same situation occur with the two AIs Wintermute and Neuromancer, Wintermute has knowledge and memory, but lacks his own identity and personality. On the other hand Neuromancer has the personality and the capability to appear in a body that Wintermute longs for. But we learn that having one of the characteristics without the other, doesn’t make you human.
Another possible argument about the body in relation to technology presented in AI could be the idea of freedom. David is built as an android child and given to a family to test their creation with real humans. David, although he has the ability to love, is restricted by his lack of understanding. He is an AI, but doesn’t understand that he is. In the end of the movie David searches for the Blue Fairy that he remembered from Pinocchio so he can be made into a real boy. He ends up getting stuck in a car and repeating his wish of being made into a real boy. The city freezes over and 2,000 years later David and Teddy are found and David walks up to the frozen fairy, touches it, and it shatters. This illustrates the idea that David is restricted by his inability to understand that he is not real. No matter how many times that he heard it, he didn’t have the ability to comprehend. David had a lack of freedom because he was restricted by technology.

Prompt 10

I think that drugs/addiction is an interesting theme that is prevalent in Neuromancer. Throughout the book we see this common theme of drug use among all the characters, as well as various other addictions. Case is obviously an avid user of drugs, constantly trying to escape from his body and the real world. But when he is not using drugs, we also see that he is addicted to cyber space, which allows him the same out of body experience. By the end of the novel, we see how both of these addictions have taken a physical toll on his body. These addictions also affect his relationship with those around him, primarily molly, also an addict of many sorts. In the novel we find Molly to be addicted to several things including drugs, cyber space and body modifications. All of these things alter her body both mentally and physically. We see how Molly is especially affected by drug use through Case’s eyes when he explains he "watched her personality fragment, calving like an iceberg, splinters drifting away, and finally he'd seen the raw need, the hungry armature of addiction," (Gibson 8). Case and Molly are constantly seeing the world through a skewed perspective. It’s as if their society is so technologically advanced that normal unaltered living is no longer entertaining for them, so they are constantly stimulating their body and minds with external things, leading to addiction. This problem is also observed with Molly’s body modifications, her natural body is no longer good enough when body modifications can “upgrade” her. She constantly modifies her body as an addiction because one is never enough, which was also something we saw prevalent with tattoos and piercings in our last unit.