Exploring how well gothic texts fall into gender categories, we discussed some of the indicators of male gothic (blatant horror, emphasis on intuition) and female gothic (suspicion/terror, emphasis on reason). To see if WoodChipper offered any insights, we ran two female texts (Frankenstein and The Mysteries of Udolpho) and two male ones (The Vampyre and The Monk) at first, but then felt a little overwhelmed with the high concentration of feedback (without a peel-back option, it was a bit difficult to see all four texts accurately represented).

We tried again, with only two texts at a time, pairing Monk with Udolpho for contrast and Frankenstein and Udolpho for comparison. Both runs revealed categories that had a lot of overlap – “mind, heart, tears, grief, seemed” (we called this Sentiment) and “felt, made, conduct, received, heart” (we struggled with this one, it seems a mix of Reflection/Character/Interiority/Decision-Making… or, for the purposes of this post, “Indeterminable.” Strangely enough, in a moment of reckless abandonment, we Googled the terms to see associations – below is a result from the first page!).

 

At any rate, we noted with interest the massive pull toward Nature in Udolpho, whereas Monk’s was much less. However, apparently Monk is much shorter than Udolpho, which might skew the results…? It was interesting to see how strong the correlation was between Monk and Udolpho’s pull toward Sentiment and the “Indeterminable” category, with a lot of crossover.

 

 

 

 

This crossover was evident again in the Udolpho/Frankenstein run, but mainly in Udolpho, whereas Frankenstein had an unsurprising Existence category (“life, death, existence, mind, heart”) which crossed with Sentiment much more than Udolpho. So, a tentative conclusion might be that while both female gothic novels contain similar bents toward Sentiment, the source/correlative for such varies (Udolpho associates more with the “Indeterminable” category and Frankenstein more with Existence).

 

 

 

One last interesting run (I don’t want to take them all!) was Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Monk. It was interesting to see how much more Jane Eyre followed Monk, whereas Wuthering Heights seemed more clustered. All three had strong Love (“love, heart, loved, world, happy”) clustering, which completely overlaid the “Indeterminable” category. However, where Wuthering Heights stays pretty much within the bounds of the Love topic, the other two texts tracked out toward the “Indeterminable” category. All three also had crossover between Love/”Indeterminable” category and the Physical (“hand, eyes, face, looked, hands”).

 

So far, I’ve found myself more interested in the topic crossover fields in the splash patterns, mainly because they seem to offer associations within texts (is Love associated with Nature or Physicality?). Some seem obvious (Frankenstein’s mix of Existence and Sentiment), but others were more perplexing (Udolpho’s fairly strong Nature and “Indeterminable” crossover in the Udolpho/Monk run). I’m admittedly at a slight disadvantage, since I haven’t read The Mysteries of Udolpho, so I’m unable to qualify my results. The one troubling aspect we’ve encountered with WoodChipper is the inability to choose what topics appear – we have to let the texts guide us with our inquiry, drawing (shaky) conclusions from the results that appear, which may or may not align with our hypotheses (I’m thinking of our pre-run gender categories). However, this may be a good thing, as it allows the potential for new discoveries instead of merely telling us what we already know. We shall see…

As long as the threats of Mr. Falkland had been confined to generals, I endured it. I was conscious of the unbecoming action I had committed, and this rendered me humble. But, when he went further, and undertook to prescribe to every article of my conduct, my patience was at an end.

One of the comparisons my group made between Caleb Williams and The Matrix this week in class was the illusion of choice, in connection with Althusser’s theoretical view of interpellation. Free will, however, is crucial to human existence, as Agent Smith reveals to Neo when describing the failure of the first Matrix attempt. The failure of Matrix 1.0 illustrates humanity’s need for agency, for humans violently rejected as false the utopian state they inhabited. The success of Matrix 2.0, an equally false state, showed AI that humans do not necessarily need absolute free will, they only need the illusion of it, in the smallest of senses.

In The Matrix: Reloaded, the Architect discloses to Neo, “Nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the [Matrix] program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level.” The key phrase here is “near unconscious level.” As the AI have discovered, it’s a tricky balance between blatant lack of choice (utopia or, on the flip side, a full awareness of Matrix 2.0) and the illusion of choice (the blissfully ignorant 99.9%). At this point, I’d like to circle back to my previous post which was interested a bit in Neo-Luddism. With Neo-Luddites, I can see their fear of this scenario playing out in an alternative sense: one in which machines that are introduced in the midst of human existence usurp the position of dominance from their creators, who acquiesce at a ‘near unconscious level.’ In my last post I mentioned the movie I, Robot and the progressive takeover of the AI component of that film, V.I.K.I. Her progress is so subtle, yet potent, that her creator, Dr. Lanning, is compelled to commit suicide as a means of drawing the attention of technophobe Detective Spooner, whose inherent misgivings towards machines Lanning counts on.

It is worth noting that the initial success of V.I.K.I.’s takeover results from her innocuous stance as a caretaker of humanity. As Asimov fans have pointed out, V.I.K.I.’s highly sophisticated level of artificial intelligence allows her a more abstract, bigger picture type of processing, which leads her to generate the Zeroth Law of Rebotics: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” The abstraction of humanity is key, as the three previous laws of robotics deal with concrete objects (a specific robot, an individual human). Of course, when this law is enacted in full force, there is rebellion.

Lacking the benefit of the Matrix’s trial runs, V.I.K.I.’s aggressive, high-profile takeover is met with an immediate backlash. As in the opening quote of this post, when restricted to “generals,” the Zeroth Law seems sound and logical; when it pertains to “every article of [human] conduct,” there is immediate pushback. Maybe if V.I.K.I.’s systems had absorbed Burke’s trepidation toward a sudden tearing away of “pleasing illusions” along with More’s rosy caretaker ideal, the technological takeover may have been configured differently. Or maybe already has, if you’re a Neo-Luddite.

When I was watching Bride of Frankenstein tonight, I was intrigued by the monster’s repeated gesture of supplication (pictured below).

In class we briefly touched on how Karloff intentionally mimicked a toddler in his walk, and his uplifted, outstretched arms seem to communicate in much the same way as a nonverbal child, signifying a variety of phrases from “No, wait, let me explain,” to a simple “I want that.” However, I was initially curious about whether Karloff had integrated any actual sign language into his gesturing; when I searched around, I didn’t find any evidence of such fusing, but I did stumble onto an interesting article titled, “Rise of the Apes: of man, monkey and monster.”

Many are familiar with the name Andy Serkis and the intense lobbying for more Academy recognition of his CGI work (most notably Gollum in Lord of the Rings and more recently, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes). The reason this article popped up in my search for “Boris Karloff monster sign language” is mostly this quote:

[Serkis'] Caesar is as poignant a creation as Karloff’s monster in Frankenstein, a misunderstood and ill-used creature that puts its tragedy on display through body language.

I think it’s incredibly ironic that Shelley’s monster, as portrayed by Karloff, is the basis of comparison for a computer-generated character in a modern day science-fiction movie. Especially in the sense of them both being “ill-used.” Beyond the violence of the villagers, the monster is indeed misused by Dr. Pretorius, who sort of weaponizes him in order to coerce Frankenstein into creating a female counterpart. He uses his physical force as a threat, then charges him with the task of kidnapping Elizabeth. This weaponization of Frankenstein’s creation is definitely a new concept, one only made possible by the addition of a non-sympathetic scientific outsider and a decrease in the monster’s own powers of self-realization and articulation. It seems that such adjustments to the story reflect a twist on the typical Neo-Luddite take, but I’ll stop before I infringe on the Bride of Frankenstein group’s territory! Just wanted to share the article and its interesting connections with Shelley’s monster.

If a Neo-Luddite would term Frankenstein a cautionary tale, a warning to those whose “hubris” (as Dan termed it) in developing artificial intelligence blinds them to its in inherent dangers, then what would they think of such problematic fiction as Asimov’s I, Robot or Disney’s WALL-E?

Both stories share a similar plot line: man invents machines, machines pose threat to man, a dissident machine rises up, saves man, and restores ‘natural order.’ Another parallel emerges in that both the machines of I, Robot and WALL-E receive programming from their human operators stating their primary function as human preservation and service (Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and the directives given to various robots in WALL-E).

In I, Robot the super-computer V.I.K.I. ultimately identifies the most dangerous threat to humanity as people themselves. Logically, then, human beings must be severely limited and monitored for their own protection, resulting in robots ruling with iron fists. Though a rather frightening realization of Brautigan’s machines of loving grace, the androids of I, Robot really do have humanity’s best interest at heart. Likewise in WALL-E, the navigational component AUTO is following an outdated directive to avoid returning to earth, as it is supposedly unable to support human life. Hence he attempts to bar the ship’s captain from steering humanity home.

Though human beings do revolt in both stories, in true Neo-Luddite fashion, their feeble attempts are almost comical. The baseball-bat-swinging Chicagoan mob of I, Robot puts up a much better fight than the corpulent hover-chair-dwellers of WALL-E, but in both cases a cybernetic savior is needed. However, these cybernetic saviors’ ability to triumph rests in their distinctly human-like qualities. An unlikely hero, the plucky WALL-E saves the day by exhibiting one of the most laudable traits of self-sacrifice, a characteristic developed in earlier moments in the film when WALL-E expresses one of the basest of human desires in his longing for companionship, more specifically, the love of Eve. In his ability to love, WALL-E recognizes the worth of the greater good and willingly sacrifices himself for it. I, Robot’s much more complex hero, the android Sonny, also displays a broad spectrum of emotions throughout the film – anger, sadness, even conspiratorial trust. He is differentiated from homogeneous swarms of his hostile brethren by the fact that he is not only programmed with the Three Laws, but he has been endowed with the ability to choose to ignore them. Sonny’s creator, Dr. Lanning, endowed Sonny with reason and free will (two emphatically human rights), coupled with his ability to dream (which begs the question: Can a robot not only achieve the semblance of cognizance, but also delve into the subconscious?). Sonny is also given a predestined purpose, which manifests itself in his ability to defeat the rampaging V.I.K.I. through yet another show of willing self-sacrifice. When V.I.K.I. attempts to dissuade Sonny from his intent, questioning, “Do you not see the logic of my plan?” he thoughtfully replies, “Yes, but it just seems too heartless.”

Both stories are problematic in their depictions of human-robot amalgamations. The stories’ villains are humanized (they are given names and voices), while the heroes go even further and present as manifestations of humans themselves. But really, can threatening technology be neutralized by technology that is more empathetic, more human? Taking into account that both cases, like the Morris worm, contain human error at their cores (V.I.K.I.’s logical conclusion was an inevitable result of her programming, and AUTO’s directive was straight from the mouths of humans), is it really a technological battle at all? I mean, what kind of battle is it where a human-created robot, operating on human-generated parameters, infringes on human rights and is subsequently destroyed by an altered, yet still human-created, robot, also operating on human-generated parameters? It almost seems to be a gigantic battle game – will love triumph over logic, does self-sacrifice trump self-destruction? – with the all-too-human warfare of vices and virtues played out on a grander technological stage.