The emotion of love is both obvious and mysterious. From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/love, love can be a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection. People have that unconditional love for family and friends. At other times love can be difficult to find. In one form or another all humans are able to experience love. On that website, the same definition mentioned about love towards a parent, child, friend, etc. Artificial Intelligence took that idea of an android displaying love for a parent. This brings up the discussion of whether a robot can share the same emotion of love that living humans possess.
From the movie, the robot boy David shows a love that many young boys have for their family. The parents were skeptic at first at having a robot child but David's love began to change them. A child's love for their mother is one of the greatest loves that is out there. A mother's love shows comfort, security, happiness, and countless others. I took the main meaning to this movie to be: an unconditional love between mother and son and the journey to hold onto that love. David was just a normal boy wanting the love in return from his mother.
The problem with this love is the fact that David is not a normal human being. Monica could not face the truth of artificial intelligence having love for her. It made things worse having her biological son there. With the brothers standing side-by-side, she saw a difference between them even though they shared the same exact love for her. If she would have realized the journey that David carried on to one day see her again, she would have taken it back in a heartbeat. Monica, like many others would have, saw that this love was not "real".
In the definition of love, there is no where written on where that love should come from. This of course is a time that androids replicating humans is an imagination. When the times comes there will be a debate of whether A.I. is able to love. David showed in the movie how "real" his love can be. His emotions were so believable that even the crowd at the demolition festival saw David as a real boy and found it to be shameful to harm a child. He was seen as a real child in the eyes of a caretaker android and a girl with her father. To all three of them, they saw David as a lost child finding with way back to his mother.
I saw the fact that if both adopted parents had no idea he was a robot, they would have seen him as human. David had the innocence, the character, and emotions of a child. The parents could have easily seen him as just another adopted child. There was that mask that Monica saw that David wasn't real and his love wasn't enough for her. Monica eventually witnessed that love and at the end enjoyed her time with David as if he was her real son. By definition and what David had to offer, his love was as real as it could be.
I think that Monica saw that the love David had for her was real. She felt so guilty about abandoning him, that she was brought to tears and gave him enough money so that he could continue to survive. She cared so much for him that she also advised him to stay away from real people and to stick with other artificial beings. If she really saw David only as a robot, then I think that she would have no problem returning him to Cybertronics to be destroyed. Also, at the end of the film Monica says that she loved David all along, and I think she really meant that. The pressure of others to protect her real son from the robot is what drove David away from Monica, not her lack of love.
ReplyDelete(SORRY, commented on the wrong post the first time around)
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a really cool point when you say that despite the equivalent love that Martin and David had for Monica, it was hard for Monica to accept David's love in the same way as Martin's. Maybe it was because she had herself given birth to and raised Martin? or maybe it was the fact that she had known Martin longer? Or maybe she just believed that Martin truly belonged to her as her own genes were a part of Martin's. Now that I think about it, there could have actually been many factors that made Monica chose what she did, and we cannot automatically assume it was because David was a machine. It's hard to place a finger on the reasons, but when Martin's life was in danger... that's when David became a "burden" to the family - at that point, Monica was forced to make a choice. If we were placed in that situation, I think all of us might have considered making that choice. Personally, I think she chose the easy way out, the escape, and failed to deal with the situation head on. I think I might be playing Devil's advocate, but what if David's being a machine was only a fraction of the reason Monica felt she had to let David go? Your post made me think about this, but we can't deny that David's love wasn't accepted and he was not treated as a unique person. There's a clear message that the orgas in this movie couldn't accept the mechas. and, of course, there's the idea that maybe it had everything to do with the fact that David was a machine.
I don't think David's "love" is actually the same as the human emotion, which we called love. David is a robot. He is programmed to love. Thus, his love is kind of paranoid in the movie. The only reason of his existence is to love his mom. When his position is replaced by Martin, his love becomes less necessary for Monica.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assumption that if the parents have no idea he is a robot, everything will be much better. However, I don't think the problem is whether the love is real or not. The problem is the gap between human beings and robots. Because of this gap, David is not accepted as a human in the family, even his love seems so pure and so real. I thought his "love" is literately the sin of his suffering. If I am going to write a story after his journey, I would free him out from his love.