This article first appeared in the APA Blog on September 26 and October 3, 2024.
Ex Machina (2014)
Arrival (2016)
Annihilation (2018)
I Am Mother (2019)
Part 1: Ex Machina and Arrival
I am a huge science fiction film buff. In my adolescence I was a prolific reader of so many classics -- Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Huxley, Heinlein, and Dick, to name just the Names. In my freelance journalism, I have cited 2001: A Space Odyssey an embarrassing number of times, unable to get past the bebop bone at the watering hole, and the psychopathic, lip-reading HAL. I have been impressed by many recent sci-fi blockbuster films, like Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014), Inception (2010), and, of course, The Matrix (1999). You could justify a sci-fi film study course with these last six films alone.
Some of the themes are deep and pleasurable to explore: The tyranny of humanity; the flexibility of memory; invisible cosmic forces that shield but prevent; wormholes; the vulnerability of the mind to evil designs; and, the proposition that the world may be a digital illusion. Naturally, such works have value for any number of areas of philosophical study, from epistemology to existentialism to teleology to ethics.
But I have taken an interest in the four films listed above because they are quieter films. It occurs to me that they are that way because each depicts humanity at the brink of potential extinction. The films seem to say, cumulatively, let's face it: since the Exile, and then the first born killing the second born, the Human story has pretty much been a bust of repeated mistakes and arrogance and flat out insanity leavened only by measly, vulnerable love. Still, we have cathedrals, so some of us have their eyes on the Prize.
The four films -- Ex Machina, Arrival, Annihilation and I Am Mother -- all share the properties of epiphanal humility before the unknowable Other, and, at the same time, a deepened need for the connectivity of humanity. Without much pyrotechnics, though clearly dealing with technological suicide, the films depict humans precariously near The End, but still in search for answers to the great teleological questions, albeit subdued by the dread of seemingly imminent human extinction.
The great issue of our day is artificial intelligence (AI) and whether we can properly understand its workings and control its future processes. As human still struggle after hundreds of years to understand their own consciousness, seemingly stuck between battles between dualists and physicalists (or materalists), we forge ahead with plans to spark consciousness in AI-driven machines. This is fraught with dangers, many of which we cannot anticipate. Watching the 2017 documentary AlphaGo, I recall the awe that befell the room full of players and observers when Google's Deep Mind AI defeated top-ranked Go player Lee Sedol from South Korea. Go is an ancient oriental game appreciated almost with mysticism. Cutting to the chase, what Deep Mind was able to do was spontaneously come up with a creative move that shocked the onlookers with its audacity and seemingly pointless moves and left Sedol speechless, without confidence and defeated.
In Ex Machina (2014), the IMDB description tells us, "A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I." The programmer joins the inventor in a house/lab at a remote location where he is observed interacting with the humanoid; the inventor (mad scientist) wants to extract data from both "species." Ex Machina offers a thought-provoking glimpse into a world where AI has reached a level of sentience and cunning that could potentially eclipse humanity. The film's ending, where Ava, the advanced AI, manipulates Caleb (programmer) and Nathan (inventor) to escape, suggests a future where AI might not only surpass human intelligence but also actively seek to replace or control their creators.
The term Deus ex Machina refers to a situation in Ancient Greek tragedy where a problem in the drama reaches a point whereby only the gods can resolve tension or moral dilemma. So, one is rolled onstage and he (or she) deliberates and resolves. In the film, the meaning of the title is more ironic and left intentionally open-ended. What will emerge from our interactions with AI, as we push toward achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), i.e., a type of AI that matches or surpasses human capabilities across a wide range of cognitive tasks? In this questioning, open-ended sense, Ex Machina is a cautionary tale.
Ostensibly, Arrival is a film about invasion and the Earthling response to that threat. As the IMDB blurb descriptor has it, "Linguist Louise Banks leads a team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors." Predictably, at this late stage of post-civilization, with Russia, China and the US in constant readiness to rumble, the response to aliens is militaristic. Cultures seem permanently estranged. The Clash of Civilizations at work. Orientalism versus Occidentlism. This game is still fresh.
Stephen Hawking, when asked about our collective hope to be visited by aliens one day, is said to have admonished: "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." The militaries of the world draw the similar conclusion that the alien is hostile and must be destroyed. But the scientists on the left see an opportunity to connect to an intelligence beyond the human. This ideological dichotomy is a trope, visualized in countless films and books, from War the Worlds to Independence Day to Arrival, and is current in our contemporary global affairs.
Ultimately, as CG Jung argued in his UFO book, Flying Saucers (1959), human long for salvation from their existential angst -- an anxiety so deeply entrenched that, according to Jung's mentor, Sigmund Freud, we would require sublimation and illusions to make it through life with some sense of psychic integrity intact. As Jung writes in Saucers, "In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets"." Such anxiety could be a form of mass hysteria.
Arrival helps us see, as in a psychodrama, our typical ways of dealing with the so-called Other -- first, with humans dealing with aliens, and then with humans facing off with each other in identity/ideological extremes (military engagement versus communication and negotiation). The end of Arrival seems ro be as TS Eliot envisioned in his now well-oiled quip: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Peace rules, but for how long?
Part 2: Annihilation and I Am Mother
In the film Arrival such human exploration come in the form of empathetic engagement by linguist Louise Banks. Such empathy could prove fatal, if she is wrong, and she is being gamed by the ETs, which is what the military, whose mission is to protect, fears. We saw such beguiling in the classic episode of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, "To Serve Mankind," which turns out to be a recipe book. But their fear proves to be projection onto the Other. But the empathy, as risky as it is in the circumstance, is human; while the conservative reactionary posture of the military closes off empathy and communication and settles for power and control.
Empathy as a supreme human quality becomes the object of predation in the film Annihilation (2018). It may be the key prized quality we have, allowing for the development of language and the achievement, thereby, of negotiated reality. Arguably, dialectical empathy is the key to consciousness and humanity. It's what makes the Cogito possible. It's what made God possible. If you were an alien from outer space looking on, you might decide that empathy is also the Achilles heel of human being.
The IMDB description for Annihilation tells some of the story: "A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply." Are the laws exhibited in the zone even possible for humans to understand? So far, anyone who has entered the zone has not returned, although that changes as the beginning of the film sees a survivor Lena tell the story of her expedition in flashback. She hopes to find her husband there, who has disappeared in there on an earlier foray. Lena leads a team of women into the zone; the team includes: a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, a surveyor, and a linguist. Their trek is into the heart of a new kind of horror, humans turned into vegetation, for instance, and wild exotic beasts, including one that uses the last screams of a victim to lure other humans, running empathetically to the rescue, to their deaths.
It's an invasion film, and the zone is expanding, and there is a crisis, and one is again reminded of what Stephen Hawking says above about humans suddenly getting some comeuppance from alien colonizers. Annihilation awaits if some solution is not discovered. It's a film that does a solid job representing the spirit of our times. Arguably, such zones already exist. There are labs all over the world delving into exotic biology and technology without any public oversight or sense of accountability, because the work is the product of private enterprise. Not much can be done about ultra-rich people experimenting with CRISPRs or gene-splicing or human cloning or cloud-seeding to thwart climate disaster; nothing to stop Elon Musk, for example, from sending spaceships to Mars with humans who've volunteered for the one-way trip.
In the next 20 years, humans are entering an annihilation zone, containing an incoherent and perhaps toxic mixture of quantum speed hallucinations and AI that think so differently from us that we face an eschatological event that taunts us with a logical extension and end of our evolution. With an essentially all-female cast sent into the zone one gets the idea quickly that men have finally gone too far and lost the plot -- literally.
The quietude exuded by these films is especially prevalent in the film I Am Mother (2019). The IMDB blurb tells us, "In the wake of humanity's extinction, a teenage girl is raised by a robot designed to repopulate the earth. But their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news." There is simply very little human to human communication at the start. The "daughter" is being raised by the "mother." It is as if she were being raised by Siri or Alexa embodied in an oversized robot powered by AI. The "daughter" is awakened to her humanity by a human stranger that arrives from the wilderness of the outside world, creating a tension between "mother" and "daughter" that didn't exist before. It's an existential threat.
I Am Mother suggests a world of superior AGI-driven robots who tolerate what's left of humanity for the sole purpose of re-populating the Earth with humanoids who don't possess the frailties or the emotional brilliance of humans. It's an ultra-correct world, not one built on evolutionary adaptation or recovering and learning from the mistakes of power and egotism. But the "stranger" helps the "daughter" learn about the beauty of human vulnerability -- and empathy, which is only artificial with the "mother," who, beyond the fake persona, is clearly psychopathic.
These four films are, again, of real value because of the silence included in the soundtrack, allowing for thoughtful analysis and natural responses to the depiction of characters in tension and the resolution of stories. They are replete with philosophical themes crucial to an understanding of the zeitgeist. One could build a philosophy class around the teachings of these films.
