Hot Fembot Research!

[Miss Pris]

Hi Everyone,

I'm doing a project for a class in which I'm analyzing the composition, social reception, intended message, etc. of two music videos featuring fembots (yay college!) I would greatly appreciate it if people would view these two fembot music videos and write what they think about the fembots in the videos (not the music/lyrics/production/other actors unless they have bearing on the fembots in your opinion - otherwise, just the fembots; also, please refrain from commenting on the actress or "musician" playing the fembots if you would like to participate in this mini-research project - one is much-oggled, and one is much-disliked, and I'm more concerned with the fembots that they're playing then the flesh and blood femmes here.) Thanks so much for participating!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVxTsXRjNTw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVw7eJ0vGfM


Miss Pris

[jolshefsky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVxTsXRjNTw

I guess the premise is semi-plausible – that android parts have value that can be traded. It was somewhat more logical that her limbs came apart in the middle rather than at a joint as the joints would be necessarily more complex.

As for the social implications, I think it could equally been a male. The notion of becoming a star and trading in your body was rather blunt and obvious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVw7eJ0vGfM

The quasi-magical element here I think allows it to work okay. I don't know whether the neuter, mannequin-like forms of the women were more to do with Puritanical control of media, or a stylistic choice. I assume it started as the former and was adapted to the latter – the doll-like female forms are in some ways an idealized body in that they are smooth and hairless. Perhaps the whole point is to mock the Puritanical media – what would sexuality be without sex and gender?

[dale coba]

Hi, Miss Pris.
Here's one angle: The red-head's body was a fembot, to be sure; but her thinking was patterned after human, all the way to the creation of yearning. There is no essential need for a fembot to be designed to think that way.

The video is yet another use of fembots as metaphor for humans
- using fembots, but not actually about fembots.
We see a very annoying amount of this, where a metaphor serves to spare the filmmaker from actually having confront his topic directly. That's not novel since Metropolis, it's a first-year film student project quality topic, and a bunch of Outer Limits episodes from 15 years ago covered the whole subject better.

- Dale Coba

[dale coba]

The second's creation is a performance, a ceremony, an arising. For whose benefit? We viewers seem to exist for her, to form before us and sing to us, like a clockwork automaton (but with more autonomy).

After she's all together... that was a fembot, hunh?
I wouldn't have known from anything she did later.

The other 'bots formed a mob to chase her... because she was too pretty? she dissed them? I didn't want to listen for lyrics, but I saw boring human behaviors tarted up in fembot drag.

How about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeKv_qX1 ... re=related
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHA4vqHfbIg ?

Those fembots don't exist for the narrative purpose of being equivalent to a person.

- Dale Coba

[Miss Pris]

Thanks to you both - this is great. Thank you, Dale for the additional videos; I'm playing with making this into a longer project for which I'll need to collect more videos, so these are much appreciated. I like this idea of performativity and "fembot drag" that you brought up here, too - film depictions where human agency is attributed to fembots (either by the filmmakers or the audience) might be a good lens for a larger project.

[DollSpace]

In the first video (which I've always liked): It seems to be objectifying and making comments on a lot of things. One can interpret the gynoid giving parts of herself up in exchange for goods and services as saying parts of the human body are just something else to sell (or to use for payment). Adding in the gynoid element gives it a slight edge because at the beginning, she looks so perfect by the pool, but has no problem giving up parts of herself for a greater dream (or want, or possibility). If she was a human cutting off her hand to pay a toll, it would seem barbaric, but a robot doing it seems to elicit a self-survival mechanism even as it says that she's just property anyway, in this case, of herself, and can use her parts in any way she deems necessary. It's sacrificing part of yourself for what she perceives as the greater good. As far as her treatment goes, she doesn't seem to be treated any differently by the pool boy, the tollbooth, the petrol station, or anywhere else, because she's a robot. I mean, the end has her getting a new body anyway, albeit years in the future. The ending is also very bittersweet because it sort of has a message seeming like "you can give up all you have to give and maybe, someday, you'll reach your destination/goal, but will it be worth anything because of external influences, in this case, the fact that so many years have passed by and made this contest obsolete, so it was all for naught. But the opposite works, too, because what if she got there finally and was able to achieve her dream? Then the self-sacrifice may or may not have been worth it, depending on your point of view of someone doing whatever it takes to get to the top (except harming others). She may have got it all in the end, but in this ending, she's much too late. Also in this video, it is easy to refer to the robot as a "she" or "her", rather than "it". She looks like many humans (better than, even, depending on your definition of beauty). If she were made of just pieces of metal and other materials, it would be tougher to empathise with her, but not impossible (like the android Kryton on the British sitcom "Red Dwarf", but even he had human features and was able to look sad or annoyed or happy or whatever, which he (there's that personal pronoun again) shares with this robot). The video would seem to be pointless if it was just an empty transport ship going through tollways or whatever, but because there's a (presumably) sentient life form on board, we feel empathy but can in some way justify her decisions. Lastly, if she were human, this wouldn't even be an option unless she were willing to cut off parts of her own body (or internal self, metaphorically), for things that will help her get what she wants. So in the end, it's basically a comment on fame (or something else of equal value to them) and what some people (even androids are people too!) will do to get it.

In the second clip, the concept comes initially from the song title. In this case, it almost seems to be like "making the ultimate girl" by whatever means seem necessary, and she is also portrayed as being much more realistic (or more "alive" or more "human") than the other (apparent) robots she comes across. That implies a jump in technology, and how people can be very fearful of that until the new technology is "time-tested", showing it apparently has few enough faults to justify using it. It also seems to comment on how people (portrayed as robots in this case) want new technology as soon as it's available, essentially beta-testing it for the rest of us. As soon as a more realistic (human-looking) robot emerges from this forge, the less-realistic robots approach the house and try to get the creator of the new technology to make it available to them, at any cost. And then later, they chase after the new technology itself, the impersonal pronoun here to underscore the metaphor I'm going for. Lastly, there seems to be at least some reference to sex, as they show the "male" robot coming towards the more realistic model in a way that could be interpreted as longing for that pleasure, but he has no genitalia, and the video seems to imply that she *does*. So, in the end, it may just be a comment on people seeking pleasure, no matter what the cost. But taken with the lyrics of the song "My body needs a hero, so come and save me" and "come and rescue me", speak to the possible fact that her consciousness is alive before her body is and is demanding a physical body worth what it believes it's worth. It seems a lot of directors use the "robot metaphor" to make a point while inducing the watcher to feel some emotion, something that it may not be able to do if the robots in the second video were chasing after the newer iPod, or if the space traveller in the first video was offering up an iPhone to pay her tolls and service charges. The two videos are similar in a number of ways, but also quite different, and I can't believe I wrote that much on either of those videos, by the way. What Dale says is also true to a large extent:

Here's one angle: The red-head's body was a fembot, to be sure; but her thinking was patterned after human, all the way to the creation of yearning. There is no essential need for a fembot to be designed to think that way.

The video is yet another use of fembots as metaphor for humans
- using fembots, but not actually about fembots.
We see a very annoying amount of this, where a metaphor serves to spare the filmmaker from actually having confront his topic directly. That's not novel since Metropolis, it's a first-year film student project quality topic, and a bunch of Outer Limits episodes from 15 years ago covered the whole subject better.

Though the robot in the first video was a lot easier to empathise with and relate to than the one in the second video, even though I could relate to that robot as well, though in that case, it doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that she's a robot; it's more of a yearning to be free, and we all can relate to that. In the human equivalent cases I postulated earlier, they all could be done and probably elicit the same feelings; using a robot to make comments on something about humans isn't new by any means, and all cases of this could be done without the robots, and using sentient humans instead, It seems like both of these videos were a lot about the art of the video, the posing of the redhead by the pool in the first video, and the scene that shows her finally getting to her planetary destination, as well as watching the robot be created in the second video and how they chose to portray the other robots.

I think that's about it for this early in the morning! lol I hope this will also be of some help to you!

[Miss Pris]

Thank you so much, DollSpace - this is great!