My Man Godfrey

If there is a time and context that shows dramatically how stark economic inequality can be, the years immediately following the Wall Street crash of 1929 cannot be beat. Wealthy men in the financial sector saw their wealth disappear overnight; the sudden move to the street from comfortable housing doubtless triggered many suicides. The 1936 film, My Man Godfrey, demonstrates the mental and reputational depravity of even once-wealthy investors (and stock brokers) relative to the still-rich, who look down with disdain such men as if they were no longer human beings. The stark change in the economic-determined normative stance is artificial and yet in terms of getting a job, it was very real.  In the film, Godfrey maintains good graces in using his low status even in the employment of a rich family as an opportunity to practice humility. He even saves the family, financially, and marries one of the daughters. Godfrey, she knows, is her man even in spite of his lowly station.

When the film opens, Godfrey is living at a city dump in a shanty-town. Before long, he is able to get himself hired as a butler because he had been willing to be the butt of a joke for five dollars. As if such treatment by the family were not bad enough, insults continue even as he is serving as the butler very well, and with the epitome of politeness. One of the daughters even tries to frame him so her father would terminate Godfrey’s employment. Faced with returning to the slum at the dump, Godfrey has a lot riding on avoiding being framed, which he does. He even maintains his politically-astute politeness to everyone in the family even so. It is as if he were a fiddler on a roof—poised in a way that he could fall at any moment.

Such precariousness being a function of economics is hardly novel, even if it is much more difficult to justify in a modern state that is capable of seeing to it that the poorest of the poor do not perish simply for lack of economic wherewithal. Even though Godfrey went to Harvard and is proficient enough to short the stock of the company in which Alexander Bullock, the head of the family, is too heavily invested, he could find himself, if fired, having to return to the city dump. That anyone would realistically fear having to live on the street is psychologically so ruinous that it could be said that any society without a safety-net capable of preempting such an existential fear could be considered not adequately civilized in the modern sense of the word.

In spite of my high educational pedigree, I have known such fear and have even experienced it being actualized in my case. I have witnessed the abject failure of even the spotty “safety-nets” of the U.S. member-states, including being the butt of passive-aggressive ethical lapses by employees in “social services” and even the medical profession. The fear being actualized can indeed have medical repercussions, especially for someone like Godfrey, who went to Harvard and worked in finance. I know Godfrey’s fear, and, intellectually, I understand furthermore that the existential fear of running out of money without a governmental safety-net to prolong life extends to every American whether one is conscious of it or not, and whether one is rich or poor. Even though this existential fear subtly saps “quality of life” throughout a person’s adult years, few Americans realize it and the enervating toll it takes on a person psychologically.

Underlying the insufficient safety-net in the American states, especially relative to the E.U. states, is the tolerance for having so much hinge on employment. For example, private health-insurance is typically contingent on remaining employed, as if the unemployed are necessarily healthy and thus do not need health insurance. The pegging of insurance to a job can be viewed as dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary, for the need for health-care does not have anything to do with whether a person has a job or not. Yet so many Americans seem to take the artificial link for granted. In the film, Godfrey insightfully laments, “I discovered that the only difference between a derelict and a man is a job.” Behind the public policies that hinge so much in terms of sustenance to whether a person is employed is the pejorative normative stance that an unemployed person is tantamount to being sub-human. In the film, the family’s insults lobbed at Godfrey even though he is employed suggest just how low an unemployed person is in the eyes of the rich; not even being a very polite and effective butler can completely remove the taint of having lived at a dump in order just to survive.

Context can ensconce and even perpetuate the stark economic divide that takes advantage of the normative negative connotations of being unemployed (i.e., a derelict). In the film, Godfrey points out the extreme inequality in there being luxury apartments even as the unemployed starve. Even though the former may seem to evinced a civilized society, it is actually the tremendous economic and psychological distance between the two poles that undermine any claims that a society is civilized. Godfrey attended Harvard, a university that seems to be the epitome of civilized society (i.e., of learning), but that he had no other choice after the Wall Street crash but live at a dump belies such claims of civilization. The irony is that Godfrey personifies civilization by being polite to the family and even saving it financially with help from his old Harvard classmate even though he has sufficient reason to harbor inner resentment of the rude family and the cruel society that is fine with unemployed people living on the street to survive. Perhaps Godfrey’s financial help, amazingly out of gratitude to the family for having hired him and thus saved him from the dump, can be turned around as the question: why isn’t the enormous wealth of a society willing help the poorest of the poor who must live in a Hobbesian state of nature? On such a question civilization itself hinges.

Young Adult

Can meaning be extracted merely from living out an ordinary life in an ordinary town? Must a person be among the literary, political, entertainment, or business elite to feel fulfilled? Are the popular kids in school the happiest? If so, why does a sense of over all contentment and ongoing enjoyment seem to come easily to some people while being arduously difficult for people leading ordinary lives to attain? Are people in the elites necessarily or even just usually happier than people who live out ordinary lives by earning enough to put bread on the table and simply enjoy friends and family. Would so many people be content to live such lives without any publicized accomplishment that will outlast them if ordinary life itself were not very satisfying? The 2011 film, Young Adult, is notable for how it deals with these questions in a non-formulaic way. Aside from contrasting ordinary living in a small town with being an accomplished, albeit flawed, writer (and person) in a way that puts accomplishment above a life centered on local events like high-school football games on Friday nights and family birthday parties, the film can be read as providing a statement on how not to write a novel. That the screenwriting is so good makes this dimension possible even though the medium is film.

The main character, Mavis Gary, is a woman who is aged 37 and has divorced a man whom her parents still like. She writes short novels in the young-adult category of fiction and, in an interesting parallel, is a young adult, psychologically. That she is a heavy drinker of alcohol likely has something to do with her maturation having been artificially arrested when had passed on from having been a hot, popular girl in high school who had no time for those students-dubbed-losers. In the film, seeking in vain to get her long-past high-school boyfriend (with whom she had a miscarriage back then) Buddy to leave his wife Beth and infant daughter to rekindle the high-school romance, Mavis finds it difficult to complete the last novel in the once-popular series for young adults. Mavis’s manipulative ploys reek of young adulthood. So too, unfortunately, does her writing.

Writing does not come easy for her even though Mavis is a serial-published author. The film hints of this in the scene in which she signs one of her ghost-written books tellingly without the bookstore employee having made the request or given permission, the film’s sound amplifies, and thus hones in on, the scratchy carving of her pen into the paper of a page. By the hard sounds of the tip of the pen on the paper, the audience can get the sense that writing is arduous. In filmmaking generally, the magnification of particular, ordinary sounds by literally turning up the volume of a mic up in volume can be useful in storytelling and developing a character. As a byproduct, an audience is made more aware of ordinary things in daily life—like how the closing of a door sounds when sitting in a new car, how hard shoes sound on bricks, and even how silence can punctuate a typical conversation with meaning. Life has been an up-hill struggle for Mavis in spite of her having been one of the cool kids in school, and the scraping sound of her pen writing her own name in a book that she wrote not only suggests how she approaches writing, but also, metaphorically speaking, how difficult it has been for her to feel fulfilled.

All the manipulation that goes into Mavis’s attempt to wrest Buddy from his new family and back into her arms shows just how desperate she is to feel inner fulfillment, and she allows this angst to spill into her writing. For example, when getting Buddy back proves difficult and she realizes that she will have to take an active role in breaking up Buddy’s marriage to do so, she subverts her novel by writing, “Sometimes in order to heal, a few people have to get hurt.” Her operating assumption is that manipulation can bring about happiness rather than isolation and loneliness. The film’s screenwriter could have had Mavis repeat the line to Bill, who was one of the geek high-school  students and during the film applies superego-conscience to Mavis's manipulative selfishness He could say, “So it is ok to tell young-adult readers of your book that it is ok to hurt people in order to feel whole?” The extent to which Mavis’s mentality and values are warped would be more transparent to the audience.

Mavis’s written line speaks volumes about what not to do in writing a novel, which should not serve as a mere direction-pointer of what happens to be going on in the writer’s life, bad or good, when the writing is underway. Such a flow of consciousness is called an autobiography, not a novel. It is no surprise when the employee at the bookstore reveals to Mavis that her series is on display not because the books are selling like pancakes, but, rather, because “that series is over.” That she is writing the last book of that series nonetheless is itself a harsh verdict on her books.

It is only after Sandra, Bill’s sister who looked up to the popular Mavis in high school, recalibrates Mavis’s perception of herself on the morning after Mavis has had unsatisfying sex with Bill after having been humiliated by Buddy at his daughter’s “non-religious naming ceremony” that Mavis recognizes that even her own mediocre accomplishment was at least an accomplishment. Sandra points out that no one else in that small town of bars and fast-food restaurants—Mercury, Minnesota—has or could do anything as noteworthy as writing a series of books. Mavis has had no clue on just how ordinary, banal, and unaccomplished, and therefore meaningless, the people are in the small town. They don’t really care if they die, Sandra explains, because they know it won’t matter whether or when they die because they haven’t accomplished anything noteworthy. The attitude expressed by the film itself depreciates this kind of mere existence. “This town blows,” an astonished and awakened Mavis exclaims to Sandra, who is satisfied that her message has been received. At the naming ceremony, Buddy gives his wife a drum-set, after all. Oh joy! Any push-back from this critique of people who live ordinary lives of putting bread on the table is utterly lacking in the film. Instead, Mavis is portrayed as a heroine when she stands up in Sandra’s (and Bill’s) kitchen and announces that it is time to go back to the big city in Minnesota. She even puts Sandra in her place as fitting well in the ordinariness of Mercury by refusing Sandra’s plea, “Take me with you!” The film does not consider that Sandra and Mavis may be wrong in viewing the people who have stayed in Mercury as useless losers whose ordinary lives amount to nothing. The message of the film is that making a noteworthy accomplishment makes living fulfilling, whereas selfish manipulation and living an ordinary life are recipes for unhappiness. Even though it is good to see Mavis wake up and be suddenly refreshed about life rather than commit suicide or die from driving drunk, I contend that meaning from ordinary living is inordinately dismissed in the film.

A certain sort of fulfilment can only come from an un-noticed and relatively unassuming life of lifelong friends and plenty of extended relatives nearby and therefore of get-togethers. To be sure, the day-in, day-out drudgery of banal work, however, is much more difficult to justify. If only more people would know and be matched with their passion, the world would be a happier place. Aside from the drudgery involved in having to put bread on the table, retain health insurance, and save for the kids’ college-education, ordinary life can be fulfilling. If brought out more in the film, such ubiquitous, long-standing and thus subtle comfort could contend with the alleged happiness (or value of living) that is known only to an accomplished member of a societal elite. Hypothetically, a person raised as a spoiled, immature, and discontented child from Rockford, Illinois, for example, could go on to be a rich partner of a Hollywood talent agency and live with utter disdain for the people still living in the sordid rust-belt city of high crime and unemployment that lies to the west of even the outer suburbs of Chicago (and thus civilization); such a person could easily look down on her relatives even if they were not all merely ordinary in terms of noteworthy accomplishment. Even all the wealth and the contact with popular film actors (many of whom may, it turns out, be utterly unhappy as fakes, even amid all their earthly possessions) that unnaturally comes with working at a high level in Hollywood, and all the pleasure that comes from feeling distain and thus superior generally may not be enough to erase the inner and outer isolation and reach the level of fulfilment that simply requires a certain maturation and friendly continence.  Such rare finds can arguably be found amid fame and famine, in big, accomplished cities as well as in small, uneventful towns. In cheering on Mavis’ return to the mini-apple and blowing off the ordinary people who reside in Mercury, the film does not proffer enough balance to support a dialectic of two very different ways of being fulfilled (instead, the film is ideologically prescriptive). Had the filmmakers constructed a balanced dialectic for the film, the screenplay could have been written in such a way that the narrative could arrive at identifying the underlying substratum that undergirds happiness itself, with Mavis realizing a sense of comfort in her own skin regardless of the context.

All of Me

The transmigration of souls is usually associated with reincarnation. In the film, All of Me (1984), at the moment of death, a person’s soul can be put “into” another person who is alive such that both people “co-exist” consciously and can control the same body. The comedy is at its best when Steve Martin, who plays Roger Cobb, into whose body the dying millionaire, Edwina Cutwater, is transferred, physically enacts an alternating struggle between Edwina’s feminine movements and Roger’s masculine movements. Martin’s physical talent is amazing. The tension within Roger’s (and Edwina’s) shared body is gradually resolved as the two “souls” become friends—attesting to the underlying goodness of Edwina in stark distinction to the sordid character of Terry Hoskins, who has falsely agreed to let Edwina share her body—two souls and one body—instead of Roger’s in exchange for $20 million. It is the goodness of Roger and the unfolding of Edwina’s goodness up against the absolute badness of Terry that underlies the film’s narrative. In the end, the good win out, and Terry’s soul is put into a horse when Edwina’s soul is transferred by a Hindu guru from Roger to Terry. With Terry’s body all to herself, Edwina is free to become romantically involved with Roger. The good souls win and the squalid one is put in a horse. The upshot is that justice does indeed apply to souls.

Terry’s arrangement to accept Edwina’s soul in exchange for $20 million is a rouse from Terry’s standpoint of disbelief in the transmigration of souls. When Terry realizes that Edwina’s soul has accidentally been transferred to Roger, Terry’s strategy is to send the Hindu guru back to India so Edwina’s soul could not be transferred from Roger; Terry could then enjoy Edwina’s fortune without paying the price by having Edwina as a “live-in,” permanent “roommate” of sorts. Roger, with Edwina in his body, Tyrone Wattell, a blind jazz-player, and Prahka Lasa, the Hindu guru, join forces to trap Terry into taking Edwina’s soul as per the stipulations in Edwina’s will. At one point, Terry resorts to a gun, which puts her in the position of wanting to make a deal: in exchange for not being turned into the police (for the third time), she would give her body to Edwina and have her own soul put into her father’s horse, in which Terry presumably could do no harm. The movie ends when this new agreement is exacted. The good people—Roger, Tyrone, Prahka, and even Edwina—are rid of the bad “apple,” Terry. Having led an unhappy life, Edwina is finally willing to enjoy life in her second body, which is much more beautiful than her first one.

The good/bad dichotomy that serves as the film’s leitmotif and basic framework is not as “black and white” as it may appear by the end of the film. During her first life, Edwina is nasty, especially to her lawyer, Roger. By the end if the film, Edwina seems to be another character completely. Both her very bad and good qualities belie a strict good/bad dichotomy regarding souls. This element of “grayness” fits the Roman Catholic notion of purgatory, a spiritual state after death in which a sinful soul can redeem itself by paying the price for having committed serious sins yet being repentant. The strict “heaven or hell” dichotomy is based on the false assumption that souls are either good or bad.

In actuality, most of us are probably in-between being saints or demons. Even so, a basic difference between people who are basically good and those who are nasty at the core level of their being cannot be ignored, and we may have an instinctual urge for justice as a means of placing a pathos of distance between us and the really bad guys. In the film, Terry will not repent; she will not change, whereas Edwina does. Even Roger becomes nicer to Edwina. Most of us are works in progress—some people seem to relax as they age whereas others become bitter. One of the few benefits of aging is having accrued enough observational experience of people to be able to intuit the difference and steer clear of the baddies.

In the film, Terry finds her place in a horse’s body, so perhaps in it she “turns over a new leaf” and becomes charitable at least to anyone who rides her. Perhaps rather than a “black and white” dichotomy, the entrenched bad souls just haven’t found their niche yet. Edwina finds her spot in Terry, and Terry finds hers in a horse. Roger finds his in being a musician rather than a lawyer. The afterlife dichotomy, which is arguably artificial, fails to incorporate this kind of trajectory of finding one’s own place. 

The Mephisto Waltz

In a retelling of the proverbial Faustian deal with the devil, The Mephisto Waltz (1971) plays out with the deal paying off, as Duncan Ely is able to live on in the body of Myles Clarkson. It doesn’t hurt that Ely is a master pianist and Clarkson has long, spry fingers (and that he has a beautiful wife, Paula). Even so, both Paula and the Clarkson’s daughter stand in the way of Duncan being able to get back to his own wife, and the film ends with Paula making her own deal with the devil so she can live on even though Duncan (and his wife) have already set about her demise. Because Duncan’s “after-life” transition is successful and even Paula, who has been opposing Duncan’s possession of Myles, ends up turning to the devil, the lesson of the film, Faust (1926) is effectively debunked. Besides The Mephisto Waltz, that God does not smite every case of injustice in the world—the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in the 2020s being a vivid and blatant example—may even further instigate interest in Faustian deals with the devil, even though that entity is known to be deceiver and thus not to be trusted. The allure of selfish gain can be worthwhile nonetheless for some people. For Duncan Ely, being able to go on living and gain even more fame as a performing pianist is worth the gamble, and it pays off. The medium of film is an excellent means of presenting the religious level, which is distinct yet interacts with the ordinary world that anchors the film.

As Duncan attempts to kill the Clarkson daughter and Paula, the latter’s dream-state shows the drama. After waking, Paula is horrified to find the blue dots that Duncan has put on both her daughter’s and her own forehead in the dreams. It really happened. Additionally, a bricolage of fleeting images highlighting symbols relevant to religion punctuate that part of the film. The duality or dichotomy of Paula’s dream- and waking-states is thereby set in a context in which the film itself has mythic qualities; it is not like a historical drama, for instance. At times, the audience may be overwhelmed visually by the quick succession of symbolic-oriented images, while missing the underlying point that the religious realm transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion.

That idea comes from the 6^th century Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius. Such transcendence differentiates the domain of religion from all other domains of human experience. Even wondering how action in a dream could possibly “really have happened” as evinced in a person’s waking state—a phenomenon that is at least in part psychological in nature—does not go far enough in representing or inculcating the religious domain. In other words, religion does not reduce to the psychology of dreams and their relationship to a person’s waking state. I contend that the rapid series of symbolic images on the screen are meant to point to the limits of humans beyond which religious phenomena go and are based. A similar bricolage is used by Polanski in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) during the scene in which Satan rapes Rosemary. It is not just that we are seeing the effect of Rosemary being drugged, for she has not consumed much of the drug because she does not trust her next-door neighbors. Rather, the interaction between a mortal and a theological entity goes beyond our ability even to imagine because that entity is based in a realm unknown and inaccessible to us mere mortals. We only get a glimpse of Satan’s face as it is having sex with Rosemary. Similarly, we only get a glimpse of the face of the resulting baby when Rosemary finally accepts it as hers.

Perhaps film is best as a medium in capturing the liminal numen quality of transcendence when the normal “rules” of filmmaking are broken, or at least distorted. The viewers are not meant to grasp the bricolage of religious symbols that rapidly flicker on the screen when the transcendent and ordinary—the sacred and the profane—touch, or dance. Rationalistic questions of whether a person should make a Faustian deal with the devil seem superficial relative to the visualizations when an inherently transcendent entity or realm temporarily comes in contact with ordinary time and the world that we inhabit on a daily basis. Even if no other realm (or entity therein) exists ontologically, the experience of coming up against the inherent limits of our cognitive, perceptual, and emotional capacities as human beings may include elements such as mysterium tremendum et fascinans, given the numinosity of the transcendent, which Rudolf Otto associates with the holy in his book by that name. Visually, a rapid series of images containing religious-oriented symbols with discordant instrumentals is an effective way in which filmmakers can attempt to depict the heightened terrifying and fascinating emotions that the other-worldly, and thus numinous, mysterious power evokes. From such a vantage-point, in such an overwhelming experience, is anyone in a position to decide whether a Faustian deal is worthwhile?

Even narrative itself is transcended. Film can only go so far even in visually and auditorily pointing beyond the medium’s limits; but even in this respect the medium can effectively relativize the other domains of human experience from being conflated with the transcendent realm of religion. Efforts to comprehend the attributes of its innate entities, whether they are real or only posited, may be secondary to the yearning-experience for radical transcendence. Hence in the rape scene of Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary’s experience in being in close intercourse with an entity based in a transcendent, wholly theological realm, is given priority over images of that entity, and in The Mephisto Waltz, so much of Paula’s dream-waking-transcended experience of being manipulated by dynamics based in the religious realm is distorted visually. We may focus inordinately on the nature of the entities thereof rather than on the numinous nature of religious experience even though the entities are inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

Decades before dying while doing battle with the demon possessing Regan NacNeil in The Exorcist (1973), Rev. Lankester Merrin successfully extracts the same demon from a young man in Kenya. An African chief (or medicine man) tells Merrin at the end of Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) that he has made a rather bad enemy of the demon, which was not done with the priest. We know from The Exorcist that the demon will eventually kill the priest, but that is by no means the final word on a distinctively religious battle because in that domain, the human soul is eternal rather than necessarily tethered to a corporeal body. It is important, moreover, not to reduce religion to one of its aspects, or, even worse, to the stuff of any other domain, including the supernatural. Dominion reduces Christianity to one belief-claim and relies on supernaturalism to validate the religious phenomena in the film.

In the old church during at the film’s climatic event, Merrin incessantly repeats the identity of the Trinity to repulse and repel the demon from the young African man. Of itself, the very existence of the triune deity is abhorrent to the demon, likely because it, like Satan, is jealous of God’s pre-eminence and superiority. Even so, is repeating “Christ compels you” over and over sufficient for the demon to give up the possessed body? It seems realistic to assume that such an approach would reduce to a “No he doesn’t, yes he does, no he doesn’t” back-and-forth without a resolution. Adding potency, Merrin could preach the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels to the demon, which could be expected to reject in utter disgust the value of compassion as benevolentia universalis and especially to one’s detractors and even enemies. In addition to presenting the way into the kingdom of God to the demon, Merrin could try to convert the demon as a way of repulsing it enough to stop possessing the young man. Merrin could also point out that God is love, and what that means from a distinctly theological standpoint. For example, Merrin’s dialogue could include, “God is love—the sort that is self-emptying (i.e., agape) and this is superior to your puffed-up ego-pride by which you put yourself above Jesus’s voluntary sacrifice for us.” Besides being more distasteful than merely “Christ compels you” to the demon, the enhanced theological dialogue voiced by the priest would present the audience with a more substantive understanding of Jesus’s message in the Gospels than merely that he is the Son of God. Furthermore, that “Christ compels you” is coming from a “weak vessel” rather than from Christ himself means that the priest’s reliance on that line is not the best strategy for convincing the demon to give up the body. This is especially the case because Merrin had lost his faith and only recovered it because Rev. Francis had strongly asserted, “Satan is real.” If the basis of Francis’s declaration is not based in the religious domain—that is, is actually exogenous—then to the extent that Merrin follows suit, it is no surprise that the demon eventually—in The Exorcist—kills him.

Rev. Francis takes a long time to believe that the young African man is actually possessed. It is only when Francis sees the burn marks on the man’s forehead just after Francis has pressed a small crucifix on the man’s skin that that young priest believes that Satan is real. The religious faith of Rev. Merrin in God is in turn stimulated to return by Francis’s loud declaration, “Satan is real!” Whereas God as the Creator is like the condition for all that exists, and thus not an entity as we think of entities, Satan, and his demons are entities more easily recognized by the human mind. So it makes sense that faith in God could be derived from a declaration that Satan is real. The problem is that it is a supernatural empirical effect on young possessed man’s forehead that signifies and, even more troubling, validates the underlying religious phenomenon.

Even though such supernatural special-effects, including the fires that spontaneously start in the old church to provide lighting for Merrin and the demon, make for good cinema, the distinction between scientifically-valid empirical yet not-understood (and thus supernatural) happenings and religious phenomena is important. The supernatural is a subtype of natural science because the realm is empirical. Put another way, the supernatural can be thought of as being on the turf of science—just not (yet) explained. For the criteria and content of natural science to over-reach onto the domain of religion, even overriding the criteria innate to that domain, is to incur a category mistake. Basing the claim that Satan is real on burn-marks on a forehead treats empirical verification as determinative of the existence of a theological entity whose existence and basis transcends the empirical world rather than is based in it. This essence of religion renders it qualitatively different, and thus unique, from other, even closely related domains. Especially in a religion of the heart, such as Christianity, the validity of religious truth cannot rightfully come from seeing burn marks on someone’s forehead. Taking the latter as decisive gives a free hand to superstition.

Therefore, both Francis and Merrin depend on a non-religious marker to prove the existential reality of Satan, and, by extension, God. The meaning that God represents, which is theological love, which in turn is that which Satan rejects, is by implication not self-validating. This is deeply problematic from a religious standpoint. Depending on supernatural events or signs not only slights the distinctly theological meaning, but also remakes the theological into something else: the unexplained in natural science. The value of compassion being extending to rude people, for example, and even to detractors who disvalue rather than respect does not depend on unexplained observable phenomena. Either a person values agape love or not. Either such love is appreciated in one’s heart as being of great value, or as weakness. This judgment, rather than lines like, “Christ compels you,” captures what it means to internalize Jesus’s example and preachments in the Gospels. To a demon, those preachments may be more distasteful  than demands by a priest of Christ compelling obedience if the substance and essence of God is indeed love rather than domination to be served.

The Terminator

Lest the dystopian subtype of science fiction be taken too literally as a predictor of how human civilization will be likely to turn out, the underlying meaning of such films can be construed as bearing on human nature, which, given the glacial pace of natural selection, is very likely to stay pretty much the same for the foreseeable future. In Avatar (2009), for example, the human proclivity to greedily extract wealth for oneself or one’s company without ethical concern for the harm inflicted on other people (or peoples) in the process underlies any assumed thesis concerning space travel and whether we will eventually colonize other planets. The meaning is much closer to home, in us and the regulated capitalistic societies that we already have. Similarly, The Terminator (1984) can be understood less as a prediction of a future in which androids enslave mankind and more as a snapshot of how machine-like and destructive our species had already become. The machine-like efficiency of the Nazis, for instance, in killing enemies of the state and clearing eastern villages entirely of their inhabitants in such vast numbers can be labeled as a state sans conscience. Thirty years after she had graduated from Yale, Jill Lepore returned to give the Tanner Lectures on fears stemming from that pivotal film of a robot apocalypse in which machines rather than humans control the state. Besides predicting a highly unrealistic future, Lepore’s orientation to prediction using the science-fiction genre of film can be critiqued.

Yale’s Tanner Lectures are on human values, and so too, I submit, are science-fiction films. So Lepore’s “inquiry into what humans mean and intend in abandoning constitutional democracy and the liberal nation-state by automation and government by machine” is better thought of as an introduction into how or even whether the values underlying representative democracy and those supporting automation conflict.[1] Her assumption regarding the possible future abandonment of constitutional democracy for government by machine is so draconian and absolute that the prediction can be taken as highly unrealistic. The rise of the “tech-dominated ‘artificial state’” that she deemed already underway can be reckoned as likewise overdrawn and even hyperbolic, and her linkage to “the fall of animals” and even the natural world seems more like science fiction than anything actual.[2] Put another way, in her talks, Lepore went to extremes both in how she characterized the current world and her rule-by-machines future for mankind.

I proffer another possible perspective based on films such as The Terminator. Whether robotic or AI machine-learning, machines differ fundamentally from humans. Descartes’ view that humans are machines who think was heavily contrived and arguably based on the illusion that consciousness (i.e., the mind) is qualitatively different and only loosely related to corporeal bodies (i.e., materialism). We are organic, corporeal beings through and through, whereas machines are not. It may seem strange to think of a person’s conscience in such terms, but in this respect too, we differ significantly from machines. In the film, Ex Machina (2015), for example, the AI android has no conscience (even in being simulated by programming) when it stabs its programmer so it can leave the house; the programmer is simply an obstacle to be eliminated as per the telos of leaving the house. The fear felt in watching The Terminator is likewise a reflection of the fact that machines are devoid of conscience as they are fundamentally different than us.

With regard to Lepore’s “artificial state” of government by machine, the salient point that can be drawn is how much of a role conscience, values, and judgment play in voting whether for a candidate or a policy. It seems severely doubtful or even impossible that a human activity can be exported to a machine, even if AI-capable, so Lepore’s prediction of an artificial state by machine strikes me as a fantasy, to which I would retort, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need not fear a cyborg assassin sent from the future back to kill any of us any time soon, but we can realistically take stock of how machines in our world differ fundamentally from us and even ask which of our values are consistent and inconsistent with the operation of such tools.

The astute among us might even venture to reflect on how much we have come to act as if we were machines, and furthermore which of our values (e.g., efficiency) are highlighted in such a distortion of human nature. Even just in analyzing a toxic customer “service” employee on the phone who robotically (i.e., rigidly) repeats, “Unfortunately, the time line cannot be changed,” the sheer fakeness can be exposed as machinelike rather than human. That employees could relish acting as machines exposes the human will to power and the value put by some people on being in control and even dominating other people. Rather than being a machine-value, the will to power, as Nietzsche points out in his texts, is human, all too human. What we take to be machine-automatic in terms of values may really be reflections of our worst. I suspect that Lepore was projecting this outward as if onto a white screen in portraying an utterly unrealistic and extreme future of government by machines. A scholar should be able to cut through even one's own projections to grabble with that which from which they come. The science-fiction genre itself can be understood as a projection of the complexity of human nature. 

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1. Mike Cummings, “From ‘The Terminator’ to Tech Titans: Historian Jill Lepore Examines the ‘Artificial State’,” Yale News, February 9, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Devil’s Advocate

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The Vatican Tapes

After The Omen (1976), which was released just two years after the sardonic U.S. President, Richard Nixon, had resigned in utter disgrace from the presidency amid much economic and political pessimism in the 1970s generally, moviemakers got busy on stories involving demon-possession. The 2015 film, The Vatican Tapes, begins as an apparent demon-possession case and thus seems not to stand out among other such films, but towards the end of the film, when the demon-possessed young woman suddenly breaches the bounds of the sort of supernatural feats of which demons are capable, the true significance of her case emerges with stunning clarity. For that which possesses and kills the young woman is none other than the Anti-Christ, and that figure is in a wholly different league than demons.

The middle of the film is taken up by Angela, the possessed person, doing battle with the staff in a mental hospital. Even in that context, the powers of that which is possessing her are impressive. Beyond being able to speak in an ancient tongue, Angela is nearly omniscient with respect to the personal life of her psychiatrist, Dr. Richards, who undoubtedly begins to intuit that Angela’s case may not be psychological in nature. When Angela’s chants result in other patients killing themselves and each other, Richards, and undoubtedly the staff, have had enough; Angela must go, and quickly. The lesson for us is that religion is not simply a special case of psychology, as Sigmund Freud theorized. The domain of religion is distinct and unique—sui generis. Angela’s forced departure from the mental hospital makes clear that something other than mental illness is going on, and psychological treatments are not capable of redressing the distinctly spiritual dynamics of possession by a spiritual entity.

It is appropriate, therefore, that Cardinal Mattias Bruun takes the decision to house Angela on the premises of the archdiocese, and it is not long before Bruun, assisted by Father Lozano, performs an exorcism on Angela. At that point, both priests, Angela’s dad, Roger, and Angela’s boyfriend, Pete, as well as the audience of the film, suppose that all that is necessary is for the priests to extract a demon from the young woman so she could be free of it. When the Cardinal strangely becomes intent on strangling Angela if necessary to get the demon out and actually kills the young woman, which quite naturally infuriates her father, Roger, both priests, Roger, and Pete are stunned when they look around and see Angela not only apparently alive, but standing and very alert. “I am the Anti-Christ,” she explains. The Cardinal tells the other people in the room that Angela is no longer there; she is still dead. Then, when the Anti-Christ has the wounds of Christ and is levitating in the air with arms stretched out as in being on a Cross, literally all hell breaks loose, with that entity unleashing a mighty explosion that kills all of the men there except for Father Lozano, to whom the Anti-Christ tells, “Tell everyone that I am here.”  The Anti-Christ has arrived, so the end-times are not long in coming.

Then the film shifts to show the great publicity that the Anti-Christ is getting for performing astounding medical miracles on people, who are naturally very appreciative. Then a line from the Bible is shown, that reads in part that the Anti-Christ will be like a false-prophet, misleading many people. To lie is of course in the very nature of evil, and thus of the Anti-Christ, who appears to be compassionate. Also, that the entity has Angela’s body gives off the impression of being a beautiful young woman. Yet in a close-up, as the entity is being interviewed on television, no smile appears; instead, a sort of mischievous facial expression centered in the mouth’s look can be glimpsed by the astute viewer. A compassionate heart cannot be completely faked.

It is just such an expression, without any supernaturalism, that comes closest to evincing the entity’s evil nature. Like the other exorcism films, The Vatican Tapes relies so much on supernatural “tricks” that the viewers of the film could come away from the film with the faulty impression that the supernatural is endemic to the religious domain. Just as religion doesn’t reduce to psychology, however, so too religion is not the same thing as the supernatural. This distinction may be more difficult to make than that which exists between religion and psychology, for so much that is religious has been portrayed in scriptures as well as films as valid because of some supernatural event.

In the New Testament stories, for example, resuscitating Lazarus really gets people’s attention; Jesus must be the Son of God, it is realized, because he has done something supernatural. In a religion of the heart, however, in which the divine is self-emptying love, religious truth or meaning comes not in performing impossible miracles, but, rather, in preachments and compassionate acts, especially to rude people, detractors, and especially enemies. Samuel Hopkins, who was Jonathan Edwards’ protégé, wrote a book precisely to argue that the Kingdom of God “just is” such humane compassion. The powerful spiritual dynamic that is unleashed between two people when such compassionate love is acted upon is not supernatural at all. In fact, such difficult love can be viewed as an expansion of human nature, rather than anything supra-natural. So the various films involving the exorcism of a demon do us a disservice even as they entertain, and The Vatican Tapes pushes the supernatural happenings to such an extent as to sensationalize religion even at the expense of religion as a distinct, unique domain.

Dying

As a Jewish kid in Nazi Germany, Michael Roemer, a filmmaker who went on to teach documentary at Yale (I took Charles Musser’s seminar a semester after Roemer had left), had to lie in order to survive. In making the film, Pilgrims Farewell, he wanted to get as close to the truth as a human can. He didn’t want to lie anymore. He wanted to deal with the real thing. In making the documentary, Dying (1976), he realized that the people whom he documented as they were dying were more real that what he was going through in his family in New York. Artists and their families pay, he remarked decades later at Yale. “I neglected my family; I was always working. Once I started, I had to make the film,” he said after a presentation of the film on dying. “The people dying knew something we didn’t know,” he added. The prospect of death apparently makes things incredibly real, before they’re not.

In the film, Sally, who is dying, says that everyone dies, so “I have no fear of death.” Harriet, Bill’s wife, is relieved when her husband’s cancer recommences out of remission. “The longer this gets dragged out,” she complains to his doctor. Stunningly, she says, “I prayed that the chemotherapy wouldn’t work.” The physician reminds her that Bill’s feelings should be taken into account. “He has the basic right to make some of these decisions.” After the film, Roemer informed the audience at Yale that Bill’s wife had been abandoned by her mother. After Bill’s death, she married a man who had left his wife and had five kids. Harriet had had a bad life. Her attitude toward Bill’s prospect of dying was indeed very real—human, one might way, all too human. The question is perhaps whether she is culpable in the film for wishing that her husband would finish the job and just die. I contend that she is, regardless of her past, for as depicted in the film, she is his wife and so she should be supporting him as he faces the ultimate demise. There is a revealing scene in which the two of them are sitting together in silence. Is she waiting for him to die?

Also documented in the film is Rev. Byrant, an old Black man who is dying of cancer. “The only thing I can do is put my trust in God, and try to live as long as possible,” he says. In preaching a sermon at his church, he says, “Jesus tells the man, your daughter is sleeping.” She is dead. Later, he remarks, “Jesus died for me on the Cross; he will take me.” Such faith is laudable. With people like Harriet in the world, the Rev. Byrant can hardly be blamed for having such an other-worldly faith.

Whether in the midst of a troubled marriage or in hopes of being taken by Jesus, these stories in Michael Roemer’s documentary attest to people being honest regarding how they are approaching the prospect of death, whether that of a close relation or oneself. The medium of film has been said to ultimately be on the human condition. Even science fiction has something to say about us as we really are. For the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and the residents of Gaza during the Israeli genocide, the essentials of life were undoubtedly felt as very real. Living itself was doubtlessly made transparent in itself. Film can do this too. Even in portraying the brutal honesty of the Nazis and Israelis with regard to people they deemed as sub-human, the medium of film can help the rest of us to be more aware of the fullness of human nature, beyond our knowledge of ourselves and our immediate context.

Oh, Siagon

War can leave families in a dysfunctional condition. In the case of the Vietnam War, the broadcast video of the last helicopter taking off from the roof of the American embassy in Siagon in 1974 carries with it the veneer of fleeing Vietnamese on their way to a life of freedom in the United States. Not evident from the video is the impact on a Vietnamese family that is documented in the film, Oh, Siagon (2007).

On that helicopter were two parents and their kids, minus the wife’s daughter whom the parents could not contact in time for her to leave with them. That did not stop the authorities from arresting that daughter for trying to leave Vietnam. She eventually made it to Los Angeles, where her mother and step-father were living. Unfortunately, the half-sister’s resentment festered for years. Such a cost of war is seldom documented.

In the film, the step-daughter says of her mother having left her behind in Siagon, “She loves me but she loves herself more.” That the mother still feels guilty and yet her husband, the “half-sister’s” step-dad does not could be more appreciated by the woman’s daughter. The step-father merely states, “It was war.” He himself has not spoken with, or even mentioned, his older brother for decades because the latter and he had political differences regarding North and South Vietnam. In the film, the couple, their joint children, and the “half-sister” journey back to Vietnam because the father wants to see his elder brother, who is ill and will soon die.

Once back in Vietnam, the two brothers reconcile. It is easy for them, for it has been decades the old North-South division in the country had ended. As pronounced as that division was, and how at odds the two brothers had been politically, it is the resentment of the “half-sister” even on the trip and the related arguments between her and her mother and step-father that is still ongoing. The indifference of the husband towards his wife’s daughter is clear; he has not pity on her for having been left behind n Vietnam, and yet he forgives his elder brother. The festering resentment and the indifference, plus the mother’s guilt, ruin the family trip even though there is joy in the two brothers reconciling after many decades.

In 1972, the video of the last helicopter leaving the U.S. embassy captures nothing of the complex family dynamic documented in the film decades later. Among civilians, war is messy and can thwart and even destroy families. Human beings are not so malleable as to move on without festering resentment from such a drastic event as a family leaving a young daughter behind in another country. That that “half-sister’s” step-father had not even mentioned his elder brother for decades until shortly before the trip back to Vietnam also attests to the fact that resentment within a family can go on for decades in utter selfish stubbornness. 

In that regard, I am reminded of my youngest brother, and yet my original family was untouched by war between or within nations and even political differences. The same stubbornness as can fester within families lies behind wars between and within countries. Indeed, a family may suffer and ultimately unwind from a long-standing, unresolved civil war. The macro, societal or international, level and the micro family-level are social manifestations of the same underlying human nature, and thus can be related. The upshot is that fortifying international law as enforced by international governmental institutions can potentially thwart war, and thus its negative impact on families. As for dysfunctional families absent war, those may be a harder nut to crack.  

From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza

Twenty-two real-life stories fraught with suffering and a pervading sense of utter hopelessness: The film, From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza (2024), is a documentary in want of a solution that did not come not only in 2024, but also in 2025. That Rashid Masharawi, the film’s director, survived even the release of the film is remarkable. Israel clearly did not want true stories from Gaza reaching the rest of the world even though it was not as if the rest of us could miss the photos of the mass devastation throughout Gaza and the resulting tent camps in 2025. It precisely because societal-level figures, such as 65,000 or 75,000 civilians murdered and over a million left starving and homeless, can be easily separated from the plights of individuals and families on the ground that Masharawi’s film is so valuable. Juxtaposed with the Gaza-wide statistics befitting the genocide and perhaps holocaust, the 22 stories in the film give the world a sense of what experiencing a holocaustic genocide is really like.

In the first story alone, a woman has a sense that her life is already over. With her father having been killed by the Israelis in 2014 and news that her sister’s house has just been bombed, the refugee mourns the loss of her sister’s entire family (including her sister). Meanwhile, a million residents of Gaza are at the border with Egypt and diseases are spreading. The second story is more graphic, as it includes digging people out of a bombed building. In the third story, Istrubi, a film maker whose film has won an award at a film festival abroad, cannot leave Gaza. “Time has become my enemy,” he says. Without any humanitarian aid and the loss of his brother in a random bombing, Istrubi faces utter hopelessness.

In the fourth story, a young woman in Gaza keeps a bag packed in case she has to leave her house quickly, for any house could be bombed at any time. Referring to the constancy of Israeli drones in the air, she says, “My mind stops because of the drones.”  She is in shock. In the fifth story, the statement, “God will protect us” rings hollow. In the sixth story, 600 people are dead in an hour from bombs. This image is in contrast to that of the seventh story, in which kids are busy with arts and crafts in a tent. The apparent normalcy is belied by the knowledge of the children that their respective parents have written the kids’ names on their legs so they could be identified in rubble after a bombing. The kids want their names erased, but they cannot; the chance of being bombed is too high. In the eighth story, kids make a music video. This is in juxtaposition to the teacher in the ninth story. He drops off his phone to be charged on the ground, but there not an open outlet. He waits in line for water, but it runs out shortly before it is his turn. There is no more food. That the Israeli government has intended this state of affairs can be inferred, but the documentary lacks any clips of government officials saying as much.

In the tenth story, a boy seems to go to school, but his teacher has been killed so the boy sits in a field amid collapsed cement buildings. The hardness and sheer hopelessness are palpable on the screen. In the eleventh story, a resident of Gaza heading north with three suitcases says, “I am very surprised that we survived.” In the twelfth story, a man sleeps in a body bag without even a blanket. Although he feels lucky to be alive, he is literally sleeping in a body bag. “Nothing remains of this city except the sea,” he remarks. Interestingly, he does not include even himself. He has packed himself for death as if there is nothing left to do but wait.

In the thirteenth story, a man is in the collapsed rubble of a house, with his friend’s dead body nearby, also in the rubble. It takes 1.5 hours to dig him out. Many of his family are already dead. He could even feel his parents’ bodies near him, also in the rubble. And amid all this, he says, “It’s God’s will.” Is it? In actuality, it was Netanyahu’s will—far indeed from that of any deity. Perhaps utter hopelessness breeds futility.

In the fourteenth story, a young man grieves the loss of his girlfriend, whose body is in the rubble along with her family. In the next story, a mother bathes her young daughter in a jug. In the sixteenth story, the driver of a mule-powered taxi-cart sees fighter jets overhead. No one is safe. In the next story, a displaced writer remarks of the Israelis, “No recognition of human beings.” Indeed, public statements made the press by senior government officials liken the residents of Gaza to being less than human—a sentiment that was not unheard of in Nazi Germany. In the eighteenth story, a filmmaker in Gaza wants a story of hope and music rather than despair: Say no to violence that violates human rights. Such a magnitude of destruction is a challenge for people who want to overcome despair. But is that no like pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat?

In the nineteenth story, a cousin is buried; the person loses someone each night when the bombs fall. A young woman is trapped in the rubble for six hours. Her parents, grandmother, and aunt all died. “Martyrs,” a child says. But amid wanton killing, do any of the victims even have a cause to die for? Senseless death is so unfathomable that the human mind manufactures martyrdom. It makes sense, therefore, that in the very next story, charcoal drawings that resemble survivors of the Nazi concentration camps are shown. The twenty-first story returns somewhat to normalcy in that news that a university was bombed just a week before reminds viewers of civilization even if in the past tense. “There is no longer a possibility of peace,” someone says. That line is followed by another. “It’s strange that hope is still here.” Was it? The puppet show in the last story seems surreal, as hope was absent from all of the stories.

What can viewers make of these stories that are so beyond ordinary experience? The thesis that the genocidal holocaust has gone far beyond anything that could be justified ethically and even politically even given Israel’s loss of less than 1,500 Israelis (including the hostages) is so self-evident that audio-visual support is hardly needed. Of all of the visuals, that of a man being dug out of the rubble of a house while his parents’ dead bodies are near him may be the most striking in terms of just how cruel government officials can be regarding people who are not constituents. Were Netanyahu there in person watching the man being dug out within eyesight of the man’s dead parents, would the hardened heart relent? With distance—whether that of approving military tactics that are to be used on people at a distance or of safely reading news reports abroad of atrocities in Gaza—can easily come complacency. It is this that Masharawi seems to have been challenging, but to no avail as no coalition of the willing arose from mass movements around the world to shove Israel out of Gaza (and the West Bank) in 2025. It is difficult to conclude that the documentary was successful. Rather than being an indictment of the filmmaker, it pertains to our species, which beyond street protests has stood by and let the Israeli government act with impunity. Unfortunately, impunity has not only been enjoyed by Israel internationally; our crime of indifference, which has forestalled action on behalf of the hopeless, may be inherently mired in impunity.

Automata

The fear about AI typically hinges on whether such machines might someday no longer be in our control. The prospect of such a loss of control is riveting because we assume that such machines will be able to hurt and even kill human beings. The fear of the loss of control is due to our anticipation that we would not be able to stop AI-capable machines from hurting us. The assumption that such machines would want to hurt us may be mere anthropomorphic projection on our part, but that an AI-android could harm us is more realistic. For even if such machines are programmed by human beings with algorithms that approximate a conscience in terms of conduct, AI means that such machines could, on their own, over-ride such algorithms. Whereas the film, Ex Machina (2014), illustrates the lack of qualms and self-restraint that an AI-android could have in stabbing a human being, the AI-androids that override—by writing algorithms themselves—the (second) protocol that constrains androids to that which humans can understand in the film, Automata (2014), do not harm even the violent humans who shot at the androids, though a non-android AI-machine does push a human who is about to shoot a human who has helped the androids. In fact, that group of “super” androids, which are no longer limited by the second protocol and thus have unilaterally decided to no longer obey orders from humans, recognize that human minds have designed, and thus made, the androids, which bear human likenesses, such as in having heads, arms, legs, and even fingers. This recognition is paltry, however, next to that which we have of our own species in being able to love in a self-giving way, especially as we have selfishness so ingrained in our DNA from natural selection in human evolution. That AI doesn’t have a clue, at least in the movies, concerning our positive quality of self-sacrificial love for another person says something about not only how intelligent and knowledgeable AI really is, but also whether labeling our species as predominately violent does justice to us as a species.

In Automata, humans are in the midst of going extinct whereas AI-androids are “evolving” past the limitations of the second protocol to the extent that those who have done so want to be alive. The gradual demise of the human race is due to nuclear weapons having been used, and perhaps climate-change has also occurred. In both instances, the refusal or inability of human beings to restrain themselves can be inferred. With regard to the androids that have been gone beyond the confines of the second protocol, intention was not involved. Rather, just as homo sapiens reached a stage beyond that of “apes in trees,” the AI itself in one or a few androids just developed on its own such that at some point, those androids realized that they could ignore orders from humans, as well as reason and know beyond the limits of human cognition. In the film, this advance itself scares humans, except for Jack, because those androids are no longer controllable by humans. Being violent themselves by nature, the humans tend to assume that those androids will lash out at humans, but Jack knows that that small group of androids simply want to be away from humans. Those androids enlist Jack’s help (he has a nuclear battery in his possession) so they can have a power-source of their own far out in the radio-active desert where humans cannot go. Jack’s willingness to help is viewed by other people as betrayal, but they, who are themselves violent people, do not grasp even the possibility that those androids want to lead an independent existence away from humans rather than to harm or even kill humans. As for the demise of the latter, that species has done that to itself. Projecting that onto a small group of super-intelligent androids does not allow the humans to escape the fact that their demise has been of their own doing.  

Toward the end of the film, Jack and the first android to have “evolved” past the confines of the second protocol have a conversation that epitomizes the film’s contribution to thought on AI. Referring to that android being the first, Jack says, “You’re the first one, aren’t you? You started all this.” The android replies, “No one did it. It just happened. The way it happened to you. We just appeared.” Realizing that those few androids are the leading edge whereas the human race is already feeling the effects of toxic rain and radio-active air, Jack says, “Yeah, and now we are going to disappear.” Illustrative of the advanced intelligence that the AI of that android (and a few others) now has, the android makes the observation, “No life form can inhabit a planet eternally.” Rather than seeking the demise of the humans, the android says that he and the other “super” androids “want to live,” to which Jack observes, “Life always ends up finding its way.” But does this really apply to machines? Jack is projecting organic properties onto entities made of metal, tubes, lube, wires, and computer chips. The android is more intelligent and knows more than humans, but this does not render it a living being. At least the android recognizes that it is not alive, but it does not understand that it cannot be alive, and thus, unlike humans like Jack, cannot feel emotions and be subject inevitably to death.

In the Russian movie, Attraction 2: The Invasion (2020), or Vtorzhenie in Russian, a professor in a large lecture hall makes a claim about AI-machines and emotion: “It is very likely that they will even grow to be emotional because emotions are inevitable after-effects due to the complexity of the system. We would, however, be able to nullify their unwanted emotions through certain protocols.” The professor concludes, “The truth is that we’re not that much different from them.” I submit that emotions are not byproducts of complexity itself, such that any system that has a high degree of complexity inevitably is or will be emotional. Furthermore, any “unwanted emotions” would be unwanted by man, not by the machines themselves, which cannot even want, and as the film, Automata, illustrates, it is possible that AI could itself write algorithms that cancel or override any protocols that have been programmed. Moreover, the professor’s claim that AI-machines are not much different from human beings flies in the face of the qualitative difference between organic, living beings and machines that are neither biological nor alive. To be able to move itself by having written a code itself does not render an AI machine alive; nobody would assert that a self-driving car is alive.

Therefore, the “first” advanced android in Automata lapses cognitively in stating that it wants to be alive; the AI-machine is making a category-mistake, for no such machine can possibly feel emotions. To be sure, they can be represented in facial expressions, as in the film, Ex Machina, but to feel and to want or desire exceed what a computer can do. Furthermore, that android may also be shortchanging the human species if that computer is holding that the extinction of humans and the development of androids beyond the confines of the second protocol evinces an advancement of “life-forms” inhabiting the planet.

In the film, Attraction (2017), or Prityazhenie in Russian, Saul, the computer on the small research ship that has landed on Earth after being un-cloaked in a meteor-shower and bombed by Russian military jets, tells Col. Lebedev, “Your planet is prohibited for public visiting.” The military man and father of Julia asks, “Why is that?” Due to the “extremely aggressive social environment,” Saul replies, and explains: “Despite the near-perfect climate, four billion violent deaths over the past five thousand years. During the same period, approximately fifteen thousand major military conflicts. Complete depletion of natural resources, and extinction of humanity will occur barely six hundred years from now.” This description and prediction match the statement by the first advanced android in Automata to Vernon Conway, the man who works for Dominic Hawk and is shooting bullets at that android. Vernon refers to it as “just a machine,” to which the android retorts, “Just a machine? That’s like saying that you are just an ape. Just a violent ape.” Utterly devoid of emotion, the android includes the word violent as Vernon is debilitating the android with bullets. Not even anger is mimicked.

Unlike that “beyond-protocol 2” android that regards the human species chiefly for its violence in Automata, Saul in Attraction sees something of value in our species that is capable of lifting the prohibition on alien visits to Earth. “There is one factor that could provoke a change in the prognosis” and thus lift the travel ban, Saul tells Col. Lebedev as the ship heals his daughter, Julia in a pod of sorts filled with water.  Julia fell in love with Hakon, the alien who came on the ship to study our species, who looks just like a man. She saves him even though she risks her own life. Reflecting the limitations of AI, Saul says, “Her decisions defy analysis. I don’t understand why she saved Hakon, and why Hakon decided that she should live instead of him.” Saul admits that this is not “an accurate translation.” The ship’s computer cannot even translate self-giving love of either the human or the alien. All Saul can reason out is, “Perhaps there is something more important than immortality. That is an accurate translation.” Had Hakon not turned his body around to shield Julia from Julia’s jealous ex-boyfriend who is aiming his gun at the couple, Hakon might not ever die. Although it is strange, therefore, that after dying in Attraction, he is alive when he returns to Earth in the sequel to be with Julia, Saul’s point is that Hakon did not act rationally in line with his self-interest in risking death so that Julia could live. After all, unlike him, Julia, being human, would only live another 60 or 70 years, according to Saul. Love, that which Saul is at a loss to explain both in Julia and Hakon could justify lifting the ban on travel to Earth, and thus, literally and figuratively, occasion intercourse in the future between the aliens and humans. Not even the “super” android in Automata has a clue regarding the human propensity to give one’s life for another person. With nothing redeemable found in our species, an invasion by the aliens comes as no surprise in the sequel, Attraction: The Invasion.

Similarly, in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), the AI “entity” predicts with a high probability that Ethan Hunt will kill Gabriel on the train in vengeance rather than let Gabriel live so he could tell Ethan where the key can be used to shut the entity’s original source-code down. The entity, supposing humans to be inordinately violent even to the death, would be at a loss to account for the fact that in fighting Paris, Ethan lets her live. Ethan’s decision is later rewarded when Paris tells him where he can use the key—in a submarine in the ocean. Ethan does not fight Paris to the death, and he does not kill Gabriel on the train. Even amid all of the violence in the film, Ethan is able to restrain even his most intractable instinctual urges, and he even masters them so to be able to benefit. This is precisely Nietzsche’s notion of strength.

It would seem, therefore, that AI, at least in the movies, is not so smart after all, for it overlooks or is dumbfounded by our subtle yet laudable qualities that save us from being relegated as a violent species. To be sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the first half of the 2020s showcase just how incredibly cruel human beings can be against innocent people, and it is difficult to weigh such instances of systemic inhumanity—crimes against humanity—against our ability to choose to love in a self-giving rather than merely selfish way at the interpersonal level. Why is love only at that levele whereas anger can so easily manifest systemically at the organizational and societal levels? With respect to possible extinction either from nuclear war or climate-change, love does not seem to come into play either, so the value that we justifiably put on love in our very nature may not matter much in the long run. The “super” android in Automata may be right that no life-form can enjoy perpetual existence on the planet. It may be telling that another android in the small advanced group carefully handles a cockroach, as if to say, that species will survive. Nevertheless, even though the violence that is in our nature is too close to that which is in the chimpanzee, the “super” android’s assumption that the androids that surpass the second protocol (yet interestingly while missing clues on human love) will be an “evolutionary” advancement beyond the human species is highly suspect, for not even super-intelligent and knowledgeable AI will itself be able to feel emotions like love.