Brave New World

Pardon the hyperbole, but I wonder if we can't trace a goodly portion of the decline of Western culture in just the drop-off from Walt Disney's Pinocchio to Steven Spielberg's A. I.: Artificial Intelligence. Despite the surface similarities between these tales of a wooden boy on the one hand and a robot boy on the other, both of whom hope to become real, and despite Mr. Spielberg's quite conscious attempt to implicate Pinocchio in his film, it is really the differences between the two that are instructive. Pinocchio is a story of the moral education of boy, an education which when completed makes him human. A.I. is the story of the emotional retardation of a boy, a retardation which sees him live for thousands of years without ever progressing beyond a desperate need for his mommy's love. It may well be that both stories are about becoming human, but what they tell us about how our culture perceived humanity at these different times is rather depressing. In 1940, to be human was to be a moral being. In 2001, to be human is to fixate on your own emotional needs. That's progress?

In Pinocchio, the kindly woodcarver Gepetto has made one particularly beguiling puppet of a little boy. Because of all the joy he has brought to others, when he wishes upon a star the Blue Fairy grants the puppet life. Pinocchio mistakenly believes himself to have become a real boy, but the Blue Fairy explains: "Pinocchio, if you are brave, truthful, and unselfish, you will be a real boy someday." She evens gives him a conscience, in the form of Jiminy Cricket, to help him tell right from wrong.

The task before Pinocchio then is plain enough, if not simple. And so begins the familiar series of adventures that sees him skipping school, joining a theater troop, being kidnapped to Pleasure Island, and ending up finally in the belly of the whale, Monstro. Along the way he learns vital lessons about what is expected of him, most memorably in the scene where his lies to the Blue Fairy make his nose grow, because a lie too grows until it's as plain as the nose on your face. In a harsh but fair judgment, the Blue Fairy warns: "I'll forgive you this once, Pinocchio. But this is the last time I can help you. Remember, a boy who won't be good might just as well be made of wood!" Only after he takes these lessons to heart, proves his bravery by rescuing Gepetto from the whale, and sacrifices his own life getting his "father" to shore, is Pinocchio restored to life and made real. His has been a journey of moral awakening and development, but it has made him worthy of being human and of his Father.

Meanwhile, A.I.,, which Stanley Kubrick originally planned to base on Brian Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long", tells the story of David (Haley Joel Osment), a robot, or mecha, whose creator, Professor Allen Hobby (William Hurt), has made him to be "a robot who can love". The Professor says that "love will be the key by which they acquire a kind of sub-conscious". So, right off the bat, we've switched from the timeless battleground of Man's struggle with Good and Evil to the oh-so modern realm of Freudian complexes and conflicts.

Nor does David even have much of a role to play in his own story. Created as a child substitute in a future where overpopulation and global-warming catastrophes have led to strict limits on procreation, he's been programmed to love the person who "imprints" him, his "mother" in this case. But, as one of the Professor's employee asks: "Isn't the real conundrum: can you get a human to love them back? If a robot could genuinely love a person, what responsibility does that person hold toward that mecha in return?" And so, while David loves Monica Swinton (Frances O'Connor) unreservedly, unthinkingly, and unflaggingly, she finds that she can not love him as she would a real boy. His robotic mannerisms are too off-putting for her ever to forget his machine nature. When her own son is revived from a coma and her need for even an imperfect replacement is removed, Monica leaves David in the woods, suggesting that the answer to the question above is a person has no responsibility to a mecha, even one that loves them.

Monica's decision, though extremely creepy, is defensible if we consider that David is not a moral creature, and has no free will. Mere love is not adequate to impose an obligation on Monica, particularly when David's love is little different than that which a pet might have for his owner. Compare Monica to Gepetto, who when Pinocchio goes missing sets out in search of him. Pinocchio, though not yet human, is already human-like in that he's engaged in the struggle to be good. This does impose an obligation