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Here's a review of the new Will Smith film for OSV. By the way, I found out that I won Catholic Press Association award for "Best Column" in the arts & leisure category, for my OSV movie reviews. I didn't even know I'd been entered in the contest!
To my surprise, I got lots of positive and very little negative about the last column, the Beliefnet piece on women's ministries and women's spiritualities. It seems a lot of women out there are just as uncomfortable as I am with "women-centered" material. One thing was getting misunderstood though and I had my editor make a change in the text. I'd said "I don't know why my church doesn't ordain women priests--we never spelled out a reason." It might have sounded like I was complaining, or saying "there's no good reason." But I just meant literally that I don't know, no one knows, it's what we do but we don't define doctrine except under pressure, we don't chart the realm of theology just for the sake of charting it. I think in a way this works better than defining everything, because once you define something someone else will come along and start picking at it. So I didn't mean that I disagree with this stance of my church, or that I was incapable of suggesting some reasons why it might be so; I just meant literally that there is no official explanation, there is just the ancient unbroken pattern. So I had the editor change it to "I can't explain why".
The other thing was that I didn't need to make it so emphatically about Orthodoxy. How that happened was, the editor had asked me to write something for the Orthodox page, and I had been thinking about "women's ministries" lately, and combined the two. It maybe made sense on the Orthodox page, but once it got put on the main page it looked like West-bashing and triumphalism. I didn't mean to do that, and could surely write a column about what American Orthodox can stand to learn from American Protestants and Catholics. I'll suggest it to the editor for next time.
I'm fascinated by this material on the "uncanny valley." There's a lot more to it, as you can read at http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html or elsewhere by googling "uncanny valley."
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I, Robot Title: I, Robot Starring: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk Length: 105 minutes USCCB Rating: A-II MPAA Rating: PG 13 Robotics designers have a problem; it's called the "uncanny valley." Humans like humans, and we like robots, but we want to know which is which. A robot can be made to look increasingly human, and for awhile we find it appealing. But if its skin texture becomes too realistic and movements too lifelike, suddenly it becomes horrifying. Instead of seeing a clever human-like contraption, we think we're seeing a disturbed, distorted human. It has fallen into the uncanny valley. This is the creep-factor behind a lot of sci-fi and horror, from Frankenstein to "Blade Runner." If HAL 9000 ("2001") had had a clunky robot voice, it wouldn't have been so unnerving; it was that gentle, coaxing, fully-human voice that gave us the chills. The fear that robots might leak over into human life drives the suspense of "I, Robot." Shortly before a new line of androids is introduced, genius designer Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) plunges to his death through the window of his office, an apparent suicide. I wish this movie was as good as it sounds. It simply lacks a centerweight. Sonny combines HAL's voice with C-3PO's figure, and is polite and wistful; he never achieves any level of threat. The robots who become threatening do so en masse, and the effect is like a swarm of spiders. The more destructive they become, the less human, less creepy they seem. The uncanny factor is lost. The Del Spooner character could have contributed some gravity--a detective with some secrets, some cynicism, weariness, hidden sorrow. Instead, Will Smith eats pie. He eats pie from a ceramic dish while walking down the street. When he spots a misbehaving robot he thrusts the dish on a hesitant passerby saying, "Hold it or wear it!" That's the kind of snappy talk we expect from Smith, and while it zings in "Men in Black," it's out of place here. Smith offers only one scene in which he seems in touch with something authentic, and it's unfortunately not the scene where he works up gelatin tears recounting a traumatic memory. But there's a brief sequence midway through in which he tells Lanning's assistant, Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), that he can't figure out what's going on. He's confused by events and even a little frightened. For a brief flash Spooner seems like a real live perplexed detective, rather than a smart-mouthed Fresh Prince. It's over in a flash, and that's all you get. Will Smith is the consummate know-it-all, and uncertainty is not among his talents. The oddest element in the film is Spooner's relationship with Calvin. It's meant to be a budding love story, but rarely have two people appeared on screen who seemed so alienated from each other. She communicates no affection or even interest in him, no hint of welcome in facial _expression_ or body language. She moves with such stiffness and speaks with such overly-precise enunciation that I thought maybe Calvin would turn out to be a robot herself. She regards the detective as if he were a spot of dried spinach on a greasy-spoon plate. They have all the chemistry of sand and cardboard. You know what I liked? There's a scene in which Lanning's mansion is going to be demolished by a robot, a "demo-bot." (Improbably, the home's furnishings are still intact, including the no-doubt-irreplaceable files in the famous inventor's office. Don't expect sterling logic in this movie.) The demo-bot is a giant scuffed-yellow metal Gobot, and when the preset timer goes off it stands up, towering against the night sky, reaches out a claw-like hand, and begins grabbing chunks out of the second floor. It was great! After the demo-bot had reduced the building to piles of rubble, it sat down and folded itself up again. This makes no sense as a way to demolish a building, but it was just so cockeyed and free, such a kid's-eye view of demolition, that I wished I had a demo-bot of my own. I'll keep him at your house. ********
Frederica Mathewes-Green www.frederica.com |
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