Sunday Cinema
Today we conclude the "Bionic Booty" chapter by studying the Robin Willams classic Bicentennial Man -- the story of an unconventional robot who annoyed the terminally ill with rubber glove balloons. Or something.
Anyway, this summary is by Scott C., who is rumored to on the short list to replace Sanda Day O'Connor. At least, that's the rumor I'm trying to spread.
Bicentennial Man (1999)
Directed by Chris Columbus
Written by Nicholas Kazan, based on writings by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
In the not-too-distant-future, robot Robin Williams is delivered to Sam Neill’s palatial seaside home. As he makes his first appearance, clanking around in a bad Tin Man costume, Sam’s younger daughter sensibly backs away, with a whispered, "Scary!" The elder daughter retorts, "It’s not scary–it’s stupid," demonstrating that this film employs the same advanced technology as the self-cleaning oven–it lambastes its own idiot conceit, so you don’t have to.
Robot Robin is so gentle and benevolent that he removes a spider from the house rather than kill it, but Sam’s wife doesn’t seem convinced, and always looks as though she’s waiting for Robin to re-enact the computer/human rape scene from Demon Seed.
Unable to bear the strained atmosphere of whimsy wherever Robin goes, the Older Daughter orders him to jump out the window. The robot complies, sustaining damage to his delicate and sophisticated microprocessors, which causes him to talk like Charlie Callas.
To prevent further destructive pranks, Sam orders that everyone start treating Robin as a person–a mistake people have inexplicably been making ever since "Mork and Mindy."
Younger Daughter lets Robin hold her favorite possession, a glass figurine of a horse, but he breaks it in an effort to convince the by-now bored audience that they’re actually watching "The Glass Menagerie." Robin then shocks the family by carving a tiny horse out of wood to replace it, causing Sam to wonder if his robot is in fact showing signs of human-like behavior. This leads to a hilarious and heartwarming scene, in which Sam awkwardly explains the birds and the bees to Robin, presumably to facilitate that upcoming Demon Seed sequence in the second act.
Years go by. Older Daughter becomes a sullen, foul-mouthed cycle slut. Mom becomes a jumpy, ill-tempered wino, while Younger Daughter develops an inability to relate to her own kind and a severe erotomania directed toward the robot, who will apparently vibrate for you if you give him a quarter. Yes, it’s clear that Robin has had a profound effect on his adopted family.
Younger Daughter, who is now inexplicably older than Mom, receives a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, but hesitates because he lacks the Magic Fingers attachment. She makes it plain to Robin that she’s got a yen for some android booty, but he rejects her by symbolically severing his thumb with a band saw.
12 years later. Robin is sick of picking up after Sam’s family, and offers to buy his freedom. Sam is so relieved to be rid of the weird-faced golem that he tears up the check and kicks him out on the spot.
Robin finds himself sitting alone on the beach. He is on his own at last, no longer a slave, and free to pursue his dream of becoming human. Unfortunately, the first human he becomes is Martha Stewart, and proceeds to build a gorgeous Craftsman bungalow out of driftwood and kelp.
16 Years later. Sam dies, and Robin celebrates by going on a quest to see if other robots have also evolved toward consciousness and developed the personality of an overrated comic obsessed with dick jokes.
Another ten years go by, and we’ve finally got those flying cars they’ve been promising us ever since the October 1939 issue of Popular Mechanics. But Robin has failed in his quest, discovering that all the robots like him have been deactivated, dismantled, and had their operating systems deleted, proving that not everyone in America is as stupid as Sam.
Just as it looks like we’re heading for a happy ending, Robin finds a female robot dancing in a fruit market and blasting Aretha Franklin’s "Respect" out of her pelvis. She leads him to Oliver Platt, who gives him a face made from Silly Putty.
Now looking exactly like Robin Williams, he goes home to horrify Sam’s survivors. He finds that the actress playing Younger Daughter is now playing her granddaughter, so we’re still not through with her. Younger Daughter, now a crone, dies with Robin’s hand-carved wooden horse figurine in her hand, inspiring him to want to have sex with look-alike Granddaughter.
Robin hooks up with Oliver again, who solves the dilemma that queered things between Robin and Younger Daughter, by installing a penis. (Mercifully, Robin wears a T-shirt during the subsequent sex, so we don’t have to wonder why an android has the thick, oily pelt of a beaver. Just so we don’t get cocky about our good fortune, however, he climaxes the love scene with a fart.)
Robin wants to wed Granddaughter, but even in the future there remains a social prejudice against human beings marrying household appliances. So Robin takes his case to Artificial People’s Court, but Justice Antonin Scalia (whose deal with Satan is apparently working out quite nicely for him) declares that Robin is legally a machine.
Many years later: Granddaughter is 75 now, and getting a little too brittle for Robin’s jackhammer-like sexual technique. She understandably longs for death, so Robin transfuses his system with a chemical solution that will cause his body, over time, to acquire age make-up and a white wig.
Many more years go by. Now wizened, he goes before the U.N. (whose members are composed entirely of chorus boys from Janet Jackson’s "Rhythm Nation" video) and asks to be declared a mediocre actor. Then he dies. Granddaughter asks to be unplugged from her life support, and dies beside Robin, secure in the knowledge that at least she won’t be seeing him in the afterlife.
* * * * *
Bicentennial Man: a thought-provoking exploration of just what it means to be human, but also a sociological fable which asks the important question, "Just what kind of screwed-up future society would manufacture robots modeled on Robin Williams?" More than one, apparently, since Bicentennial Man wasn’t Robin’s only robot movie. No, he also lent his voice to A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, the film which showed us that in the future, abandoned Haley Joel Osment mecha-sons, Jude Law brand "Gigolo Joes," and other feral androids will infest our national parks. It apparently started when Bush rescinded the Clinton-era regulation banning snowmobiles in Yellowstone—and the next thing you know we've got kevlar-plated androids using Old Faithful as a bidet. Remember to take plenty of ‘bot repellent on your next vacation.
There is a bright side, however. Most movies portray robots as libidinous monsters, always terrorizing our women and pulling the heads off our men. A.I., on the other hand, indicates that in the future, women will be the ones exploiting the robots, using them as mere walking, talking vibrators that look like Oscar Wilde’s lover. So, ladies, decide who you’d rather do: Twiki, Robby, or the Cylon’s Imperious Leader.
Now, to conclude our lesson on robot/human relations, let’s review what we’ve learned from the three movies we’ve studied: Colossus of NY taught us that robots are inflamed by negligees, are against humanitarian aid to third world nations, and are prone to vote Republican. In Saturn 3 we discovered that robots possessing human gray matter would inevitably lust after blonde floozies and spend all their money on flocking and novelty headgear. And Bicentennial Man showed us that robots lacking penises would just buy them on the street and then marry your daughter anyway. We think the lesson is clear: vote YES on Proposition 12, penises for robots; but vote NO on Proposition 13, which would admit them to the U.N. and give them Harvey Keitel’s brain.
But enough about the robots, what about us? What do these films teach us about how our own society’s view of technology has evolved?
In the Fifties, robots lacked souls. Consequently, they were prone to fratricide, megalomania, and violent killing sprees (although they were good with kids). In the Seventies, human/robot hybrids wanted to share in the free love movement--and to kill a few people, just for old time’s sake. In the late Nineties, robots had ditched the brain tissue and were now actually better human beings than people were. You've come a long way, baby! But plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose–because even with no meat in the can, the modern Hollywood robot still has a bad case of Jungle Fever. So if even if you enjoy doing housework in the nude, we’d advise you to wear some clothes around your Roomba, or you might find your husband’s severed head riding around the house on your robot vacuum.
4:56:44 AM 
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