THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY GALATEA
By Eleanor Tarr
While the word ‘familiarity’ often carries pleasant connotations, anyone who studied OCR English Literature at A Level will remember that their seventeen-year-old selves were familiar (no pun intended) with the Gothic. In the Gothic realm, the ‘familiar’ is not favourable or pleasant: it’s disturbing and unwelcome - and this applies as much to gender roles in the modern world as it does to any other cultural phenomenon. The Gothic thrives on unnerving its readers. Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay ‘The Uncanny’ (an analysis of E.T.A. Hoffman’s short story ‘The Sandman’) argues that the uncanny is ‘that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and long been familiar’ - essentially, people are unnerved by what seems too familiar, whether that familiarity brings to the fore unwanted memories, or whether it represents something that is a bit too human. Although Freud was writing a hundred years ago, his ideas of the uncomfortably familiar strikes a resounding chord today. We’re living in a technological world where people can strap their smartphones into headsets and live in virtual reality, and where CGI has revolutionised what is recognised as familiar or strange in cinema. Even more impressively (and so, even more frighteningly), human-like robots - androids - are becoming a reality. This year, in February, it was announced that a lifelike android called ‘Erica’ was to replace a news anchor on a Japanese television station. Erica has been called ‘creepy’. Why do we find non-human things with human attributes ‘creepy’? Hoffman’s ‘The Sandman’ offers some answers: the titular character steals the eyes of naughty children, a premise that’s terrifying because humans put a high price on our eyes, since we believe that we see the world differently to animals (and intelligent robots, too). As such, human-like robots are ‘creepy’ because they appear human - and therefore, familiar - but do not have that crucial element of human eyes - that soul, that identity, that envisioning of the world surrounding them.
