Love and death in A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Michigan Quarterly Review

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 257-284

  Naremore, James ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950428645     PISSN: 00262420     EISSN: 00262420     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Critical reaction to the film was mixed. One of the most lengthy and discerning reviews was Jonathan Rosenbaum, "The Best of Both Worlds," Chicago Reader (July 13, 2001), 32-6.
2. See also Geoffrey O'Brien, "Very Special Effects," The New York Review of Books (August 9, 2001);
3. and Andrew Sarris, "A.I.=(2001+ E.T.)2," The New York Observer (June 25, 2001), 1.
4. Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," in Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XVII (London: The Hogarth Press, 1954-74), 38.
5. For a fascinating discussion of the relation between narrative closure and the death drive in Hitchcock's Psycho, see Laura Mulvey, "Death Drives," in Hitchcock Past and Future, ed. Richard Allen and Sam Iishi-Gonzales (New York: Routledge, 2004), 231-42.
6. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).
7. See also Carl Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1999).
8. Paul Virillo, The Vision Machine, trans. Julie Rose (London: British Film Institute, 1994).
9. Sean Cubitt, "Introduction: Le reel, c'est l'impossible: the Sublime Time of Special Effects," Screen (special issue on FX, CGI and the question of spectacle), ed. John Caughie and Sean Cubitt, 40:2 (Summer 1999), 123-30. Page numbers hereafter noted in the text.
10. See also Sean Cubitt, "Phalke, Méliès, and Special Effects Today," Wide Angle 21:1 (January 1999), 115-48.
11. André Bazin, What is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 13.
12. André Bazin, "William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing," trans. Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo, in Bazin at Work, ed. Bert Cardullo (New York: Routledge, 1997), 12.
13. R. L. Rutsky, High Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 34. Page numbers hereafter noted in the text.
14. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), 4.
15. Christian Metz, "Trucage and the Film," Critical Inquiry (Summer 1977), 657-75.
16. Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Films and the (In)Credulous Spectator," in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 818-32;
17. André Gaudreault, "Theatricality, Narrativity and 'Trickality': Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès, Journal of Popular Film and Television 15:3 (Fall): 110-19.
18. "Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick," in The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, selected by Stephanie Schwam (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 274-5.
19. Aldiss is quoted in the introduction to "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long," which is reprinted in an extremely useful website devoted to Stanley Kubrick: .
20. One of Kubrick's ideas was to have experimental director Chris Cunningham create the scenes involving the robot. Tests of these scenes were apparently made, but were judged unsatisfactory. (For an example of Cunningham's sexy and uncanny work with robotic figures, see his video of Bjork's "All is Full of Love.")
21. Jack Zipes, "Breaking the Disney Spell," in From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture, ed. Elizabeth Bell, Linda Haas, and Laura Sells (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 25.
22. For a good discussion of the historical and literary context of Collodi's story, see Nicolas J. Perella, "An Essay on Pinocchio," in Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Story of a Puppet, trans. Nicolas J. Perella (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 1-70.
23. Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), xi.
24. Lasseter is quoted in a website created by the PBS program "Nova," which devoted one of its programs to the history of special effects in Hollywood: .
25. For a discussion of the scripts of Blade Runner and the ambiguous effect of the film's ending, see William M. Kolb, "Script to Screen: Blade Runner in Perspective," in Retrofitting Blade Runner," ed. Judith B. Kerman (Bowling Green: Popular Press, 1991), 132-53.
26. Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man's Soul (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 77.
27. Sherry Turkle, "Artificial Intelligence and Psychoanalysis: A New Alliance," Daedalus 117:1 (Winter 1988), 241.
28. See also Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984).
29. Sigmund Freud, "The "Uncanny,'" in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17 (London: The Hogarth Press, 1900), 226.
30. "Friendship's Death," in Peter Wollen, Readings and Writings: Semi-otic Counter-Strategies (London: Verso, 1982), 140-52.