Bridesicle

“So Lycan had a hitcher. At least one” (4)

This notion of being able to host a dead relative in your mind is inconceivable to us. It wholly ruins the connection between body and mind, and goes against everything we know. But to the characters of Will McIntosh’s’ Bridesicle it is not strange to host one or even multiple “hitchers” and hear them constantly in their minds.

However, the characters seem to have differing opinions as to whether or not these “hitcher” relationships are beneficial. For Mira, her relationship was terrible, and her mother was constantly driving her crazy, even to the point of driving Mira to kill herself in order to escape her mother. On the other hand the hitching experience is wonderful for Lycan’s family and allows them to become closer. This shows that even though technology has advanced enough in this story to keep people’s minds alive, the tensions of families and of relationships still exist and transgress the mind-body relationship.

In this story the mind is powerful, and it is implied that humans live through their minds. However, that brings up the question of what qualifies as being alive? If the body is removed are we still alive? Personally, I do not particularly like the idea of reviving or of absorbing people, and I think that once a loved one dies they should be allowed to rest in peace and move to their next stage of being.

Bordo and Hopkinson's "A Habit of Waste"

“Feminine bodies now speak symbolically of this necessary in their slender spare shape and the currently fashionably men’s-wear look.” (Bordo, 2368).

Bordo’s article about the ideology of the feminine mystique seems disturbingly true, as she characterizes the parallels between women’s views of themselves and contemporary cultural ideals. But as Bordo points out in this quote, femininity does not just consist of what the media thinks a women’s body should look like, but rather it also consists of what society says a women’s role in the workforce or at home should be, thereby forcing women to conform to two entirely different standards. In the day of Bordo’s writing, current day, women are expected to be independent and to have a job with equal pay as a man, but this forces them to conform to masculine and feminine ideals as Bordo exemplifies in the above quote. This therefore creates a double standard that makes it extremely difficult for a woman to have a successful career in today’s society and still have a traditional family, as while women are now almost expected to take on “men’s work” and have a job, men are not yet expected to take on “women’s work” and take care of the household. Until the feminine and masculine ideals balance, women will always feel an increasing amount of pressure to be perfect, and sadly the female diseases described by Bordo will only worsen in severity as women try to conform both their bodies and their attitudes to modern life.

“You’ve got to work with what you’ve got”---(Hopkinson, 276)

Cynthia in Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste” struggles with her body image and does not seem to live her life to its fullest and eat all the foods she enjoys, for fear of becoming fat. She is so adamant about changing her body, that she saves for five years, just so she can buy what she believes to be a more attractive body, but in doing so she no longer looks like herself and deprives herself of once traditional and tasty foods, such as her parents’ cocoa tea.

As she admits in this quote, Cynthia realizes by the end of the story that the exact image of her body is less important than the person she becomes in it. I think she begins to realize this when she sees the woman on the bus “wearing the body [she] used to have”, but unlike herself in this body, this women is “far from looking graceless, her high, round bottom twitched confidently with each step, giving her a proud sexiness that I never had” (263), showing Cynthia that personality and confidence make the person, not their body.

As Cynthia gets to know Mr. Morris and revels at his resourcefulness, she begins to realize the importance of “use[ing] what you’ve got” to create the best life possible, until she finally comes to terms with her body and decides to eat Thanksgiving dinner without worrying about the calories.

This story is thereby trying to say that while body image may seem important to shaping who we are, the true value of our lives rests on not our perfect shape, but on our personality and the confidence we exude. It is this confidence and personality that create beauty, regardless of a person’s external experience.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Part 3

“She was a wonderful singer. The planet could have used her. This is insane” (136)—Rick Deckard.

Why in a destroyed world, barley able to prevent itself from crumbling, would such talent as Luba’s be discounted? Well, I guess the simple answer to that is because Luba is different. Luba Luft is an android, and so, despite her talents, contributions to society, or pure desire to break free from her master and live life as a more privileged human, she will never be accepted and will always be hunted as a danger to the human race.

With this quote, Rick, a bounty hunter who claims to “stand between the Nexus-6 and mankind, a barrier which keeps the two distinct” (142), begins to realize that maybe the androids do have something to offer to society. However, due to his fear of androids, his job, and the promise of money, Rick inevitably retires Luba, despite his awe of her voice. He says, “this is insane” yet does not alter his actions and spare Luba’s life because he is too set in his ways and not open to a change in the social order.

Androids are seen as second class citizens, not even citizens, in Dick’s world, and because humans fear them and refuse to give them a chance to assimilate into earth society, this classification will never change and society will miss out on all of the potential androids possess such as their singing and police talents. Even though Rick is beginning to realize the error of his ways, he has not yet made the mental leap to accept androids for the benefit of society. This quote thereby shows the harm closed-mindedness can cause and demonstrates that in order to make a social change for the better, people of the higher class must be willing to take a leap of faith and change their mindset to allow new people and new ideas into their way of thought.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Part 2

“Are you an android, Mr. Deckard?” (114)

This simple, direct question has the potential to throw a crutch in Rick Deckard’s reality, possibly indicating that he is in fact not a human, but one of the androids he seeks to destroy. This kind of paradigm shift would be fatal to Rick and to his reality and as Jill Galavan points out in her essay, if Rick were in fact an android it would show that androids and humans have been incorporated into the same world almost indistinguishably (Galavan, 418). This question may be simple and extremely easy for Rick to answer, but it makes him stop and think and begins to bring his life into question as he is no longer sure if he is even human, a fact most of us take for granted. It is quotes such as these that make me wonder how the androids themselves do not know that they are androids. I realize that their memories are altered, but it begs the question, how do they really not know? Do the androids bleed like humans? What does this say about humanity, about the distinction of empathy that I previously wrote about? As Jill Galavan says, questions such as these bring into question the entirety of human reality. (Galavan, 418)

This quote also threw an entire new spin into the novel and made me want to continue in order to find out whether or not Rick really is a robot. I think that this is so fascinating to me because I, like most other people, cannot fathom my whole reality being destroyed so suddenly and by a simple question, especially so far as to not know whether or not I am alive.

*Excerpts from Galavan, Jill. (1997) “Entering the posthuman Collective in Phillip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?””. Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 24 num 3 pgs. 413-429.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Part 1

One thing I thought was interesting about this section is that as the humans (I suppose we aren’t really sure if he is a human) dehumanize themselves by dialing for a certain emotion on a certain day. A large part of humanity is our emotion, and without our ability to reason and vary our opinions and actions according to said emotions, how much different are we from the androids that Rick tries so hard to kill? In other words, by dialing an artificial emotion, I feel as though Rick is somehow ironically moving away from his humanity, even though it is humanity he wishes to protect.

For my discussion of part one of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep By Philip K. Dick, I would like to combine the quote “Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order” (30) with the fact that the humans in this novel turn a dial to, in a way set their emotional status for the day and own empathy boxes which create in them their sense of empathy.

The fact that empathy seems to be an emotion that the humans can almost artificially create makes this quote about the importance of empathy to humanity rather ironic. By dialing for emotions and connecting to a program to feel empathy, I feel as though these humans of post-World War Terminus are almost artificially creating their humanity, even though it is their most valued asset. The humans prefer biological life over androids, as seen in Rick’s job to kill androids and the fact that it is an embarrassment to have an electronic animal instead of a real one. This would make me think that the humans would strive to keep their own bodies free of the influence of machines, but this novel seems to show the opposite. For instance, Rick and his wife dial emotions to stop their argument and to prepare themselves for work. This seems to take the effort out of being human and basically gives the humans a formula to deal with other people, which to us is what being human is all about, interacting with other people and learning through emotion.

In this quote, Rick says that “intelligence [. . .] to some degree can be found throughout every phylum and order”. I find it interesting that he does not include androids in this assessment of intelligence. Apparently, Rick is able to completely separate biological life from robots in his mind, yet he still relies on technology and his electric sheep to keep him acceptable in his social sphere. This is interesting to think about, that Rick vehemently separates himself from the androids, while at the same time relies on technology to keep himself what he views as human.