Gynoid
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Gynoid (from Greek γυνη, gynē - woman) is a term used to describe a robot designed to look like a human female, as compared to an android modeled after a male. The term is not common, however, with android often being used to refer to both "sexes" of robot. The portmanteaus fembot (female robot) and feminoid (female android) have also been used; the latter sparingly. The term "Gynoids" was created by the female British SF writer Gwyneth Jones, and developed by another British SF writer, Richard Calder.
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[edit] Early concepts
From 600 BC onward legends of talking bronze and clay statues coming to life have been a regular occurrence in the works of classical authors such as: Homer, Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, and Pliny. In Book 18 of the Iliad, Hephaestus the god of all mechanical arts, was assisted by two moving female statues made from gold - "living young damsels, filled with minds and wisdoms". Another legend has Hephaestus being commanded by Zeus to create the first woman, Pandora, out of clay. The myth of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, tells of a lonely man who sculpted his ideal woman from ivory, Galatea, and then promptly fell in love with her after the goddess Aphrodite brings her to life. Variations on this recurrent theme of loving an artificial creation appear in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Gothic short story Der Sandmann (1817) in which the love object is the automaton Olympia, in Léo Delibes' ballet Coppélia (1870) where it is the eponymous dancing doll, and in countless recent science fiction films and novels.
Since the Renaissance, inventors began considering machines for more realistic yet aesthetic purposes. In 1540, Italian inventor Gianello Torriano of Cremona made automata for the amusement of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, including a life-sized girl plucking a lute. The girl could walk in straight lines or circles and tilt her head. It still exists and now resides in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.[citation needed]
By 1773, Jaquet-Droz in France had developed a series of life-like mechanical puppets which included a female musician. The musician played a piano with fingers on the appropriate keys and was designed to simulate breathing as well as turn her head sideways and bow at the end of each performance. Mechanist Les Maillardet is credited in inspiring the invention of "The Philadelphia Doll" (1812) which was capable of writing in English and French and drew landscapes.[citation needed] In 1823, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel had manufactured a doll that could state "Ma-ma" and "Pa-pa". By 1891, Thomas Edison developed this work further by patenting his Talking Doll, utilising a wax cylinder that recited "Mary Had a Little Lamb", based on Maelzel's earlier idea. Initially to advertise his phonograph, more than 500 were produced.
[edit] Modern developments
The Industrial Revolution, and since World War II, the development of cybernetics and the concept of artificial intelligence led to more complex ideas of robots and androids. Whereas robots in the past have performed routine and mundane tasks, a fully independent gynoid has yet to be developed. Prototype gynoids are the Actroids, including Repliee R1 (resembling a little girl) and its successors Repliee Q1 and Repliee Q2.
[edit] Role of gynoids in science fiction
Science fiction storytellers have widely used humanoid robots, sometimes as part of the look and feel of their fictional worlds, but often so as invite the audience to react to the robot character as if it were human. Stories using androids can explore issues such as what it means to be human. One of the earliest appearances of such a character in science fiction movies was in the 1927 film Metropolis, in which a female android, disguised as a normal human, encourages the working lower class to rebel against the ruling upper class in the highly mechanized society of 2027.
Many of these accounts focus on the same philosophical question: at what point do androids become so human-like that they deserve the rights that society grants to humans? This question is further muddied due to the fact that many depictions of gynoids incorporate the notion that the female androids are capable of -- or develop the ability to experience -- emotion.
The November 13, 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone was titled The Lonely and deals with James Corry, a convicted murderer sentenced to 50 years solitary life on a barren desert planet. Allenby, the captain of the rocket which delivers supplies once each year, takes pity on Corry, and leaves him with a gynoid named Alicia who is indistinguishable from a live woman. Corry eventually finds that she makes his life much more than bearable, and falls in love with her. Things go well until one day Allenby returns with news that Corry has been pardoned, however the rocket is already near full capacity, and Corry is only allowed to bring 15 pounds of gear. Corry protests when he realizes that Alicia exceeds this limit, and will be left behind. Allenby shoots Alicia in the face, revealing ruined, smoking wires and components, and tells Corry "The only thing you are leaving behind is loneliness".
In the 1962-1970 DC comic book Metal Men, a frequent plot element was the infatuation of the beautiful platinum robot Tina towards Doctor Magnus, who had constructed her, and his rejection of her affection.
In 1972, American novelist Ira Levin wrote a satirical horror novella titled The Stepford Wives which successfully mingled both speculative fiction and social satire, depicting a well-to-do suburban town in Connecticut where all the married men have been systematically replacing their wives with gynoids that are stunningly beautiful, sexually compliant, and obsessed with housework. When Joanna Eberhart and Bobbie Markowe, two local housewives transplanted from New York start uncovering the mystery, a horrible fate is revealed for both of them. The book and the 1975 film version were so popular, that the term "Stepford Wife" was coined to describe a person of perpetually content demeanor and a robotic earnestness.
In the 70s, the Cutie Honey Manga and Anime became very popular in Japan - she would set the template for future "Magical Girls" such as Sailor Moon. Honey Kisaragi was one of the first Gynoids to be displayed in sexual situations.
In the 1973 movie Westworld, both male and female androids populate a resort where the guests' every dream and sexual fantasy can be made to come true. Yul Bryner famously portrays a western gunfighter android who is shot by the human guest played by James Brolin. Westworld goes drastically wrong when the human controllers are asphyxiated in an accident and the android safety mechanisms fail causing them to defend themselves and to kill the guests. Adjacent to Westworld are Romanworld and Medievalworld that fail as dramatically.
Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was adapted into the film Blade Runner) deals with a world in which androids are so realistic that only special equipment can distinguish them from humans. However, androids are treated as inferior to humans. The action revolves around a special police officer employed to track down escaped androids who are masquerading as humans. In the film, the androids are instead replicants, bioengineered servants that are physically indistinguishable from humans but can possess superhuman qualities.
The 1980s science-fiction sitcom, Small Wonder focused on the "life" of V.I.C.I., a gynoid with the visage of a ten year-old girl who finds herself becoming increasingly human-like. In 1992, Dick Wolf produced Mann & Machine, a science fictional police drama starring Yancy Butler as a gynoid police officer who, similarly, begins displaying human emotions as the series progresses.
Since the 1980s female androids have also become a staple of Japanese anime and manga, where their human appearance but inhuman nature is commonly used as a plot element. Primarily, anime gynoids fall into two categories: emotionally innocent gynoids who live in a world where part of the population treats them as humans and the other half treats them as tools (for example Chii from Chobits and Sally #1 from Hinadori girl); and those who appear human and placid, and live in a world where gynoids are common, but who reveal their mechanical nature in a shocking or destructive way, such as Miyu Greer from My-Hime, or Rogue Boomer. Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence also features malfunctioning gynoids as a plot device.
Gynoids have also played a part in the Terminator franchise, being featured in both the 2003 film Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the 2008 television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (see Cameron Phillips). A gynoid also plays a major role in the film Alien Resurrection.
The Star Trek franchise has featured gynoids on numerous occasions including the Star Trek: The Original Series episodes "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "I, Mudd", the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Offspring".
In the Japanese Nintendo 64 game Wonder Project J2, the player is left in the care of a young gynoid named Josette, who they must teach in the ways of how to communicate with others, as well as how to cook, clean, pilot crafts, etc., all so Josette can become more human-like.
[edit] Fembot
The term Fembot (sometimes spelled Femmebot) is used as an alternative name for a gynoid who is designed to look like a woman. The term has been used in several fictional productions.
[edit] The original fembots
In The Bionic Woman, the Fembots were a line of powerful life-like gynoids that Jaime Sommers fought in two multi-part episodes of the series: "Kill Oscar" (with help from Steve Austin) and "Fembots in Las Vegas". Despite the feminine prefix, there were also male versions, including some designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent, the fembots still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for human in most situations. Often however, their "facemasks" would be dislodged to reveal the machine's underlying facial mechanism and circuitry, creating the classic inhuman image of the menace.
In the show, the fembots' primary weakness was that their default operational setting produced a unique high pitched sound that only Jaime (with her bionic ear) could hear. This allowed her to detect their presence. However, once the fembot's operator was aware of this, the operational 'frequency' of the fembot could be changed and the sound thus eliminated. Fembots on important missions were often remotely controlled by an operator back at the base who was able to see and hear everything through the machine.
Fembots could also be discovered because of their heavier weight - more than twice that of a similar-sized human. Steve Austin once discovered that Oscar Goldman had been replaced by a "male fembot" by tossing a pencil on the carpet between them. When the Goldman fembot unwittingly stepped on the pencil, it didn't just snap but was instead crushed into tiny pieces.
When the bionic heroes faced the machines in battle, their operator at the base could increase their strength and make them extremely formidable foes.
[edit] Other Fembots
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In a parody of the fembots from The Bionic Woman, attractive fembots in fuzzy see-through night-gowns were used as a lure for the fictional agent Austin Powers in the movie Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery. Austin couldn't help but be seduced by the fembots. However, he was able to snap out of it and used his mojo in a striptease that exceeded their limits and caused them to self-destruct. The film's sequels had cameo appearances of characters revealed as fembots: in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, it was Austin's bride, Vanessa Kensington, and in Austin Powers in Goldmember, a Britney Spears fembot attacks Austin during the opening montage.
Futurama also used the word fembot (male robots being "manbots," although this was used as a joke). It was used twice in "Bendless Love", but referred to female robots instead of realistic gynoids. Futurama also introduced the term "femputer" (a portmanteau of female and computer) to refer to a computer with a feminine personality. The term "fembot" was also used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (referring to a robot duplicate of the title character, a.k.a. the Buffybot), and fans of the Transformers line of toys and related fiction occasionally use the term to refer to Female Transformers (traditionally, but not always, Autobots). It was used once in the Transformers Beast Wars cartoon series.
The character Cherry 2000 in the 1987 film of the same name is also a fembot.
The T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines is an ideal example of a Fembot.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Adams, Alison (1998) Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-12962-1
- Balsamo, Anne (1996) Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-1686-2
- Haraway, Donna J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90386-6
- Jordana, Ludmilla (1989) Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-12290-5
- Leman, Joy (1991) "Wise Scientists and Female Androids: Class and Gender in Science Fiction." In, Corner, John, editor. Popular Television in Britain. London: BFI Publishing. ISBN 0-85170-269-4
- Warner, Marina (2000) reprint Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22733-6
[edit] Further reading
- Gaby Wood, Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, Knopf, 13 August 2002, ISBN 0-679-45112-9
- Sidney Perkowitz, Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids, Joseph Henry Press, January 2004, ISBN 0-309-09619-7
