Today's JSVB post is designed to see if anybody is paying attention.
Here's what I've been thinking about: in sci-fi movies, shows, and books, you just don't see robots made to look like people of colour. They're white guys. A civilization reaches a high enough level of sophistication, they start to make automatons. Or an alien species wants to infiltrate Earth, so they create a being that looks exactly like a human. In both cases, that artificial person is likely going to be white. Maybe there are some examples I have not yet found. I have seen Asian-styled robots, both very real and in anime form, but is that enough?
Let's take a look at some of the great humanoid robots of the genre:
Maria/Maschinenmensch - Metropolis (1927), white lady (metallic as well)
Gort - The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), silver metallic
Robby The Robot - Forbidden Planet (1957), black (!) metallic... hmmm...
Ash - Alien (1979), white guy, also:
Bishop - Aliens (1986), white guy inside and out
Robocop - Robocop (1987), a white human cop becomes a cyborg
Robocop - Robocop (1987), a white human cop becomes a cyborg
T-101 - Terminator (1984), big white guy, metallic interior
T-1000 - Terminator 2 (1991), white man, woman, silver liquid metal
T-X - Terminator 3 (2003), white woman, silver liquid metal
Was there ever a black Terminator? I do not recall.
C-3P0 - Star Wars (1977-2005) golden metallic, some variants white metal and silver metallic
Roy Baty, Pris, Zhora, Leon, Rachel, Deckard(?) - Blade runner (1982) - all white.
Production notes show that Tyrell (white) was also supposed to be a robot, but the special effects for him did not work.
I was thinking that there was a black robot in The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002) with Eddie Murphy, but the android was played by Randy Quaid, definitely a white guy. I think there was another Eddie Murphy vehicle called Meet Dave (2008), where Eddie Murphy literally was the vehicle. He played a one-inch-tall captain who piloted Dave (also Murphy), a human-sized robot meant to blend in with Earth civilization. Dave was black, but I never saw this show, so I can't comment beyond that.
My guess is that black robots frighten Hollywood. The idea of having an African-American actor play a robot could be problematic. Usually, androids are used in science fiction as slaves or at least as tireless unpaid boon companions. Star Trek's Mr. Data (white guy in yellow make-up) explores his place in a human-dominant universe throughout his lifespan; he ends up being treated mostly as an equal. Were Data definitively black, perhaps he would have been perceived differently by audiences, if not his crewmates.
Terrible associations with racial slavery may prevent the black android from making a memorable appearance in science fiction cinema. Could an audience take seriously any enterprise that would recreate a black person as a mechanical servant or slave? I figure that's got to be a tough sell. Still, for shock value perhaps there is room for a black android in the future.
I took a promotional photo of Harrison Ford as android bounty-hunter Rick Deckard and rotoscoped a promotional photo of Andre Braugher on top. I painted out the picture digitally to make the image look unified. So much for my New Years' resolution to be more careful with the rights to images I post on JSVB.
Braugher, who portrayed the genius-level Homicide detective Frank Pembleton on television, would in my opinion make a really good Deckard if he could have played the role. Was Deckard a replicant, a human android? I put an otherwordly glow in Braugher's eyes to suggest that this might be so.
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