Comments on: Burn the House Down

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By: What I Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging | participant/observer

What I Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging | participant/observer — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 23:09:36 +0000

[...] was incredible. And introduced me to the joy of digital humanities. We had a course blog, and this is one of my posts on mimesis, Frankenstein, and the TV show [...]

By: Kristen Gray

Kristen Gray — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:57:16 +0000

I’m glad that you brind up R.U.R., because it’s a play I’ve been mentally referencing throughout this course. In many of the works we’ve been dealing with we’ve addressed the idea of superiority. In R.U.R., the best worker is the one who makes himself obsolete. At which point does technology or man (in our “real” world) become obsolete? Is that what all of these “creatures” (ones we’ve read/viewed and ones we’ll get to) are lashing out at?

By: Daniel Kason

Daniel Kason — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:50:48 +0000

Wow, your discussion of mimesis and Dollhouse relates perfectly to Frankenstein and, well, everything else we’ve been discussing in class. From my understanding, and from what you and Kathryn lay out, mimesis is used in these works to disrupt the idea of a fixed identity. In Blade Runner, for example, the Replicants are able to mimic or, if you will, replicate our own conception of what is human (even while we try our best to limit them), so that their very existence challenges our notions of humanity and humanness. Thus, mimesis, or an act of replication, only serves to illustrate how there is no fixed original to begin with. Frankenstein’s creature, while a monster, is a twisted and in some ways more honest (made of parts) version of ourselves. The Replicants can be viewed as a more perfect or more human version of ourselves. In either case, the truth is scary, and thus while we laud mimesis or the replication of the self as it pushes us to the limits of knowledge, in the end we view it as a monstrosity, a failed experiment that reveals our own false conception of ourselves.

I’ve always found it interesting that in science fiction, emotion is always the element that separates humans from the Other (usually robots or machines). But if the robot develops emotion (as they always do), does that make them human? And what does that say about humanness?

Another stray idea: we’ve been talking about mimesis on the human end (trying to imitate the self), but what about when the copy starts to use mimesis (kind of what Philip K. Dick talks about: a copy of a copy). Specifically, if they use it against us, as they do in The Matrix (the Matrix as a simulation of our reality filtered through the machines). I’ll stop here, since this gets into our later discussions, but I find interesting the different ways mimesis has been used or can be used in all of the works we’ve read, and the implications this has for our own identities.

By: Kathryn Skutlin

Kathryn Skutlin — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:39:21 +0000

First of all, I would like to say that I love the work of Joss Whedon! Now, for the good stuff… I had been thinking of Dollhouse in terms of this class earlier in the semester. However, it only really struck me once I read your post how Echo can be considered to be a patchwork girl. Although, Dushku’s character once was considered to have an essential identity–Caroline–she has become a patchwork girl of identities. Remembering all of her past imprints, Echo is not simply the empty shell that walks around saying “I try to be my best” and trimming bonsai trees, she becomes an amalgamation of the identities that she previously assumed. When she needs a skill, she sifts through her mind to find an imprint that knows how to do the skill she needs to perform. She goes by the name of Echo, but she is not just Echo. Like the patchwork girl, she feels each of the imprints that have come together to make her something other than whole (an extension of simply Echo) making up her identity. She is Echo, Caroline, Roma, Eleanor, Alice, Taffy, Kiki, and even the male serial killer Terry Karrens. The show does not aspire to return Echo to her whole essential identity, but rather relies upon Echo as a patchwork of imprints. I just thought that this was a great example of another patchwork girl that does not need to justify being whole. Although she does go by the name of Echo–the predominant personality–it is her ability to embrace her multiple identity that allows her to be the heroine of this show.

By: Nigel Lepianka

Nigel Lepianka — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:22:33 +0000

Wow, mimesis is something I had never considered before, and actually, since I’m still thinking about Phil’s post below, I’ll try to coordinate the two strains of thought. My response to Phil’s post pertained to abjection, and how, to me, monstrosity has had to have human components to which humanity must be compared or contrasted. Mimesis is probably the exact thing I was looking for in responding to his post, since the ‘human components’ are naturally going to be mimetic and act as the canvases on which abjection occurs. I said I had trouble thinking of the creatures Phil posted as monsters, and this would be precisely because they are not mimetic when compared to humans, and instead, composed entirely of things of which I cannot relate (at least not easily) to and contain no easily distinguishable human-like qualities.