Blinky is a short science fiction film from director Rauiri Robinson. The film is a classic tale of a boy and his robot, and the hijinx they get up to. Blinky is visually stunning, seamlessly blending CGI and live action while taking great care to use imagery to tell a story that is slightly different than the one told in dialogue. It is also a cautionary tale about what would happen if the products we buy actually did help us achieve the unconscious desires and fantasies we project onto them.
Blinky is precisely such a product. He just wants to be your friend, and he loves to help. (Warning-graphic. Blinky does a little more than help.)
The way to watch (or re-watch) horror films is to ignore the horror element in them and focus on the considerably more realistic but much more subtle conflicts between characters that ultimately birth the monster. Watched in this way, The Exorcist is really about a girl who is enraged at her mother for divorcing her father, and also about a son who happens to be a priest (and a psychiatrist, wink wink) who feels enormous guilt over the death of his mother. Likewise The Ring is about a boy angry at his mother over the estrangement of his father, and also about a girl angry at her adoptive mother for committing suicide, etc. See also Let The Right One In, Friday The 13th, and pretty much everything by Hitchcock. Not all films are Freudian, but a lot of them are, especially films that involve a child as a central character.
Films like this one.
Spoiler Alert!
Blinky is one such film. The boy, anxious and depressed over his parents incessant fighting, sees a commercial for a Blinky, a personal robot friend and servant. The commercial promises that your family will be happy after Blinky joins it. The boy, brighten by the prospect of future parental harmony, asks his parents for Blinky, and they agree. At first the boy loves his “plastic pal who’s fun to be with,” but soon learns that the joy it brings is limited to him. His parents still fight and ignore him and the boy soon grows bored with and resentful of the robot.
The film suggests this cycle–projecting a fantasy of family harmony onto an external object–has been repeated at least once before. The boy has a dog which presumably was his first, low-tech solution to the problem. Where the film become psychologically interesting is how neatly it encapsulates the idea that achieving one’s fantasy results not in joy but in annihilation. The object serves only to motivate us, to fuel the drive to the fantasy. But the drive, and the driving, are what is important. The object could be anything, and it usually is anything. The object is something we drop into the gap between our reality and the fantasy. At first it was a dog, now its a robot.
His parent’s fighting is not a thing, it is the lack of a thing: harmony. The boy feels this lack acutely, and suffers, and projects that gap onto an object that he then must strive for. Notice his joy in asking for the robot for Christmas. If his parents continued to fight from that moment until Christmas day, we can imagine the boy found comfort, solace, and even joy in the waiting. And waiting, the simple act of counting the days for a specific moment in the future to arrive, is the easiest drive of all. In the boy’s mind, a happy home will arrive on Christmas Day, carried in Blinky’s arms.
But the fantasy can never be reached because the object we choose to fill the gap is not a real object, it’s only the part of the object we rightly or wrongly project onto the lack. And because it isn’t real, the object never really delivers the fantasy. The drive is not from a starting line to a finish line. Drive is a cycle. What we normally do is circle our objects of desire (and the fantasy projected onto it), like a comet orbiting the sun on an extremely eccentric orbit. Sometimes, we feel we are getting closer to it, other times moving away, and that oscillation is provides the emotional dynamics of life. But to achieve the fantasy is to annihilate the fantasy.
The boy wants the robot because he imagines it will stop his parents’ fighting. It doesn’t, at least not right away. The boy is disappointed (a drift away) then cycles back through the dog and the robot again looking for something that will fill the void. Then he tells it outright all the other things he imagines, in his depression, that he wants. He asks it to deliver other things that will carry with them a bickering-free home.
But this time, in this imaginary narrative, it delivers, and therein lies the horror. Horror is not about getting what we never wanted. That is tragedy. Horror is getting exactly what you wanted, unequivocally, without every having to worry about getting it ever again.
The robot, smiling dumbly in the pouring rain, listens as the boy projects onto it his fantasy of a peaceful family. And the robot–the intelligent partial object–delivers the fantasy, annihilating the boy in the process.
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Over the last 5 years I have reached the conclusion that chasing a fantasy is far more fun that actually attaining the fantasy. That is not necessarily a bad thing in general, but usually you have to replace the fantasy with something new to chase. Most of the time what you replace the old fantasy is farther from reality than what preceeded it, and that can get dangerous as your fantasies drift farther and farther from reality.
Let me go a different way:
The robot is a robot, but it’s deliberately constructed to trick us into thinking it is human, down to the sing song voice. So what the kid does to the robot (e.g. in the rain) is cruel, not because the robot feels pain but because the kid experiences the robot as quasi-human. In that sense, it’s no different than if he tortured the dog.
So everyone is cruel to each other. If you read Blinky as a “person”, then he’s a psychopath, unfeeling, lacking in remorse.
If that robot was shaped like a giant spider, none of this would have happened– the kid would have never bonded.
And the director of the movie is similarly cruel. Killing kids (in horror movies) has until recently been a no-no. That’s the safety we expect from horror movies, that’s the deal we have. I expect to see all sorts of craziness from Michael Meyers, but not a scene of him decapitating toddlers. So this director takes a shortcut to horror, he cheats his way to the emotions, porn style. That’s cruel.
So I read this whole debacle as an exercise in cruelty. Here are a bunch of characters who are cruel to each other, who care little for the feelings of others; here’s a director who feels the same about his audience. The difference between them and Blinky is that Blinky feels nothing, but he isn’t supposed to; and he’s not supposed to know better.
Did anyone notice that the director seems to make all of the human beings in this film hateable?
He establishes that the parents are jerks (they neglect their child, essentially treat him like their own “robot”/disposable object; repetition compulsion going on in the family). Meanwhile, he portrays the child as initially grateful but then, ultimately, a total brat. The child abuses the robot as his parents have abused him.
The first part of the film, the director sets you up to root for the robot. You see the robot getting abused and because it is humanoid-like you feel a certain amount of empathy for it. Why would the child attack/manipulate the robot? The robot’s mantra is “I just want to be your friend” — all the “brat” (portrayed by the director) does is abuse the “innocent” robot, while the robot tries to help him.
The director isn’t showing the boy purposefully leaving the robot out in the rain counting over 1000 to make us like the boy.
So the director seems to be toying with our own unconscious wishes. A part of us feels that Blinky, the innocent robot, should be done justice. Initially, the director sets us up for an unconscious wish of revenge. And he gives it to us. But, like the child, did we really want that wish to come true?
That’s a really good point. Yes, all the humans are cruel, which sets the audience up to want “the best” for the robot, some kind of happy ending (see AI), or maybe even revenge. And then the ending makes us question whose side we were really on– after all, it is only a robot.
I do, however, really believe that this film, while very well shot and directed, is a porn because it violates the rules of storytelling to get a cheap reaction.
Another thing: usually, in these kinds of oedipal movies, it is the relationship between the boy and the robot that would have been taken to the extreme, i.e. it would have been the parents that the robot killed. We experience the movie through either the boy or the robot. When the boy gets killed, we’re supposed to infer how terrible that is by the parents’ reactions but we’re not bonded with them. So that leaves the robot, who’s a psychopath, and how can we experience anything through its eyes?
And there’s no “possibility of hope” left in the movie either, there’s no world scenario where things might get better. Arrggh. I hate this movie.
Are you getting misty-eyed over the Motion Picture Production Code or is there a bona fide storytelling rulebook which you could refer the rest of us to?
On its surface, Blinky reads more like propaganda for antinatalism – humanity is accepted as degenerative and ultimately inferior to its psychopath ex machina (humanity created it, after all) – but the direct mention of “War Machine” suggests that this is intended as allegory and not simply pr0n: the “inhuman” killing machines made by humanity are representative of how we conduct ourselves, so you may as well sympathize with the psychopath so long as you live in a society which devotes more to “defense” than social services.
I might be overthinking it, but I think Blinky realized that killing the boy would bring the most happiness to the parents-the boy’s biggest wish. If Blinky had been taken away, and the boy left alone, then what would’ve happened after (5,4,3,2,) 1 year(s)? Would the boy have possibly killed himself? It seems like Blinky is an amazing catalyst for finding your deepest and darkest desires.
I like the “no problem. no problem. (times ?)” part-partially because of the double meaning, and also because we see the robot trying again and again to over ride the first Asimov law of robotics programmed in him, to fulfill the boy’s wish (which is Asimov’s second law.)
Sorry, I should elaborate w/ the first part of the comment-after the parents forget and move on from the “Blinky incident” (assuming they do,) it’s possible that they will be happier and more harmonious. Maybe. Their relationship could even get a lot worse. It doesn’t matter, because Blinky was betting on the parents’ relationship becoming more harmonious, and the psychopath acted on it’s bet.
In fact, if there was more evidence that Blinky was starting to show *emotion* or deeper cognitive thinking, and Blinky thought the (extremely graphic) death of the parents’ son would bring happiness to their relationship, then Blinky actually “sacrificed” (similar to how a murder-suicide perp might think) the boy and himself. In which case Blinky may or may have not been necessary for his plan to work. It *is* convenient that Blinky would have liked revenge, too. Would the possible stability/eased stress been the same if the boy just committed suicide? The “reality” is of course, that Blinky was there to take (and give) the fall.
Is this consistent with the reasoning/logic of a psychopath? idk, I’m not a psychiatrist… Anyone?
As we are dwelling onto the deeper readings of this, I’ll spare my view as well. I applaud the previous comments and the thread, but they leave out one question. What is the robot?
I can’t help but treat the robot as a projection of the boy, a sort of dissociation to obtain control amidst the chaotic family situation. The boy can safely be angry at the robot, yell at it all his deepest wishes and worries (not unlike to an antropomorphised animal), and the robot just takes it all in, as a safe container. At the same time it is also made clear that the boy has control (albeit fallacious) over Blinky, being able to shut it down or reboot it.
In keeping with this view it can also be thought that the ending with the murder of the boy is symbolic; Blinky has taken the boys place in the family by killing him. If Blinky is seen as projection of the emotionless part of the child (the Ideal self: emotionless, wanting to be everybodys friend, always helpful etc. Surely the parent’s wouldn’ fight if their child would be as easy an object?), then the ending can be seen as the boy transforming into Blinky. Read: childhood depression. This is then presented and amplified by the catastrophy that follows.
On Claudius’ iew: we do are asked to play the part of the child in perceiving the characters. Similarly as the child seeks refuge from his parents in Blinky, we demonise the parents and the kid, and are left with Blinky. So Blinky is a one size fits all -solution, the parents are happy that the kid is not around causing more havoc, the kid is happy to have a power-relationship to something, and we are happy there is something to sympathize to. Blinky fills everyones desires. In the end rather ultimately.
Oh, and the bastard doesn’t even blink.
I think you are right, especially in the moment when the robot is outside in the rain and the boy bombards it with impossible, inconsistent demands. Isn’t he acting as superego here, the compliment to the ideal ego?
At the same time, the robot is also the unconscious. It’s clear that it misinterprets, takes too literally, expressions that are meant by the speaker to be metaphorical or exaggerations, and ultimately acts on them.
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Is it significant that the boy is an only child?
What is the significance of the scene where the boy and blinky stop to look at the taller more human shaped robot?
I see that as a humanization of Blinky. He, just like everybody else, also you, involved now have a Lacanian object of Desire. For Blinky it is the other robot. The parents have each other, yet both of them desire something else, the boy has Blinky and the og, yet desires something else and now Blinky “has”/is enslaved to the boy and wants something else. Even the bloody dog seems unhappy with it’s current state. It is all a Rube Goldberg device of unattainable desire.
So this makes us empathize more with Blinky as we have been given a classic cinematic moment of emotion towards the other robot. Now it feels thrice as sad when the boy abuses it, while it plays the part of a catatonically bullied school child who “just wants to be your friend”.
I like this take on it. That scene struck me as significant for a number of reasons, but giving Blinky his own object of desire was the big one.
What do you think about a completely different reading of the film as sort of a Marxist rise of the proletariat allegory? Blinky is a friend but also a servant, and an exploited one at that. AI only hinted at this angle (Jude Law’s character says something to the effect of “they made us too smart, too clever, and too many” (I’m butchering the line, sry) but AI was at best a Kubrick film that got Spielberged up so we got the Blue fairy plot instead.
Thanks. This Marxist viewpoint started to fascinate me. It alludes to Slavoj Zizeks epic reading of Titanic as a class division catastrophe. I’ll try and express my rather lateral thought process here.
Blinky clearly states it’s wish is to be a “friend”, an equal to the boy (The need for equality is also visible in the passing robot scene). So that’ll make the robot a signifier, not the object, to it’s desire. The desire here being, of course, equality. Now the more I think about this, the more self-destructive this film appears. Similarly to a master-slave -relationship, Blinky (a robot, an appliance, an object, a serf) is only something in relation to an Other, here the boy. There can be no slave without a master, or vice versa. That probably is why the boy desired the robot in the first place, to gain control, to be a Master.
Now, the relationship being the only thing that defines Blinky, the need for it to destroy this (the relationship, the master) is self destructive. Now this clearly can be read as a annihilation of the class system. And likewise it shows the paradox of Marxism, it would be a disaster for everyone involved (even Blinky’ll probably end up shot). You have to sport some serious doublethink to first ingest a definition to the core of your personality, only to notice the causes main aim is to destroy that very definition. Here too, in Blinky, the journey is the thing, not the goal. The desire, not the reaching of the octet state. After all, in killing the people, he answered to the demands to the letter, he was the perfect servant.
This reminds me of the way people in the communist states best emphasised the utter absurdity of the system, not by demonstrating or revolting, but by doing everything just as it was supposed to, following every law, singing the highest blue-eyed praise etc. (which was in clear contrast to the corrupted, two-booked way of how the country actually worked).
So Blinky paradoxically destroys the power system with just this sort of action.
Another thing that gets to me is the passive-aggressivity of it the whole time around. You wouldn’t really trust anything that rational to begin with. And then we’re shown it has emotions (or the like), and the whole nonchalance starts to appear a charade. When it goes bluescreen on the lawn and needs to be restarted there’s an ominous change in tension. The passive-aggressive / aggressive switch over? Superego / id?
Based on other things I’ve been reading today I also see an allusion with school massacres. The final narcissistic injury to activate amok-mode being the cascade of aggressivity (What, now I should kill for you as well? Are you really asking for it?). It just wanted friends, not to be an outsider, to be equal.
Robot are people too.
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