Saga Droids aren't welcome in restaurants and clubs but it's okay if they serve the food?

The word "robot" does actually come from the Czech "robota" (which means "slave"), after all.

 

Blade Runner must be a doozie for you.

Not to mention AI, Terminator 2, Silent Running, I, Robot, 2001, the Alien movies, and nearly every other story that's touched on humanity's relationship to machine intelligence in the last half-century.

 

Well, you told me, now didn't you? Of course, SW calls them droids, not robots. Droid is short for android which according to the online etymology dictionary :"automaton resembling a human being," 1842, from Modern Latin androides (itself attested as a Latin word in English from 1727), from Greek andro- "human" (see andro-) + eides"form, shape."

So, it's an automaton that is shaped like a human, not a human facing racism.

I've made my point and I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I have my opinion, others have their opinions. I have stated mine. Feel free to disagree and continue duel it our amongst yourselves.

 

People are taking this whole racism analogy way too far.

 

(MOD EDIT: Not allowed) It's scary that people here don't think of droids, computers, and machines the same way they do living people who are enslaved? Do you think a sex robot is equally immoral as a real, live sex slave? Lucas might have used the droids in Star Wars to create a sort of literary analogy, but if you think the movies seriously intended to champion the issue of "droid rights" as a legitimate subject--a topic that would emotionally compel and enrage audiences, or even raise serious moral questions about our use of computers and robots--then you've taken it too far.

Your (Mod Edit: Not allowed) observation about how scary it is that I don't equate robots to actual slaves is not only wrong, but down right offensive. It's demeaning to actual slavery.

This is slavery:



This is slavery:




And this:









This is NOT slavery.

 

And for good measure....










"Not only are artworks allegories, they are the catastrophic fulfillment of allegories" -- Theodor Adorno


http://www.thefreedictionary.com/allegory

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau










"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" -- Genesis, 1:26

 

There's an essay by Robert Arp, in Star Wars and Philosophy, that goes into some detail on the subject. It begins by commenting on how a blind person, listening to Star Wars for the first time- identified Threepio as "a man" based on his emotional expressions- and carries on from there.

 

Why would Lucas include the scene of droids being "tortured" in RoTJ- if he didn't intend the audience to feel sorry for those droids?
----------------------

humour?,

pretty dark sense of humour I suppose, but I try not to think too deeply on a fridge with legs shouting "no..nooooo" being tortured by red hot iron..

I'd prefer this silly scene wasn't in it at all, or get rid of this silly circuits can feel pain motive (which if is this is the case 3PO would have died from shock a long time ago..

 

I always thought it was funny that the guy says "We don't serve their kind here!"

What would droids want in a cantina?

 

Without getting too deep into the political waters, we can't even all agree what a human being is now, even without robots. Near my favorite cafe are a big Baptist church and a Planned Parenthood office right across the street from each other - there's literally two radically different definitions of what a human being is and what that ought to mean in operation depending on which side of the street you're standing on. Then, of course, there's the differing opinions on meat - Morrissey says Meat is Murder, but most people drive through the window at Mickey D's and get their Big Macs without giving it a second thought.

So in the GFFA, I'd imagine that there's probably some Space Morrissey writing songs about Droid Liberation, but that most people don't think much about it.

 

Droids, how real their emotions are, do they count as "people" and so forth, are discussed in some of the very first Star Wars tie-in material:


STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #3
Published December 1977 by Galaxy Publications. Text writers Jon Trux, John May, Michael Marten.
http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post3-03.jpg
STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #5
Published February 1978 by Galaxy Publications. Text writersMichael Marten, Jon Trux, John May.
http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post5-02.jpg
STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #7
Published April 1978 by Galaxy Publications. Text writers Michael Marten, Jon Trux, John May, Dr. Humbeto Kazinski.
http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post7-02.jpg
STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #9
Published June 1978 by Galaxy Publications. Text writers Michael Marten, Jon Trux, John May, Brian Shepherd.
http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post9-03.jpg

 

So that's the question - how much of it is real and how much a mimic? I mean, we already have AIs that do a great job of mimicking real human emotions. I just read an article about how much work went into creating the AI behind Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite. Seriously - "she" is very complex indeed, and a great deal of effort was expended by a lot of very smart people to make sure that "she" would absolutely steal your heart. And, if the early reviews are anything to go by, "she" very much does.

But does that mean that you're committing "murder" if you delete a copy of Bioshock Infinite (and thus a copy of that AI) from your PC? I don't think you'd find many people who would say so.

 

Well, first droids don't eat or drink so it would be pointless.

I always thought the droids were treated like 2nd class citizens and it goes to the age old sci-fi question of whether they are sentient, et al. In Star Wars in particular Luke treated them kindly and (aside from the callousness when R2 is pulled out of the X-wing after the battle of Yavin) as equal companions.

When TPM came out I thought Lucas was trying to make a statement that all droids were blamed and hated for the CIS droid troops in the Clone Wars.

 

A few minutes after I wrote this post I thought of George's influences and went back to Kurusawa's Seven Samurai. In it two peasant villagers try to recruit Samurai to defend their village. The droids have many parallels with the two peasants... Anyway I remembered that when the peasants try to recruit the first Samurai he is in a lodge/den kind of establishment and I believe they are not allowed to enter because they are peasants, and they do sneak in... It's been a few years but that's my recollection.

So in this case there is a direct parallel between ANH and Seven Samurai.

Also somehwat of a parallel in LOTR when Sam and Frodo go into the Inn and meet Aragorn, their first destination outside of the Shire, they are not kept from entering (although I think they are denied at first but have a reason to get it, to meet Gandalf IIRC) but they are certainly out of their element.

 

Perhaps the best argument I've seen in sci-fi for this notion: