Saga Is there a reason for the anti-droid racism?

I think this whole "prejudice" argument is BS to be honest. Droids in SW may be programmed to mimic human emotions, but they are still MACHINES. Some people don't like computers, some hate smartphones (me included), some don't drive cars, others hate flying (like 3PO). Does that make them "prejudiced"? I don't think so.
Some of you may have read the Dune saga. A long time ago there was a movement known as the "Butlerian Jihad", after which all robots, computers or other AI were outlawed. Then there is Skynet, which turned out to be a serious threat to humanity. Then there is the Trade Federation with their battle droids. So is it any wonder why in the SW saga some may have some negative feelings towards droids?

 

The difference is, cars don't scream and plead when damaged, the way the droids in Jabba's Palace did.

There's more to droids than just "mimicry".

 

Human being are machines as well--we're a collection of algorithms. In real life, anyway. In the SW universe, people are fantastically magical.

 

In StarWars Droids have personalities, it appears the longer the AI has to develop, the more human they become. They have their own personalities and even feel pain.

 

Then why is it that C-3PO's personality is exactly the same both pre- and post-mindwipe? Why does he immediately start having feelings of hatred and bloodlust for Jedi the moment his mind is influenced by battle droid programming, then revert back to his same old self the moment his head is screwed back onto his own body? Why is he already so neurotic when Anakin has barely even finished constructing him? C-3PO never develops or changes on his own. He's exactly the same from the moment we first meet him in Episode I to the present.

Droids do indeed have personalities, but they're programmed into them right from the start. C-3PO is always going to be a prissy worrywart, R2-D2 is always going to be a bold hero, and a battle droid is always going to an amoral killer, no matter how long they're active or what they experience. The only thing that will ever change a droid's personality is a rewrite of their programming. Droids can't think creatively. They're stuck within the confines of their starting parameters, whatever those may be.

 

"Being a prissy worrywart" wasn't something Anakin intended for 3PO - it was an unanticipated consequence of giving him more self-awareness than is usual for a droid.

Not everything is intentional.

 

I can give you a very clear example of growth from C3PO.
In ANH C3PO says this when Luke asks if he has been in many battles;

So here C3PO says he is no good at telling stories.
Yet in RotJ he is telling the Ewoks what has been going on and is quite good at telling a story.
The Ewoks certainly seemed quite impressed.

So how can this be if droids can never grow or change?
Or did Luke program C3PO with a storytelling subroutine?

As for the battle droid/C3PO head switch.
How did that work? No, not the issue of fitting.
Where is the CPU, the droid "brain"? In the head?
If so how can C3PO be affected by the battledroid programming?
Also, C3PO was affected and started to act like a battle droid. But the battle droid that got put on C3PO's body did not change in the same manner. He only commented about his body's poor movement.
He did not start to act like a protocol droid.
So why did the two act differently?
If the same principle is involved here, with C3PO's head being put on a battle droid body and he acted like a battle droid. Why didn't the battle droid on C3PO's body act like a protocol droid?

As for R2, he would only be programmed with a very basic understanding of humans and other intelligent and sentient lifeforms. His function is an astromech droid, he would have pretty limited interactions with "humans".
And yet R2 at times display a better understanding of "humans" than C3PO does.
C3PO even comments;

So R2 thinks more than "normal".
So I think R2 has grown beyond what his basic program was.

As for creative, again look how R2 manipulated Luke in ANH.
R2 needed the bolt removed and he had heard Luke talk about his interest in the rebellion and how he did not want to be stuck on Tatooine.
So R2 decided to show Luke part of the message, hoping that Luke would be interested enough to get him to remove the bolt.
That is very creative thinking on R2's part.

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

That's not growth. C-3PO didn't somehow learn to become a good storyteller in the time between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. He has always been good at telling stories. He just doesn't know he's good at it. He is not a confident droid.

 

Time limit for editing expired as I was adding on to my previous post.

Artoo has been like this from the very beginning. As Panaka says, he is "an extremely well-put-together little droid."

The point is not that droids literally lack any creative thinking skills at all, but that they can't think outside the parameters of their programming. Artoo was programmed with extremely good problem-solving skills, but that doesn't make him a real boy. At the end of the day, Artoo is of a kind with the targeting computer. As Mike Klimo notes in his essay:

This is borne out by the imagery employed in the films:










Note how the first series of shots in Revenge of the Sith exactly mirrors those depicting the mechanical Vader in A New Hope relying on his computer to target Rebels. Note in Revenge of the Sith how Artoo is identified with the targeting computer both compositionally and through the dialogue spoken by Anakin ("Lock on to 'em, Artoo").

Artoo is a targeting computer. He's a technological crutch which separates the human from the Force. Throughout the battle in A New Hope, Luke is continually relying on both Artoo and his targeting computer to pull him through. But it is only when Luke turns off his targeting computer and has Artoo taken away from him that he is able to make the final shot by relying on his own human connection to the Force.

This all a metaphor for the universal human process of becoming. Through the Force, Luke overcomes his narrow, mechanical way of looking at things and thus enters into a "larger world" of possibilities. He leaves the naiveté of his childhood behind and becomes a man of wisdom. He goes through a profoundly spiritual and creative experience of transforming into a different kind of person than he once was. This is not a path that is open to a droid. Droids have no access to the creative, transformative power that is the Force. They are stuck the way they are. They can't grow or develop in the way that a human being like Luke is able to do.

And you know this...how?

And it doesn't matter what Anakin "intended" or not. What matters is how Threepio is programmed. Whatever that program started out as, it never changes its fundamental nature. Threepio may gain knowledge and experience, but he can never gain the kind of wisdom from that knowledge and experience that would allow him to take on a profoundly different nature.

 

From the RoTS novelisation.

Alphabet Squadron (the newest newcanon novel) shows us a torture droid that has become a kindhearted therapy droid, with only a small amount of reprogramming. Droids can "change their fundamental nature" - sometimes with help, but it's possible that some do so without help - gaining the ability to program themselves.

And in the real world, us humans don't "have access to the power that is The Force".

I think you're selling droids short, and that, at least in some cases, they may be more like "mechanical lifeforms" of other franchises, such as The Transformers.

 

Last I checked, this is a movie forum.

 

And movie novelizations are fair game:

https://boards.theforce.net/threads/star-wars-saga-forum-rules-updated-please-read.50009764/

There are a number of 'EU' sources which can be considered grey areas and are permitted to a certain extent - these include (but are not necessarily limited to) the film novelisations, the Star Wars Holiday Special, the Ewok films, and the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye.
Such sources are considered to be grey areas based upon the direct involvement of George Lucas in their creation - should any other sources be shown to bear such influence (e.g. some concrete evidence regarding GL's involvement in Dark Empire), then feel free to bring them up, but only in the context of their place in George Lucas' vision of the SW Saga, as opposed to Lucasfilm's broader canon.

 

And I'm telling you I don't care about the novelizations. They were written by someone else. You're free to talk about them to your heart's content, but I personally have no interest. I haven't read most of them and, at this point, I don't plan on ever reading them. If something doesn't appear in a work that has George Lucas's name on it as the chief creative personality, then it makes no sense to use it as an interpretive aid for works actually created by George Lucas. Like I've said before, it would be like trying to perform a literary analysis on J.R.R. Tolkien's writings by appealing to the authority of Peter Jackson's movie director's commentaries. It just doesn't make any sense. They're not part of the same oeuvre and so they're not going to be consistent. You can certainly compare and contrast, but you're not going to get anything coherent by mushing them together.

Again, here's what George Lucas, the guy who actually made the movies, has to say about C-3PO and R2-D2:

And what do you know, all of Lucas's own work consistently reflects this view. One of Threepio's defining character traits is in fact his complete lack of self-awareness. He doesn't really understand anything about himself or anyone else. He is, in fact, incapable of ever understanding these things. He's a slave to his nature.

I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not sure how else to approach this. Do you understand that the Force is a metaphor? That the droids are symbols? Star Wars is entirely about the real world we live in, and the Force is very much a part of that real world, at least as George Lucas sees it.

I think the problem is that I approach Star Wars as the metaphorical literary work that George Lucas intended it as, while you seem to approach it as an alternate reality where nothing has much meaning beyond what it is literally stated to be. I feel like you take any material that is given the official "canon" stamp by Lucasfilm as being some kind of objective revelation of the nature of this alternate reality, whereas I see such things as merely representing the viewpoint of whatever Lucasfilm employee or hired gun happened to come up with that info. Is my assessment of these differences in our philosophical approach to Star Wars inaccurate? I'm just trying to better understand where you're coming from so I can maybe try to figure out a way to explain certain things about my own approach.

 

I see Star Wars as a collective work - Lucas is important to it, but his opinion is not the only valid one. Especially not once he sold the franchise.

As Anakinfansince1983 put it a while back:

And Lucas's comments about Vader's "losing the ability to think like a human" due to his limbs being replaced with mechanical parts, make very little sense.

Especially considering that he ends up redeeming himself later.

Ben was wrong about Vader's being "more than machine than man" mattering.

 

What's valid is what's in the movies. And Lucas determines what's in the movies. If you can come up with a coherent, alternate interpretation of the filmic evidence, I'm all ears. That's fair game. But so far, no one has. They just ignore the things I bring up, or make appeals to things that are categorically not the movies.

I personally don't care how collective you think Star Wars is. That's your right of course. There's nothing I can say to prove objectively that it isn't. But to my mind, it's just plain silly to argue that some text an intern wrote on the back of an action figure box should be considered as a cohesive work with the actual motion pictures created by George Walton Lucas. And that's essentially what you're trying to do when it comes to any EU work. It's functionally no different. You're fully welcome to try it yourself, but I have no interest in participating, because the results will be mostly gibberish. I'm sure you would strenuously object if I ever tried to make a textual appeal to some literal online fan fiction, but there's really no difference between that and EU content except that the Lucasfilm corporation happens to license one and not the other. There's no objective rule that says we have to discount fan fiction in our analyses. So why don't we do it? Why don't you do it? That's a question you should genuinely ponder, and maybe then you'll understand my position better.

There are certainly right and wrong interpretations. If you interpreted that last sentence I just wrote as me asking you for a tuna sandwich, you would just be dead wrong, my friend. That's how communication works. Art is just another form of communication. It's a more abstract form than written communication, so there's more room for alternate interpretations. But there are still right ones and wrong ones. You can't just interpret anything any old way you want. Your interpretation has to be consistent with the signs and symbols used to communicate the message. And those signs and symbols are set by a human being (or beings) with varying levels of intentionality. Depending on the circumstance, that can give the creator of a work of fiction a greater or lesser amount of control over their work.

If you were to argue that Star Wars is a series of movies glorifying and promoting fascism, I feel quite confident in saying that you would be wrong. Lucas's intentional arrangement of signs and symbols precludes such an extreme alternate reading from being supportable. (I know some people would disagree with me on this, but I don't really pay attention to those people.) So you see that there is a limit to the number of valid interpretations that can be derived from a work of art, and that limit becomes more strict the more precisely the signs and symbols are organized.

So no, you can't just arbitrarily declare your own personal interpretation to be valid. I'm afraid you're going to have to do some actual work. You're going to have to confront the text. You're going to have to grapple with it. You can't ignore the parts of it you find inconvenient to your interpretation. You're going to have to make a very good case for why you think I really just asked you for a tuna sandwich.

When Lucas says that, he doesn't mean that Darth Vader's mechanical limbs are literally, in a physical cause-and-effect way, causing him to lose his human nature. His mechanical parts are a symbolic representation of his loss of humanity. It's a literary device. Anakin lost his human nature because he chose to abandon it. And it's this choice which also leads to his maiming and reconstruction as a machine. His machine parts are symbolically representative of the choice Anakin makes to abandon his humanity and submit to the control of a dehumanizing system. This is what droids and machines, as symbols, represent in Star Wars. They represent a lack of humanity.

It's like when, in a movie, something sad happens, and then it starts raining. The rain symbolically represents the sad thing that happened. It represents sadness. But that doesn't mean that the sadness caused the rain, or that the sadness is the rain. The connection is figurative, not literal.

I don't quote Lucas because I just expect you to take his word for it. If his words were totally at odds with what was in the movies, then I wouldn't quote him. I quote him because he does a better job than almost anyone of explaining these sorts of things that I'm talking about. I'm simply trying to explain.

He ends up redeeming himself by rejecting the machine. It's the human Anakin Skywalker reasserting himself over the robotic Darth Vader. That's why it's so important to him that he take his robotic mask off and look at Luke with his own human eyes. This act is symbolic.

Ben was wrong only inasmuch as he discounted the ability of the man within the machine to reassert himself. He wasn't wrong about the nature of the machine itself. The machine is evil. The machine is an impersonal mask which needs to be removed to reveal the man.

The Empire is the machine. The Death Star is the machine. When Luke gives in to hate, he becomes the machine, which is what this shot of him gazing at his mechanical hand signifies:



The machine is distinct from the human. They signify different things. I know I'm probably not explaining this in a way that makes sense to you, but this is the best I can manage right now.

 

It would indeed.

 

I have to disagree here. Lucas wasn't directly the author of the novelizations, but he at least sanctioned them, and probably would have demanded changes if there was anything in them that directly contradicted his story. So at least we can say the novelizations are at a higher level of canon than the EU or games. As for LOTR, the situation is certainly different, because Tolkien was no longer alive when Jackson made the movies. So there was no way for him to suggest corrections. He had absolutely no control over the movie versions of his books. Lucas at least must have had SOME control over the books.

 

Really?
I gave you an example of growth and you dismiss it?
1) Where is your proof?
Since you insist on movies only, where in the PT is it shown that C3PO is good at telling stories?
2) How you describe C3PO is not consistent with how he is. He worries about things outside his control yes.
But when it comes to his own abilities, he can be quite confident. How often does he tell people how fluent he is in communication?
So that C3PO does know how to do something but lacks confidence to do it, that is not how he often acts.
3) How much sense does it make to program a droid to be good at telling stories and also program them to doubt their own ability?
Since your argument is that droids can only really do what they are programmed to do.
Why would someone program say a mech droid with knowledge to make repairs but also make that droid doubt their ability so they do not do what they are programmed to do?
Unless C3PO's doubt of his own ability is NOT due to his programming but that he doubts himself.

But then that makes him pretty human.
A person doubting their own ability and think they are no good and then they do the thing and realize they are actually quite good at it.
That is very human.

He is commenting on that R2 is tough, resilient and does his repair job well.
I doubt he has a deep insight into his programming.

R2 thinks more than most astro-mechs, that is said in the films.
He is shown to do things that are way outside of his primary function.
Like how he manipulates Luke.
Again, since you argue that a droid can't do something unless they have been programmed to do that.
Why would someone program an R2-unit with skills in manipulation and deception?
As I said before, R2 untis would have pretty limited interactions with "people" and only when it comes to things that fall inside their function.
And yet R2 is often better at reading people than C3PO, who is programmed to interact a lot with people.

You argue that droids can't think outside the box they have been made with. But the films don't support that. R2 is shown again and again to do things that would fall way outside his role as a mechanic.
Manipulation, lying, taking pleasure from C3PO's misery, those are not things an astro-mech unit would be programmed with.

Take C3PO, Anakin builds him to help his mom. Would a protocol droid be programmed to say use a broom and sweep the floor? Not really, what would be the point?
So if C3PO can only do things that fall inside the narrow confines of his programming as a protocol droid, he would be useless to Shmi.
Plus we see him use a broom in AotC. Was he programmed with that knowledge?
If not, how could he do it?

R2's role in the battle in ANH is to make small repairs. Do you think Luke could use the Force to do that?
Could Luke or any Jedi navigate through hyper space without a computer?

Most humans or other sentient, sapient races need computers because they don't have enough midis to be able to use the Force. A regular person, using just their eyes would do far worse than someone using a computer.
Luke is one of the few that has enough of an advantage from birth that he can do better than the computer. But to the other 99%, this isn't the case.

Again I think you are stretching your metaphors.
Luke is also told that his eyes can deceive him and he has a lesson to not rely on them.
Eyes are organic, not mechanical.

What Luke needs to unlearn is his conceptions of what can and can't be done.
He thinks that lifting rocks with the Force is one thing but lifting a ship is something else.
His mind is what limits him, not his tools.
He thinks he can't fight without being able to see.
Again a limitation in his mind, his thinking.
And these are likely a result of his life experiences. He knows that he might be able to lift a rock with his own hands but he can't possibly lift a whole ship. So that mindset still influences his conceptions of what he can do with the Force.

But even Jedi have things they don't think are possible.
For ex, they thought that they would be able to sense the Sith if they were back. That was wrong.
They also thought that turning to the Dark Side was forever, Luke proved them wrong.
So even the wise Jedi have limits in their mind of what can and can't happen. Things they can not conceive or consider.

And this is the heart of the matter, can droids grow, change or "evolve" beyond their programming?
Your argument is that they are stuck, they can never be more than what they were made as.
No droid can do something unless they have programmed to do that.
No droid can strive, no droid can want to better themselves or accomplish that.
No droid can move beyond what their programming is.

I don't think so and I think the films show that the droids are not so limited as you think.
Example, restraining bolts. If droids are always obedient and will never run away or disobey orders, why is such a thing needed?
If a droid is told, "Don't leave the house" and they will always obey, why have restraining bolts?
No, the existence of these things show that droids aren't always that obedient and extra precautions are needed.
Why program droids with the ability to feel pain or battle droids to feel fear? That makes no sense.

I think that droids have an ability to learn. That a droid, even if they have not been programmed to do something, they can observe others and be able to replicate it. Depending of course on the task and their design.
C3PO can't dance a ballet no matter how many such dances he sees.

I also think a droid can become better at something, that with experience, they do a thing more skillfully.
This learning ability also makes it possible for droids to become better at understanding people.
But this "growth" is removed when a droid has their memory wiped.

I think that many in the SW galaxy regard droids as little more than "tools". Useful tools and some likely take care of them. Like some here take care of their tools.
But few I think view them as "people" or give much concern about them beyond their use as "tools".
Luke I think is one such exception. I think he does care beyond their use as "tools".

Lastly, since you only consider the films.
What about Lando's droid in Solo? Was she programmed to act like that?
I doubt that.
Or R1 and K2SO. Yes he had been reprogrammed but his behavior was more than that.
He could disobey orders, he at first doubted Jyn but then grew to trust her.
He could lie, he could snark.

Bye.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Wow I've read a couple Lucas quotes lately and I'm surprised at all those metaphors he intended. Personally I don't like metaphors... we learned about them in English class and I never really understood the point of having them other than making life more difficult for students... Gosh I'm glad I don't have to take those classes anymore. *shivers*

I also don't tend to care much about an author's intention, other than as interesting trivia. When I read/watch a story, I like to take it as a window into another world, with whatever we see in the story as snippets of that world. When analysing, I try to come up with in-universe explanations that can reasonably explain as much phenomena as possible.

In terms of canon and what not, I see only the first six films as windows to one world and everything else as something different. Those six windows open into different timepoints of that world, but the snippets revealed are coherent enough that I see them as different windows into the same world. But with the bits I've been exposed to in the novelisations etc, it doesn't feel like the same world to me. Though there are parts I like, too much of it conflicts with my interpretation of the films themselves.


Anywho, back to the droid stuff.
I see R2 as highly intelligent, basically a living soul (and a smart one at that) with a mechanical physical form. If he was originally programmed to be creative like how he turned out, it must have taken tremendous skill to program him, and he would be much more expensive and highly valued than ordinary astromech droids. However, at the beginning of TPM, he was placed among other astromech droids, and everyone was surprised when he managed to fix the shield. This suggests to me that he was programmed as just another astromech droid, but a miracle happened and he somehow became extremely intelligent.

Anakin does use R2's help a lot in battle, but I never saw it as Anakin depending on technology, but rather as teamwork. I think Anakin sees R2 as a buddy. I believe he even sees 3PO (who's mentally less human-like than R2) as a buddy, referring to him as a great pal in TPM.

 

Not to split hairs but I don't think racism is the right word as droids are not a living race. Stigma maybe.

 

I think droids in the SW universe are basically like domestic animals to us. Some are treated as tools to serve a particular function, some are treated as pets, some are both. Even within either group, there is a lot of variation.
I think Luke treats R2 like a kindly owner to a clever little puppy

 

I'm sure he looked them over to make sure there wasn't anything totally egregious in them, but that doesn't mean he had the time or the inclination to demand changes to anything that even slightly contradicted his ideas about the story. We know this is true because there are multiple small instances in the book (which others have pointed out, obviously, since I haven't read it) that confirm this. Little things like the novelization claiming Padme is talking about Obi-Wan when she tells Bail she knows a Jedi they can trust, when in the deleted scene in the film she is obviously supposed to be talking about Anakin.

This is totally in keeping with how Lucas treated derivative works. According to J.W. Rinzler and Pablo Hidalgo Lucas hated Mara Jade and believed Luke, as a Jedi, should be celibate. Yet despite Mara Jade not fitting in with his vision of Star Wars, he never forced the EU to get rid of her. So no, I don't think it's reasonable to treat every single line of the novelizations as gospel simply because Lucas didn't feel it necessary to micromanage the author's work to an obsessive degree. The novelizations are the author's interpretation of the film, limited to a point by Lucas. Very similar to the EU.

 

(Edit window expired again, sorry.)

You're already pretending objects in the movies are something other than they appear. Jar Jar isn't a real person. He's a collection of pixels and audio recordings representing a real person. The situations he's depicted as being in aren't real either. They're fictional situations representing real situations which we, as real people living in the real world, can relate to.

You're confronting it as we speak. You're confronting it every time you're challenged on your interpretation and feel compelled to defend it, as you're doing now. You don't really have a choice in the matter, not unless you bow out of the discussion entirely. Sorry.

Well, what you're doing here is discounting the vast majority of great art. Emotions aren't always best expressed using words. Sometimes it's more effective to use color, or sound, or symbolic imagery. Emotions themselves are not the words we use to describe them. Emotions are things we feel in a way which is impossible to directly translate to language. Take this shot of a boy staring out at a sunset on the horizon:



Even completely devoid of surrounding context, I think the emotional content of this image is immediately clear. That is entirely because of the symbolic imagery being employed. The horizon represents possibility and untapped potential. This is because the horizon is something that is perpetually in the distance, perpetually out of reach. The physical properties of the horizon can thus be likened, figuratively, to the properties of an internal emotional state. By presenting these physical properties in a nakedly visual form, this internal emotional state is directly induced in the viewer, thus totally bypassing the distancing filter of language. This symbolic use of imagery is far more effective at producing this effect in the viewer than if Lucas had simply had Luke explain his feelings to us in a dialogue scene.

This is how symbolism and metaphor work. There's nothing "complicated" about it. It's the exact opposite of complicated. It's the most intuitive thing in the world. No one needs a degree in art studies to understand symbolism like this.

 

The point the novelization was making was that while she started out thinking of Anakin when she began speaking to Bail, by the time she's finished speaking, she's realised fully that she no longer trusts Anakin the way she used to. At least not on the subject of Palpatine.