Characters and the Uncanny Valley; or, Why I Really Like Heathcliff

The uncanny valley is a phenomenon where we feel discomforted by something just falling short of looking human. The uncanny valley is inhabited by zombies... and Michael Jackson. But I repeat myself.

Let me start off by saying that Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte has turned out to be a much more interesting read than I thought it would be. In contrast to romance stories like Romeo and Juliet where the romance is sickly sweet and torrid, the romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw actually feels very cold, and I think Emily Bronte did a very good job of portraying all the dark emotions that passion can spawn. Emotions like hatred and envy. It is a dark romance story, and I respect it for that.

Today, our discussion of Wuthering Heights in English class went over two things. The characters and cultural literacy. While most of the discussion about cultural literacy and literary canon went over my head, it did get me thinking about characters now compared to characters in the past. The discussion about characters was basically about how much the class hated a bunch of characters because they were unrealistic and too stock character-like. 

Say what again.

I don't want to offend or anger anyone... but I find that a little ridiculous. In a generation that has seen Bella Swan and Batman, a robot and a much larger than life character respectively, the cast of Wuthering Heights is, by leaps and bounds, far more realistic than the characters we follow today (and just to be clear, I don't hate Batman, I like Batman. Bella Swan... not so much.). My point is that our generation does not have a problem with unrealistic characters or scenarios. Unrealistic characters are the par for the course in every form of media today. Whether it's Master Chief from the Halo video game series, Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games or Jules Winnfield (the character played by Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction.

In Wuthering Heights, we have a man who fancies himself an introvert, despite clearly not being one and being taken aback when he meets a real one. We have a manservant whose faith in god leads him to condemn everyone else to hellfire, simply so he can deal with his fear that he himself might not be worthy. We have a rich kid who is used to the world being the way he likes it, but is so insecure that that might fall down around his ears; and we have his wife playing at being the aristocracy, trying to both keep her closest childhood friend close while also trying to distance herself from the low that he represents. And of course we have Heathcliff, who loves Catherine, and can only watch as she moves away from him, with him powerless to catch up because society dictates that his place was not at her side. So he simply rejects humanity as a whole. All of these characters have very real hopes, real fears and real problems. Very human problems. The problem isn't that they aren't realistic. I think the real reason people hate these characters is that they simply fall short of the realism we need to be comfortable with them.

This is the phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. It is a very prevalent problem for video game developers, and it's clear to me now that it's not just video games that experience this phenomenon but all forms of art, be it movies, paintings, TV shows, novels or comic books. 

This video explains the uncanny valley better than I can really, but if you don't want to take the seven minutes to learn about video game theory, I won't hold it against you. The history of the uncanny valley is that there was a maker of robots some time in the past, and he decided to give his robots more human features. He found that giving these robots some features actually made people think they were cute. However, as he added more facial features to his robots and gave them facial expressions as well, people began to see them not as more appealing, but repulsive and grotesque. This led to the formation of the theory of the uncanny valley. The curve at the top is a representation of the uncanny valley, basically as you start adding features there is a lot of appeal and familiarity, and when you have something that spot on resembles a human, there is a lot of appeal. But along the line, appeal takes a drastic drop when there are a certain amount of human characteristics that makes what we are looking at seem human-ish, but something seems off. We recognize that the thing in front of us is playing at being human, but it doesn't quite achieve the semblance, and we become repulsed by the much more noticeable non-human characteristics.

He barely looks human... and we don't care.

That is the uncanny valley, falling short of the realism expected. There are a lot of examples I can think of from video games, like the afore mentioned Master Chief from the Halo universe, who has a lot of appeal even though he looks nothing like a human. He occupies the left side of the curve, the side with just enough human characteristics to make what we look at relatable, but few enough that it doesn't throw a glaring spotlight on his non-human characteristics, characteristics that would repel us. The same could be said of Nintendo's star character Mario. And as PCs and consoles become more advanced, we can expect to see more developers try to go for the realistic side of the curve, the one with high fidelity to real life. We see blockbusters like Call of Duty try for that side of the curve a lot.

These are scary...

But not as scary as these guys...

But at the same time there are very good examples of falling into the uncanny valley. I could cite more examples from video games, but I'm going to go ahead and talk about the Walking Dead instead because it raises a point that will be important a little later on. Zombies (or should I say roamers?) are an obvious example of the uncanny valley at work. Shuffling around in various states of decay, their human features only serve to highlight the grotesqueness of their appearance, right from the first time we see them we think, "That is not natural." And they become unnerving because of that. But even more unnerving than the roamers are some of the humans that Rick and co. encounter in their search for a single moment of peace. People like the Governor or Negan. They are human, they look human, they look normal. But their sadistic nature is repulsive, and the fact that they look like humans only serves to make their acts all the more horrifying. It is disturbing to watch them carry out their acts of cruelty because they aren't grotesque and different like the roamers. They are human, they are us. They don't fall into the uncanny valley because of their outward appearance, but because of their inward grotesqueness. But here is that point I wanted to go over: this isn't an accident. The writers didn't accidentally make the zombies revolting, or the Governor or Negan's presence uncomfortable. They wanted them to be disquieting, they wanted them to be menacing, they wanted them to be grotesque. The uncanny valley isn't inherently evil, it can be a very effective tool used in the right hands.


We see that with the Southern Gothic genre as well, and with authors like Flannery O'Connor. The Misfit (among other characters) from "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" falls into the uncanny valley because, despite his being the quintessential Southern gentleman of good parentage and stock, he is a killer. Those gentlemanly characteristics of The Misfit only serve to highlight that stark fact. It creates the grotesque convolution that the Gothic genre is known for.

So what does this have to do with hating the characters of Wuthering Heights? Well, my belief is that people are simply repulsed by these characters falling into the uncanny valley. It is true that these characters are, to a point, exaggerated, melodramatic. But I'm not quite prepared to chalk that up to the medium of the novel being in its infancy at the time. After all, video games are in their infancy, and we have gotten a lot a very good games that present poignant social commentary and/or moral dilemmas. Games like Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored or Papers, Please. A medium being in its infancy doesn't mean that it has to make missteps. I'm more inclined to believe that these characters are falling into the uncanny valley. It feels like characters like Catherine or Joseph or Edgar are a caricature of being human, a shadow, a parody. Their humanity only accentuates those disconcerting characteristics, Catherine's vanity, Joseph's... well, Joseph, and Edgar's insecurity and foppishness. But as I said before, you don't have to necessarily be stumbling into the uncanny valley. It's entirely possible, I'd even wager likely, that Emily Bronte intended for her characters to fall into that valley. To use that repulsion a reader would feel at these characteristics to highlight them, to comment on them, to create discourse by making us do a double take as we read. In other words, you're meant to hate them, but don't hate them because they are unrealistic; hate them because, at the end of the day, they are hateable people. They represent the dark emotions that come with passion, emotions that all people are susceptible to, love is a double edged sword.

And that brings me to why I like Heathcliff. When I tell people I like Heathcliff, the general response is, "he broods too much." I will grant that. However, the reason I like Heathcliff is because I can sympathize with him, personally speaking. I can understand him, the pain of unattainablity. He kind of reminds me of myself. I have been described as cold, cruel, merciless and just straight out mean by the people I respect the most. Does that hurt? No, not really. But I can at least understand who Heathcliff is and why he is what he is. He becomes a real person for me, and so he doesn't fall into the uncanny valley, he sits on the right side of the curve, having attained a state of verisimilitude his companions fall short of.

I still hate Catherine Earnshaw though.

Requiem Aeternam: Ambition and the Curse

Botox, the immortality of today

Humans throughout all of history have sought immortality in one way or another. We see the myth of Heracles, embarking on twelve labors in order to achieve this goal. Qin Shi Huang of the Chinese Qin Dynasty drank mercury in the hopes that it would make him immortal (this did not work out quite like he hoped), even in today's "enlightened" age of science and rationalism, we still try as hard as we can to escape the progression of age. We may be taught that with age comes wisdom, but this seems low compensation for the loss of the youthful vigor that flows through our veins; and worse yet, the gradual fading away of an easier time. Even today, people desperately try to escape such an inevitable progression, seeking to restore at least the facade of youth by way of Botox or hair regrowth technologies. We are also prone to place our hopes in the science of today to reveal some way that we may escape age, by way of stem cells or repairing telomeres or 3D printing in the body or something.

People cling to this fantasy, and yearn to make it a reality. Indeed, one of the most defining characteristics of gods compared to humans is their immortality, their permanence even as we fade away.

What do we hope to gain by immortality? On Wednesday, our English class was made to practice 24 multiple choice questions of the AP test variety (I scored a 20/24, and suffice it to say, that discouraged any possibility that I may take the AP test...), on this multiple choice practice, a particular passage stood out. The passage dealt with a hypothetical society of immortal people. These people could be divided into two types of people, those who made haste to do everything they could possibly do in an infinite amount of time, and those who sat back and waited, believing with infinite time, all things were eventually possible.

Is this what we hope to gain with immortality? The time to do everything we may ever want to do with our lives? The prospect is certainly tempting, one could be a beggar and a prince, an officer of the law and a thief, a soldier and a professor. One could do all things and travel all places and still not have experienced all of what an infinite life has to offer. Is what we want as people the ability to not only experience all things, but to know that we are able to experience all things, that death has no hold or limit on us?

Friedrich Nietzsche, master of existentialism... and mustaches.

Perhaps we want to be free from the obligation to impact the world, to make a mark and be remembered. As John Green said, "You are going to die. And what's more, everything you ever make, think and experience will be washed away by the sands of time. And the sun will blow up, and no one will remember Cleopatra ruling Egypt or Watson and Crick untangling the structure of DNA or Ptolemy fathoming the stars." To look oblivion in the eye is difficult, if not impossible. When you stare into oblivion, oblivion stares back, to borrow a phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche. It stares back with an eternal gaze, and when it stares back it can strike fear into our hearts, fear of the existential meaninglessness of what we do in our lives when we face this inevitable prospect. We may look for a shadow of immortality by affecting the world in some way, leaving behind people to immortalize our memory, if not our bodies. But this too is finite, the Sun will blow up, and just as no one will remember Cleopatra and Ptolemy, so to will our mark be forgotten. We may escape this with infinite life and infinite time, we don't have to face oblivion in the eye if we do not one day have to succumb to it.

But the passage from the multiple choice also went on to reflect on what we lose when we shed mortality. We lose meaning in our actions, for everything we do, everything we could do will have already been done. We lose our freedom from the past, as those who preceded us will live forever as well, and thus we may not be free from their expectations, we may not be free to make mistakes. But immortality cuts deeper than freedom. Relationships become fleeting, countries become mere lines on a map, rather than a subject of loyalty and pride. And all along we must watch as the world around us crumbles and rebuilds, as the world as we knew it is replaced over and over until we must ask the question of how much of it actually matters.

We aspire to immortality, we want to live forever, but immortality can be a blessing and a curse, just as mortality can be.

But what is really interesting is the basic desire to be immortal. This desire to become more than mortal, to transcend, is reminiscent of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the hypothetical "overman"; one who, according to Nietzsche, transcends the ordinary man through enlightenment.  We seek to escape the inevitabilities of being human, the mortal coil that holds us back. Not only does this desire remind me of Nietzsche, it reminds me of the trans-humanism movement, a cultural and intellectual movement that seeks to transform the human condition by way of technology from multiple disciplines. Technologies such as nanotechnology or robotics, which hold the potential to transform life. The trans-humanism movement represents the desire of people to move past our limitations, just as our aspirations toward immortality reflect the same thing.

So, what is the point of immortality? Time, freedom from fear? Perhaps none of these, perhaps such aspirations, such a desire to transcend, is just the nature of man.