The Uncanny - Freud
Uncanny valley
-1970 -robots and other inanimate objects looking too close to human beings and passing the point where they become revolting to us
Examples of uncanny
-mixture of familiar/ unfamiliar -past intruding on present (deja vu) -familiar made strange -doubles or strange repetitions
Jentsh
Freuds un-please uncanny definitions: -intellectual uncertainty -doubts, really alive
Uncanny
Partaking of a supernatural character, mysterious, weird, uncomfortably strange or unfamiliar
Primitive Beliefs
animism doubles
Complexes
castration complex
heimlich
homely
The uncanny becomes less of a lost or suppressed human nature...
more product of technical innovation
Castration complex:
penis seen as symbol of power and worth, but one that can be removed (boy sees that girl does not have penis and thinks she did something wrong to have it removed so he is now afraid of father)
Freud was interested in...
people suffering from mechanical impulses to repeat painful memories
heimlich and unheimlich
secret, hidden
Freud's thesis
secretly familiar, undergone repression and returned from it -infinite complexes -primitive beliefs
technology can produce uncanny feelings because...
split between familiar and unfamiliar
unheimlich
strange, unfamiliar
the uncanny in many ways is a
technological phenomenon of shifts and disturbances of technical innovation
Main theme:
theme of the Sandman: who tears out children's eyes (fear of going blind is substitute of being castrated)