This blog is created by students from Clemson University's spring 2009 course Women's Studies 459 - "Building Bodies: Women's Bodies in Theory and Practice." This class explores the construction of bodies from various methodological perspectives, focusing on five specific areas: theories of bodies; bodies and genders and sexes; “misbehaving” bodies; politics of bodies; and constructing bodies. We welcome comments and contributions to our posts and discussions.

19 February 2009

Will Smith and Mechanized Body

This picture takes me back to two of our discussions.  The first is the idea of the mechanized body and the other of organ donation.  even though the picture does not represent an organ donation, it does show the way bodies are put back together on a whim.  The picture shows Will's arm from the movie I, Robot where he has a robot arm.  He got the arm because he lost his trying to save a young girl.  In the movie, the robot chooses to save him because he has a higher chance of survival than the girl in the movie.  Surival becomes just a term in the movie because in saving him, the robot causes him to lose his arm and he must get another from a robot.  This thus makes his body parts and it also mechanizes him.  He becomes like a machine.  The part of him that is most machine is barely considered a part of him and he must hide the secret forever.  In this case, his donor, though not of organs, is the thing he hates the most.  Very interesting.

1 comment:

  1. In one of our readings a few classes ago, we talked about how the body starts out fragmented. It seems that in the event that you are a recipient or a donor of an organ the body ends fragmented as well...
    I don't really have much more to say, that was just an observation that I made!

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