"Bridesicle"

Reading "Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh angered me a bit. As a woman going to Wellesley College, I have been developing strong feminist views recently and I felt as though "Bridesicle," in many ways, went against feminism.

First of all, the setting of the story enraged me. The fact that women who have died, from 125~100 years ago up till recently, are stored in what seems like a "bride market" for the men makes women seem like objects sold at a store. One question that came up to my mind was why it would be women and not men in these "bridesicles." Perhaps there is a deficit in the women population but in comparing the future and the past, such setting surprised me especially since women have been gaining more voice and power overtime. In the story, however, it seems as though, with the establishments of these "bridesicles," time and history has taken its step backwards. Once again, women, though lifeless, are placed into bride markets for men to shop for.

Another reason why I was enraged was because of the requests the men made to the protagonist, Mira, in exchange for their offer of reviving her. The first man seemed to ask Mira for sexual favors. For example, he asks, "If I revived you, what sorts of things would you do to me?" The second man, Lycan, seems like a nice man who keeps visiting her to have conversations but at the end, doesn't have the money to revive her. Lastly, the third man who visits Mira, claiming to be Lycan's grandson, asks her for a "platonic" marriage in which she would carry he and his real wife's child and serve as the baby's caretaker. Overall, it seemed as though the women in in the bridesicles didn't have much say in their desires since it is the men who have the advantage because they are the ones offering them a chance to live again.

Overall, I felt as though the story was swayed towards a more masculine perspective than a feminine one.

"A Habit of Waste"

These are the latitudes of the ex-colonised,
of degradation still unmollified,
imported managers, styles in art,
second-hand subsistence of the spirit,
the habit of waste,
mayhem committed on the personality,
and everywhere the wrecked or scuttled mind.
Scholars, more brilliant than I could hope to be,
advised that if I valued poetry,
I should eschew all sociology.

Slade Hopkinson, from
'The Madwoman of Papine: Two Cartoons with Captions'


In the prefatory note of his series of poems, "The Madwoman of Papine" (1976), Slade Hopkinson wrote that the poems, especially the title poem, represent "the effects of society on the individual psyche" (from Anglophone Caribbean poetry, 1970-2001 by Emily Allen Williams).


By beginning the story, "A Habit of Waste," by the poem, it seems as though Nalo Hopkinson is trying to imply the same idea about the effects of society, or "sociology," on the individual. 


By reading "A Habit of Waste," I really came to question the idea of individuality and what it really means to be an individual. As Slade Hopkinson writes at the end of his poem, 

Scholars, more brilliant than I could hope to be,

advised that if I valued poetry,

I should eschew all sociology.

He seems to be implying the fact that high forms of art and writing tend to value the aesthetics more than content. In other words, Hopkinson, as a poet, addresses the fact that he feels discouraged to reference to the problematic aspects society and reality when writing a poem, what is supposed to be an aesthetically pleasing form of writing.

Similarly, in "A Habit of Waste," Cynthia and many others living in her society, view their bodies in a limited scope where everything has to be beautiful. They keep perfecting and changing their bodies to fit what they believe as the ideal images of their bodies.

However, this is where I came to question, "Then what about the individual and individuality?" Going back to the poem, shouldn't forms of art be ways in which one could express his or herself? Similarly, shouldn't one's unique physical characteristics be ways to express an individual identity? If poems "eschew[ed] all sociology" and if people altered their bodies, would that really bring individual satisfaction?

Upon asking myself this question, I also ran into another one. Say that one changes his or her body to gain individual satisfaction through other people's admirations. But is that true individual satisfaction? Wouldn't a true form of individual satisfaction be when one is happy with his or her original body? What he or she began as?

Personally, I believe the true beauty resides in imperfections. Art is more beautiful because it's not always perfect; the small flaws show history, styles, and trends of the era and the artist. Similarly, imperfections in physical characteristics are beautiful. An old woman's wrinkled face depicts the difficulties she went through in her life and a child's scar might hold a special memory. 

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - "Pathos"

Jill Galvan stated in his critical essay, "Entering the Post-human Collective in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?":

"...whether we accept it unquestioningly or rebel against it, technology, in the hands of the powers that can be, has acquired not simply a life of its own, but a life that substantially infiltrates our lives, changing our character in subtle yet meaningful ways. If we succumb unwittingly--or, worse, indifferently--to the totalitarian mechanization of our world, we risk becoming androids ourselves, reduced to 'humans of mere use--men made into machines' (187)." (414)

Though the main conflict in Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, arises between humans and androids, I believe it is also interesting to view their conflict in a more general term as the integration of humans and technology/mechanism. In other worlds, how does the integration of mechanisms generate new problems for us, human beings?

One of the examples of human reliance on mechanisms is Iran Deckard's strong attachment to the mood organ, which enables her to control her mood. However, as seen in the quote, we see that her strong dependence on the mood organ has allowed its mechanism to, in a way, control her instead.

Rick Deckard says to his wife:

“I took a test, one question, and verified it; I've begun to empathize with androids, and look what that means. You said it this morning yourself. 'Those poor andys.' So you know what I'm talking about. That's why I bought the goat. I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then my means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lost a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth―” 
― (174-175) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick


Iran, from the beginning of the novel, has always felt "depressed." She sets her mood organ to "despair" (5) at certain times because she believes that is "a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything" (6). But at the beginning, Rick believes that his wife is able to "dial [her] way out" (6) by "program[ming] an automatic resetting" (6). However, at the end, as seen in the quote above, he realizes  that if not for the machine's automatic resetting, Iran would stay in depression forever for she has become "infiltrate[d]" by the mechanics of the mood organ; she simply "[doesn't] care" anymore. The mood organ, for Iran, has become like a drug where she has lost her ability to dial back to "hope" as well as her "sense of worth." Therefore, the mood organ has overridden Iran's confidence in her existence; machine has taken over human worth.


Another important concept seen through the quote above is the relationship between "empathy" and "apathy." Though both words are from the same root--"pathos," an emotion of sympathetic pity (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)-- they have complete opposite meanings. Empathy means "an inclination to think or feel alike" while apathy means "lack of feeling or emotion" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). It is interesting to see how for Rick, the interactions with the androids have allowed him to feel "empathy" towards androids which are advanced forms of technology, while for Iran, interactions with the mood organ, another form of technology, have disabled her ability to have feelings or emotions at all. In a different point of view, however, while Iran does feel a sentiment of detachment for the world she lives in due to the growing effects of the mood organ on her life, she also feels strongly attached and dependent on the mood organ itself, creating some kind of a relationship between her and the machine.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, therefore, introduces a new perspective on technology where feelings and emotions become involved. As Galvan said, "to deny technology'spervasive role in our existence means, then, to deny reality--the reality of a world in which we are advancingly imbricated in a mechanical presence. Only by recognizing how it has encroached upon our understanding of "life" can we come to full terms with the technologies we have produced" (414). As seen in the passage, it seems that Galvan is indicating our need to "blast the illusion of an exclusive and empathic community of humans," and recognize it as "one compromised by the technologies with which they share the Earth" (414). In an essence, he tells us to include technology in our emotional spectrum and expand our empathy for technology and machinery for that is the way in which we could "[shape] one another's existence" (414), thereby solving the problem for some, like Iran, of "hav[ing] no worth."