+J.M.J.+
Once You've Had Mecha…
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
I'm handing the mike over to David for a little while, not to say that Joe isn't lingering in the shadows. This chapter is for "Ermite", the most thought-provoking new "A.I." fic writer (glad to have your wonderfully philosophical fics with us to balance out all the lascivious Joe fics!).
Disclaimer:
See chapter one (Chapter 4 already, and I thought this would be a one shot deal)
Chapter 4: …You Won't See the World the Same Way…Again
One theme in the film that cropped up, or one way I've interpreted it is this: It's all about learning to accept your own differences and learning that you don't have to change who or what you are to be loved and be lovable. David learns the dark side of human love when Martin returns home; people are going to argue with me that jealousy is not a part of love, but if you don't know jealousy, how can you really know love? It's a perfectly normal and at times a good thing to want to have the person you love all to yourself. It's just what you do with that jealousy that can be dangerous (i.e. smashing your identical twin in the face with a table lamp). Henry is perfectly right in saying that if David knows how to love, it's logical that he knows how to hate, but David's hate starts out as something very innocent, child-like dislike of things. It isn't until Martin shows up that our little guy starts to learn a less innocent form of this emotion. And he also learns to dislike what he is from Monica's apparent setting him aside ("Mommy will love a real boy"). (She should have consulted some robo-psychologist to help David make the transition from being an only child to having a brother…but then we wouldn't have this story…)
I happen to have, like David and like the rest of us each in our own way to a greater or lesser degree, a few things that set me apart from the rest of Orgakind. My parents chose an alternate means of educating me, which was probably a wise course of action in the long run: when I was twelve, I was diagnosed with dyscalculia (severe difficulties with mathematics) and fine motor coordination problems which stemmed from a possible mild case of dyslexia. The diagnosis has since been changed to Asperger's Syndrome, which explains some of my at times "odd" behavior: a tendency toward being a happy loner, and toward having odd fixations on different subjects (in the past it's been humpbacked whales, Adelie penguins, opera, the King Arthur legends, etc.) almost to the exclusion of other, more practical things; with the sheer number of fanfics I've written based on one particular movie, I lead you to figure out my current fixation. To put it in a nutshell, AS is a clinical term for the absent-minded professor behavior; Dr. Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician who first identified the behavioral pattern now named for him, called the three and four year old kids he worked with who manifested this condition his "little professors" since they were often incredibly smart, often far above average in their intellectual development, but they tended to be off in their own little intellectual orbit, not really connecting much with other people. It was probably just as well that I was home taught, since kids with Asperger's tend not to do well in traditional class settings: they're often labeled disruptive, not in the classic sense of being rough/throwing things, et. al., but in a diametric opposite sense: they're almost too smart. As an example, if they get called on to give an answer, they often come out with a big, long monologue on the topic. Often they get put in the class with the troublemakers, and since kids with Asperger's have a tendency toward being very sensitive and having a hard time defending themselves properly, they get into worse bad trouble—think of the kids by the pool poking at David…
I'm often tempted to compare Mecha behavior with the behavior of people with Asperger's Syndrome: they both often tend toward slightly impassive facial expressions, their voice tend to lack a little naturalness; and in his case David tends to fixate on the Blue Fairy (I suppose we can argue that Joe has a one-track mind as well, but for a much different reason, heh, heh, heh.)
To be utterly honest, it was David's story that drew me to this movie. I remember a week before the film premiered, reading an interview which Haley Joel had done, in which he described David's journey to come to terms with his nature, and the scenario reminded me of my own story, my own difficulties in accepting myself as I am. Like David wanting to be "real", I wanted to be like everyone else. The term "learning disability" felt like a stigma. At the age of eleven, I even endured the trials of the Flesh Fair when a 12 year old female twice my size and two other girls pinned me to a telephone pole and tried to bash my head in with a rock bigger than my head (I wonder now if my principle tormenter might not be Lord Johnson-Johnson's daughter: she looked like a young, female version of Brendan Gleeson, and she had the same last name as a certain Mecha-basher) because I was home-taught and because I was brainy.
I don't have to tell you, readers, that Joe's all-too-brief story has me distracted in the worst way possible. Besides my being hormonal, there's another, deeper reason for this: I'm afraid to admit that I'm very like David. When I took the "Which 'A.I.' character are You?" challenge (available through Laurie E. Smith's site "Clear and Haunting Visions"), it did not surprise me in the least that I got David. We're both innocent, inexperienced, vulnerable, sensitive, sweet-natured (well, I am when I'm not writing Road to Perdition fanfics!), and we just want to be loved unconditionally, for who we are, not what we can do (I often get the feeling Joe wants that sort of treatment as well). I've had a lot of kids poking cake servers at me/Flesh Fair goons after me: crass employers, snitty co-workers, patronizing people who think that what I've got can be cured through sheer will power alone. I'm still looking for a strong hand to grab onto when I feel threatened (Hey, Joe, where'd yah go?). I've dealt with professionals who were just as NON-helpful as Dr. Hobby (my first therapist: at the risk of sounding like I'm assassinating her character, she was a total dud and my sessions with her left me more screwed up than I was). But I lucked out and found the Specialist who can help me come to terms with what I am (Judy, my current therapist; if you're reading this, THANKS!).
But calling David's story a parable of mine is never that simple. I think we're all like David, we're all looking for love and going in the wrong direction as we look for it, but as soon as we realize that we can love and be loved as who we are, right now, we'll all be much happier. We all have an inner David who needs to be let out to play a little more often. Granted, this step makes us more vulnerable, but it is this vulnerability that makes us better lovers, just as Joe becomes a better creature, a better lover even, when he makes David's quest his own journey instead of continuing his own flight for safety. On that note, it is always two classes of people who are the most vulnerable: the very innocent and the very wicked, who end up being destroyed by the powers that be who think they know right from wrong, but who can't see the moral forest for the legal trees.
Looking for love in all the wrong places…David looking for the Blue Fairy, Hobby seeking to recreate his lost son, Henry bringing David home to Monica as a means to tide her over in case the worst should happen to Martin, Patricia looking for solace in Joe's arms: I can't help noting the irony in Joe's line to her "You deserve much better in your life". The quest for love can bring us to some weird places, but wherever it takes us, we are better for having made the journey. Like the title of one of my favorite fanfics on here, "Love Makes You Real".
I have not been the same person since I saw this movie. As of this writing, I've watched it seven times. I plan to make it a monthly ritual. Each time I watch it, I notice something I didn't notice before, which is what Spielberg said he set out to do, according to one recent interview. And each time I watch it, I realize just how much like David I am, how I've chased after the Blue Fairy in my own way, thinking I could change what I thought was wrong with myself. I realized, after the first time I watched "A.I.", that if David could have had his wish come true, if he could have become a "real" boy, that would have lost the very thing that made him "special and unique". And I realized that, if there was a magic bullet that could take away my quirks, that it would destroy one of the things that has made me who I am and in that case, it might make it impossible for me to love and be loved as I have learned how: to be able to see past a person's flaws and see them as they really are. I just hope I can find someone who, like Joe, can see me as an attractive individual, regardless of my quirks
More musings someday…