This is a guest post by Colleen Martell.
Set in alternate-present London, the world of AMC’s Humans looks just like ours, except that humans employ high-functioning robots called “Synths” to do all kinds of work for them, including cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, and healthcare. For an additional fee, Synths are even made available for sex.
The show’s drama centers on a small group of rogue Synths who were developed (by whom? why?) with human feelings and independent thinking. In the first episode we learn that these “corrupted” Synths and a human ally were caught in an escape attempt: Fred (Sope Dirisu) is taken in for testing; one female is wiped clean, re-programmed, and later purchased by a family who names her “Anita” (Gemma Chan); and Niska (Emily Berrington) is placed in a brothel, very much still capable of feeling and thinking. Two of their compatriots, human Leo (Colin Morgan) and his Synth Max (Ivanno Jeremiah), are still on the loose, plotting to locate and free the others.
The question at the heart of this U.K.-U.S. hybrid miniseries is, what does it mean to be human? Through the show’s emphasis on intimate, domestic life, this becomes a decidedly gendered question. Among the four concurrent storylines, Anita’s and Niska’s stories stick out to me as the most expressly concerned with gender, power, and technology. In a parallel present in which traditionally gendered roles like housekeeper, cook, nurturer, and prostitute are taken up by hyper-productive female robots, what does it mean to be a human woman? Or more specifically: what is a mother? A sex worker? A wife? And what is the relationship between female Synths and human women–one of solidarity or antagonism?
Anita’s storyline primarily takes place in the home. Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill) purchases a female Synth while his wife Laura (Katherine Parkinson) is away for work. He was apparently struggling to maintain the household and their three children alone for a few days. This is very much against Laura’s wishes, and her relationship with Anita is predictably hostile. For good reason. Anita usurps Laura’s place in the family: Joe and Laura’s daughter Sophie (Pixie Davies) comes downstairs one morning to find the table set and covered in food and drink. “Is it a party?!,” she asks. No, Joe replies: “This is what breakfast is supposed to be like.” But Laura also seems to be the only one who notices Anita’s less-than-robotic behavior, suggesting that Anita was not, in fact, successfully re-programmed and does indeed still feel and think on her own. Anita patronizes and toys with Laura, and becomes unusually attached to Sophie.
If Laura is a “shit mother” (her words) because she isn’t constantly emotionally available to her children, because she doesn’t make three meals a day or do the whole family’s cleaning and ironing, then the remedy for her failure in the world of Humans is to add a non-conscious, non-sentient being to the family to do all of this work. Sharing the household labor does not seem to be an option; people prefer instead to displace this emotional and physical labor onto others.
Not only does the show encourage us to feel with the never-good-enough mother; Humans simultaneously poses some very Donna Haraway-esque questions about Anita, the machine. Laura constantly fires criticisms and insults at Anita: “You’re just a stupid machine, aren’t you?” Anita complies, “Yes, Laura.” Laura insists on referring to Anita as “it” and threatening Anita, “I’m watching you.” How can humans treat machines so poorly if they are at the same time so physically, intellectually, and/or emotionally dependent on them? As the show progresses, there are hints that some seemingly human individuals, like Leo, are also part robot, which keeps pushing viewers to ponder the boundaries between “human” and “machine.”
The Synth brothel also raises interesting questions about gender and technology. Weeks of pretending not to feel while locked in a windowless room serving clients against her will push Niska over the edge. When a male client wants Niska to act young and scared, Niska chokes him (to death?), uses his human hand to open the door to her room, and walks out in a trench coat. Picking up a knife on her way out the door, Niska presses it into her madam’s throat. “Everything your men do to us, they want to do to you,” she tells her before walking out in defiant liberation.
It’s hard not to thrill at Niska’s rebellion, particularly because we know that she can feel and has been placed in the brothel against her will. But should Niska’s madam, a human woman, feel solidarity with the non-feeling female Synths she owns? Does displacing violent sexual fantasies onto non-feeling robots liberate human women from similar fates (and do human women want to be liberated from sex work?)? Is it ethical to hold female robots in captivity as sex workers, with doors that only unlock by human hands, whether or not they can feel?
Thus far, the show offers more questions than answers, but like all good science fiction, the questions are important ones. They are also old questions, concerns about household labor, child-rearing, and sex work that feminists have been exploring for generations. As a result, Humans makes the important point that while we may be technologically advancing, there is still much work to be done when it comes to social issues like gender equality.
Recommended reading: Donna Haraway’s, “A Cyborg Manifesto”
Colleen Martell is a writer and gender consultant based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She might be a cyborg. Find her on twitter at @elsiematz.
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