Читать книгу Bent Street 4.1 - Tiffany Jones - Страница 16

There is a scene in the Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy 2 where Yondu, a space pirate with blue skin, stands at a window and zips his fly while pitching an anxious stare into the distance. It’s snowing outside. Behind him, several robot courtesans (aka Love Bots *employed* at the Iron Lotus brothel on the red-light planet Contraxia) wander past. One is sitting on a bed twirling her hair. She looks sad. Yondu turns to watch with vague disgust as she manipulates the panel on the side of her head and switches herself off, seemingly for a post-coital rest.

The Love Bots of Contraxia are styled like femme rockstars, albeit somewhat depressed rockstars with yellowy skin—clearly dressed to entertain the parade of uber-masc space Ravagers who come to Contraxia for ‘time out’. The Love Bots are all leather corsets, shiny neck collars, thigh high boots, green lipstick and thick mascara. They each hold the same absent expression.

It strikes me that the Love Bots of Contraxia epitomise contemporary images of sex robots. In recent years the media has regularly baited us with headlines inferring the imminent possibility that human-like androids created for sex and driven by artificial intelligence will soon be commonplace. The UK Mirror recently ran with the headline “Lifelike sex robots that ‘have a heartbeat’ and ‘breathe’ could go on sale this year” (Best, 2020). Sex robots, sometimes referred to as sex bots, erotic bots or erbots, sit on a bizarrely fine line between science fiction, reality, and voyeurism that is both fascinating and ethically disturbing. Perhaps most disturbing is that common media depictions of sex bots draw on the darkest imagery of sex work—the bots are essentially positioned as sex slaves (or at best, a pimped-up Stepford Wife). Like the Love Bots of Contraxia, the sex bots we are currently being promised are almost always styled to engage the stereotype of cisgender, heterosexual male desire—white skinned Barbie dolls with large breasts and passive, wide-eyed stares. Always available for sex.