Week 3 Popular Media Review




Big Hero 6 is one of my favorite Disney movies. It was funny and heartwarming animated superhero movie. It revolves around Hiro, a 14-year-old robotics genius who lives in a futuristic city. Early in the movie, his brother dies, and with him Hiro’s dream of attending college early. However, Hiro find his brother’s inflatable health care robot, Baymax. Throughout the film, Baymax displays many human emotions: confusion, concern, love, etc. Alongside Baymax and some of his brother’s friends, Hiro is able to save the day. Throughout his journey, he struggles with the loss of his brother and (spoiler alert) eventually the loss of Baymax.

In chapter seven, Turkle ponders whether children will eventually feel more empathy for their robot companions than even their family. I instantly thought of Big Hero 6. I’m not arguing that Hiro cared more about Baymax than his brother. Rather, I think that he used Baymax as a coping mechanism after his brother’s death. Because his brother had invented Baymax, Hiro’s interactions with the robot allowed him to feel close to his brother again. I don’t know whether people will ever feel more empathy for robots than humans, hopefully this won’t be the case. But this movie demonstrated that adolescents have a great capacity to feel empathy for a robot. Even as I watched the movie, I teared up when Baymax sacrificed himself. I felt connected to a robot within an animated movie.

As robots become more prevalent, I think that giving them human qualities and connecting to them emotionally will be inevitable. I don’t think it’s reasonable that adults try to prevent adolescents from making these connections. Even nowadays, children and teens feel connected to toys, video games, etc. What will be imperative, however, is that we don’t allow robots or other online connections to replace genuine human interaction. I’m sure it’ll be increasingly difficult to find where that line is and how to handle those situations, as there’s concern that ‘taking away’ the robot/toy/game could lead to rebellion and a distancing away from parents. Perhaps households would need to create some sort of rule that for every hour their child spends with a robot/toy/game, they need to spend another hour with family or friends. This is simply conjecture, I don’t know how this would play out, or if there are any other ways to increase human interaction without punishing a teenager for spending time online.


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