Talking Trains, Planes and Automobiles: Machine Anthropomorphism in Children’s Fiction

Machine anthropomorphism is the reification of technology in representation, giving machines human features, qualities, and motivations. This study aims to investigate the origins and functions of machine anthropomorphism and the impact that it has on readers in a technic society as part of an ideological apparatus. It looks at how machine anthropomorphism creates a social imaginaire for technology and how animist representations of machines have shifted from adult culture to children’s fiction. Working from the premise that children identify with childlike machines such as Thomas the Tank Engine this study examines how the relationships between machines and humans are used to model relationships between children and adults. These fall into three modes of representation: the promethean machine, the fraternal machine, and the dominant machine. Each mode functions as an ideological apparatus to either support the promethean ideology, provide a counter discourse, or turn it on its head completely. The case studies focus on promethean representations in The Railway Series/Thomas and Friends and Bob the Builder; on fraternal representations in Ivor the Engine and WALL·E; and on reverse promethean representations in The Transformers franchise and Pixar’s Cars films. Machine anthropomorphism is an important mode of representation not only in children’s entertainment but increasingly in adult culture as well, functioning as part of an ideological apparatus to reproduce consumer power in a post-technic society. As technology becomes more human-like machine anthropomorphism functions to create a new social imaginaire, preparing society for the technical disruption of increased automation, robotics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence.

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10454/19772

Type

Thesis

Qualification name

PhD