Issue #302: The Error of Perfection in Pluto
Issue #302: The Error of Perfection in Pluto
Over the past week, I have driven across the United States’ east coast to Florida for a combination of so-called Thanksgiving holiday family visiting and a hardcore festival, Hellshine Fest. Inspired by my forbearers, I even did a one pager zine for the fest’s first day. It’s kind of a “you had to be there” thing, so I’m not going to distribute it online. But here’s a little snippet:
Though you may not want it, paid subscribers are entitled to a copy. If you are one of my deeply appreciated financial supporters, please reply to this with your mailing address and I’ll get one out to you in due course.
There is some news from Hellshine Fest I feel is appropriate for the newsletter itself, and that’s a review of something essential: band banners. More on that below.
I also continue my weekly writing about Pluto with a bit of a lighter read this time, relatively speaking. If you have been waiting for a Pluto essay that doesn’t use the word “jouissance,” this is your moment. However, I hope those of you following the Pluto essays week to week see how “Episode 4” pays off and reinforces a lot of what I have discussed in the previous newsletters.
If you are off work this week, enjoy it. Maybe watch Pluto.
The Banners of Hellshine Fest
Banners are huge in hardcore music right now. Throughout the years, I’ve seen all kinds. Paper, cloth, tarp, projections onto walls. But right now I feel like I see a banner at every show. I dig it. Bands can show off some of their art or art from a friend. It’s utilitarian — a band doesn’t have to introduce themselves if their name is flying in huge stylized letters behind them.
There’s also a long history of hc banners. There’s the Underdog banner with a smirking face that has been borrowed for newer bands like New Brigade and Burning Lord:
There’s also the infamous Slapshot banner heist from more recent history.
Systematic Death also had a fantastic banner a couple weeks ago hand painted by Masato at the show:
Real DIY shit.
But not everyone is a fan. In an unpublished one question interview segment for a non-existent Hellshine Fest day two one pager, I asked members of Protocol if they would ever have a banner — they told me no. They don’t like banners. But I do.
In Tampa, FL over the weekend, the inaugural Hellshine Fest had a lot of banners. I expected great bands playing great sets, but the banner representation was diverse and sometimes creative.
Across the two days, I saw at least 7 “banners”:
The Hellshine Fest banner
Heaven’s Gate
Iron Lung
No Uniform
80HD
Brain Tourniquet
Fugitive
The Hellshine Fest banner, pictured above, was simple and descriptive. Hellshine has a nice logo. Didn’t get a pic of the Heaven’s Gate banner either, but it was much the same. I think they used this logo:
It’s got some nice curvature to the letters and is non-uniform, the two As look different for instance. That’s much cooler than just using a font.
The Iron Lung banner was also strong:
Logo? Check. Pair of hands? Check. Vertical name makes good use of the large image. Iron Lung always has cool art.
No Uniform played in front of a jumpsuit with their logo on it, which I am counting as a banner. It was also good advertising, this dude named Ricky bought it before the end of the fest:
I’ve been a long time admirer of the 80HD banner, which they have been using since at least the beginning of the year:
An artist named Wombat drew it who I very unexpectedly met in Tallahassee many years ago. This really showcases the great opportunity to let a friend get some shine. Non-printed hand drawn is always going to be better than something screenprinted or otherwise mechanically produced.
The Brain Tourniquet “banner” was a work of genius:
What, you can’t see it? Computer, enhance:
Yeah, they put a sticker on the Hellshine Fest banner. Dope shit.
Finally, the Fugitive banner:
It cast a big shadow… because it was the biggest banner of the weekend.
These won’t be the last banners I’ll see, I’m sure. And you can bet if they’re cool, I’ll write about them.
“A brain capable of error. That’s what it means to have reached perfection”: The Reach and Grasp of Professor Tenma in Pluto “Episode 4”
The Greatest Voice Actor the World Has Ever Seen
Keith David, ladies and gentleman. I had no idea Professor Tenma would be played by him in the English voice track (Eizou Tsuda is his Japanese voice actor). David is one of my favorite voice actors. He’s a great screen actor too, with roles in The Thing (1982), Platoon (1986), and They Live (1988) among many others. The role where he first came to my attention as a kid was Gargoyles (1994), where he played Goliath — that was a voice role.
Here, he is menacing. He is the perfect choice for Professor Tenma, who is more like Gendo Ikari in Pluto than his Tetsuwan Atom equivalent. Tenma’s withdrawal from public life coincides with the foreboding prophecy he delivers to Professor Hoffman and Ronald Newton-Howard, “Stop trying to make robots more human. Give it up, or something terrible will happen.”
This episode presents a wide range of provocations related to the dividing line between human and robot, beginning with the bright certainty of Ochanomizu and ending with the warnings of Tenma. It also deals with questions of fatherhood, exploring briefly the kinship among Tenma, Professor Abullah, and the unnamed man who Gesicht meets during the 39th Central Asian War — as well as the question of progress. There’s also the various plot progression in this episode, involving Darius XIV, Adolf, and a litany of other characters — some newly introduced but never really present in the text. Jonathan Lethem writes about the pruning of the bush of detective stories in Motherless Brooklyn (1999):
Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detective stories always have too many characters anyway. And characters mentioned early on but never sighted, just lingering offstage, take on an awful portentous quality. Better to have them gone.
Poor Newton-Howard to have suffered such a fate, even as his death changes Epsilon’s disposition.
Death by Public Opinion
There aren’t too many new ideas introduced in “Episode 4,” but the episode rapidly develops many of the ideas I’ve been discussing over the past three weeks. Take Adolf and his “radical anti-robot group,” for instance. They are dedicated to ensuring public opinion turns against Gesicht and other robots, to the point of being willing to kill Adolf.
In “Episode 3,” the group’s leaders showed their fear-mongering pundits on TV “pushing the ‘dangerous robots’ narrative.” “Episode 4” emphatically links the anti-robot propaganda with the misinformation from the United States of Thracia that led to the 39th Central Asian War, following the real historical facts of the Iraq War.
Besides the plot function of the anti-robot group, they serve the purpose of making this connection. The media is fallible and can be used to the end of misleading, whether it is to justify a war or stoke fear that leads to social exclusion.
The episode also introduces the Kara-Tepa Prison, a prison facility in Persia with some immediate similarities to Abu Ghraib. While it remains to be seen whether or not torture will be a plot point in Pluto, Tracia maintaining a prison for “war criminals” is similar to the U.S. use of Abu Ghraib for “enhanced interrogation.”
More important for Pluto’s plot, though, is the appearance of Tenma and the brief gloss of the car crash that killed his son, Tobio, and led to the creation of Atom. His “Tenma Chip,” made after his departure from Japan’s Ministry of Science and his meeting with Hoffman and Newton-Howard at Kimberley, may be what powers Pluto. This opens up a whole host of questions, but the one I am most curious about (having forgotten what happens in the manga…) is: did Abullah and Tenma collaborate on Pluto, Abullah making the body and Tenma making the brain? Or is the identity of “Dr. Goji” someone other than Abullah?
Either way, Tenma’s ideas about computerized brains and artificial intelligence further bolster the reading of Pluto as a work dealing with the negativity crucial to human subjectivity.
Negativity and “a brain capable of error”
Tenma presents an opposite view of Ochanomizu. Ochanomizu never gets to state his case to Tenma directly, though, instead speaking, but someone claiming to be “Goji” — a robot who seems to be controlled by Abullah. Ochanomizu explains in detail, for the first time, the preventative measures in place to stop robots from killing humans:
AI was developed with build-in systems to keep humans safe. We left none of it to chance. I can promise you that.
Later, Tenma gives an even more elaborate description:
Thanks to Article 13 of the Robot Laws, all robots re equipped with a control device that dampens certain extreme emotions. Having not known those deep emotions, their brains are incomplete.
By this logic, then, the international robot laws don’t prevent robots from killing, but actually keep their brains “incomplete,” keeping them separate from humans. Tenma seems to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth to Ochanomizu and, later, Hoffman and Newton-Howard. Even as Tenma suggests “something terrible will happen” as a result of making robots more human, he aspires to create “the greatest robot the world has ever seen.”
One may also want to read Ochanomizu’s ideas about robots against their grain. With all of his compassion, his deep sadness at the death of the robot dog, his kindness to his robot guard Yujiro, his tender attitudes toward Atom and Uran that put them right alongside his grandchildren, Ochanomizu does not believe robots can become human. He says to “Goji,” “Even when they’re almost us, robots will never kill humans!” Almost us, the “almost” representing the ever-present and supposedly uncrossable gulf that will separate robots from humans, imposed by the International Robot laws — despite knowing about the exception of Brau, the robot who kills with a perfect AI. Ochanomizuo concedes, however, that robots can seek revenge. “Goji” says, “if I can seek revenge, why not murder?”
As benevolent as Ochanomizu may appear, there is a core of paternalism in his view that holds robots as definitively distinct from human beings. Tenma, on the other hand, believes that robots and humans can become alike, but knows the outcome is undesirable. Nonetheless, he pursues it anyway, dedicated to the advancement of science or self-satisfaction of accomplishing a challenging goal.
Tenma’s belief that Atom is a failure is because Atom’s brain is impossible to error, thus imperfect, despite the ostensible contradiction. A perfect brain, says Tenma, is “capable of error.” At the very least, it’s obvious how such a brain bears a strong resemblance to a human one. Though I won’t rehash my theoretical argument from last week, hopefully the connection is clear. An error, as a mistake in thought that involves an absence rather than some kind of present knowledge, is a negative rather than positive thought process. The error usually results from something missing — information, experience, memory, etc.
Whether Pluto’s AI is “perfect,” either by resemblance to Brau’s or the criteria of Tenma, remains to be seen. But Tenma and Abullah have another piece of shared background that could lead to their collaboration on the making of Pluto.
Three Sons
Though Abullah is only in the episode briefly, “Episode 4” offers a crucial flashback to the tragedy he suffers in the course of the 39th Central Asian War. His wife, Fatima, and son, Murat, die in the ruins of their home pummeled by bombs. Fatima seems to be human, but Murat is a robot.
Abullah isn’t the only father to have lost a son in Pluto. Tenma’s son Tobio — a human — dies in a car accident briefly shown in this episode. The revelation of these details assume the viewer has some knowledge of the backstory of Tetsuwan Atom, where the same tragedy leads to Tenma creating Atom in Tobio’s image. In Pluto, Tenma calls Atom Tobio at first, in a dream sequence that may suggest Gesicht and his wife Helena were also present when Atom took his first steps — though I’m not sure that’s actually the case.
Finally, there’s also the unnamed man Gesicht meets during his service in the 39th Central Asian War, the one who teaches Gesicht the meaning of despair. While Abullah’s memory of his son is clearly that — recalled by Abullah as he awaits the recovery of the AI powering “Goji” — the flashes of Tenma’s past with Tobio and Atom along with the flash of the unnamed Persian man all appear to be a dream or memory of Gesicht hallucinated while his AI is overloading after passing out at the airport.
Aside from being a core motivation for many of the characters, fatherhood is also crucial to the symbolic logic of the show as I discussed regarding “Episode 2.” The aspiration toward godhood — and the will to supplant the cisgender woman (the symbolic logic here excluding transness) — of figures like Tenma motivates them to create life. But Tenma also feels himself falling short as he tells Ochanomizu, “Computerized brains are not something a man creates1.” To take creation out of the equation positions the brain — computerized or biological — as an organic emergence rather than a creation of man, woman, or any person or agency.
In my reading, Gesicht’s recollections of Tenma don’t come from from his actually having been there, but his potential shared trauma with Tenma, Abullah, and the unnamed Persian man. Gesicht’s profound loss may be precisely that which has been erased from his memory, along with his killing of Adolf’s brother, but even the erasure of a memory doesn’t erase its mark.
So-Called Progress
When Gesicht discusses his new dream — actually a transmission from the dying Atom — with Hoffman, Hoffman makes a crack about “emotional trash bins.” Gesicht tells him he hasn’t revisited the dream and keeps it circumscribed to the trash bin to which Hoffman replies:
I was just thinking about how humans put unpleasant thoughts in our emotional trash bins, though it’s not nearly as foolproof.
Of course, all Pluto has shown is that the evacuation, erasure, destruction, or sequestration of robot memories is far from foolproof. One might choose to bear their memories as a redemptive punishment, like North No.2. Or, in Gesicht’s case, memories endure despite their erasure.
The exceptional robots that populate Pluto, including Pluto himself, seem to defy the rules or received wisdom of robotics again and again. Pluto is capable of killing humans; but perhaps rather than not being subject to the limitations imposed by the International Robot Laws, he circumvents them by overloading his system, a state which makes “every part of him … [controlled] by righteous hatred.” The implication of Gesicht’s erased memories, Adolf’s certainty that Gesicht killed his brother, and Atom’s haunting question to Gesicht, “are you the one who murdered me, Detective,” is that Gesicht’s erased act of murder was also fueled by a “righteous hatred.”
If overloading righteous hatred is the manner by which the perfect AI can defy the restrictions imposed upon it, one might also consider who among Gesicht, Pluto, Brau, and Atom are “most advanced.” Or, furthermore, by what criteria does one judge advancement? Robots are iterated upon, but humans evolve, whether their evolved state is an improvement upon what came before is an open question. Hercules discusses robots having the potential to evolve in “Episode 2,” but the catastrophe portended by Epsilon and Tenma evacuates evolution of its progressive implication. The complexity of these machines, and the possibility that they have taken on the qualities of humanity that are so destructive, contrast them to the robotic dog Ochanomizu repairs. That dog can’t evolve, only die for want of the parts discontinued “in the name of so-called progress.”
Protection and Investigation
Just as robots evolve, but perhaps don’t progress, the investigation of a labyrinthine neo-noir evolves similarly. The recording of Darius XVI is discovered in the course of another deception — Gesicht tells Adolf he has been assigned to protect him. But, in fact, it is only because of the remnants of the banned MZ-390 that requires Gesicht not protect, but investigate. Gesicht’s protection is simply a pretense, then, to utilize his investigative prowess and uncover the truth behind why Adolf would have such a weapon.
Even as the investigation unfolds, there is some knowledge only a few are privy to. The Europol director from “Episode 3” and another agent know about Gesicht’s erased transgression and Adolf’s brother. Though what exactly happened remains unclear, Gesicht is traumatized in a way the world only believes a human can be. And these agents bear the secret of what happened like North No.2 remembers the robots he killed during the 39th Central Asian War.
As the story progresses, its audience will be burdened with such knowledge, too.
Weekly Reading List
We are in a bit of a zinaissance, at least as far as my contributions are concerned, and this zine by my friend Val does indeed feature a very small segment from me. If you would like to read it, contact her on instagram and pick up a copy.
Until next time.
The Japanese voice track and original manga don’t use a gendered noun or pronoun, so the meaning here is that one does not simply create computerized brains rather than men do not create computerized brains.