Iron Man 2 as a cyborg fable

Last night I worked with my son on an exam about World War 1 for quite a long time. We went over the Mandate system, reparations, the War Guilt Clause, the Schlieffen Plan. So when our neighbor asked if we wanted to watch Iron Man 2, we took a welcome break, threw the textbook down, and went to watch Robert Downey Jr. test his blood toxicity for almost the entire movie. Since most of the people watching knew I write about cyborgs, I asked the assembled – two parents, three teenage boys – to be on the lookout for cyborg themes. My son replied “yeah we’ll be sure to watch for the way exoskeletons make us stronger.”

First of all, it is sort of funny that my 15 year old knows the word exoskeleton, and probably not from me. Second…well, it is interesting, isn’t it, that Iron Man 1 & 2 are both kinds of fables about technology, the kinds of exoskeletons we don, and the purposes for them? At one point before a Senate committee, the sleazy senator played by Gary Shandling demands that Tony Stark give his weapon-cyborg system to the US military. And Stark replies that it isn’t a weapons system, it is a kind of prosthetic. He is making a cyborg argument, and only half of it; of course it CAN be a weapon system. In fact, when the action scenes start, a lot of the subtlety (well what passes for subtle in a blockbuster) of the film’s anti-militarist, anti-proliferation stance is lost. We just want to see battles between new kinds of superheros in flying armor. Or at least the 15 year olds seem to take this position.

So it was with interest that I came across the article “When Power Armor Makes You a Cyborg.” [http://io9.com/5743585/when-power-armor-makes-you-a-cyborg], which asks the question “But what happens when the armor changes you?” The article samples some film and a lot of gaming cyborgs, and concludes – as I do – that these technologies are not simply “tools” to be used by good guys for good and bad guys for bad. Instead, the armor or exoskeleton effects the user’s personality. Consider how people change when they get behind the wheel of a car, especially certain cars (SUVs, offroaders, high performance cars). But the article focuses on people who become cyborgs WHEN they put on their power armor prosthetics. So Darth Vader doesn’t count (already was a cyborg).

The article focuses on Iron Man the comic hero, not the film hero:

You could definitely argue that Tony Stark becomes a cyborg the moment he needs his arc reactor in his chest to keep his heart beating. But several times in the comics, Tony's gone a lot further towards cyborg-hood. In particular, in one storyline, Tony gets injected with Extremis, a techno-organic virus that rebuilds Tony's body — and gives the ability to link to any computer on Earth. With his upgraded technology, Tony has the Iron Man armor inside his body, until nanobots bring it out of him.

In the comic and in the film, Tony Stark begins as a selfish narcissistic playboy, and ends up “more” human than he was (though still with flaws like alcoholism). The technology forces him to realize his vulnerability (this is particularly true in the film) and that of others who may need what his now-necessary cyborg prosthesis can deliver. Hence the way the armor comes "inside."

In contrast, the anime and manga series Evangelion feature a number of Iron Man-like suits, called mecha or gundam. This is a cyborg post-apocalyptic action story that features hostile space beings called Angels, and a paramilitary organization called Nerv which fights them. Evangelions are giant mecha or cyborg suits worn by teenage pilots, “plain human kids,” from the Nerv, including the hero, Shinji Ikari.

Unlike Iron Man, the Evangelions or EVAs highlight the neurological link that the human teens have with their cybernetic prostheses. This constant linkage with the prosthetic has implications:

in the second [Evangelion] movie…we're told over and over again that if Shinji Ikari and the other pilots descend too deep inside an EVA, they will change and become something no longer human. And this keeps happening, with the pilots evolving into something post-human in the process.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Ever since the earliest cyborg stories like No Woman Born, the addition of a cyborg shell or a new metal/cybernetic body chances the human. Something metal affects the female protagonist of No Woman Born, and she no longer has prototypical 1940s “female” emotions. Yet this was seen (at least in one reading of the story) as a potentially positive thing for the woman who had been burned horribly in a fire, and who before that had been more or less controlled by her two male handlers (husband, manager).

In the anime series of Evangelion, the goal is (according to the io9 website) Shinji’s goal is “to merge with his EVA,” after which "Shinji's mind will evolve beyond individuality in its merge with his EVA." This notion of merging with the prosthetic can also be seen in the film and manga Ghost in the Shell, with its ongoing story of how the cyborg body of Major Motoko Kusanagi seems to flatten her emotions while enabling her to perform superhuman bionic acts. And in the end of Ghost in the Shell, Motoko merges with a bodiless AI called the Puppetmaster, and responds to a call from a ghost-like being that inhabits the entire Internet and offers Motoko new powers and transcendent knowledge. Because she is cyborg and not simply human, this appeals to her, as a logical extension of what she already feels.

In Iron Man 2, the arc reactor that powers Tony Stark and keeps him alive is also poisoning his blood with its metal, Palladium. Of course, the technophilic film shows Tony inventing a new element that allows him to survive and keep his cyborg powers. But the notion that our prosthetics infect us, one way or the other, and lead us past a particular notion of “human,” is found in most cyborg stories.

Let’s end with this: unaugmented humans are, themselves, poisoned with elements of their (prosthetic) identities. They are not inevitably more capable of emotion, or better. In some ways cyborg stories, and their cyborg protagonists, make this poison visible.