Creating Mr. & Ms. Perfect: Robot Metaphors in Btvs Part I.

Quotes: Psyche Transcripts and redcat. Thanks for the idea goes to the wonderful folks who participated on the What Happened to April Thread on the Misogyny Post, specifically exegy who hinted that I do it and redcat who gave me some ideas.

Spoilers through Grave!

At the beginning of the Spielberg film A.I, a movie about a robot boy who wants to be real, the creator tells his students -he created a robot child who can love. Everyone applauds. Then a woman raises her hand and asks: "But how do we get a human to love a robot? What if the human doesn't return the robot's affections? Is it ethical to create and give someone the desire for love and affection when it will never be returned?"

An interesting question, what are the ethics of creating artificial life? This question has been asked over and over again in sci-fi novels and movies. In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (loosely based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), a bounty hunter or blade runner hunts down and kills replicants or artificial human beings who do not have souls. They only have memories and emotions imprinted and programmed into them by their human creators. They are used as slaves, weapons and companions in Scott's futuristic world. When a bunch of replicants escape from a prison planet, all they want is an extension on their lifespan, they want to live as humans without a due date. They want to be real. Of course, the blade runner kills them. But the question posed by the replicants echoes through the final credits - what is real? Do I have the right to be real? And why am I here? 

Star Trek The Next Generation posed a similar question through Lt. Data, an artificial man who did not possess emotions, at least originally. In one episode, they hold a trial or tribunal in which they decide who should have control over Lt. Data's destiny on whether he is turned off or on? Does he as a thinking, autonomous entity have the right to choose his own path? Lt. Data had gotten tired of being turned off. He had gotten tired of feeling owned.

In Btvs - robots initially are used as objects of horror - the monster robot who can destroy you, then slowly they become humorous or just harmless distractions easily destroyed. But each robot seems real, almost human. And in a show that requires a soul for redemption or for someone to be deemed of value, the use of robots - the epitome of hollow beings is interesting. Robots are nothing but wires and chips and silicon. They aren't real. They can't love. They can't think for themselves. Right? Slaves to man, created by him to serve his needs, whether those needs be physical or emotional.

Part I. Being The Perfect Boyfriend: Malcom, Ted & Riley

The idea of robotic love is first breached in Season 1 with the episode, I Robot, You Jane. Poor nerdy Willow doesn't know how to talk to boys. Xander, the only boy she can talk to is infatuated with  her best friend, the perky, pretty, super-hero Buffy. Luckily for Willow, Buffy doesn't share his affections or life would truly be hell. So Willow retreats to her computer and does what many of us unlucky in love types do - cruise the chat rooms and internet. Actually, she doesn't really need to cruise, all she needs to do is scan Malcome into her computer and list him under the file named Willow and he conveniently contacts her.  Malcome - Giles states is a demon  that tempts those who long for love and attention. Prays on young impressionable minds. Willow is an excellent target as are the other computer nerds. They all get validation and support primarily through their computer terminals.

Malcom is the perfect boyfriend, supportive, complimentary, interested in what Willow thinks and feels. And best of all he is safely contained behind a computer screen - she does not have to worry about the face to face rejection. When he asks to meet her - she understandably puts him off, even sort of panics, causing him to kidnap her instead. When faced with the real Malcom, Willow freaks - this is not the kind supportive friend she'd written to, this is a monster. He asks for her love, tells her they should be together, that they understand one another. But she rejects him and he tries to kill her. Buffy luckily saves the day. At the end of the episode, Willow wonders if she is truly doomed, the only person to ever take an interest in her romantically is a robot. And the audience notes that Willow has a serious problem - she needs someone to take an interest in her - to feel special, to be important. Hence the reason she was attracted to Malcom to begin with. The internet entity of Malcom made Willow feel wanted, less alone. But when confronted with the robotic reality - she was understandably horrified.

Joyce Summers has a similar experience in the Season 2 episode Ted. Recently divorced, struggling to raise a daughter and hold a job, Joyce doesn't get out much. She aches for companionship. She aches for someone to help her raise her daughter. So along comes Ted, the perfect boyfriend. He cooks. He appears to be good with kids, taking her daughter and her daughter's friends out to play golf. And most important - he is interested in Joyce. Joyce is the center of his world. Unfortunately, like Malcom, Ted isn't all he appears. He wants the perfect wife, the perfect child. Ted wants to control his world, just as Malcom wanted to control his. Except Ted really is a robot, a robot imprinted with the desires and personality of his human creator.

This is what Xander tells us about Ted: "So, I'm Ted, the sickly loser. I'm dying and my wife dumps me. I build a better Ted. He brings her back, holds her hostage in his bunker'o'love until she dies. And then he keeps bringing her back, over and over. Now, now that's creepy on a level I hardly knew existed."

(Is it? Sort of reminds me of few old stories: the first is the tale of Bluebeard who keeps hunting the perfect wife and beheads the ones who don't fit until he gets it right, hiding their corpses in the attic or proverbial closet, sort like robot Ted hides the bodies of his disappointing wives).

Willow oddly enough appreciates Ted's abilities and sympathizes with him. Stating the sad part is he was such a genius. Willow would like to control love as well. To create the perfect boyfriend. Ted similarly wants the perfect wife, one who will stay with him. But, instead of creating this wife, Ted recreates himself - as Xander puts it - builds a better Ted. 'I'll create the perfect husband. I'm not good enough as I am, she left the current version, so I'll make a better model.' This reminds me quite a bit of Willow who believes she's more interesting with magic. As she tells Buffy in Wrecked - without magic I was just a girl, Tara never knew that girl, she wouldn't have liked that girl. And later in Two to Go - Willow was the loser who people picked on for her mousy ways. (Outside of OZ and Tara no one took an interest in her.) Magic makes her better, builds a better Willow (a scary vieney Willow but a better one from Willow's perspective). I'm not unconvinced Willow wasn't somewhat impressed with Ted's idea of building a better self. An idea that sickened Xander. Both Ted and Willow believe that the fault lies with them.  If they can be different - they can control love. They deserve love, they just don't know how to get it. Another character this reminds me of is Riley Finn. (Who I will explore in more depth in Part III of this analysis.) When Buffy first meets Riley he is the perfect studly boyfriend. Super-powered like she is. Although he notices with some chagrin she can still pummel him. Mystical energy beats the manufactured brand any day.  Riley's strength is manufactured. His skills and natural abilities have been enhanced with drugs and other technological ingredients over time- providing him with super-strength. When these drugs almost kill him in Out of My Mind, Riley undergoes an operation and the super-strength is removed. He is no longer "super-solider" and therefore cannot keep up with his girlfriend either in bed or in the field. He believes that she can't love him as he is. Weak kittenish Riley. That he has to be the Perfect boyfriend  just as he had to be the Perfect solider. As a result, Riley eventually leaves Buffy.

Joyce and Buffy really don't want perfect love or for that matter the perfect man. They would just like to be loved, appreciated.  Joyce's attraction and disappointment in Ted was actually quite touching. He seemed to be the perfect man. He seemed to care only about her. What the human Ted didn't understand - is it wasn't super-strength or longevity his wife needed. It was love, unconditional and simple. If he had loved her he would have been able to let her go. Unfortunately robot Ted is incapable of understanding these concepts just as robot/demon Malcome is.  Willow tells Malcome, 'I'm not a possession.' That's Malcom's concept of love - she's a possession, she's his. Just as Ted's concept of love is Joyce is his.   Riley, to his credit, is far more advanced, he doesn't view love in this manner. No, Riley's problem is he can't believe he is good enough for Buffy as he is. He can't measure up to her without the super-strength and stamina.  Malcom and Ted know they measure up what they can't understand is why the objects of their affection don't appreciate it and return their affection. Why can't you love me?  Why don't you want me to take care of you? Well, if you can't - I'll kill you.

Part II.  The Perfect Girlfriend: April, the Buffybot and Katrina

The Stepford Wives, a book and later a 1970's horror movie, starring Kathryn Ross, is about a bunch of men in a small community who murder their wives, replacing them with robot imitations. The robots are the perfect wives. They do all the things a perfect wife should do: housework, cook meals, entertain at dinner parties, raise kids, pleasure their husbands and they never ever complain. Real wives want to work, paint, hire a housekeeper, get depressed, etc. But the Stepford Wife - well she's the perfect solution. Predictable. Programmable. And best yet, she will stay with you forever.

The Stepford Wives reminds me of a far older tale of a man who constructs the perfect female. The Greek myth of Pygmalion, the king who makes a woman out of ivory and has it brought to life by Aphrodite. Once he does, he teaches the statue how to be human and it is more or less under his control. George Bernard Shaw adapted this story and modernized it in his play of the same name about a rich linguist who takes a poor flower girl under his wing and teaches her how to be a lady, treating her as a thing or robot in the process. She makes the mistake of falling for her teacher only to discover that he is incapable of loving her - she is, in his head, just his creation. My Fair Lady, a musical by Lerner and Lowe is a much more positive presentation on the same theme.

In Btvs' I Was Made To Love You - Warren attempts to create the perfect girlfriend. He actually has purer and less sexist motivations than the creeps in the Stepford Wives.  As he states to Buffy, " I didn't make a toy, I made a girlfriend."

BUFFY: They're not talking to you, you're not gettin' dates ... you start thinking, "hey, this isn't fair."
WARREN: Yeah, I mean, I felt like I deserved to have someone. You know, I mean, everyone deserves to have someone.
BUFFY: So naturally you turned to manufacturing.
WARREN: Kinda.
BUFFY: And how long did it take to build yourself that little toy?
WARREN: Oh, no, she's not a toy. I mean, I know what you're thinking, but she's more than that.
BUFFY: I'm sure she has many exciting labor-saving attachments.
WARREN: No, I made her to love me. I mean, she cares about what I care about, and I didn't make a toy. I made a girlfriend.
BUFFY: A girlfriend. Are you saying ... are you in love with her?
WARREN: I really thought I would be. I mean, she's perfect. I don't know, I ... I guess it was too easy. And predictable.  You know, she got boring. (Buffy rolls her eyes) She was exactly what I wanted, and I didn't want her. (laughs crazily) I thought I was going crazy.

I can sort of identify with Warren here. It's awfully hard to find someone to click with, who gets your jokes, who loves you. And doesn't everyone deserve to have someone? That's why the creator in A.I. creates the robot boy with the special skill to love. That's why Gepetto creates Pinocchio. And that's why Pygmalion asks Aphrodite to animate his beloved statue. We all want someone to love us.  But is it right to create something with the impetus to love you without any guarantee you will love it back?
What if you don't? The perfect girlfriend can get awfully boring. She does whatever you want, but there's no surprises, no suspense. As Spike puts it in Bargaining, that's all a robot is, perfect, predictable, boring, the perfect teacher's pet. While Warren is a step above the creeps who design the Stepford Wives - after all he really didn't want a slave at this point, he wanted a girlfriend, he doesn't understand that you can't just create something, make it love you, then forget it exists.

WARREN: Okay, I didn't really dump her, as much as I, uh, went out, and, uh, didn't come back. (Buffy stares) I left her, I ... left her in my dorm room.
BUFFY: (angry) You left her in your dorm room?!
WARREN: Well, I figured I could just kinda get away until her batteries gave out. Which should have been days ago.
BUFFY: Did you even tell her? I mean, did you even give her a chance to fix what was wrong?
WARREN: I didn't need to fix anything. I mean, her batteries were supposed to run down. Really, they should be completely dead by now.

The real world metaphor is pretty obvious. Riley leaves Buffy with a less than twenty-four hour ultimatum. Takes off. Doesn't give her a chance to even try and fix things. A common theme for Buffy. Every guy she gets romantically attached to or cares deeply about, takes off, starting with Hank Summers.  From Buffy's perspective the worst thing that Warren could have done is just leave April sitting there, alone in his dorm room.  It reminds me of scene from AI, where the mother takes her robot son out to the forest and leaves him there all alone with his teddy bear, nothing else. When all else fails, let's abandon the thing that didn't work out. The SG repeats this behavior pattern with the poor Buffybot in Bargaining. Willow mentions how they need to do something about it and Xander mentions it's a loss. Not worth salvaging. So the poor robot is tortured by the demon bikers and dismembered in a horrifically violent scene where they tie her arms and legs to four bikes and go off in four different directions. (Reminds me of an old Edgar Allan Poe Movie called Pit and the Penduleum.) It is ironic that the bot's original owner, Spike, is the one who finds her, driving up with her surrogate daughter Dawn on a demon bike. Spike, barely able to look at her, tells Dawn that she isn't real, that it's just a robot, but he goes and picks up her pieces, examining the wreckage, muttering, "look what they've done to you." The SG barely think about her. And to their credit, she was a nuisance, breaking up Willow's spell, bringing the demons straight to their doorstep.

At the end of IWMTY, Spike orders the Buffybot. Obsessed and lonely, Spike wants what Warren did, a girlfriend. But unlike Warren, Spike doesn't just want a girlfriend, not any old girl would do - if that was the case, he'd still be with Harmony or he'd just  find someone. He really hasn't had any problems getting women. Sheila, Harmony, Drusilla, and the goth chick in Hells Bells all come to mind. No, Spike wants Buffy. Only Buffy. And since he obviously can't have Buffy, he orders the next best thing - a copy. Sort of similar to the parents in AI., who order a robot boy to love them, their real son lasped into a coma and may never get off life support. So they order a replacement. They miss the real thing of course, but the replacement offers some advantages - such as never getting sick. Spike also can't have the real thing, so he orders one to be made, one that is everything he thinks the real one would be if she loved him. One who slays vampires, loves her friends, and loves him. The result makes me think of a Harlequin novel or the romantic Buffy/Spike fanfic, makes one wonder if ME reads fanfic. (*Quick disclaimer - no I am NOT sabershadowkitten, no relation, do not know the woman or man who runs that site. I'm shadowkat. Never wrote fanfic in my life until I joined the Fanged Four FanFic Round Robin on ATP board… we'll see the results, a tad nervous. Now back to our discussion.)

Before Spike orders his robot, the writers do something fascinating, they compare him to April, scissoring back and forth between the two character's quests for love and acceptance. Building up their mutual desperation to the point that their resulting acts make perfect sense. Both are freaks. Both outcasts. Both hollow, soulless beings, that appear to everyone including the audience to be unworthy of love. First we see Spike try to speak to Buffy at a frat party. She understandably rejects him. (Wouldn't you? He had her in handcuffs the last episode and let Dru knock her out with a cattle prod. Actually she's quite polite about it. I would have staked him, especially after he tells her that she can put her hands on his tight hot body and throw him out. But then, Buffy is far more heroic and compassionate than I am. Not to mention forgiving.) Then April shows up looking for Warren and Warren hides from her. I think Buffy would have hidden from Spike if given half a chance. Luckily April throws him out the window. April is a little like Ted and Malcom - you don't love me or do what I want, you're dead. Robots up to this point were bad news.
The next comparison is far more disturbing and painful. It is, in a way, played for comedy, but the p.o.v is so clearly on Spike and April that we as an audience inwardly cringe. Spike rushes into the Magic Box on fire. Puts himself out and tries to interact with SG, in hopes of continuing his relationship with them and through them Buffy. They justifiably reject him and do so somewhat cruelly. He has formed a dangerous attraction for their friend, Buffy, and they cannot afford to encourage him in any way. Giles even threatens him, suggesting he move on or else.  The way this scene is played, makes me cringe in sympathy for Spike. Then, as if to emphasize this, the scene shifts to April asking a bunch of people where Warren is. They proceed to cruelly ridicule and lie to her. This scene isn't as uncomfortable as the one with Spike, but it is just as disturbing. If you've ever had anyone reject you or treat you like an idiot - these two scenes back to back may have brought up some unpleasant memories. The people involved do not see their actions as cruel or reprehensible. After all April is not real. She's a robot. She can't perceive the cruelty. And Spike? Well, he's not real either, he's a loser, a soulless demon, evil. He does not deserve love, compassion, respect or tolerance. All he deserves is ridicule. Which I guess makes it okay. In Spielberg's A.I. there is a similar scene with the robot boy and the real son of the parents. The real son has come out of his coma and returned home. His parents have a party for him. During the party the real boy and his friends play with and cruelly ridicule the robot boy. You're just a toy, they tell him. You're not real. They could never love you because you aren't real!  It's okay to treat someone cruelly if they don't deserve your respect, if they aren't human or real. Right?

After these scenes - Spike and April slowly degenerate into despair and rage. When April discovers that Warren doesn't love her but loves Buffy instead, she inflicts her bent-up rage and disappointment onto Buffy, even growling. What? April's a robot. She doesn't have feelings. Well apparently there was a screw-up in the programming, April does. Just like the A.I. robot boy did, reacting to the real son's ridicule and teasing by attacking him just as a real boy would. And what does Spike do? He packs up his Buffy shrine and takes it over to Warren, whom he's figured out created a robot girlfriend. Perfect solution, Spike thinks. I can't have the original, I'll get the next best thing a copy. He's lonely. And he needs someone. Is this evil? Who was evil in this episode? Personally I think we create our own monsters or at least have hand in their creation. Warren created the Aprilbot but was unable to shut her down or take responsibility for his creation, instead he runs away, hoping her batteries will run down and his current girlfriend will never find out. Of course the Aprilbot catches up to him and his current girlfriend, Katrina finds out, and leaves him in a huff. Buffy and the SG hope they can just ignore Spike, ridicule him, be cruel and he will go away and leave them alone, move on. But Spike is a demon and can't let go of things. No more than Angelus or Dru or Darla or the Aprilbot can, it's not their nature. They aren't human. They are like Ted or Malcom. The fact that Spike hopes to transfer his affections to a robot is actually an improvement over Malcom and April's desire to kill the obstacle or object.  But his desire to build the Buffybot - to his specifications terrified me at the end of that episode. After all - look what happened with April? A violent robot on the rampage.

Ironic that the one robot in our lineup that did not turn out to be a violent creation was built to Spike's specifications. The Buffbot is a charming, witty parody of Buffy. In fact she seems to be more approachable and affectionate than the real Buffy. To the extent that her friends think she actually is Buffy.  "You couldn't tell me from a robot?" Buffy accuses them. And the Buffbot's charming response? "I don't think I'm a robot."  Spike wants more than just a girlfriend when he creates the Buffbot, he wants Buffy. And in the Buffbot we get a clearer picture of what he thinks Buffy is and why he has a thing for her. Forget for a minute their sexual excursions and think about her interactions with the other SG. Why did the SG buy her as Buffy? She doesn't react in the same way as April did with a one-track mind. She actually responds to the SG as if they are her family and friends. She wants to slay vampires. When they fight Glory and Giles is injured - Buffbot risks her life to save him, getting horribly injured in the process. In fact she beats the real Buffy to the punch. And when Spike goes missing? She goes to the SG to ask for help. Warren didn't come up with these little touches, he doesn't really know the SG. Spike did. Spike, as redcat puts it in her post on ideals and women in the long misogyny thread on ATP board, "Spike wants someone to serve, just as I always imagined that William fantasized himself the knight serving his lady." So when he creates the robot  - he creates someone who will not only be sexually uninhibited with him but who he can also serve in the war against the vampires. Very ironic. Wouldn't it have made more sense for her to be against slaying vampires? Spike doesn't create a Stepford Wife or a sex slave, really, he creates his approximation of what a lady is. Complete with chaste knee length skirt and perky smile.

Except he grows bored of her after a while. I agree with redcat, who indicates in her ideal and women post that Spike has an almost bored look on his face while the Buffbot is giving him a blowjob and when she asks if he wants her to replay the program - he says, "no, program, don't say that, just be Buffy." And when Buffy pretends to be the Buffbot to see if he betrayed Dawn's origins to Glory,  he acknowledges that she is his true concern. "When she confronts him with the obscene nature of his failure (building the Buffbot), his first emotion is shame."(redcat, ATP board).  The Buffbot as Spike himself states in Bargaining, became predictable after awhile, boring, the perfect automaton. She'll never be exactly like Buffy and after Buffy dies, he finds that he cannot bear to be near her. Spike has learned the difference between real and not real. You can't create the perfect girlfriend.

What does the Buffbot represent metaphorically? The writers use her repeatedly throughout the show. First in The Gift as a distraction for Glory. Then later after Buffy dies we see that the SG have replaced Buffy with the Buffbot. The Buffbot manages to convince the world that Buffy isn't dead, so that Dawn isn't carted off to social services or to her delinquent father and the demons don't invade Sunnydale. And the Buffbot is more approachable and emotionally interactive with the SG then Buffy is when she returns. She goes with Dawn to school and charms the teachers. As Dawn states - they wanted to make it National Buffy Day. They loved her. Xander's snide reply: "And they couldn't figure out this wasn't Buffy?" The Buffbot lets Dawn sleep next to her at night and is kind to Spike. Spike can't bear to be near her, but she continues to smile perkily at him. She even tries to interact with Giles, who realizes that she just can't comprehend the notion of breathing or inner chi (neither can I for that matter…but hey, that's not the point).  The real Buffy pushes everyone away, puts up a wall between herself and her friends and family. The only one who gets through oddly enough is Spike. Who she doesn't consider real. Buffy's sexual relationship with Spike reminds me a lot of Spike's with the Buffybot and Warren's with April. Using something to make yourself feel good regardless of what the thing feels for you in return.
The Buffybot is left for dead by the SG. As Spike tells Dawn, it's not real, it's just a robot. Which means we shouldn't care. When we last see her she is just a head and torso lying admist a bunch of bonfires and wreckage, looking very lost. Dawn bends over her to shut her eyes and she moves responding to the gesture. Asking where her other self, the real self ran off to. It is a touching scene, particularly since it follows the SG's abandonment of her. An abandonment that Buffy has always feared. Xander and Willow leave the Buffbot to the demons, racing through the woods to save themselves. The Buff bot had gone to Willow to be repaired as Willow programmed. But the creator neglects its creation to save itself. Yes, I know you can argue that Spike or Warren really created the Bot, but Willow brought her back to life, Willow changed her programming, and Willow imprinted the information to seek her whenever she got hurt. Willow became the bot's mother. Just as Willow becomes Buffy's when she brought her back from the Earth's womb. And just as Willow neglects the bot, allowing the bot to be destroyed to go after her own ends, she attempts to discard Buffy in an open grave fighting demons Willow has created. Like Warren, Willow wanted the perfect creation, but doesn't know what to do with it when it wants more than she can give. Echoes of Malcom? Or am I reaching?

At last we come to Katrina, the human turned into a robot by a dampening device. Reminds me a little of Professor Walsh and her behavior modification chips, which I will get to shortly. Also it makes sense that Warren would move in this direction - not that big a step from actual robot to turning an ex-girlfriend into one to realize one's desires. And Jonathan always felt he was more successful with women when they didn't see him as he really was. Like Willow, Jonathan uses magic to hide himself - dampening Katrina's ability to actually see him protects him from rejection. In fact that's why they do it - avoiding rejection from the girls. Buffy states it perfectly in IWMTY:  "They're not talking to you, you're not gettin' dates ... you start thinking, "hey, this isn't fair."" So I'll make you "like" me. Make you be my slave. Make you my stepford wife. Actually the image of Katrina in the French maid's uniform brought back memories of the Stepford wives. In the film we are led to believe that the women aren't actual robots, so much as have been brainwashed into living automatons. I was actually relieved when I discovered they were actually robots. Warren's abuse of Katrina in Dead Things is at first played humorously, with light music and laughs, until the mood breaks and she comes out of it. Her accusation of rape takes them all by surprise. All but Warren. Warren has gone from manufacturing a girlfriend to creating a step-ford wife. A slave who will address his every whim. And when he accidentally kills her - he really doesn't see it as being much different than shutting off April. Yeah, he has to hide it. But it's no big deal. She was just a girl. Just a robot. For Warren - the distinction has become blurred.  In fact, I would take this a step further to state that Warren is slowly becoming like the mad Prof Walsh - he no longer sees people as human beings, he sees them as things to manipulate to fit his ends. The metaphor of Katrina as a robot only heightens this view. As does his treatment of his underlings, Jonathan and Andrew. Tools to reach his ends.

What if Katrina had really been a robot? Would her treatment have been justified? Is it more ethical to treat a robot in this manner? Would we have been less horrified if Warren had treated April or the Buffbot in this manner? Spike seemed to use the Buffbot in this way - except the Buffbot was a willing participant, even appeared to enjoy it. Just as Spike is a willing participant with Buffy, even seems to enjoy it. Except the Buffbot is programmed to enjoy it. Is Spike similarily programmed? Conditioned by the chip? By his desire for Buffy to accept any affection he can from her? Does it matter that she doesn't/can't love him while he can't help but love her to distraction? Does it matter that Spike doesn't love/can't love the Buffbot while the Buffbot can't help but love him? Does Spike's willing participation and the fact that he is not programmed make Buffy's actions less reprehensible morally? Should we use someone else, an entity with feelings, to make ourselves feel better?

In I ROBOT by Issac Asimov, later made into the movie Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, this question is raised. A robot for years is used as a slave until he is finally set free and falls for and marries a human woman. His owner determines that it is wrong to enslave a creature with a mind of its own. Star Trek raises similar questions with two separate characters - the first was the robot Lt. Data on Star Trek Next Generation who initially is used to make the other characters feel better. Denise Crosby's character way back in the first season sleeps with him to feel better, he tells her that's one of his abilities. Later, after she dies, he touchingly mourns her. The Doctor on Star Trek's Voyager - a hologram, not real, struggles to obtain the right not to be moved about at the crew's will. Through these robotic  metaphors - the writers express the immorality of using someone to make ourselves feel good without concern for their feelings.  Btvs takes it a step further by comparing three selfish acts with different levels of severity. The worst is Katrina. The next is Willow's suppression of Tara's memories - very similar to the dampening of Katrina's consciousness and the third is Buffy's initiation of a sexual relationship with a vampire that she knows loves her passionately and to distraction and would literally stake himself for her.  Each act is wrong. Why? Because in each situation the object is being treated as just that an object, to be controlled (Tara), to be used then discarded (Spike), or to be all three  - (the robot-like Katrina).

It's easy to justify misuse of an object. It has no feelings. Just as it is easy to justify the misuse of an evil soulless thing. It's evil. It's feelings don't matter. It's not real. And if it's not real, not good, not worthy of respect, then what we do to it isn't real and doesn't matter. It's just a toy, after all. Something we throw in the closet, in the garbage or under the bed when we are done with it.

End of Part II - Part III to follow soon. Have to break these up - apparently I have more to say on this topic than I thought. LOL!  Sorry exegy, you'll have to wait for my views on Riley, Sam, Prof Walsh, Adam and the chipped demons.