An Entirely Robotic Life.

Introduction 

    The film Surrogates, released in 2009 and directed by Jonathan Mostow, tried to capture a robot-filled world, but where people were still in control. The idea of a Surrogate is that you will be able to leave your house without having to worry, as a robot that you can control from your own bed and control it with as much precision as your own human body(assuming you have the money), and this lowers the violent crime rate to practically 0% for years. We follow the main character, Tom Greer, a detective who has started to have some doubts about the Surrogate system and how the world has changed, while there is a weapon(the Raygun) going around that can kill Surrogate users through their Surrogates. These Surrogates are shown throughout the show to be, in a lot of cases, some kind of persona for the person behind them, giving them an outlet to express themselves in different ways, in some cases, for the better or possibly for the worse. 

Gender and Online Identities

    In this film, if you have the money, you are able to purchase any kind of surrogate you would like and become any kind of person you want to be. You could be a middle-aged man transformed into a young girl in her twenties, or even if you were an older woman who wanted to look like her younger self again, you could do that. This movie gives the characters anonymity, almost like the kind you would have online while playing a game or in a public forum. While online, you have complete anonymity, and no one can really tell who you really are. This is seen in the film where we have a Surrogate girl in her twenties at a party who is murdered by the Raygun, and when the police arrive at her place, it is shown to be an overweight middle-aged man who hasn't seemed to have left his apartment since he got a Surrogate. With this system, though, it is shown that people have the option to be any gender or have any kind of appearance that they would like, which could be seen as a positive and negative at the same time. With people being able to express their gender identity in so many ways, but also in the area of body positivity, I think it would be a massive setback and increase the beauty standards to something more unrealistic than they already are. 

The changes to the Beauty Standard  

     Something that is just as pervasive in this film is the idea of beauty standards and how they are viewed in this artificial world. With anyone with enough money being able to afford a few Surrogates and them having removable faces and hair, your look is more personalizable than ever. With this being true, a lot of female Surrogates will tend to have more revealing clothing, and some of the models even potentially being half-naked on display. We get to see how the beauty standards change due to the fact that you can literally look perfect all of the time. Most of these models don't even show wrinkles on the skin and other blemishes that would be on the face or the rest of the body. Another thing to look at in this world would be the beauty industries like salons you can see though the main characters wife Maggie Greer who works at one where they work entirely on Surrogates and have operations where they can either work on changing how your removable face looks, replacing your removable face, or working on the inside faces of the Surrogates that will change the structure and shape of the face. People walking around without any Surrogates are also looked down upon and called “flesh bags” as if in some way the people controlling the Surrogates aren't also “flesh bags,” but that was something interesting I thought worth mentioning. 

Identity and personal relationships  

     Another thing that is focused on throughout the film is Tom and Maggie Greer's relationship and how the Surrogates have affected them. At the beginning of the film, we see the couple have a smaller argument that eventually snowballs into something way bigger by the end of the movie. In this situation, Tom is upset that Maggie won't ever come out of her room and is only willing to see him through her Surrogate as a younger version of herself that isn't imperfect as she sees herself now. After the couple went through the tragic death of their only son, Maggie locked herself in her room with antidepressant drugs and would only interact with the world through her Surrogate. This shows a response that could realistically happen to someone in this kind of society, and we get to see how her body atrophied due to lack of use, and as well she looks way more pale and elderly than her husband, who comes out of his room and interacts with the rest of his house at least. In the scenes where we get to see Tom break down over never being able to see the actual woman he married, I think we can see how much this would affect not only your Self-Image but also personal relationships that we all have, whether romantic or not. 

Final Thoughts

    By making a world where people can leave their homes from the comfort of their own beds, many problems were eliminated; however, it came along with a set of new problems for the world to deal with. This is true for almost any major technological advancement that has been made in our world as well, and in this story, we get to see those problems and how they affect the world. With everyone being able to hide behind a literal mask and never be seen, there is more anonymity than ever before. However, this also gives people the opportunity to do things or be put into situations that they might never be in as themselves, and it gives a potential way to express themselves in a fashion that would better fit how they want to look for the day. This movie brings an interesting look at what could possibly happen in our future, and with AI here now, it is more of a talking point than it has ever been in the past.