Deconstruction of I, Robot

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Emily Whitmore

Study the film I, robot and deconstruct using the key concepts.  Look closely at the character played by Will Smith, how does his blackness impact on the audience’s understanding of his role?

I, robot is an action sci-fi film which stars Will Smith as Del Spooner.  It is a futuristic view of the world and is set in the year 2035. This is a very common genre of film for Will Smith, as he has been in many action/ action sci-fi films such as Independence Day (1996), Men in Black (1997) and Enemy of State (1998).  However, more recently, he has branched out into different film genres such as Shark Tale (2004) for which he did the voice over for Oscar and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) which was a drama.  

He was born on the 25th September 1968 in Philadelphia.  While at school he gained the nickname ‘Prince’ because of his attitude and knack for getting out of trouble, he later added to this and became the ‘Fresh Prince’.  Unusually this and the place he was born would later be the basis of an episodic comedy which he starred in called ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-air’ (1990) which ran for six years, and for which he also won an award for ‘Top TV series’, he was nominated twice for ‘Best performance by an actor’, twice for ‘outstanding lead actor’ and many more. This was his first major break and lead to his acting career.  Overall he has won 28 awards and has been nominated for 49.  

I, Robot is not a stereotypical futuristic film, although it was set 31 years in the future, it is still very realistic.  There are many normal things which have just been ‘upgraded’ to be futuristic.  For example, the yellow police tape which section things off is still in this film, but now they are holograms instead, which subtly shows that this is the future, but it is not extremely advanced, so much so that the film would seem unreal.  There is also a ‘holographic projector’ which appears when Will Smith seems to be talking to an old man, but then the camera pans round so that the audience can see that it is simply a holographic image. These things slowly introduce the idea of the future to the audience.  There are other objects in this film which do not fit in with the stereotypical view of the future, for example the cars do not hover and there is even a petrol fuelled motorbike.  

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The clothes they wear in this film are very similar to the clothes we wear today.  However some characters such as Calvin are wearing unusual clothes which do set them apart from people of today.  For the start of the film she is wearing a shiny silver suit, which many people to associate with the future.  However, the people are not outrageously different and advanced; they are still shown to be normal people by anyone’s standards, and although there are robots, a lot of them do ‘normal’ everyday jobs, such as at the start of the film the audience can ...

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