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But first he must deal with the prejudices of his robophobic society. And yes, the film does suggest that those who believe there is a qualitative difference between humans and androids may be harboring an attitude that is tantamount to racism. Although the film encourages a reductive view of robot behavior—the robots that preceded David are little more than "sensory toys," Hobby tells us—it also suggests that robots are people too. By extension, one might wonder whether the filmmakers would encourage a reductive view of human behavior, and, like some sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists in our own day, explain all of our instincts away as mere biochemistry.

David is captured by religious rednecks and taken to the Flesh Fair, a festival in the woods where humans who feel threatened by androids take sadistic glee in torturing the machines to death. One of the robots in the holding pen mutters that history is repeating itself, and the line evokes memories of Schindler's List and Amistad, two previous Spielberg films that dealt with systemic racism. To make sure we don't miss the point, the first android victim we see has black features and the voice of stand-up comic Chris Rock.

When it is David's turn to be destroyed, one of the fair's ringleaders, a burly Irishman named Lord Johnson-Johnson (Brendan Gleeson), tells the crowd that scientists have made androids as part of a "grand scheme" to replace "all of God's little children" with machines. Then, to goad the crowd into participating in David's demolition, he quotes, out of context, one of Jesus' most famous sayings: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Jesus, of course, said this to point out that none of us is free of the taint of sin, and thus, we have no right to condemn each other.

But Johnson-Johnson says this to flatter his audience, to persuade them of their superiority over robots and those who build them. Ironically, sin is a quality that belongs only to fully conscious beings such as humans and angels, so if Johnson-Johnson is correct, and robots do not have souls, then the humans at his fair are the only sinners there. Conversely, if robots do have a sinful nature, then who knows? God may have given them souls after all. (One wonders if the Christians in this futuristic society have ever tried to evangelize the robots.)

The relationship between these two perfectly captures the film's central tension between Kubrick's cold, cynical rationalism and the warm-and-fuzzy spirituality typical of Spielberg. David is convinced the Blue Fairy exists, but Joe is not so sure. Joe argues that David's belief in her may be nothing more than an "electronic parasite"—or a "mind virus," to use the term favored by outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins—and the way Joe sees it, selfishness and sensuality are all that really exist, in the end.

When David asserts that Monica might still love him, Joe replies that he merely fulfills her emotional needs: "She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what I do for them." And as he stands outside a chapel in Rouge City, a high-tech red-light district populated by robot hustlers, Joe declares that, although those who made the robots are always looking for their own Creator, in the end, most humans settle for the empty physical pleasures provided by androids like him. "I've picked up a lot of business in this spot," says Joe.

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August 6 2001, Vol. 45, No. 10