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Being The Uncanny Valley
How I accidentally discovered I’m not quite right
The concept of “the uncanny valley” was developed a couple of decades ago to explain the discomfort people feel when confronted with something that is almost, but not quite, familiar. As the Japanese assiduously developed ever-more-realistic sex dolls, manufacturers were surprised to discover that they would reach a point where the dolls were simultaneously too realistic and not quite realistic enough.
When we see cute robots like Honda’s Asimo or Eve in the movie Wall-E we are not at all disturbed. The wide open eyes enable us to anthropomorphize what is clearly an artificial construct. Our brains respond to the baby-like cue (wide eyes) but we’re not disturbed because there’s no danger of us confusing the robot with a real human baby.
But when we see a hyper-realistic animatronic Japanese sex doll, something akin to revulsion seeps in. This is because the doll is too realistic for us to process as artificial but insufficiently human for us to accept as “one of us.” No doubt this kind of discomfort is at the bottom of a great deal of xenophobia and racism, but that’s a topic for another time.
It is not just Japanese animatronic sex dolls that evoke the uncanny valley, however. At least, not unless there’s something my parents neglected to…
