Valley of Zombies
By discovering the latest web movie of the BigDog quadruped robot, I stumbled upon the concept of the Uncanny Valley - a theory that tries to explain the different empathic to uncanny feelings toward human- or animal-like creatures such as stuffed animals, robots, zombies or animated movie characters. An article of the Australian TheAge describes the difference between “a still from Polar Express where one of the children looks practically demonic, not their intention at all” and the Simpsons, whose unrealistically yellow skin never would harm the credibility of the characters: As long as the visual appearance or movements of a creature is far enough from human, the perception of the audience can be mainly influenced by the behavior of the creatures. If the creatures are very similar to humans, things start to get creepy.
One reason for that effect may be the spectators ability or disability to predict a creature’s behavior. You wouldn’t trust a zombie, as you can’t predict his next steps. But maybe you would trust Mr Incredible or even Sponge Bob as they are a unique class of creature on their own, and you learned how they are (in their universe) from the movies you saw. Near-human creatures remind you of the cruelty that humans are able to do, but they are not human-like enough so that you could apply your knowledge of human nature to decide if they’re sympathetic to you. Maybe that’s why Pixar’s comic style movie characters appear so believable to us, as they stay in their universe - and don’t raise connotations about our experience with real humans.
