The human being that isn’t.
The Japanese, who are more obsessed with robots than anybody, have coined a term for 3D human simulations that are so close to realism that people find them, well, disturbing. It’s called “The Uncanny Valley,” more technically known as coulrophobia. It’s the sense of discomfort we all felt watching the “Polar Express.”
Creepy, right?
Thinking these days that we should all have registered our discomfort with the Uncanny Valley of Obama. Have any of us ever seen him live?
He’s something like a person, only missing the human parts.
Think. We’ve seen him in Hollywood, on magazine covers, in constantly posed positions hooked to a TelePrompTer he was speechless without.
Are we having our first CGI president? I know I have the distinct sense of something inhuman about him. And his wife.
You?
I agree completely. Our first CGI president is an excellent description. Kind of like one of those Transformers movies: there’s all sorts of explosions & stuff flying around but it still sucks and nothing is *actually* happening.
To quote Neo from the Matrix, “Whoa.” I’ve never really considered this, but you’re right, he both looks and acts a bit like a CGI creation. As one who has had to endure a couple of screenings of Polar Express (kids at Christmas and all), I know the uncanny valley all too well.
But to Tim’s point, if it were all a perfect illusion, wouldn’t they be doing a better job of it? The scandals, the fact that his own supporters are turning on him en masse, the poor gravitas that he has on days like today, with a shooting… Shouldn’t they have made him *better*?
Why I think he’s only just too human, too much of the man of his father’s dreams.