Evans, Jo M; (2017) The uncanny valley and todo sobre mi madre (all about my mother, Almodóvar, 1999). In: Hart, S and Biederman, Z, (eds.) From the Supernatural to the Uncanny. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

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Abstract

In 1970, a Japanese robotics expert, Masahiro Mori, published a paper speculating that there is a crucial point at which our empathy dips the closer a robot comes to resembling us. At the point at which a robot become almost, but not quite, like us, he argues that there is a sudden change in our response from empathy to revulsion. Mori’s paper went largely unremarked until advances in CGI and the science of robotics caught up with him at the turn of the millennium, and in 2012, when his paper was finally published in English, the point at which this crucial ‘dipping’ occurs was translated as the ‘uncanny valley’. There is now a growing body of literature debating Mori’s findings that is beyond the scope of this paper, but his haunting vision of the ‘uncanny valley’ that exists between us and nonhuman figure that almost, but not quite, resembles us lies at the heart of this exploration of the uncanniness of the film medium, the uncanny returns of the mater dolorosa, and the (uncanny) success of Almodóvar’s 1999 film, Todo sobre mi madre.

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