Film essay “INHUMAN FIGURES: Robots, Clones, and Aliens” featured in the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

Northwestern professor Michelle N. Huang partnered with digital storyteller and producer CA Davis to create a film essay examining aspects of emerging technology alongside Asian American struggles over the course of history. The film, titled INHUMAN FIGURES: Robots, Clones, and Aliens, is featured at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

Huang is an assistant professor in the department of English and the Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern. Her background includes research in posthumanism, feminist science studies, and Techno-Orientalism.

Using animations put together by a three-person art team along with narration from Huang herself, the Smithsonian exhibit argues that Asians in the United States are seen as robots — “mute, yet superbly efficient machines.” The film also describes how these characteristics are ever defining the future, replacing workers and using machines to move civilization “forward.”

According to Huang,

“The difference between human and inhuman is one that has been methodically engineered — and reverse engineered — over and over again. [But] what futures require dehumanized labor to bring them into being?”

Tropes from pop culture are laced throughout the film, highlighting disturbing patterns of discrimination. The exhibit focuses on three of these tropes — the robot, clone, and alien — and deconstructs them in a 24-minute examination of this aspect of Asian American identity.

This project was supported by a research grant from the Alumnae of Northwestern University and a Northwestern University Provost Faculty Grant for Research in Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts.

Anyone can now access the exhibit on the Smithsonian’s website. Watch the film here:

The film, titled INHUMAN FIGURES: Robots, Clones, and Aliens, is featured at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.