“Better Than Us”. L’icona androide nella serialità televisiva contemporanea

The aim of this essay is to explore the cultural function of the android icon. The hypothesis is that the android icon plays a fundamental narrative role in highlighting culturally dissonant issues. The reference definition of icon used here will be that of a cultural icon as a narrative core. Such a definition of a cultural icon is historically defined as a narrative intertextual corpus, or a set of narrative models, that can be drawn upon, both to create new narratives and to interpret and understand them. The intention is to conduct an exploration of a small portion of the vast field of the android cultural icon (literature, cinema, comics, video games), through a very limited reference corpus, in order to identify its function in a popular form of narrative communication like television series. But why can a single cultural icon like the android one assume a broader significance than just that of a single narrative device? And why is it in a popular narrative form like television series that we can find effective answers regarding the relevance of this cultural icon? There are commercial products tied to popular narrative genres that hide or mask complex or controversial themes from an ideological and cultural perspective. We can call this mechanism "narrative camouflage," borrowing the sense of this expression from the context of evolutionary biology. Just as some animals hide their presence by assuming an appearance that allows them to blend into their environment or context, similarly, some culturally dissonant themes can be conveyed through the narrative structures of a popular narrative genre in a more or less concealed manner. This mechanism can be traced back to a more general aesthetic-narrative principle, namely that a specific aesthetic form represents an indirect response to a dissonance or contradiction present in the real world. A problem in the real socio-cultural context finds an indirect response in an aesthetic work through the use of a specific linguistic, discursive, or narrative form. The hypothesis here is that one of these aesthetic forms is the android icon and that the function of its repeated use in many contemporary television series is linked to the issue of using it as a "response" to particular cultural dissonances. The figure of the android is prevalent in contemporary science fiction television series. Three specific cases will be considered here, which are relevant because they belong to three different cultural contexts (UK/Sweden, USA, Russia) and three different production mechanisms (Channel 4, HBO, C1R). The three TV series in question are: Humans (UK, Channel 4, 2015-18), a remake of Real Humans (Sweden, SVT1, 2012-14); Westworld (USA, HBO, 2016-22); and Better than Us (Russia, C1R, 2018-present). In each of these series, the figure of the android receives its own particular characterization but exhibits constants. The analysis of these recurring features is important to understand the function of this figure in terms of aesthetic-narrative response to significant socio-cultural issues.