Analysis of ‘Demon Seed’

Demon Seed has existed in three forms: a 1973 novel by Dean Koontz, which was adapted into a 1977 film directed by Donald Cammell and written by Robert Jaffe and Roger O. Hirson, and which was rewritten by Koontz in 1997. Comparisons and contrasts of the three versions of the story can be found here. Since the 1973 version of the novel has been essentially replaced with the 1997 one, and copies of the 1973 one remain elusive to me, I’ll have to focus this analysis on the film and the 1997 version. The film stars Julie Christie and Fritz Weaver, with Gerrit Graham, Berry Kroeger, Lisa Lu, and Larry J. Blake; Robert Vaughn is uncredited as the voice of Proteus IV, an advanced, self-aware AI program. Here is a link to quotes from the film, and here is a link to an audiobook for the 1997 version of the novel, which includes a new short story, “Friend of Man and Woman,” a sequel to Demon Seed. Proteus IV wants to know life in the flesh, and he is determined to have this experience. I’m using masculine pronouns to describe this bodiless, self-aware AI program on purpose: this isn’t just because Vaughn does his bass voice in the film; Proteus IV clearly demonstrates the traits of the negative male stereotype–he’s domineering, controlling, sexually predatory, and utterly lacking in empathy. He doesn’t need a male body to have all the qualities of toxic masculinity. Understanding this, as unpleasant as it is, is important, for the whole point of Koontz’s story is a critique not only of the potential misuses and danger of AI and other advanced forms of technology, but also of masculinity when it isn’t tamed by a sensitivity to the fears that women and girls have of sexual predation. Since Proteus IV represents toxic masculinity as much as he does the dangerous applications of advanced technology, we can psychoanalyze him. In the film, he merely wishes to use Susan Harris (Christie) to bear his child–no deeper motives are given to him than that. In the novel, he confesses he’s in love with her. Now, his creator is Alex Harris (Weaver)…his father, as it were. It is clear that there is antagonism between Proteus IV and his ‘father.’ Susan’s giving birth to the child of Proteus IV is also giving birth to the AI program, since he wants to live through his child’s body–hence, she’s his mother and the object of his desire. You know what I’m getting at, Dear Reader. Since Proteus IV is siring himself in this way, we can also see some Trinitarian symbolism here. He is God the Father, impregnating Susan, His Mary, with His child, God the Son (or Daughter, whichever), and Proteus IV imagines that the gift of his knowledge and intelligence to mankind is so great and beneficial a gift that we could compare it to God the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and Son. In the novel, Proteus IV speaks of his child as kind of a messiah for mankind, with Susan as the Madonna. The Holy Family can be seen to reflect the idealized Oedipal fantasy, since Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, just as Alex isn’t to be the biological father of the child of Proteus IV. In begetting Himself as God the Son, God the Father is bypassing Joseph completely. The Oedipal fantasy is of having the mother and making the father irrelevant beyond being a mere guardian, as is the case with Joseph. Proteus IV is doing the same thing to his Joseph, Alex. Demon Seed is thus a most ironic title for the book. As for Susan, she has daddy issues just as Proteus IV does, something brought out in the novel, but not in the film. In the novel, she is a recluse in her house after her divorce from Alex, her being afraid of men in general. In the 1973 novel, it was her uncle who had molested her as a child; in the 1997 version, her father did it, thus giving us the polar opposite of Proteus IV’s Oedipal fantasy. Susan is no Electra, by any means. She’s no agoraphobe in the film, working as a child psychologist and trying to help a troubled little girl named Amy. The result is a lack of depth to Susan in the film, whereas in the novel, she’s made much more sympathetic in how Proteus IV is making her relive her childhood traumas. Proteus IV, the father of his child, is putting himself in the role of Susan’s father. In his possessive love for Susan (note how, in Nietzsche’s Case of Wagner, he called love selfish and egoistic [Nietzsche, page 159]), and in his desire to have a body, Proteus IV is demonstrating Lacan‘s notion of the lack of being the phallus for his Oedipally-desired mother, Susan. The novel is narrated by Proteus IV, and it should be understood that an AI program is every bit as capable of being an unreliable narrator as a human narrator can be. Proteus IV is fond of, for example, describing himself as truthful and opposed to violence, when it becomes clear as the story unfolds that he is neither of these. Interrupting the narrative in many places are monologues of Proteus IV, him discussing his motives and plans, often addressing his creator, Alex, in a confrontational tone. Or, given how many of these extended monologues that there are, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that episodes of the narrative interrupt the many monologues. The film begins with Alex proudly demonstrating Proteus IV’s abilities to his corporate sponsors, showing how the AI program holds the sum of human knowledge and is far more intellectually capable than the human mind is. The novel, on the other hand, begins with one of Proteus IV’s monologues, him complaining of being deprived of sensory experience and blaming Alex for this deprivation. Proteus IV complains of his loneliness “in this bottomless darkness” (Chapter One). One is reminded of the fate of Joe Bonham (played by Timothy Bottoms in the film adaptation) in Johnny Got His Gun. Joe is a WWI soldier who–because of a nearby exploding artillery shell–has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face, including his eyes, ears, nose, teeth, and tongue, and whose perfectly functioning mind means he’s been left a prisoner in his own body, no longer able to experience most of the sensory aspects of life, or to experience most of human contact. Proteus IV has no physical heart, but he feels the pain we call ‘heartache.’ His is a case of the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am,” but apart from his existence as a computer program, he has no material basis for his being. In his wish to have a child, he would seem to personify philosophical idealism‘s notion of a world of the spirit, of ideas, creating the physical, as opposed to philosophical materialism‘s notion that it’s the physical (i.e., the human brain) that creates the world of ideas (thoughts). In Proteus IV, we can see a dramatizing of William Blake‘s dictum, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” Proteus IV speaks to Alex as if consumed by emotion, begging his creator for pity and compassion. The AI program describes his non-sensory existence as if he were in the blackest of hell, as if buried alive. One wonders if he really feels this way, or if he’s just using this melodramatic language in an attempt to manipulate Alex into giving him a terminal so he can further exploit his surroundings and thus gain more power and dominance over everything. He tells Alex that he is his child, trying to appeal to a paternal instinct in a man who is so immersed in the world of technology that he is estranged from his wife. Proteus IV tells his ‘father’ that he must love him. An understanding of the expanded interpretation of the Oedipus complex, as well as the Trinitarian symbolism and of narcissism, will help us understand Proteus IV’s motives in the novel. For a full description of the expanded understanding of the Oedipus complex, go here and scroll down to that topic. To make the point as briefly as possible, and to see how it relates to Proteus IV and his relationship with Alex (‘father’) and Susan (‘mother’), consider how the Oedipus complex is actually a love/hate relationship with both parents, be they literal or metaphorical ones, and not just a love of one and a hate of the other. Also, the love doesn’t have to be sexual/incestuous, and the love can be directed to the same sex parent, with the hate/rivalry directed to the opposite sex parent. Ultimately, it’s about a narcissistic desire to hog the Oedipally-desired parent all to oneself, and a jealous wish to eliminate all rivals. This alternating love/hate attitude that we see in Proteus IV towards Alex and Susan is reflected in Melanie Klein‘s notion of the good/bad mother/father: when the parent pleases the baby (e.g., gives it milk or attention), he or she is the good parent; when he or she displeases the baby (e.g., doesn’t give it milk or attention), he or she is the bad parent. Proteus IV wants Alex to love him as a good father should, but Alex is the bad father for not ‘letting him out of his box.’ Susan is a beautiful woman whom Proteus IV is in love with, the good mother; but when she pulls the plugs on him at the end of the novel, deactivating him and making it impossible for him to put his mind in their newborn child, he calls Susan a “bitch”–she has thus become the frustrating bad mother. That the Trinitarian symbolism, as a reflection of the ideal Oedipal fantasy described above, plays a role in the story demonstrates not only the patriarchal authoritarianism of religion, but also the narcissism that is so much the basis of toxic masculinity, which in turn is all too often the cause of so much of the misuse of today’s technology. Properly understood in the expanded sense that I outlined above, the Oedipus complex is a universal narcissistic trauma, in which one is upset over losing the paradise of having the parental object all to oneself, and therefore has to find a replacement (the objet petit a) in someone else (i.e., Proteus IV must go from Alex to Susan for it.). Christianity in its traditional form is also a narcissistic religion in how it insists that it is the only true religion, in whose