Zombies are mythical characters created to frighten children in movies and stories. Amy Wilentz describes zombies in her story, A Zombie is a Slave Forever, as characters “… in rags, eye-sockets blackened, pumping devices that make fake blood run down their faces.” She also states the idea of zombies arose from old African religious beliefs encompassing the pain of slavery. It’s reflective of their starvation during this time and the idea that they had to turn to cannibalism. Many people, including myself, don’t know the history that follows these characters from the horror category, but it is the reason that type of character was created. Despite any physical features differing between zombies in various films, they always follow the the theme of eating brains.
Robots are a whole different category from characters like zombies or mummies. Robots don’t illuminate that fear factor in most people and most likely because they are realistic. There are many robots that have been created and function in our world. Some even believe that they will take even more of a prevalence in our lives when scientists create robots that act even more human. Since they are more familiar to humans and have more similar characteristics, they aren’t scary to most people. They typically share common qualities like their metal frame, a certain voice, and human-like shape.
Androids are much less common characters than robots and zombies, particularly in cinema. By definition, they are robots with human characteristics. This means they exemplify a human with similar features and actions. They are pretty close to robots, but the difference is in their description. By this I mean that all androids are technically robots, but not all robots are androids. Other robots besides androids exist. For example, when a customer goes to Red Robin and wants the check at the end, rather than waving for their server they use the tablet. This is an example of a robot replacing human labor without the robot having actual human characteristics.
Automatons are basically the same thing as androids. They are “moving mechanical devices made in imitation of a human being,” according to my google search. The difference that comes to mind for me when I read that is that they seek to mimic human action, rather than just representing some human qualities like an android. When I think of automatons the first thing that comes to mind is the movie Wall-E, but this is a clear misconception because Wall-E hardly mimics human attributes and actually takes the shape of a box.
All these characters are different, but share a similarity in their presence in cinema. Whether they add a fear factor to a movie or show, or they are just characters in it, they bring a new element of characterization besides what humans bring. They show different qualities like computation in robots or eating brains in zombies that are unfamiliar to us. Despite their primarily physical differences, they are similar in their addition to cinema.
