We've seen them in movies, comics, shows, and in most fantasy/sci-fi outcast stories. The non-human character. The robot, the alien, the animal, the personifications. Once they are established to have human emotions, the audience always falls in love with them, faster than they would a human character. Why is this? Why are we more attracted to the inhuman than the human?
Non-Human characters are often visually pleasing, such as human and animal hybrids, humanoid or even non-humanoid robots, actual animals with the poser of speech. There's often an attraction to the elegance, the cuteness, or other aesthetics of these characters that draws us to them more quickly and strongly than the regular human ones. It also could be (in part) that non-Human characters do not necessarily fall to the same sinful or selfish desires that regular humans do. Alien species may not have the same moral dilemmas or vices purveying their culture, thus it is easier to like them because they do not have the same capacity to do wrong. Animals and robots also often don't have those same issues either, either because they are devoid of certain human abilities, or they are without conscious autonomous thought. This is why we often fear for the life of pets a little more so than humans in certain instances, especially film. We worry about the cute innocent creatures meeting their deaths more than any human characters. – Jonathan Leiter9 years ago
With the extremely detailed sci-fi horror game SOMA, there was a lot that dealt with the meaning of humanity and sentient life. It really made me appreciate sci-fi that tackles this topic well. I'd be intrigued by an exploration of this appeal toward the inhuman. – emilydeibler9 years ago
One way to write about this topic would be to look at the evolution of sci-fi movies and books in the last decades. It maybe interesting to find in what ways they have effected our emotions and understanding of non humans in comparison to when the genre of comics and sci fi first emerged. Has the popularity of such genre changed our perception of non-humans and how we related to them?
– aferozan9 years ago
Maybe mention a few examples specifically like the new droid in Star Wars, or the operating system in Her. – luminousgloom9 years ago
I think that perhaps we fall in love with them because in a way we pity them whether they have gone through something to get to the stage of not being able to be loved or show emotions and that after all the hardship they are. Or perhaps we're interested in the idea that they can show feelings.. – Wanderlust9 years ago
I'm glad you brought up SOMA, Emily. I also thought of the droids in Star Wars, as well as the robots in the video game series Portal and WALL-E and EVE from the Pixar movie. For the purposes of keeping the article focused, the author may want to focus solely on one type of non-human (robot, alien, or animal) because there are so many great examples for each category (ET for the alien and Remy from Pixar's Ratatouille for the animal, for instance). – KennethC8 years ago
Because animals, robots, and aliens have never hurt me as much as humans have. – Tigey8 years ago