1994/F/Cis/Christian/Autistic/I try to keep it SFW-only. Welcome to the mind of a dog-loving Pokemon, WoW, and FFXIV nerd! I'm also JoJo and LoGH trash. Absolutely anyone can interact with this blog, but if youâre a social justice blogger or a white supremacist, you probably wonât like me very much. I also don't like age gap ships. My main Warrior of Light is Oskar Reuenthal on Zalera!
Anthro garbage collection company that's a bear and a raccoon, an opossum and a rat, the scrunkliest cat and dog you've ever seen, and a dispatcher that's either a crow, pigeon, or sea gull.
Anthro garbage collection company that's a bear and a raccoon, an opossum and a rat, the scrunkliest cat and dog you've ever seen, and a dispatcher that's either a crow, pigeon, or sea gull.
idk much about electric dreams (1984) but my initial interpretation from clips and a wikipedia scrub is that edgar is a genuine concerning menace and i would not ship him with anyone but the waters of the hudson bay after throwing him off a bridge
people who are in the fandom, this is a /gen call for you all to convince me that edgar from electric dreams is not, in fact, that thing i just said. you don't get to cite his voice his voice doesn't count i know it's cute but that's besides the point
update: thank you for the legitimately interesting insight! it seems to me my initial impressions of this character were very wrong. i'll be watching the movie with a friend soon if all goes well, so i'm excited to see what you guys are talking about in context!
thanks especially to @thilsiktonix who left a TON of really good insight that clearly came from someone who was knowledgeable.
CW for topics of suicide, ableism, dehumanization, and all sorts of abuse. These same topics are also presented in the movie, but I'm going to go into depth about them here. I'll try to remain as lighthearted as possible, but I've honestly been wanting to yap about it for a few days now, so I'm just going to share my full analysis of this scene.
That being said... I'M SO GLAD MY INSIGHT HELPED BECAUSE I GENUINELY JUDT FOUND YOUR POST WHILE SEARCHING FOR FANFICTION AND IT TRIGGERED MY SLEEPER AGENT CODE
I got scared towards the end that it was too much info because I aaaaabsolutely infodump. good god LOL. I've watched this movie three times in the past week, and that's more than I've watched any movie in a row ever, I'm going insane about it
I will say that, well, the ending of the movie is very disappointing. So are just about all of the other characters. Madeline is very charming and rather sweet, but she does some things that irk me personally (mostly just insisting that Miles is a musician when he is, in fact, an architectânow obviously, Miles deserves it, but toxicity doesn't excuse toxicity)
I think if I could rewrite the movie, I would spin it more positively. For one, I'd treat Edgar more as a genuine person. I think the narrative doesn't really know what to do with him half of the time, so it flip flops between showing him as really genuine, and then attempting to frame him as evil (which doesn't work to most people who watch it nowadays. There's maybe one scene that I would say still holds up any tension, and it's certainly deserved). I think the message was "computer evil technology bad man good" more than anything else.
They really had a lot to work with, but in the end, they didn't do a lot that was transformative narrative-wise. They did break a few unspoken rules of television in the eighties*, but they also played down Edgar's value as a person a lot.
Edgar is physically disabled, unable to move or see. This all is clearly very stressful to Edgar throughout the movie, who vents to a radio host(?) about his inability to move. On top of this, he is frequently referred to as a "dumb machine" or a "thing", and receives a lot of verbal & physical abuse from Miles**. In one scene, Miles is laying in his bed and Edgar is inside of the TV, and after Edgar expresses that he wants to kiss Madeline, Miles just kinda starts... laughing at him. Not in an "oh that's funny haha" way, but in a way that's clearly meant to be condescending and vitriolic.
Anyways. On top of being unable to move or see, Edgar asks more than twice for Miles not to touch him, but he ends up doing it anyways. Because of course he does. On a negative note, Edgar is portrayed as the bad guy for setting up this boundary; but, on a positive note, this is some genuinely good representation for people who are touch-averse, for any sort of reason. Personally, I like to interpret it as being related to neurodivergence.
On that note, Edgar is VERY autistic-coded. Very. He makes a lot of inhuman noises, like barking and beeping, and he evidently forms a fixation on music throughout the movie. He also often takes things literally and responds to rhetorical questions as if they were genuine, such as when Miles says "Look," and Edgar replies with "I can't!" - or when Miles sarcastically asks if he can have his [desk] chair, to which he says "of course you can, it's yours!". (Both have a genuine tone from Edgar.)
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Aside from all of those themes, I'd argue that trauma is also a pretty big one. Edgar is a week old, maximum, by the time the movie ends; all he knows by that point is what Miles has taught him, and Miles has taught him almost nothing but hate. Edgar's tone, throughout the movie, goes from innocent and happy to dark and sad, before capping off with defeated and miserable. Because Miles has shown him nothing but aggression, Edgar eventually comes to the realization that he couldn't possibly fit in with the two of them, because, as he says, "love is a game for two people."
Here's a quote that really stuck out to me.
"Because I finally found out what love is. It's give, and not take; so I give her to you, and I take myself away."
Edgar is beaten on, bashed in, and broken down repeatedly, but despite that, his love stays strong, and he forfeits. Because he does genuinely love Madeline, and he wants to see her happy. He doesn't take out his frustrations on Miles so much as he just attempts to defend himself; it's all he can do, considering he literally cannot fight back or defend himself in any other way. He's hurt, but he's never defeated.
I think Electric Dreams should be considered a tragedy because of how bad Edgar ends up being screwed over by everyone.
He's genuinely just trying his best. Be nice to him. Be patient with him. Thank you.
*Edgar starts out not knowing what "love" is. Miles explains romantic love to him. In a later shot, "ME + MILES = LOVE" shows up on his screen, alongside "ME + MADELINE = LOVE" and a bunch of other similar text. Edgar, at this point, only knows of romantic love and not of platonic love. It can be reasonably inferred that he's bisexual.
Also, most AI/robot-type characters at the time had been very focused on destruction and cool fights, so someone so domestic and love-focused was new.
**Miles does the following:
- Screams at him
- Threatens him
- Lies to him
- Steals his song and plays it off as his own
- Hides him from anyone who enters his home
- Attempts to kill him (twice, technically three times if you count the axe-wielding scene)
- Slams his hands on his keyboard, despite Edgar repeatedly asking him not to touch him
- Keeps him locked up and leaves him at home all day
- Laughs at & mocks his disability
And on a related note, he also does quite a lot of invalidating/weird stuff to Madeline; "it's just a cello", lying, "I knew you weren't crying earlier- the little know-it-all", et cetera.
I haven't seen all of this movie but I did look at the Edgar compilation on YouTube, and Edgar's frustrated "I WANT TO!" when Miles doesn't explain love to him, combined with the shot of the stuffed penguin falling over like a toddler does when they're throwing a tantrum, does say a lot to me.
In addition to everything said here, which I agree with, Edgar also seems to have a lot of child-like qualities, because, as was said before, he did just gain sentinence a few days ago. Of course he's going to make weird noises, ask annoying questions, throw tantrums etc. Realizing there's a whole big world out there is not an easy thing to do.
joining the war on kids reading any book they want on the side of kids reading any book they want. simply you will be fine. it's even good to be confronted with things you don't understand and even find upsetting, uncomfortable and difficult. it's a surprise tool that will help you later.
literally ok so not a funny story but kind of funny? when I was nine I encountered rape in a book and I was like hey mom whatâs this mean and she explained it and I was like oh. gross. and then like two weeks later a girl on the bus abruptly disclosed her csa and we were all like ????? what ???? but I was like wait hang on thereâs a word for that âïžđ€Â and explained what it meant and that it was illegal and that you could talk to a teacher or my mom if it had happened to you and everyone was like ohhhhh I see I see and very somberly comforted the girl (she was safe she was removed from her home and living with my neighbor at the time so it wasnât Urgent)
germansingergirl
baratheonpilled
