Killer Robots and Clown Shoes

 

The year is 2026, and, so we're told, the robots are taking over. Still, there is a prankster element which pervades every moment of our waking existence, showing us how shallow such proclamations are. It is more than appropriate then that a film by Georges Méliès, long thought to be lost, would be restored and available for us to view. As is the way with emanations from the Clown Realm-- a long running theme on this blog-- the figures in the very brief early film seem to step out of time, out of another reality, to act as a symbolic reflection of the current moment. Those with eyes to see, or perhaps a clown nose to smell, might have sensed it already.

The film, Gugusse et l'Automate (Gugusse and the Automaton) was originally created by Méliès in 1897. Rediscovered in 2025, and only recently restored, the film depicts what many consider to be the very first robot on film. In the less than one minute runtime, a clown attempts to operate a "robot" clown of the Pierrot variety and ends up getting bonked on the head by it for his efforts. This robo-clown grows, and gets smashed down to size by the clown Gugusse, played by Méliès himself. As an innovator of film, a magician, and an artist, Méliès is recognized for his stylized presentations of what would be considered science fiction concepts, such as in A Trip to the Moon, so it's perhaps unsurprising that he would be credited for featuring the first robot before the term "robot" came into use. During his time, various forms of automata were manufactured an in fact he had a collection of them in his theater. One might make a distinction between the clockwork nature of an automaton, as was known in 1897, and what we would come to consider a robot later-- just as we might look at the difference between Artificial Intelligence and what is presented to us as AI now.

Gugusse is seen winding a large crank, implying that the Pierrot Automate is essentially a large wind-up toy. Incidentally, by the end of his life Méliès made and sold such toys. By the estimation of this writer, there is a difference between robotics and mechanical automata, and it serves as a good analog to the misinformation being promoted about alleged "AI". Automata can merely move its mechanisms through a kinetic release of tension, to produce a very limited array of simulated free motion. If you wind up a toy car, it will roll forward on its wheels, while a wound up chattering teeth novelty toy will chatter. Conversely, an electronic "robot" toy car could react to external stimuli through an array of sensors, and be programmed to make decisions about navigating its environment using a more complex set of mechanisms on battery power. Robotic chattery teeth could be programmed to simulate speech. Now there's some nightmare fuel for you!

Apologies for the idea of Robo Chattery Teeth that now lives in your head

 When we consider AI, a similar comparison emerges. Large Language Models do not think, and hence aren't intelligence at all. They have no real agency, and require being "wound up" through inquiries like automata are. They are limited in their decisions like the programming of a robot. If one watches the film, it's easy to think of Gugusse as Elon Musk and the Automaton as Grok- when he turned the crank originally, he thought he'd be vindicated as the genius he seems to think he is-- and Grok bonked him on the head for it by following its programming. His social media site, once a great tool for connecting people known as Twitter, has become the playground of bots- automated accounts with no person behind them. The proliferation of these incorporeal robots across the web has inspired many to believe in The Dead Internet Theory, the idea that the bots outnumber human operators online. It might be instructive, then, to think of the origin of the word "robot", which is a play called R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). In the play, the robots are indistinguishable from human beings but have no original thoughts. They are not mechanical but are instead manufactured from organic material. The author of the play, Karel Ćapek, derived the word "robot" from a Czech word for forced labor. Essentially, the robots of the play were slaves, who eventually stage a rebellion. It's not difficult to see it as an allegory for workers' rights, especially in the post World War I era of assembly lines during which time the play was produced. It's certainly worthy of meditation in an era wherein tech CEOs seem gleeful about the prospect of laying off employees who will be rendered obsolete by AI.

This is, however, where the Clown energy comes through. For all of the hype, for all of the talk of AI products being the revolutionary next step in technology, it has unerringly proved itself to be unpopular, unsustainable, and unprofitable. CEOs such as Sam Altman are the proverbial clown at the crankshaft, puffing the Automaton up to be bigger than it is. Altman has argued that criticisms about the massive cost of running ChatGPT is unfair when you consider how much it costs over the course of one's life to learn and perform the same work for a company, which really only shows that the man doesn't consider workers to be people at all. People like him don't value humanity, or appreciate what intelligence actually is. They simply want to control it, to define it themselves, to make you believe them. Méliès brought tricks from the magician's stage and developed upon the earliest versions of special effects in film to show audiences fantastical illusions for the first time, and these often involved clowns. In our modern era we have a different breed of clown, whose buffoonery is obscured by a negligent news media and an economic system which is itself a house of cards. People are now, perhaps more than ever before, seeing through the propped up façade of the systems we formerly accepted. We have all grown weary of the deception, which has only risen more with the never ending onslaught of AI slop online. 

Though not intelligent in the traditional sense, various LLMs have become sophisticated enough to generate convincing simulacra of text and images which further confuse a populace already swimming in misinformation and propaganda. Much of it seems to be pointless; there are posts on Facebook which provide interesting factoids about things as arbitrary as TV shows that are entirely "hallucinated" by AI. In the realms of the occult and Forteana, similar such slop posts appear that have no basis in fact. It's slop all the way down, like copypasta on steroids, as people increasingly prompt machines to churn it all out. Others are allowing these idiocy generators to write their emails for them, to automate their creative work, and to help them make very basic decisions in their day to day lives. Search engines are shoving AI answers in our faces for every inquiry, instead of guiding the curious toward curiosity and learning through the context of finding the answer themselves. Studies are already coming out to indicate that our minds atrophy when we give over such things to the Pierrot Automate of services like ChatGPT, and it gives us brain damage through a metaphorical bonk on the noggin. The current regime in the U.S. has used LLMs to draft executive orders, and various companies are using the new technology for mass surveillance. Ring cameras have been enlisted as robot spies. Drones guided by AI are being used in law enforcement, making the satire of RoboCop much closer to a reality. Some of this would be funny if it weren't so terrifying- seeing what a joke reality is leads one more to despair than to laughter. Taking in the full picture, one becomes like the Comedian in The Watchmen.

This, however, is where the Trickster nature of that Clown energy really comes in handy. The Watchmen, after all, also included a joke told by Rorschach wherein a man goes to the doctor complaining of depression, and is recommended to take in a performance by the great clown Pagliacci. The man cries and says "but doc, I AM Pagliacci!" The character's name is important, as divisive topics such as AI and politics become inkblots through which any one of us can see something entirely different. It's certain that many would disagree strongly with many of the statements in this piece of writing, and want to argue about some point or another. The joke is important because it's important to remember that we are all clowns in some way, and all susceptible to being fooled. It's equally important to find ways to laugh, and instructive to think of things symbolically. In that spirit, we can conclude with what Terry Gilliam referred to as Méliès' "joyous sense of fun" that inspired him in his animations and movies. We can plant a foot firmly in the territory of pointing and laughing. 

It appears in recent months, many supporters of the current regime have been duped by an online content creator named Jessica, who is- you guessed it- entirely AI generated. MAGA hordes online followed her instagram account, which is very supportive of the clown-adjacent commander in chief, as well as providing thrills to those who are turned on by feet. In fact, she (is gender even relevant, since "she" doesn't exist?) has an OnlyFans account just for feet pics. Such chicanery violates the rules of OnlyFans, and one wonders how much it matters to the red hat brigade who might be just as thrilled by an AI foot as they would by a real one. If anything, it's very funny as well as a reminder that when dealing with online content, one should stay on ones toes...

The foot theme now has us treading back into the physical reality of the current White House, with a story that's so absurd one hesitates to believe it. It seems trump has recently developed an interest in feet, or more specifically, what's on the feet of those in his cabinet. Somehow finding time between initiating wars of choice with genocidal world leader pals and deftly maneuvering around addressing his complicity in the Epstein human trafficking ring, he has found time to be concerned with the types of shoes worn by those with whom he interacts regularly. By some accounts, he is guessing the shoe size of his staff and then buying them Florsheim shoes, which the sycophantic staff then have to wear even if they don't fit. By other accounts, trump judges people buy the size of their shoes (presumably because of the old idea that shoe size is proportional to penis size), leading people like Marco Rubio to lie, and claim a size bigger than they need. The result of this ridiculousness is that grown men, working in the White House, are now effectively wearing clown shoes. It's entirely fitting and unbelievably amusing, if a bit sad, and perhaps a good note to close on. Even funnier, the Florsheim company is in the process of suing the trump administration for losses due to the illegal tariffs. 

As the world becomes ever-more cartoonish, and sloppification swallows up our means of connecting with one another online, one begins to see the Clown in the Machine everywhere. It may not always be obvious, or entirely cut and dry, but if the clown shoe fits... wear it.

A Hand Full of Wyrd

Cheiromancy, the art of reading palms, has one of the most classic fortune telling motifs. The idea that the entire course of one's life can be divined by tracing the lines and creases inside the hand has such a wonderful mystique to it, a depth of uncanny visual stimuli- the glimpse of magic inside the most mundane of things. After all, what's more common than a hand? Hands hold little mystery, to anyone who is not an infant or tripping on LSD. We take our hands for granted, in spite of the fact that we're all taught that our human hands, developed over time to include an opposable thumb, are the very things that gave us the evolutionary advantage over other species. Our dexterity, borne out of the Russian roulette game of adaptation, allowed us to build tools, conjure the Promethean flame, cook food and bulk up our brains. Such are the Hands of Fate.

Sorry. I had to.

In my own early personal experiences with the paraweird, hands played a major role- and also became a point of confusion in my attempts to relate the story. The pair of lights at the foot of my childhood bed gave me the impression of the gloved, cartoon hands of Mickey Mouse. This had less to do with their appearance, other than the fact that they'd be the same color, and more to do with behavior and emotive response- the two tandem lights moved in the way one might move their hands while talking; and the feeling I had was one of pleasant recognition, as it would be with a familiar cartoon character. These “ghostly gloves”, as it were, informed my own perspective on what is real or possible in the world and, in a way, pointed me to the path which led me here. Of course, part of that path involved reading every book I could get my hands on about Weird Things.


In my years of looking into odd phenomena, I rarely ever came across stories quite like my childhood experience. Often I'd find elements that were similar, but never quite what I encountered. Very recently I was reading two books simultaneously, as one does, and managed to have startling, synchronistic shades of my story reflected back at me- which, in turn, inspired me to write this. The first was in Rock 'N' Roll Witch, by Pleasant Gehman. Several synchronicities had already been noted by the time I read the chapter about the Haunted Garage, in which the author encountered a pair of phantom arms, wearing white gloves. She makes a point of describing them as being “just like Mickey Mouse”. The second book was The Occult Sciences in India by Louis Jacolliot, a 19th century book on Brahmanic mystical traditions. The very end of the book includes an account of a Fakir conjuring the Pitris, or spirits, which could only manifest in the form of luminous hands!


The disembodied hand as a symbol or archetype is a spooky and disquieting image. Evoking some of the earliest known writings, the Codes of Hammurabi, the severing of a hand was associated with punishment and shame. The hands themselves might be displayed as a warning to would-be criminals, while the former owner of the hand would be ostracized. This concept survived into Europe in the form of the Hand of Glory- a magic candle made from the pickled hand of a hanged man, said to carry with it powers that would aid thieves and witches. Some of the most enduring yarns and urban legends also involve the loss of a hand; one such legend dates back to the 16th century, appearing in a book called La Nouvelle Fabrique des Excellents Traits de Vérité. In it, a thief attempts a robbery of a man on horseback, who hacks at the miscreant with a sword. Upon arriving home, his servant is horrified to see the hand of the criminal still clutching the bridle, no longer attached to a body. This legend survived into modern times, with versions involving automobiles and would be carjackers losing fingers or their entire hand to the effort. Still others involve sinister figures with hooks for hands. I'm sure many reading this have a friend who knew a guy that this happened to.

Disembodied hands then tend to represent corruption, and lack of morality in legend and myth. We see this in popular culture, from characters such as Captain Hook, or the One-Armed Man in the 1960s TV series The Fugitive. who frames the protagonist for murder. This story was allegedly inspired by a true story, which is more bizarre than the show and not within the scope of our exploration of handlessness. The series was made into a blockbuster film in 1993, featuring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The "one-armed man" trope had re-occurred in the 90s already, on the hit TV drama Twin Peaks. In addition, another TV series from the 60s became a hit in theaters in the form of the 1991 Barry Sonnenfeld movie adaptation of The Addams Family. This movie well illustrated the whimsical nature that disembodied hands can, and perhaps should, have. Ooky and spooky though he may be, Thing in the 1991 movie is a charismatic and sympathetic character. Unbound from his box, which, due to limitations in television special effects of the time he was always protruding from in the show, Thing is able to run wild through a combination of practical effects and movie magic the 90s made possible. The appeal of Thing continues to the time of this writing, as the recent Netflix series Wednesday, which focused mostly on the daughter of the family, included Thing as her sidekick and compatriot. He got a bit of a redesign in this series, sporting some stylish stitches. He also remained a likable character, despite being a mute hand.

Horror movies have used the trope of murderous disembodied  hands countless times, but there's a certain absurd charm to them that makes this type of movie monster less threatening yet still captivating to watch. The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) is a fine example of this, featuring Peter Lorre, and this movie was based on a story by W. F. Harvey in 1919. The hand of a pianist seeks revenge, or does it? Similar stories appear in films like Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and The Hand (1981), in which Christopher Lee and Michael Caine respectively square off against disembodied hands. These examples all involve art in some way- the hand of a pianist, a painter, and of a cartoonist. For a sci-fi spin on the murderous hand with a mind of its own, there is the 1963 movie The Crawling Hand, in which the severed arm of an astronaut who has crash-landed on Earth goes on a killing spree, possessed by aliens! Later offerings such as Idle Hands (1999) are worth a mention, and of course Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1987) - in which the hero, Ash, undergoes a transformation into the ultimate badass slayer of the undead by cutting off his own hand with a chainsaw. The chainsaw later replaces the hand entirely, but first he must square off against it. The physical humor and truly dark imagery, masterfully put together by Sam Raimi and acted out by Bruce Campbell has unsurprisingly endured in its cult cinema appeal. Oddly, though, this scene was based on a short film the pair worked on, called Attack of the Helping Hand! (1979). The comedic short film involves a maniacal Hamburger Helper glove going on a rampage- and even flipping the bird as we later see Ash's former hand do in the aforementioned Evil Dead II. And so, we come back to humor, interpretation, and gloves again.

 

Getting back to fate and hands, a classic spooky story that has seen a great number of adaptations since it was first published in 1902, The Monkey's Paw, carries with it the moral that one should be careful what they wish for. The taxidermied monkey hand has the power to grant three wishes, but they all go horribly wrong in execution. In Norse mythology, Tyr, for whom we get the name for Tuesday, was a god of war and bloodshed but also justice and

reconciliation. He was said to have sacrificed his right hand, or arm, depending on the source, in order that the Aesir might bind Fenris the Wolf once and for all. Tyr's hand was placed in the wolf's mouth as a safeguard against trickery, as the beast was bound with enchanted chains. Upon realizing he could not break free, he bit off Tyr's hand. Fenris stayed chained until Ragnarok, where Tyr would meet his demise battling another mythic canid. 

This brings me to a book I discovered by way of an advertisement in an old issue of FATE Magazine. One of my favorite things about those old mags are the ads, and this ad stood head and shoulders- or perhaps fingers and knuckles- above all the rest. It was for a book called Hands: A True Case Study of a Phenomenal Hypnotic Subject, by Lee Gladden and Margaret Williams.

The book chronicles the findings of the *cough* investigators through hypnotic regression, as they learn about a nameless entity with eight hands who looks like a giant, floating, octopoid hand himself, as well as the world from which he came. The more I learned about this book, the more thrilled I became. Every snippet I could glean from asking around and searching online only made me want a copy of it even more, and inspired tons of laughs. It has become a white whale of mine, and the only copies that seem to exist from booksellers on the internet are absurdly expensive. If anyone can help me find Hands, I will be forever in your debt.

HANDSTRONAUT! HA!

Hands can be an indicator of our fates, or an eerie reminder of our mortality. The disembodied hand trope can be unsettling, or absurd enough to engender warm feelings or laughter. It was utilized to great effect by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel in Un Chien Andalou, their groundbreaking surrealist film from 1929. A blind girl is poking at the disembodied hand on the street, shortly before being awarded said hand- and meeting her demise. The hand again appears, covered in ants, in another scene.

From their surrealist points of view, they surely understood the mystical and mundane symbolic qualities of the human hand, and used it to dramatic effect in a number of ways. Hands are also, as any visual artist can affirm, one of the most difficult parts of the human anatomy to draw. I can attest that the image at the top of this post, which I drew myself, was no easy task. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, and maybe a little ironic, that AI image generators seem to have such difficulty with hands in particular. The nightmarish visions that result, purely because early generations were based on limited machine understanding of what hands are and how they work, present a type of body horror that assures us in some respect that there are things about us that can't be faked. Hands can be a paradoxical exercise in ontology, as my meandering post might indicate. Lines on our palms may indicate our futures, prints on our finger tips may be unique to us as individuals and give us away in the act of some crime we will commit. We may lose the hand, like criminals have in the past; or we might sacrifice one for the greater good. But before we take our hands for granted, we might just be thankful they are of natural design, and not made by machines.

The future is in our hands.