The flop of the 2004 animated film The Polar Express is largely blamed on the “creepy” feeling people get when they look at very realistic-looking robots or human animations. These too real facsimiles fall into the so-called uncanny valley, between acceptably fake-looking human representations and real, healthy humans. Psychologists have long wondered whether this aversion has an evolutionary basis, and new research on macaques suggests that it does.
Princeton University researchers presented images of real monkey faces, unrealistic animated faces and realistic animated faces to five monkey subjects and recorded how long they gazed at each. Similar to the human response to objects in the uncanny valley, the monkeys avoided looking at the most realistic animated faces. The scientists, who published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, speculate that realistic animations might resemble sickly or diseased animals because they lack subtle cues of health such as normal skin texture and hue—and that an aversion to such sights may have evolved to keep us healthy.
This article was originally published with the title Monkeys Get the Creeps, Too.
See what we're tweeting about
3 Comments
Add CommentPOLAR EXPRESS a "flop?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps you need to do some research before you write about such things.
A world-wide gross of $305,420,597 is not considered a "flop."
If you consider the goals of the Polar Express -- to insert the highest level of animated realism possible -- the result of people feeling that the animated actors were "creepy" shows that Polar Express did not succeed in it's animation goal, although it succeeded in the only category you apparently feel important, the bottom line. THIS is the failure the article is addressing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you wish to read about the successes of the FINANCIAL side of Polar Express, please go to such sites as Wall Street Journal or E!
On the fair side, when the description "flop" is applied to a movie, it pretty much always means a financial disaster. If the article meant to use it in a different way, one sentence should have been spared to make their meaning more clear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen words have more than one usual meaning, or you use them in unusual ways, it is up the author to make their intent for the words more clear.