In L. Frank Baum's
The Wizard of Oz series, an ordinary munchkin lumberjack named Nick Chopper is transformed into a man of metal through the evil devices of the Wicked Witch of the East. The witch does not effect the change directly, however; instead, she curses Nick's axe, and each time he uses the axe, it cuts off part of his body. (This story is told in
The Tin Woodman of Oz, which I haven't read. Nick is either not too bright -- hang up your axe, buddy! -- or, more likely, as a man with one salable skill, he has no other choice.) Nick's friend Ku-klip, a clever tinsmith, fashioned replacement parts for poor Nick as the need arose, and pretty soon Nick was completely made of tin. Somehow, Nick managed not only to survive his serial dismemberment, but also the total replacement of his body, including his brain. Except, of course, the clever tinsmith was unwilling or unable to give Nick a tin heart. Artificial body, artificial brain, no heart: Nick has become the stereotypical robot.
It was Nick's heart that got him into this trouble in the first place -- he fell in love with the Wicked Witch's servant girl, Nimmie Amee. When the powerful witch ordered him to stop distracting her maid, Nick stood up straight like a good republican (the ideology, not the party) and said that he was nobody's servant and what he did was none of her business. (No one ever said that standing up to power was safe.) Romantic love put Nick in jeopardy, and manly pride set him on the path that led to his, um, things getting chopped off. It's worth noting that Nick's cyborgization was seen by the witch as
defiance, not as a sign of her victory. In fact, Nick liked his metal parts and so did Nimmie Amee. (Once he's been completely sliced and diced and has become the man of tin, his would-be fiancee says that he'll be the brightest -- shiniest -- husband in the world, and that since he doesn't have to eat and doesn't make a mess, she'll be one of the freest wives in the world.) Without his heart, however, the Tin Woodman finds that he no longer has the capacity to love, and he sets out on the journey that eventually brings him into contact with Dorothy.
In
Littlefield's allegorical reading of
The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman represents the dehumanized factory worker of late 19th century industry. This interpretation brings us back to the pre-Asimovian world of the Czech play "
Rossum's Universal Robots". As you may recall, Mr. Rossum invents and sells robots, which are living, breathing, but non-human workers. Here is a scene from the play where a lecherous factory manager tries to impress a young, female potential customer as he gives a history of Rossum's products:
Manager: So the young Rossum said to himself : A human being. That's something that feels joy, plays the violin, wants too for a walk, and in general requires a lot of things which - which are, in effect, superfluous. ... A gasoline engine has no need for tassels and ornaments, Miss Glory. And manufacturing artificial workers is exactly like manufacturing gasoline engines. Production should be as simple as possible and the product the best for its function. What do you think? Practically speaking, what is the best kind of worker? Glory: The best? Probably the one who - who - who is honest - and dedicated.
Manager: No, it's the one that's the cheapest. The one with the fewest needs. Young Rossum did invent a worker with the smallest number of needs, but to do so he had to simplify him. He chucked everything not directly related to work, and doing that he virtually rejected the human being and created the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul. Oh, Miss Glory, the product of an engineer is technically more refined than the creation of nature.
Glory: It is said that man is the creation of God.
Manager: So much the worse. God had no notion of modern technology. Would you believe that the late young Rossum assumed the role of God?
Frankly, however, this isn't Baum's Tin Woodman. The Tin Woodman was an independent tradesman, not a factory worker. He liked being his own man, and he didn't have enough of the subordinate's sense to know that you don't mouth off to the boss--you hold it in. It was his heart and his pride that did him in, not his willingness to do mindless work at someone else's behest. The Tin Woodman may have no heart, but he is not emotionally heartless. He may not be capable of romantic love--he doesn't have the right parts--but he is still capable of human compassion, a fact that is only confirmed, not inaugurated, when the Wizard gives him a "Kind Heart instead of a Loving Heart."
So, the Tin Woodman has human compassion and other human emotions, he enjoys human company, but he has no sex drive. He does attempt to track down and marry his old sweetheart, but only out of a sense of duty. Is the Tin Woodman a eunuch, a castrated male? He is a fusion of human and machine--a cyborg. Being part human, can he ever be neuter, like the robots from the film "I, Robot," who appear to be born without gender? In her
Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway says,
A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); it takes irony for granted. One is too few, and two is only one possibility. Intense pleasure in skill, machine skill, ceases to be a sin, but an aspect of embodiment. The machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they. Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females. Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth.
I'm not positive, but I think she's saying "who knows?" Or perhaps, it's the Tin Woodman who knows, and he's not giving interviews, especially not about sex and gender.
One last comment on the Tin Woodman. When he finally seeks out his old lover, The Tin Woodman encounters a rusted-solid Tin Soldier. The Tin Soldier, formerly Captain Fyter, looks just like the Tin Woodman and has an almost identical story: he fell in love with the same woman, the witch cursed his sword, his sword hacked him to pieces, and Ku-klip patched him up. The worker and the soldier were both betrayed by the tools of their trades, but only after those tools came under the spell of a malevolent power. In our world (in contrast to Oz), losing a limb is a big deal, and there are plenty of working men and women laboring in dangerous occupations where such losses are common. Meat packing, unsurprisingly, is one of the most dangerous occupations -- much more so than police or fire -- and I wouldn't be surprised if logging is pretty high on the list. Of course, the war in Iraq is producing a new crop of men, women, and children who will need prostheses. The Tin Woodman became an Emporer, and the Tin Soldier became an important military officer, but our maimed and disabled men and women remain, for the most part, as anonymous as Oz's munchkin masses.
