***Official A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Discussion Thread - Page 4

"Some might suggest, rather, that it's the preoccupation with what we like to call the ultimate questions of existence: from whence did I come and what is my purpose in this universe?"

i think for many people (not all), those relationships that are the strongest and have the deepest bond, is that between parent and child. if it goes well, as either the parent or the child, it's the most rewarding and longlasting to have and if it sours or is broken, it's the most devastating to bear. romantic love gets all the glory (a little too much, if you ask me) but it also gets a 50% divorce rate, and people change careers all the time, so that in the end it's the parent-child bond, a bond that ai focuses on so acutely, which is the most robust.

if purpose can be defined by that which we find most rewarding and longlasting, then procreation, and all that surrounds it (including romantic love), has got to be the purpose.

Rich's mellifluous prose pales only when thrown into relief by the textual stylings of Agee Basset. Lest they think through verbal irony I am impugning their good names through the spreading of sundry contumelious epitaphs, I assure all assembled in these forums that my praise is brought forth with unaffectedness and approbation.

Or, to cite Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles: he uses his tongue purdier than a $20 whore.

Regards,

Thanks for that visual, Ken! I'll never look at a whore the same way ever again!

And remember kids, never look a gift-whore in the mouth!

Ok ok my bad... :b

I prefer to think of myself as a realist rather than a nihilist, but opinions on that will differ.

I think the issue that I have with the ending is the same issue that I have with the school of fish. Most of the first two hours of running time is centered on science and what its limitations are and the ethical responsibilities that it engenders as it gets closer and closer to the ability to create life. However, these two segments suddenly dump science and go for magic, for lack of a better word. It's completely inconsistent with the tone of the piece, and frankly is satisfying only if you believe that Uri Geller has magical powers and Nostradamus could predict the future (i.e., highly gullible). It's one thing to have magic in a fairy tale or a fantasy, but that's not what this picture is purporting to be. I don't mind blending of genres, but these moments seemed to me to come completely out of left field. One might as well have had David turn into Shirley Temple and do a dance on the Good Ship Lollipop.

Why, exactly, does David evolve? I don't buy "he fulfilled his programming" for a minute; had Martin not recovered, Monica was obviously heading down the path of truly accepting and loving David. Would he have shut down then? No, I don't think so. In order for the movie to make any sense (certainly in Campbellian terms), the journey has to mean something. But what, really, did David's journey do? It was mostly wishing and hoping for a very, very long time. There's not even a Dorothyesque journey of self-discovery. In the end it boils down to "Wishing makes it so," which, as anyone who has spent 20 minutes in the real world knows, ain't how it works, baby. At most, one can nod, smile and muster a charitable, "That's nice." I find it hard to believe that that attitude is what Kubrick was shooting for here.

Also, I'd have to say I found it galling (though certainly more in accord with real life) that David is rewarded, somehow, while he cruelly disregards his faithful companion Teddy in his complete self-absorption. I thought we were out of the 1980s with the attitude, "Me, Me, It's all about ME! Love ME!" but maybe not.

At least Spielberg succeeded in one thing Kubrickian: making a film that can engender wildly differing interpretations and serious discussions about its meaning. That's commendable and I didn't think Spielberg had it in him.

Osment does a great job throughout, but particularly the utterly creepy presence he has before the imprinting. He doesn't seem human there, at all.

I don't want this to sound like I didn't like the film; I did very much. There are just some issues with these two segments that don't seem quite right, or at least not fully thought out.

What then does this picture purport to be?

I think the film's narrative rather obviously represents a dialectic between the mytho-poetic and the scientific-historical. This is explicitly stated on at least one occasion (I believe during the visit to Dr. Know), and is implicit in every frame of the film. So, unless you reject this interpretation - and I don't see how any fair viewing of this movie could possibly do so - how then can a dialectic between the mytho-poetic and the scientific-historical otherwise be explored if the two modes aren't juxtaposed?

And I don't accept that you're so genre-bound as to reject a mixture of the fabulous and the mundane in your narratives.

And I don't believe you reject the simple notion that the same "truth" can be approached via different paths (realist, nihilist, or no).

And I don't believe for a second that you're incapable of understanding that a resolution of this particular dialectic requires that both narrative modes be juxtaposed.

In short, I think you're just nit-picking!

Again, I find your criticisms just a tad disingenuous. More nit-picking?

Fassbinder (or was it Sirk?) once said: "the only realism I'm interested in is psychological realism". To the extent that "a.i." misses this mark, I think it could be faulted. But is this your view?

On the one hand, you find this scene "galling, though certainly more in accord with real life". Well, what's wrong with being galled? Especially if said galling is in the service of uncovering something even you concede is real?

On the other hand, you say "I thought we were out of the 1980s with the attitude, "Me, Me, It's all about ME! Love ME!" but maybe not." Are you suggesting that such selfishness is passe in the new millennium? That it was merely a product of the go-go 80's? That David is somehow a displaced Reaganite?

(Again, I think you're being transparently disingenuous in order to drum up a few criticisms... but I'll address the "selfishness" aspect anyway.)

This "selfishness" in love is at the very heart of the oedipal fixation. It's also at the heart of the sibling rivalry. And both of these are at the heart of this movie (as metanyms for the evolutionary struggle). And in this battle for mother's affections, the psychology is precisely one of selfishness. In both instances, the subject seeks to greedily consume the object of its love and to the exclusion of all others. Even fathers. Even brothers.

Had David been utterly selfless, would you have found this to be a more truthful, artful, and meaningful characterization? You indicate that perhaps you would not. Nonetheless... "galling".

Or do you agree that David's selfish love is a much more accurate reflection of the human condition? And, if so, would you sacrifice that just to make him more likeable? And isn't that precisely the pre-A.I. criticism of Spielberg - that he too often sacrificed galling truth for comforting likeability?

And just because David succumbs to this all-too-human response - he's just as hard-wired for it as we, after all - is he really less sympathetic for doing so? Isn't this "humanness" which he displays precisely what sets him apart from the artificialness of the pre-David models? Precisely what ultimately defines his humanity and gives rise to the all-too-human yearnings of the mechas to follow?

Rich, I'm going to have to mull for a while over much of the last two posts, but I can readily distinguish between mytho-poetic and magical. I recognize the former is all over this picture. But it doesn't within a realistic (though speculative) framework allow for things that just aren't so. This is not a fantasy world of magic; this is our world, a bit in the future. Wishing doesn't make things happen, then or now. Neither of us can evolve to a higher plane simply by wishing for it to occur.

And I don't see in your responses anything addressing the point of the Campbellian journey---one that for David seems to me to be quite empty.

Perhaps I'm just more in tune with the woman who worked with Kubrick on the treatment and quit in disgust saying you can have a failed quest, but you can't have an achieved quest without a reward. David's quest as I see it can never be anything but a failed quest. The ending as it stands does not resonate properly for me because the solution to the quest comes about not through any sort of internal logic but by just pure force of emotion, saying, 'then, for no particular reason he became a real boy and they died happily ever after.' If you're going to do that, why not just have the Blue Fairy come to the submarine and make him a real boy and be done with it?


This leads to another observation regarding Teddy that I hadn't thought of before--which I think explains why I found it 'galling'. I think that I might have been more accepting of the reward if David had shown growth outside his programming to love someone besides Monica---the natural someone being Teddy. By loving beyond his programming, then he could in turn be loved for real and as if real. But as long as he stays within the narrow bounds of his programming, which I think he does until he shuts down, he's not doing anything that's not already hardwired into him. Maybe that's pretty romantically naive for an accused nihilist, but it at least would make some sense to the journey on an emotional level for me.

Just so you know you're making progress with me, I've come to agree with the death interpretation. The part that threw me was the line about "where dreams come from." That didn't sound to me like death, but then in tandem with the bit about space-time containing everything that ever happened, I can see the phrase in terms of becoming as one with the universe. I'll buy that, in a Tao sort of way. Interesting chat.

Mark, let me apologize upfront for the format of this response. I generally can't stand the cut-and-paste, you say/I say sorta thing as it tends to be a battle of quips without any real analysis. And worse, when someone cuts and pastes your thoughts, and then cuts and pastes someone else's thoughts as a response. Annoying!!!

That being said, however...


Yes, but it's story being related in two distinct narrative modes. We begin by hearing an unknown narrator's voice, speaking in the language and intonations of a fable. We only find out much later that he's speaking about events that occurred 2 millenia ago within an extinct race and culture (though the future mechas are an extension of that race and culture). Then, the narrative shifts to "the present" (our near future/the narrator's distant past), and presents the story in a realistic manner, from the omniscient perspective of a "you are there" POV.

Just consider Genesis. Or the origin stories of Hindu Vedic literature. Or any mytho-poetic description of our past. These ares absurd on their face, filled with magic and inexplicable time sequences that are easily disproven from a scientific-historical perspective. And yet, there's an enduring truth and beauty within their poetry that captures the mysteries of creation and origin and speak to us on a very deep level. They are true, but in a very different sense than scientific-historical truth. By conflating the two, "a.i." seeks to resolve this dialectic and comment on both kinds of human knowledge, and, ultimately, to make the point that this peculiarly human way of understanding the universe and our place in it is something shared by our mecha progeny.


We have entered that phase of human evolution where we can now intentionally affect our own evolutionary process through advances in technology, biological sciences, reproductive control... all manner of tools that give us power over the evolutionary process. We don't understand it well enough to control it, but well enough to affect it, and to produce intended (as well as unintended) results. We have written the genetic "book of life", and it appears that human cloning is merely a matter of time. Indeed, we may read about it in the morning papers. It may well have already happened. Imbuing "a.i" with those very characteristics that define our humanity - but only these and not those, more of this or less of that - is likewise controlling our evolution. And all it takes is the will to do it. The wish of a single man... isn't that the point of Dr. Hobby's character?

After all, we understand there's something more and less to David's wish. That's not the "real" Blue Faery, but a simulation provided to David by the mechas. Likewise, his mother and his home - "real" in some ways, but essentially simulacrums both. In what sense was his "wish" really granted?


This isn't the "mono-myth", though it can be tortured to fit the parameters Campbell establishes (the hero is forced to leave the cozy confines of home to embark upon a journey which will provide him special knowledge that he will return home with and which will broaden the horizons of his people, allowing them to understand their place in the universe more clearly - in this case, his "people" and his "home" have become the realm of the future-mecha). But unlike George Lucas's movies, I've not heard of any specific intent to shoehorn this story into the Joseph Campbell models of mythological narratives.

But I agree that the journey seems somehow empty for David. But it's not just David's journey. He dies, but it's only a personal extinction. The race endures.

Regarding the ending, Jonathan Rosenbaum writes:

"It sounds like typical Spielberg goo - for better and for worse - and when you're watching the film it feels that way. But the minute you start thinking about it, it's at least as grim as any other future in Kubrick's work. Humankind's final gasp belongs to a fucked-up boy robot with an Oedipus complex who's in bed with his adopted mother and who finally becomes a real boy at the very moment that he seemingly autodestructs. ***** It's the film's most sentimental moment, yet it's questionable whether it involves any real people at all.

"One might say that the emotional conflicts experienced by Monica when she first encounters David implicitly remain our own conflicts throughout the film, but Spielberg is too fluid a storyteller to allow us to remember this ambivalence much of the time. He invites us to fool ourselves just as we always do with his films and just as Monica sometimes does with David -- a deception based on primal emotional needs and repressed realities. This repression is generally sustained in most Spielberg films, but here the repressed knowledge and emotions periodically come back like icy waves lapping around our ankles.

"A.I. is consistently dialectical, almost to the point of schizophrenia and at times to the very edge of incoherence, most often with rich and complex consequences. Take the end of the movie. Is the cloned Monica, resurrected and "corrected" to satisfy a robot's programmed cravings, much closer to something human than David, created and programmed by man in his own image? Is the love of either character genuine, programmed, or some combination of the two? The line separating life from death, being from nothingness, even the present from the past ("I am...I was," says Gigolo Joe as he gets hooked and reeled in by a scavenger-police plane like a hapless fish) remains as ambiguous as the line separating orga from mecha or human from inhuman that runs throughout the picture.

"When the Blue Fairy comes back for an encore inside the suburban home, I'm immediately reminded of the monolith slab reappearing inside the hotel suite just before Bowman gets reborn as the Star Child. ***** Both locations are mental projections of the protagonist, but whereas 2001 ends with some kind of tragic rebirth, A.I. ends with the implication of some kind of sweet annihilation -- something that might also be said to resemble the opium stupor at the end of McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

"Spielberg has made the final sequence of A.I. somewhat incoherent so that he can articulate his oedipal idyll as cleanly as possible. It's similar in some ways to the terrain explored in Solaris -- an inquiry into what it means to be human and what it means to die -- without the spiritual side of Andrei Tarkovsky's Christian mysticism. And most of what gets repressed at some point in the film is articulated in another, so that the movie constantly swings between dizzying uncertainties and grim -- or is it exalted? -- finalities. It's part of this movie's richness that few of its contradictory ideas and emotions cancel one another out. Instead they congeal into a kind of poetry -- a term I wouldn't ordinarily use to describe either director's work -- whose melancholy, forlorn pungency is paralleled in the Yeats lines quoted at the penultimate stage of David's odyssey:

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

In regard to Teddy, is it possible that in becoming "real," David's attitude toward Teddy is just another manifestation of his humanness? He discards Teddy as a toy or a "thing" just as the humans discard the mechas. After all, David wants to be a real boy, warts and all. Or am I being simplistic? I haven't given it nearly as much thought as others.

Dammit, I wasn't going to monopolize this again today, but I completely agree, Dennis. Remember those letters David was drawing in crayon to Monica? (BTW, that sequence is a major derivation from Aldiss 'Supertoys Last All Summer Long".) One of those reads (paraphrasing): "I am real and so is Martin but not Teddy." Part of David's journey in defining himself is distinguishing that self from the uncomfortable similarities he shares with Teddy.

I think one of those letters also said something like "I hate Teddy because he isn't..." I think that it actually ended there and didn't finish the sentence. To me that's really disturbing, but Monica looks over it and compliments David on how nice it is.

Bill, do you mean to imply that Monica doesn't find the letters disturbing? If so, watch the scene again, Monica is deeply disturbed as the letters become increasingly hateful.

There are something like 8-10 letters that I would assume David spent about 20-30 minutes writing. In the first few that Monica reads David makes statements along the lines of "I love Teddy", "Teddy is helping me write to you". In the final letters Monica reads David is forsaking Teddy. So in the span of only a handful of minutes Davids insatiable desire to be loved by his Mommy conjurs up the darker side of human nature. David is evolving.

Well, both times I've seen that scene I didn't see Monica disturbed at all. In fact the only emotion I see from her is self pitty in having to do what Henry is making her do. She comes in to "talk to David," obviously being urged by Henry (as he looks on to make sure she does the deed), but finds messages of love. It looks like she begins to feel confused and is struggling inside, but never even appears to acknowledge that David used the word "hate." Perhaps it's her preoccupation of what she is about to do. Or perhaps hating something that is not "real" is perfectly normal to her.

I had 4 reactions to that scene. 1) "David is messed up." 2) "Poor Teddy." 3) "Monica's got issues." 4) "Henry seems more jealous than he is concerned about Monica."

I just saw this movie for the first time last night.

I thought the movie was well done right up until the point just after the mom abandons him. Very good stuff to this point. After that point the Mad Max type crap really bugged the hell out of me and then the whole alien thing really bugged the hell out of me. This was so far out of left field.

The pacing of the last half was poor. I seriously thought the film was embarassingly bad in its latter half and I am one of Spielberg's biggest defenders. I think the man is a genius. However, I don't think I can truly express in words how utterly dissapointed I was with this film. For the first time I found myself wondering what some of you guys (the ones whoms opinions I generally respect a lot) are smoking. With all due respect of course.

Brian

What aliens?


Hydroponically-grown, orange-haired sensamelia.

There are no Aliens!

Sigh...

Do we need to have an A.I. FAQ? Sheesh!

This thread would suffice. Sheesh!

I know exactly what they were but they looked like corny charicatures of aliens. Sorry, I thought it was corny as hell.

By the way, if you need a separate discussion thread and extras on a DVD to tell you what a pretty important plot point was about...has the movie not failed in some significant way?

Brian

Either the movie has or the "you" has.

Regards,

The film is quite a bit more complicated than the typical mainstream production. It touches on so many themes, you'd think you were reading an epic 3-part trilogy!

I think this film, more than any other (except maybe Contact, and Ghostworld is another), exposes the biases and worldviews of the viewers themselves. It inherently sparks debate and controversy, and with these charged emotions you inevitably wind up with wildly divergent opinions in the film. Consider just this one theme of many touched upon in the film:

The mother-child-sibling relationship realistically portrayed: Not in the idealized "mothers should always sacrifice themselves for their offspring", which completely ignores all evidence of the dark-side of motherly behavior well-documented by primatologists, naturalists, and anthropologists in the last few centuries. This subject alone would be enough to turn off a large percentage of viewers: "Monica is a bad mother: How could she even THINK of replacing her real son with this obvious simulacrum who is clearly not sentient". No allowance is made for Monica's motherly instinct to be invoked so strongly by David's own needy behavior. The kind of behavior you would expect from a child who needs the mother's support and affection to ensure its survival. Witness the riot at the Flesh Fair...even the patrons were touched by David's pleas for mercy. A human trait that is within most of us, which can only be overridden by an extensive campaign of demonization which was well-under way at the time. Nobody saw a bot that begged for its life before.

Some viewers would have conflicting feelings about this: "He's just a robot...but Spielberg is making me uncomfortable. I hate this film!" or "He's just a robot...but Spielberg is making me uncomfortable. I LOVE this film!". My sentiments fall in with the latter, but that could be because of my fascination with human behavior (it's like watching a train wreck, where the train chooses destruction to spite the caboose!).

Like Ghostworld, opinions on this film are very much dependent on the overall life experience and world viewpoint of the viewer. If you believe humans are special and that no other creature/machine could ever be sentient or conscious in the same way as a human, then you will hate this film.

Where does that leave me? I believe humans are special and that no other creature/machine could ever be sentient or conscious in the same way as a human, but I LOVE this film.

Bill, maybe you don't really believe that then. Or perhaps the movie was so good that you're slowly, but subtly, changing your mind.

Just kidding! I think humans are special too, in the same way that Jerry Springer contestants are "special".

I just think there's more to it than what someone believes. On the surface the movie is about a sentient robot, but it's really more than that. You don't have to believe what you see is possible to be able to appreciate it, IMO. The underlying theme is about our responsibility to our creations. As a father it hits me on one level. As an engineer it hits me on another.

Yeah, I agree. The mother-child relationship, sibling rivalry, treatment of unwanted children... Just one of the many things this movie explores!

Maybe it touched on too many? Perhaps people were expecting a straighforward sci-fi flick and got a complex meddly of ideas and emotion instead.

Gotta love it.

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if I'm repeating stuff:

I finally got around to seeing this film the other night, and I have one big question- were we actually supposed to like the boy-robot?

If yes, then it didn't work for me. His "love" for his mother wasn't real, it was programmed. That is not love. Love is 30 years of marriage, going through the trials and tribulations of life together, and growing close to a person. Love is a parent placing her child's interest abover his/her own. Love is not saying 7 nonsensical words to turn an switch on a robot.
Because the "love" wasn't real, and the robot was annoying, I felt no empathy for him. I was able to enjoy other aspects of the movie, but if this was the intention, it failed.
Consequently, my reaction to the ending is quite different than some who contributed to this thread. People expressed sentiments of "appreciating love," "affirming humanity," and so forth. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could get that. The whole ending was creepy. The robot/aliens (whatever) materialise a woman only for the enjoyment of the robot-boy (a morally dubious practice, at best), who's attachment to her is not that of a healthy fulfilling relationship, but actually quite disturbing.
It didn't make me want to hug my mother. It made me want to sit alone in the dark.

If no (that is, if we weren't supposed to like or root for the boy), then the film works a lot better. I was so happy when he found his replicants, shattering his illusion that he was unique. From this perspective, the boy is the Fool, showing us how absurd human's silly attachment to others and shallow concepts of "love" can be when taken to an extreme. It also draws attention to the darker, rarely spoken aspect of parents' affection toward their children: selfish and self-serving. The robot can replace a child because parenting isn't about raising a good person, giving him/her the abilility and capacity to make the most out of life; it's about the parents just feeling good about theirselves. When your son comes out of the closet, when your white daughter brings home a black fiance, when your 17 yr old gets hooks on drugs, when he chooses a different religion than you- toss him out. Throw him aside. Why not then do that same to a robot? After all, the real boy is back.

I don't think I've ever seen a film where people have been more cruel.

In order for me to derive any pleasure from this film, I have to go with the latter point of view. This way, it's brining to light some aspects of human relationships that we don't feel comfortable dealing with, albeit quite sloppily. If it is actually supposed to be about a nice little robot who we feel sorry for and are touched by his last day with mommy, then I am convinced it is a complete and utter failure.

Problem is, it can't really be both, and I think that, ultimately, it tried to be.

The other major thing (only sticking with the big ones; the little ones are too many and not important) that bothered me was how absurd and illogical the narrative was.

1. Once the robot falls in love with you, you can't reverse it. Why the hell not? Their explanation makes no sense. OK, don't give the parent that power, fine, but you could allow the factory to do that. She was going to take him to be destroyed. How is that better than just resetting it?

2. They need to go to Manhattan. Oh, looky, a helicopter, how convenient. Uh-oh, we need to go under water by accident... wait, the helicopter is also a submarine. Neato! Blech.

3. No woman would be attracted to the robo-jiggolo character. Unless, of course, the point was to make fun romance, which I don't feel it did very well.

4. People's memories are stored in the fabric of space time.
WT holy F? When he said that, there was a collective forehead-slap and groan from myself and those I watched it with.

They could have handled this stuff two ways: as a straight narrative or as an abstraction. I was prepared for either one. Instead, the movie flip-flopped from one to the other, ruining both affects. The concepts were worthy, but get lossed when you have to sit through implausible explanations of things. 2001, for example, didn't bother with explanations, and just presented you with the concept. Thus the film makes sense.

All in all, A.I. didn't know what to do with itself. I do agree that the ending is necessary (how can it not be), but it, like the rest of the movie, get lost with itself. Rather than watching a good story, or a thought-provoking piece of art, I just saw a bunch of stuff that happened.

This is the love of a child for an adult - his mother - not the other way round. In a sense the love of a child for the parent is "programmed" from birth - the child being completely dependent on them. It is only reaffirmed or lost by the treatment of that child by the parent. David's artificiality is, in a sense, reaffirmed by the fact that his love for his mother remains the same, despite Monica's treatment of him.


The film intentionally left you to make up your own mind about David's artificiality. Consequently, the final third was open to intepretation, and is probably the principal reason for the way the film polarized audiences I personally empathized with David up until the last third of the film, because the film (intentionally or not) made me feel he was, in a sense, real, but his actions in the final part just reinforced his artificiality, in the way that he blindly accepted the artificial Monica's love, without realising (or refusing to ?) that it was not real. Like you, I felt the ending was creepy.


The fairy tale aspect of the story does lead to this conclusion - as someone has stated previously, the film works as a fairytale told by the AIs in the future about humanity, after it has been lost - the narrator is, after all, the AI who talks to David at the end - but from our point of view, as you say, we can see how silly such an extreme concept of "love" can be, so from the (human) audience's point of view, I don't think we are supposed to feel the way you describe.


Resetting or destroying - does it matter ? The point is that David's mind (soul ?) will be lost. Again if you empathize with David, and consider to him to be more than just a robot, resetting him is just as bad as destroying him. The story point just reinforces how David is viewed by the human characters - a piece of machinery.


I am sure no woman has derived pleasure from an artificial piece of equipment. I don't think the woman was intending to fall in love with him.

The theme of the movie, IMO, is about grappling with "what is love," and more generally, what is it to be "human"?

Is "love" merely our physical response to changes in brain chemistry triggered by external stimuli? (This is one viewpoint.) If so, then David's love was no less real than ours, since all love is mechanical (albeit organic machinery).

Is "love" something that transcends the physical body -- borne of the soul, something uniquely human? (as many believe) If so, then David's love could not have been real, but was merely an outstanding imitation (assuming robots can't have souls). But then perhaps neither does a pet dog experience "love" for its master.

Or is love more of the expressed committment between two people -- "Love is 30 years of marriage"? If so, David's love wasn't real. But then, neither is the love real of a couple married for only six months; or that of a newborn who.

I think A.I. was successful, because it prompted you to reflect on what "love" is.

(Me - I think David's love was real to him. And it was practically real because it motivated his actions appropriately. But it was also a monstrous love, wholly self-centered, not tempered by self-sacrifice of mature love (like a child?) But was it "love" as I experience it? I can't say.)