Better Than Us Descriptive Summary
Better Than Us is a Russian futuristic TV program set in a world where humans depend on robots for everything. The robots are highly productive and require minimal management costs, making them highly favored as a replacement for human labor. Additionally, they have a great capacity to learn and remain functional for extended periods than humans.
Robots in the program can think within the limits of their programming and remember things and people. They can also acquire some behaviors by imitating their masters or through customization. These robots occupy positions ranging from cashiers to chief executive officers. Therefore, they hold a lot of power and pose a risk to humanity. Three laws are ingrained in the robots to ensure humans are safe from them. The first cardinal rule is that robots cannot cause humans any harm. The second law requires all robots to follow commands by their masters unless these commands violate the first law. The last law allows robots to defend themselves unless it results in human harm (Junkovsky, 2018-2019). These laws protect humans from robots until a leading manufacturing company, CRONOS, introduces a new robot named Arisa to the market.
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Arisa was obtained from the Chinese black-market and can kill people, which the robot does as soon as she is introduced. The robot escapes and assigns a family of three, Gregory and his two children Sonya and Ergor, as a family. Arisa’s programming makes the family her top priority. Consequently, she would save this family at any cost, including killing humans. Her programming poses a risk to human lives, yet CRONOS cannot shut down and reprogram her. Arisa can feel, learn, and understand human emotions and respond accordingly. As soon as she starts functioning, she learns all human emotions and can distinguish love, jealousy, and hate. She forms a bond with the family and falls in love with Gregory (Junkovsky, 2018-2019). Eventually, they discover that Arisa was created as a human companion.
Arisa evolves through different levels and learns to understand complex human emotions. This level forces her to accept that Gregory will never see her as human. She surrenders to CRONOS’s CEO as a strategy to keep Gregory and his family safe.
Watching a Program in a Foreign Language
One of my first reactions to watching a program in a language I don’t understand is confusion. Since Better Than Us is a Russian TV program, it took about half an hour of the first episode to understand the theme and get an idea of the plot. Therefore, the better first half of the episode was spent in frustration since I could not make sense of the program. I could not understand the Russian monologue in the first scene, which seemed like a critical part of the plot. Despite the frustration, I also appreciated the experience since it took me out of my comfort zone and forced me to watch a program in a language I do not understand.
By being out of my comfort zone, I sympathized with other audiences who struggle with a language barrier, especially in the US. I imagined myself walking through life, from school, work, and home, and not understanding a word that was said to me or being understood. The experience made me regret my impatience with a non-English speaking student I had recently met. I learned to appreciate that everyone yearns to understand and be understood.
After the first hour, I was not so apprehensive about the program. Instead, I happy when I started picking up a few Russian words. I also learned to read non-verbal cues and appreciate cultural differences in human expression.
Strategies and Cues Used to Make Sense of the Program
Since I do not understand Russian, I was forced to depend on verbal, visual, graphic, and behavioral clues to make sense of what was going on in the program. For example, one of the behavioral cues that I used to understand the plot was body language, which helped me decipher aggression from a character’s stance. For example, I could quickly tell that two characters were arguing when one was towering over the other and invading their personal space. Watching the characters’ body language also helped me recognize hesitance or malice. I was also able to tell which characters held positions of power in the plot by watching their mannerisms. Body language clarified meaning when language was a barrier (Damanhouri, 2018). I used behavioral clues to understand the characters and their relationships.
While watching the program, I also learned to read various facial expressions, such as awe, frustration, anger, and joy. When Arisa was first introduced to the CRONOS team, their long contemplative stares communicated awe and the robot's importance, though I could not understand the dialogue. Additionally, I could read mischief from one of the characters' facial expressions when he was going into a room occupied by some female robots. The robots’ expressionless faces distinguished them from humans in the program (Saunderson & Nejat, 2019). The contrast between their expressionless faces and those of humans made non-verbal cues easier to decipher.
Another clue I used to make sense of what was happening in the movie was tone. Anger, joy, urgency, frustration, and confusion were communicated using the characters’ tones. Additionally, I could also distinguish the characters’ social statuses and hierarchical positions at CRONOS depending on their communication tone.
Conclusion
Watching a TV program in a language I do not understand was initially challenging until I learned to read verbal and behavioral clues. The experience taught me that verbal and behavioral clues in communication help transcend language barriers. Moreover, I sympathized with people who struggle with language barriers and appreciated intercultural communication differences.
References
Damanhouri, M. (2018). The advantages and disadvantages of body language in Intercultural communication. Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 21 (1), 68-82. 10.5782/2223-2621.2018.21.1.68
Junkovsky, A. (Executive Producer). (2018-2019). Better than us [TV series]. BYW Group.
Saunderson, S., & Nejat, G. (2019). How robots influence humans: A survey of nonverbal communication in social human–robot interaction. International Journal of Social Robotics , 11 (4), 575-608. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00523-0
