Page 68 - Student: dazed And Confused

and the moral anguish when she must send David away. This short exchange from A.I.
shows David's desire to become real so Monica will love him, and Monica's anguish at
having to turn 'her' child, unprepared, into the big bad world:

"Monica - Stories are not real ! You're not real ! ... Stay away from ,
where there are lots of people. Only others like yo u . are safe.
Now, get going
David - Why do you want to leave me? Why do you want to
leave me? I'm sorry I'm not real, if you let me I'll be so real for you.
Monica - Let go ! ... I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the world."

A second fresh element to the film was the Flesh Fair. It is a bright and noisy event,
reminiscent of carnivals and the like. We did not have this in the original story but it is easy
to make the leap of logic. The androids, or Mecha, are gathered from the woods as they
search for new parts to make them serviceable. They are then taken to the Flesh Fair where
they will be mutilated and killed for the amusement of the human, or Orga, general public.
This raises thoughts of genocide and racial hatred, such dangerous thoughts are not easy to
obtain from Supertoys. To include these ideas, the film has been padded from the story but
to give it a stunning cinematic quality that could not have been obtained if the story had

been transferred exactly.
There is the addition of Rouge city - a place not mentioned in Supertoys - where
David makes the acquaintance of Gigolo Joe and makes his trek to the Blue Fairy. Rouge
City is practically the red light district of this world - a place where Orga go to find Mecha
for pleasure. This is where David goes to visit Dr Know, to get directions to Blue Fairy - a
being he heard about in the fairy story Pinocchio and believes can make him real. In the
original story David thinks he is real but is beginning to question it because he cannot
communicate with Monica. However, in the film, he appears to know he is not real. The
source story has no hint of any known fairy story, and the fairy story idea was written for
the film, though myth and fairy tale traces are not hard to conjure up.

One thing identical in both stories - and carried through almost to the end of the
film - is Teddy. He is a supertoy, programmed with artificial intelligence so that he can
respond to the speeches of his owner. Every child has a Teddy, or some such creation, that

they talk to and believe can talk back. This, from Supertoys' David, illustrates his confusion
at differentiating real from artificial:

"Teddy, you know what I was thinking? How do you tell what

are real things from what aren't real things?"

To this end Teddy is real to the viewer in his or her mind, and the story only took it a step
further by actually allowing the audience to see it and making it real.