At the Coperni fashion show in Paris last week, a model strode into a large empty space toward an imposing four-legged beast. The model and the creature sniffed one another, then nuzzled one another’s cheeks. And then, shockingly, the animal clamped its jaws onto the model’s top, just under her throat. The woman did not scream; instead, electronic music began to pulse. The beast tore the garment off of the woman to reveal a scant black dress. More models materialized and filled the space, one by one, interacting in various ways with a small army of identical beasts—robot dogs, to be clear, programmed to undress the models and to hold their purses and to look generally dramatic.
Jean de la Fontaine’s fable The Wolf and the Lamb inspired Coperni’s show. The models, with thick matted hair, spindly legs, and their arms delicately cocooned in lush draping, represented the “lamb” in the story. The robot dogs, the “wolf.” This unprecedented show of cooperation between the robot and the fashion model was meant to convey the potential for a symbiotic relationship that humans and technology can share in our futuristic world.
“The show presents Coperni’s vision which is that there is neither a dominant nor a dominated, but that mankind and machine can live in harmony,” says Coperni on their official Instagram.
Of course, de la Fontaine’s original story was not so full of promise and potential. At the end of the original tale, the wolf (obviously) kills and eats the lamb. The moral has something to do with the power politics between an innocent being who finds herself defenseless against an unforgiving aggressor. Coperni does, in fact, note this discrepancy between the original story and their robo-version in their artist’s statement about the show. They do not, however, acknowledge the irony.
The robotic dogs come from Boston Dynamics. They are known either as “Spot” robots or as “digidogs.” They are incredible pieces of technology, able to traverse difficult terrain and move gracefully at up to about four miles per hour. They can endure rain and extreme temperatures. They come equipped with surveillance cameras, featuring 360-degree viewing capabilities in black-and-white, color, and infrared. Whether or not Spot plays fetch is unclear.
Needless to say, Spot’s primary purpose is not fashion modeling.
In 2020, the NYPD leased Boston Dynamics’ dogs in the hopes of deploying them in dangerous situations or hazardous environments. Like they recently did in Ukraine, where Spot cleaned up undetonated mines on battlegrounds. Unsurprisingly, The NYPD program received massive backlash in 2021 when Spot was assigned to apprehend a potentially violent suspect inside a public housing building. Due to growing mistrust for police departments as well as increased scrutiny over policing budgets, the expensive and terrifying robot dog found himself widely disliked. The NYPD responded by returning Spot to Boston Dynamics in April of 2021. Not long after, LAPD would attempt and fail with Spot in nearly the exact same way.
As though it could not get any worse for Spot, videos surfaced of robot dogs shooting machine guns. These dogs were not Boston Dynamics designs, but knockoffs of Spot nonetheless. Had digidogs not already called to mind such sci-fi parallels as Terminator or that one episode of Black Mirror, they certainly began to with assault weapons strapped to their backs. Even if you don’t put too much stock in sci-fi speculative fiction, the murder canines surely call to mind San Francisco’s recent attempts to bestow lethally-armed police robots with a license to kill.
In May of 2021, Scientific American published an interview with David J. Gunkel, a communications professor at Northern Illinois University, which focused specifically on Spot’s public reception. Gunkel remarked upon the sympathy Spot received when videos surfaced of robotics engineers kicking him. This occurred when Spot was a less sophisticated, earlier model of himself—still very much new to the public oeuvre. The recordings of men kicking Spot intended to display his dynamic responsiveness. By kicking him, Spot faced unique disturbances against which he was required to adapt, quickly and without warning. Nothing more than a fumble before regaining his footing and carrying on. Robotics nerds probably found these videos fascinating, if not thrilling. The rest of us thought of animal abuse.
Later in Spot’s life, as he became sleeker and more suitable for police and surveillance operations, the sympathy for Spot dwindled. The battered puppy evolved into a symbol of police-state dystopianism. A hellish glimpse into a sci-fi future that countless books and movies and TV shows have warned us about. Nevertheless, the flexibility of Spot’s reception made him special. Other machines—guns or missile drones, for example—have always lacked the ability to garner sympathy in the style of battered puppies. Spot could.
So, in 2022, a group of Spot robots, alongside Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter, met with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. Fallon and his audience regarded the dogs with the same trepidation and mistrust as the citizens of New York and Los Angeles, but in a much more playful, late-night talk show kind-of-way. Spot poured a beer for a nervous Fallon. Then, a group of Spots performed a choreographed dance to a BTS song. Spot, tactfully, did not apprehend any suspects or commence any surveillance operations while on The Tonight Show. Spot was as friendly and cute as he could possibly be, even as audience members visibly recoiled in fear.
And now, Spot has joined the ranks of the fashion industry. Fashion, an industry that embraces and profits off of controversy. An art form that is possibly the most susceptible to ignorance than any other art form. When Spot and that first model on the Coperni runway met face-to-face, nuzzled each other, and then engaged in an act of semi-erotic high-fashion violence, Spot’s history of policing, surveillance, potential lethality, and mistrust was wholly disregarded while not at all absent from the room. To the sci-fi viewer, the scene might have resembled those stories wherein the relationship between technology and humanity has reached its apex and is bound to falter—like a Love, Death, and Robots short. Or something from The Animatrix.
It is not hard to imagine that, in our feeble-minded humanness, we are looking upon a wolf dressed in wolf’s clothing without an ounce of fear. That we cannot see the forest for the trees. Sure, the robot uprising and eventual demise of humanity does not seem near on the horizon, but the imagery certainly does not instill a lot of confidence. After all, Coperni cast Spot as the Wolf in de la Fontaine’s story. We, then—the models, the surrounding crowds of people recording on cell phones, and the whole wide world of spectators watching the recordings—we are the lambs.
By kicking Spot, we assigned sympathy to him. By bringing Spot on The Tonight Show, we assigned adoration to him. By walking Spot down the runway at Paris Fashion Week, we assigned vanity to him. Vanity is the hardest quality to overrule. We all know what ugly things we would forgive in the arena of beauty that we would not in other arenas. We all know what beauty and sex-appeal can get away with. Think of the badge of honor Gisele Bundchen received when she posed on the catwalk amidst crazed PETA protesters. Think of Alexander Wang whose sexual abuse scandals have had little-to-no barring on his standing in the industry. Think of John Galliano whose anti-semitic remarks cost him the creative director’s seat at Dior, but not the creative director’s seat at Maison Margiela. Even the devil himself wears Prada. Fashion is the ultimate armor against public opinion, and we’ve just armed Spot with it.