It probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to have an android advertise Sunblock.  They don’t really have skin and they’ll never know the searing irritation of a burn.  But, whether it makes sense or not, Japan’s Kincho has gone ahead and done it anyway.  The robot in question is made by Kokoro Dreams.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xng2rD-tYnM]

The reflexive response to something like this always seems to be: “Eeeeeeeeew.  That’s creepy.” It’s not.  You’re getting too excited. It’s just a robot.

We’re all familiar with the uncanny valley by now.  We live there.  It’s the year twenty aught eight.  Even humans are entering the thing backwards; through plastic surgery.  At exactly what point does a celebrity morph into a transhuman?  God knows, the moneyed classes have become partially synthetic.

In the dullest possible fashion, of course.  Cosmetics.

Just as I’ve seen some women in Yorkville who look less human than that Japanese robot; I’ve seen some commercials much more disturbing than that.  Consider, for example, this advert from Pepsi.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-PnrIexbnY&feature=related]

Not only does it conflate Pepsi –a soda pop– with revolution; it also features the vilest breed of chanting  demagoguery as led by three warbling amazons.  Rule by bread and circuses becomes rule by Pepsi and circuses.  The bloodthirsty masses are sated with sugar water.  And some blood.

That disturbs me.  But the fembot with the sunblock?  It’s just confusing.  They don’t even have skin.