The opening theme to Cartoon Networks animated series MEGAS XLR (2004) exclaims: "You dig giant robots! I dig giant robots! We dig giant robots! Chicks dig giant robots!" This is perhaps the essential anthem for our fixation with out of this world technology. Japanese and American audiences in particular are innately passionate about science fiction robots, as ardent consumers and proprietors of contemporary Mecha culture. The challenge then for the academically-minded aficionado is to put across just what makes these fantastic machines and their stories so fascinating, so prevalent in entertainment and society, and so tied to our own perceptions of human development. Science fiction represents what people are thinking about technology. This thesis posits the contemporary science fiction phenomenon Mecha as the predominant expression of humankind's age-old fascination with the mechanical arts. The philosophical approaches taken in these forms of escapist entertainment often mirror the attitudes each culture has towards real-life robotic machinery- from replacement prosthetic limbs, to robotic household companions and even weapons of war. In Mecha fiction, the sentiments of the artist-citizen towards this notion of a robotic, hi-tech society are expressed free of the limitations of a practical and commercial reality. Science and engineering have not yet caught up to the culturally-nurtured imaginations and ambitions of the human spirit, and they never will. Instead, the artists and creators of Mecha consciously and unconsciously translate and magnify this social consensus into mechanical designs and narratives that enforce a particular paradigm on the overall human-machine relationship. This study examines through key written and visual texts the function of low culture pop-entertainment as an influential and relevant indicator of broader societal values and cultural traditions. By reverse-engineering and deconstructing (quite literally) these Mecha designs and how they function as a creative work, I believe we can better understand how two cultures have come to express their relationship with technology both conceptually and philosophically.

After the invention of photography, modern theoreticians were hopeful that photographys faithfulness to nature would resolve painterly deficiencies by providing a more recognizable and convincing reproduction. Paradoxically, the advent of photography did not improve upon paintings failures, but exhibited an inherent problem. In particular, aspects of temporality hindered photographys ability to reproduce a convincing likeness. Concerning this issue, Gombrich opines that it could be [] true to say that we never see [in reality] what the instantaneous photograph reveals, for we gather up successions of movements, and never see static configurations as such.1 Because the constant motion of the eyes as well as the ephemeral nature of existence limits perception, I am studying the techniques used to convey aspects of likeness in the celebrity photo-portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson. To establish what stylistic choices contribute to a recognizable portrait, I will analyze Bressons photographical methods which he delineated in The Decisive Moment. Bressons concept of the decisive moment, far from falling within modernist accounts of photographys medium specificity, actually traces back to a much older discussion, one concerned with unearthing relations between photographs and paintings. As examples of this discussion, I look to ideas expressed by late nineteenth-century photographer-scientist Francis Galton and police officer Alphonse Bertillon. These theorists ascertained that photographs are not representative of a sum-total or synthetic image which humans perceive, but are indicative of an imperceptible instant. While Bressons conception of photographic likeness relates to ideas espoused by Francis Galton, I also prove that Bressons work is distinct from Galtons as it relates to human typicality. Whereas Galtons ideas concerning likeness relate to a need to arrive at ideal types, a comparison of Bressons work with broader developments in the history of the concept of objectivity and image making reveals the ways in which Bressons conception of typicality is distinct from that of Galton. 1 Ernst Hans Gombrich, The Image and the Eye: Further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 50.