Synthespian 2.0
a redux of a vocab word from a couple years ago. Even more timely today, methinks.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ll be back with a fresh vocab word next week, everyone, but this week I need to reshare an older piece. I chose this one because I’m fascinated by my Musings on this topic from all the way back in 2023, having seen and contemplated (and even used!) a lot of AI nonsense that’s so much more permeated into our everyday online lives only 2 years later. It’s a quick explosion, and an insidious. I’m not sure what to think, but I think what I will do is stick a footnote here and there with current thoughts whenever I get the impulse. Cool? Cool.
Today’s vocab word really does seem kind of Robocop-ish, like it’s a sci fi invention.1 Then again, what doesn’t sound like a sci fi invention these days? Is this a current term, invented in the wake of mass AI panic? Is it even a thing?
So it turns out, the word synthespian was coined all the way back in the 1980s. Before we even had personal computers, let alone AI. But if you think about it, it makes sense: people were already thinking about androids and synthetic humans and cyborgs: Robocop, Blade Runner, Terminator, 2001, and on and on…all these stories by the ‘80s were already touching on the terror of the non-organic human imitator, before any of us ever had a convo with a chat bot irl.
But why ‘synthespian’? Well you’ve noticed the ‘synth-‘ for ‘synthetic’ in there, no doubt. But do you know why we call actors ‘thespians’?
Thespian (not Lesbian; that’s a different thing)
The very ancient Greek theatre was structured around a narrative Chorus, which would tell the stories of the drama of the day using song and chanted verse. But then, one day, one of these performers stepped out in front of the chorus and declared his part of the narrative alone. His name was Thespis, and he is considered the first actor. Why?
Thespis was the first actor because, instead of invoking the blessings of the gods and narrating the story, he instead donned a mask (a persona), and pretended to be the character. He wasn’t narrating the story, he was impersonating the character, speaking with the character’s voice, wearing his clothes. And that’s what actors do today. Thespis’ revolutionary mode of playing changed the course of Greek theatre forever, and we call actors thespians because we honor that they’re cut from the same cloth.
[Of course, this is a pretty white-centric ‘origin,’ of acting as we know it, right? As though any older indigenous or tribal theatrical system wouldn’t have practiced this impersonation tradition before Thespis ever stepped out in front of the chorus. But. That’s a different article, preferably one not written by this white writer.]
Synthesize Me
There’s magic in becoming another person convincingly, though: to synthesize a performance so seamlessly that the actor disappears into the character is a skill lauded to this day. Creating a person from whole cloth, with acting skills alone, is the thing that gets actors the awards. The more realistic the synthetic creation is, the better.
Remember these below two articles?2 Read up, to get context solidified before I go on.
The Method of Realism is a form of synthesizing, even more than it is mimesis—it means ‘really becoming’ the character that doesn’t exist, as opposed to mimicking one that does.
Why do we think it’s a virtuous, high art to become someone else as much as possible? Actors fall into using too many Method techniques like staying in character constantly, losing or gaining lots of weight to change their real body, doing their own stunts, adopting new accents and other deep modes of imitation—they do all these things literally instead of using technique to synthesize such changes. And anyone not ‘truly’ doing these things are thought of as cheating, somehow.
What actors actually are doing though, technique-wise, is synthetic as well as mimetic. It’s never really all one or the other: nobody’s actually playing themselves (though in Realism they may use bits of sense memory and such things to help), no more than they are imitating another actor’s performance. It’s both. (With the exception of roles that are biographical, like the impersonation roles Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman, for example, are so good at—those roles need the actor to imitate the real person they’re impersonating as close as possible, at least in the service of that particular story.)3
Why are we so offended by synthetic creations when it comes to acting? Moreover, why don’t we see them as good artifice (=good art), instead of some kind of offensive betrayal or lie? When are we delighted by being fooled and when do we feel manipulated by it?
(SIDE NOTE: Do we hate magicians like we do mimes? I don’t think we do. Do I have to do an article on them too?)
Synthespian = what does it meeeeean 🌈
There’s a concept that folklore scholar Marina Warner calls the Beast as Cyborg:4 back in pre-technological days, monsters were beasts of the wild: Big Bad Wolf, man-eating tiger, venomous snake bridegrooms, cat wife shapeshifters, etc. But now that wilderness is been all but extinct, the scary monster isn’t Beast anymore. Now the scary monster is the cyborg: like the Borg from Star Trek, the terror of the synthetic human is in its uncanny nature (it’s almost human but definitely not), and its coldness—its hive mind, or its uncaring erasure of human flaws. The cyborg-monster represents leaving the wild world at best, eradicating it at worst. The animal Beast now often isn’t a monster at all, but a figure of nostalgia:
“Tapping the power of the animal no longer seems charged with danger, let alone evil, but rather a necessary part of healing. Art of different media widely accepts the fall of man, from master and namer of animals to a mere hopeful candidate for inclusion as one of their number.” (Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde, p.307)
NOTE: I am planning on writing a whole article on the Beast as Cyborg, and actually published my notes/outline of such in an old blog post. I’ll finish it eventually, and put it up here. I think it may need to be a mini-series. Stay tuned.5
There’s a distinct creepy factor to the idea of the synthetic human: the Replicants of Blade Runner and their mystique fed into the suspense and terror of that story: am I ‘real,’ was the underlying question, or am I a robot? And how many people today feel this very same existential crisis as they bury themselves into their phones, extruding a synthespian version of themself that’s prettier than the organic reality, but more shallow. “An eon wide, but only a micron deep,” as Professor Peter Lamborn Wilson said in a panel once at Naropa, when I was in grad school. And this was in 2000, when none of us had our whole lives in our phones like we do now.
Remember my discussion of the uncanny valley when it comes to mimes? Re-read this post for that context. It’s a similar reaction.
Current synthetic pop stars like Hatsune Miku have a wide following.6 Why? Is it creepier to enjoy and admire the synthespian-like Miku than it is a human celebrity that wears makeup and surgeries like Cher, or prosthetics and virtual photo ops like Melanie Martinez? Why? Is Hatsune Miku cheating, and Martinez just using modern tools to advantage? Which pop star is lovely, which creepy?
I mean, I am creeped out by Hatsune Miku myself. But then, my brilliant and cultured stepkid loves her, so. Of course, he loves Melanie Martinez more. He also feels like Martinez’ virtual (and expensive) photo op thing was a bad deal, though, too.
~
Strike, Spare, Gutter
So. How does the concept of the ‘synthespian’ correlate to what the writers & actors are striking about, as of this writing? Well, there’s a lot of different worries peppering the strikes, besides just needing to pay artists what they’re worth, which is ever the eternal struggle, isn’t it. No idea why we still can’t manage to do this,7 as a society, besides disproportionate celebrity status nonsense. But this is an old issue.
There’s a bunch of questions when it comes to AI in those aligned and striking fields of art and craft. Questions like: Who gets royalties for what, exactly? How does consent fit in with this (remember those old commercials using footage of dead celebrities, like Fred Astaire dancing with Michael Jackson)? Will work, and pay for said work, get cut into ribbons, if filmmakers can just take an actor’s likeness, shoot a couple things, then create a synthespian and use that for the rest? Who gets copyright, and for what? Is there any such thing anymore as intellectual property, if it’s all fodder for an image or a text AI creation?8
Sitting here at the pub, I just heard a terrible cover of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” and that reminds me of the myriad issues and mixed attitudes re: musical covers, sampling, and parody. Is it stealing, or good mimesis? Is it art? What is art, anyway, man?
Or is Everything [is] a Remix?
Though I notice now I look again, that this definition refers to an image of an actor only, not a full replica. I wonder if this term, if used in 2025, might actually mean all that, as I assume in my intro here.
This is definitely another book, I have no doubt. Now if only I can get me an agent that’s interested in all my wild nonsense—I could have at least 3 nonfiction books for them to shill, like, immediately.
And yet this still takes technique, I’d argue. It takes a certain flavor of meticulousness, but it is still technique. Maybe even more mimesis than synthesis, in that case.
I highly, highly recommend Warner’s incredible book From the Beast to the Blonde. It’s a wild academic ride and I adore it. The other one of hers that’s so good is No Go the Bogeyman, but that one’s so good I almost can’t stand it.
Good God, another book idea?? Somebody get me a crazy intellectual agent, stat.
Do they still? Or are they old hat?
Still can’t. Can’t pay academics either.
Still an open question today, though the projected answers seem way more dire than they did then.
“Before we even had personal computers …”. I’m sure this is just exaggeration for effect, but my family had its first personal computer circa 1983 and I know we weren’t alone. :)