What Does “Chappie” Contribute to The Idea of Nature vs. Nurture?
The character of Chappie in the film Chappie (2015) is basically a brand-new robot baby who has to learn everything about the world. He does this exceptionally fast, but he’s not immune to the persuasive power of other people. Deon (Dev Patel) strives to teach him to read, to paint, and to become well-rounded in the arts. Ninja (“Ninja” of Dia Antwoord) wants to teach him to walk with swagger and shoot people in the chest. Believe it or not, there’s an internal struggle there, and Chappie teeters between the two lifestyles. He has a respect for Deon as his maker, but an appreciation for Ninja as his “father.” There’s a religious subtext of God Vs. Man there, but the film focuses more on the parenthood persuasion of the issue than the religious.
Yolandi (Yolandi Visser of Die Antwoord) is the middleground between Deon and Ninja. Though she’s in Ninja’s gang, she takes to Chappie like a mother and reads to him, cares for him, and doesn’t want him going out on gang jobs to cause crimes. She’s the balance between the staunch “goodness” of Deon, and the obnoxiously forthright criminal Ninja.
Yolandi becomes the character to which Chappie is most connected. He exhibits more fondness and more connection with the nurturing woman in his life than with the two men attempting to acclimate him to their environments. The film puts forward the message that nurture is the chief formative property in raising a “child,” or in the case of Chappie, a freshly-sentient former police robot.