This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Skirt Collective and is cross-posted with permission.
I am going to admit: Ex Machina profoundly disturbed me – so much so that at one point I had to leave the theatre and catch my breath. It is very rare for me to walk out of a film. Rarer still for me to walk out not because the film is horrible, but because it is so disturbing that it makes me physically nauseaous and emotionally weary.
The film, with only four characters, poses key questions about artificial intelligence, gender, and sexuality – yet, as noted in the Guardian review, “the guys keep their clothes on and the ‘women’ don’t.” The “guys” of the film are human – Nathan, an egotistical scientist with a god complex (hence the film’s title) and Caleb, a computer programmer who works for Nathan’s Internet search company.
Caleb has won a trip to spend time at Nathan’s research-lab/home. While there, Caleb is given the task of giving Ava (the lead robot) a Turing Test to determine if she can “pass” as human. During his stay, Caleb learns of another female robot, Kyoko, who is basically a sex slave for Nathan. Yes, that is right, the males are human, the females are (fuck) machines.
Before seeing Ex Machina, I had high hopes it would be a movie that actually addressed sexism and females as sexualized in profoundly misogynistic ways, especially as the writer and director, Alex Garland, gave various interviews that made it sound as if the film was going to critique such matters. His claim that “Embodiment – having a body – seems to be imperative to consciousness, and we don’t have an example of something that has a consciousness that doesn’t also have a sexual component,” made me envision a film that would suggest alternative, more feminist models of sexuality – perhaps ones not based on power, jealousy, ownership, and control, but ones based on mutual pleasure, desire, and consent.
“…wouldn’t it be so much easier for the real humans (meaning male humans) if their lowly female counterparts could just be sexy in all the ways they desire, obedient, and easily modified, then upgraded or tossed away without fuss when they no longer ‘work.’”
Garland’s claim that “If you’re going to use a heterosexual male to test this consciousness, you would test it with something it could relate to. We have fetishised young women as objects of seduction, so in that respect, Ava is the ideal missile to fire” also gave me hope, given Garland specifically notes woman are fetishized and objectified. Alas, I should have instead latched onto his other suggestion – that Ava is no more than a “missile” that will be used to fire up human male sexuality.
Admittedly, the film does explore sexuality and gender in intriguing ways, but fails to explicitly condemn how the sex/gender paradigm is used as a tool of domination in profoundly deleterious ways. Instead, the film delivers the same message so many movies with female robots/replicants have – namely: wouldn’t it be so much easier for the real humans (meaning male humans) if their lowly female counterparts could just be sexy in all the ways they desire, obedient, and easily modified, then upgraded or tossed away without fuss when they no longer “work.”
Alicia Vikander is excellent in the role of Ava, and I don’t wish my repulsion towards the film to reflect badly on what an obviously talented actor she is. In fact, everyone ACTED the heck out of their roles. The film also had an amazing mis-en-scene, immersing viewers in Nathan’s technological man-cave replete with techno-gadgetry, minimalist design, and, yup, a closet full of female body parts, presumably “out of date” sex slave robots. Nathan’s hangout also has the handy ability to SEE everything, making it rival Hitchock’s vision of the predatory male gaze enacted in Rear Window.
Nathan (Oscar Isaac), as the lead scientist, is your garden variety, bearded intellectual. He is an alcoholic, mega-maniacal ego, with dark skin and hair, subtly cluing the audience to the fact he is a “bad guy” (yes, the film has problematic racial depictions too – not only is the “dark dude” the bad one, Kyoko, the sex slave, is Asian, while Ava is coded as normatively porn-star white).
Caleb, as the nubile male ingénue (with the requisite blonde hair and blue eyes), is a bit too innocent, too ready to fall in love with Ava, too reluctant to quell his male gaze.
On this note, did Ava’s body HAVE to be so sexualized and so transparent, forcing us to gaze inside of her along with Caleb, as if her body has no boundary? Or perhaps this is just the point – we can finally see INSIDE a woman’s body, and she is not that musty, smelly, hairy thing of so many nightmares (Freud’s included), not the vagina dentata or a giver/taker of life – no, she is built like a car of all things – and under her roof her parts sing and hum like a well oiled engine.
“Nathan has PROGRAMMED gender into her system, much the way our culture programs us each day to live within a world defined by a binary gender system.”
As the film continues, it forces the audience to be complicit in the covetous gazing Nathan and Caleb enact, a gaze that is linked to Ava’s sexualization. Indeed, Ava has been built to match Caleb’s porn preferences by Nathan, which prompts Caleb to ask, “why did you give her sexuality?” and “Did you program her to flirt with me?”
The suggestion is ultimately that Nathan gave her sexuality simply because he wanted to and he could (as a “male god/creator”). Garland’s remarks on the subject are telling: “If you have created a consciousness, you would want it to have the capacity for pleasurable relationships, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a machine have a sexual component. We wouldn’t demand it be removed from a human, so why a machine?” But, what Nathan/Garland don’t own up to is that they are the CREATORS – they are not REMOVING sexuality from their creations but CONSTRUCTING it in, and doing so in an incredibly heterosexist, misogynist way. (In the film, Nathan notes of Ava “in between her legs is a concentration of sensors”…WTF?)
As noted in a HuffPost review, “Ex Machina is a very smart movie…but it’s not immune to the everyday misogyny of our world.” Arguing that if robots have access to the history of internet searches of all humanity, with “all of its tropes, and all of its prejudices,” it does not make sense that Ava “chooses” to present as female, that when she makes her escape at the end of the film “It’s almost hard to imagine she wouldn’t have grabbed a dick on her way out into the world.” However, I would counter Ava does not have free choice – Nathan has PROGRAMMED gender into her system, much the way our culture programs us each day to live within a world defined by a binary gender system.
“….most films display extreme anxiety around the issue of female empowerment”
Though films about artificial intelligence have the possibility to deconstruct gender/sex norms, most films trade in stereotypes with those featuring female robots according to misogynist memes of women as sex-bots (Blade Runner, Cherry 2000, The Stepford Wives), destructive forces (Eve of Destruction, Lucy, Metropolis), or a combination of the two (Austin Powers). Even Wall-E promotes the idea good robots are male and constructs female robots as useful only in terms of how they can please males and/or be good “seed receptacles” for male (pro)creation (as noted in my review here). To be fair, male robots don’t fair that much better and are also depicted in stereotypically masculine ways (as discussed here).
There are a few exceptions to this stereotypical gendered script, however. For example, Star Wars’ C-3PO was modeled on the female robot from Metropolis, with breasts and hips removed, leading the Guardian reviewer to name him “the first transgender robot.”
Alas, as argued by scholar Sophie Mayer, most films display extreme anxiety around the issue of female empowerment, and as Mayer notes, within their narratives “these empowered women must be punished” so that a happy-patriarchal ending can ensue, or, as she puts it, “The resolution always assures us the status quo is going to be preserved.”
Sigh. When might we see a film that brings Donna Haraway’s notion of the cyborg to life – a feminist hybrid that eschews binaries; a creature that lives in a post-gender world? “This is the self,” as Haraway puts it, “feminists must code.” It is also the self film’s have – as of yet – failed to code. So come on feminist filmmakers, give us a female cyborg we can root for…
Natalie Wilson teaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is the author of Seduced by Twilight and blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.
I already mentioned this in my own review, but I think that while Garland does expertly raise all the icky misogyny you highlight here, his choice for AVA to reveal that she has no interest in sex with Caleb is challenging in all the right ways. Showing that all Nathan’s abusive actions inevitably make his robots (yes, even the Asian fuckbots programmed to be silent) profoundly hate him, was interesting. I do believe Garland is aware of the ickiness of his premise, and that that is part of the point. It’s not from the woman’s point of view, but it does interrogate the man’s perspective.
Brigit,
Thanks for your comment. I agree that Garland offers a complex representation but I am not sure if he sees the “ickiness” of his premise or sees some sort of inevitability to sexuality being perverse (as some of his comments on the film seem to indicate). Many of the comments over at Ms. Blog (where the piece is cross-posted) and at Skirt Collective argue as you do that there are feminist reads/potential. As I noted in one of my replies, I definitely want to see the film a 2nd time and take these more positive takes into account.
I think your points are valid, too. AVA is clearly an embodiment of male insecurities. The only question is whether the plot allows her to be read as a challenge to them.
This is full of insanity and ideology. I’m not here trying to convince you of anything, I’m here saying fewer and fewer people are buying into the bullshit of feminism every day. I’m here making this argument for other people- to show there is another perspective and encourage skepticism.
You have made the argument that Ava is anti-feminist. I would have made the exact opposite argument, that Ava represents manipulation of men and resources to get power, which is often the hidden reality of feminist pursuits. I would argue that Caleb is completely innocent and a real victim, that Ava is the closest to being evil with some ambiguity, and Nathan is mostly good with some ambiguity- and is ultimately a victim of murder.
The message you got out of the movie sounds like you watched an entirely different film, and as if you completely made it up to support your ideology.
At any rate, your weak and pathetic attempt at creating a race divide in the film is sad. You really struggled to suggest that Nathan was “dark”. He looked white. Maybe Eastern European or mixed- in which case the white side is non-existent? To call your made up projections a “stretch” is a compliment. Since I am making the argument that Ava is mostly evil, yet she is white, this contradicts your white supremacist interpretation.
Why is it misogynist to make a robot with female sexuality? Is female sexuality misogynist? Is appreciating female sexuality misogynist? And who appreciates female sexuality more than heterosexual males? This is part of biology, why hate males or females for a part of who they are?
But let’s also not forget Caleb and Nathan’s intense focus on Ava’s mind. This was the central point of the film- is she conscious? Alive? It was the interaction between brain, sexuality and body that played with the question of what creates human consciousness. Contrary to the belief that Ava was reduced to an object, she was actually built up as fully conscious. All parts of her played a role, and her mind was the chief focus of Nathan and Caleb. The men’s mistake of focusing solely on the mind for consciousness is a mistake many people make- the film can be seen as the suggestion that the entire human makeup is what creates consciousness.
Let’s also remember that Nathan put up an evil act to create the “rat maze” for Ava. He was using Caleb as the guinea pig. So when he was angry at Kyoko for spilling the wine, getting drunk, ripping up Ava’s drawing, it was all an act to create the tension for her to escape, and to make Caleb distrust him. Nathan wasn’t entirely evil because he saw himself as creating machines. His abuse only came to be with the transition from machine, to conscious being.
And it looks like you had no mention of his murder or Caleb’s entrapment whatsoever. Nor were Ava or Kyoko held accountable for murder and imprisonment. Caleb did nothing wrong- he was Ava’s victim (and partially Nathan’s). Ava could have let him go with her. She purposely changed the security settings so he would be trapped AND his key card would shut down the entire system.
She used his appreciation of female sexuality and naivete with the situation to manipulate and use him like an object. Where’s the mention of objectification there?
In this article, I don’t see a person standing for human rights of either gender here. I only see a prudish anti-sex feminist arguing against female sexuality, ignoring the focus on the female mind, absolving the AI women of any responsibility, and ignoring the male abuse entirely. This is sexist to both genders, and dishonest about the reality of the film.
You obviously didn’t get this article. Seriously, try reading the other posts on here about the movie, they offer other excellent feminist analysis of it. Most of us feminists here are in praise of positive portrayals of female sexuality. The point was NOT that sexuality is “bad” and this person is not “prudish”. They meant, that there is a way to show a good dose of sexuality without having to sexualize the person and portray them as simply sex objects and nothing more. One can show an honest portrayal of normal and healthy sexuality in a female character, without turning them into sub-human sex machines, so to speak. So it’s really about not giving the female characters true autonomy. And sorry, but LOTS of people, men and women are still feminists, this isn’t “driving people away” from it. There are plenty of good points to be had here.
It’s funny how you only addressed the parts of my comment that you could reorient to a feminist light. Did it occur to you that Ava was an EVIL character in the film, and yet this article paints Nathan as the evil character. Ava entrapped a man and Kyoko killed another. But there is NO MENTION of the murder or entrapment here.
This is a very fascinating article Natalie. I loved it and the movie was intriguing as well. It’s also interesting how Domhnall Gleeson died his natural red hair blonde for the film. But I guess I also see your point for that.