Misogyny in Sci-Fi Films: A Film Review on Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014)
Be it alien invasion or Artificial Intelligence (AI) apocalypse, science fiction films have long been commanding our curiosity and fuelling our sense of wonder to explore the unknown. It serves as some types of provender for rumination, to provoke us to unwire our brain and unlearn the habitual ways of thinking of our everyday life. Directed by Alex Garland, Sci-Fi-noir Ex Machina (2014) has successfully demonstrated the stereotype of hyper-sexualised ‘fembots’; and the conventional attributes and gender stereotypes of women in our society as well as the demonisation of women, especially women of colour.
Ex Machina (2014) features programmer Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) who wins a company competition to spend one week at the home of his company’s CEO Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), who lives a reclusive tech-bro life in a remote, subterranean home with his non-English-speaking gynoid maidservant named Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) and Ava (Alicia Vikander) — who is a human-like android imbued with a highly intelligent brain and a beguiling feminine physique, living in confinement in a cell within the compound. Upon arrival, Caleb is asked to be the human component in a Turing test for Ava. His task is to determine, with acknowledging that Ava is an AI, if he still thinks she is an autonomous, self-aware being.
In the film, Garland has revealed the male gaze with the portrayal of the perfect physique of both female characters. The emphasis lies on the curves of Ava’s body in which her limbs and abdomen are transparent and filled with mechanical stuff while her chest and bottom are covered with metal, which can be arguably interpreted as the outline of an underwear, not to mention her being invented to be an erotic object — by having a pleasure sensor installed between her legs by Nathan. Such design indicates Nathan’s male gaze and his fantasy to programme and produce the ideal woman, who is biddable, obedient, and attractive. Moreover, Ava’s image is repeatedly shown to us through the glass wall, Caleb’s screen and computer monitors — which has further mirrored a network of surveillance and voyeurism.
Along with Caleb being in the foreground of the beginning scene (shown above), Ava — with being regulated by spatial boundaries: being confined to a secured room and not being able to hide or escape, has become the subject of voyeurism. Caleb, on the other hand, is hence, positioned to be the voyeur. That said, such gaze was ambiguous as Ava’s mechanical body parts have a clear indication that Ava is just a machine; and with such manufactured image, it could be argued that Caleb’s gaze is just him being impressed by how femininity is performed by an artificial creation.
A more obvious portrayal of the male gaze can also be found at the end of the film. After the Nathan’s death, Caleb is asked to wait in his office. While he is waiting, he observes as Ava discovers her prototypes and tears their skins apart. After Ava ‘changes’ into these ‘human’ skins and dresses up as a naked ‘human woman’. The camera adopts the viewpoint of Caleb’s and once again, present the male gaze. Unlike the previous scene, where the gaze was both sexualising and somewhat arguably appreciative on a meta-gender level, his gaze has turned into a solely sexualising one — that he is aware that Ava is only an AI, but he still decides to ignore this facade of a performed sexualised femininity in front of him.
With the fact that he only saves Ava rather than both Kyoko and Ava, it has reflected that his intention for saving Ava is not only for her liberation, but for his own desire to be with her too — and that his empathy is disingenuous. Such intention implies a sense of ownership — that Caleb sees Ava, not as an individual, but a possession.
Apart from Ava’s hyper-sexualised body and Caleb being visually positioned as the voyeur, Asian ‘fembot’ Kyoko has also signified the heterosexual male fantasy. Throughout the film, Kyoko can be seen casually standing near Nathan in the nude, waiting for Nathan to have sex with her. She is literally created to fulfil the sexual needs of Nathan’s and do the domestic work for him, like cooking his meals and cleaning the house.
Not being able to speak English, Kyoko is, in some way, muted and unable to voice her needs and thoughts. Along with her being Asian, it delineates the depictions of Asian women being fetishised and dehumanised, which has been an existing problem in media, especially films; and perpetuates the stereotype of Asian women being subservient and powerless, and the hyper-sexualisation of Asian that is already present in western media.
Digging deeper into Kyoko’s functions in this film, most of her on-screen treatments are outrageously problematic. Kyoko is often being treated with violence — such as Nathan yelling at her for accidentally spilling food on Caleb. The way Asian women’s bodies are treated portrays the violence inflicted upon them become seemingly trifling and servile. Her purpose of ‘existing’ discloses the techno-Orientalist vision — that Asian descents are less human, more robotic, that they are something to be abused solely for advancement — which in this case, white female AI Ava’s escape.
Demonisation of women
Even though Ava has successfully escaped from her calculating creator Nathan, the way she escapes has confined her in the longstanding female archetypes— the coy ‘girl’ and the monstrous feminine.
Initially, Ava presents herself as a semi-androgynous pubescent. In doing so, she strategically disarms and captivates Caleb and the viewer by modifying her behaviour and taking full advantage of her petite, delicate appearance. Her dainty physical attributes and lack of hair, in some way, give a her child-like appearance and foster this faux-naïf façade. With her soft and smooth voice, she is portrayed to be notably human in its lilting tone. It makes it even more difficult to prevent Caleb from feeling sympathetic for her prisoner-like life and wanting to save her from that.
As the story proceeds, Ava keep on emphasising on her youth in their conversation — by repeating that she is only ‘one,’ without specifying her exact age. This evinces the idea that, besides her youth, Ava is also avant-garde, one-of-a-kind, and singularly captivating. Coupled with her submissive positioning and skeletal body, Ava manages to lull both Caleb into a false sense of security so he would help her escape.
Though Ava’s tactics and ultimate violence has successfully emancipated her from captivity, the film has shown us that the only for her to escape is to become the femme fatale, by manipulating Caleb into turning Nathan’s back and murdering Nathan. At the end, she not only gets out from the cell, but also leaves Caleb in the locked room and let him starve to death. What’s more, she pays no heed and seems somewhat blasé towards Kyoko, who lies languishing on the floor. Ava shows neither empathy, nor remorse for these victims. Whilst we might not castigate Ava for murdering Nathan, there seems no justification for abandoning Kyoko.
Ava is characterised to be a ‘fatal woman’ with this female monstrosity, whose monstrosity and horror are related to their matriarchal functions, body and sexuality. The killing scene is eerily quiet and marginally graceful as she calmly walks toward Nathan; and softly, she stabs him with a knife with a sense of ease and delicacy to her smooth movements. The whole movement of the camera obfuscating the knife from the view, and that perfervid, prolonged eye contact between them seems inexplicably cruel, yet romantic.
In this sense, the killings permeates a complex sense of femininity.
Therefore, although the power position between Ava and the male characters is seemingly reversed in her liberation, she still remains bounded and trapped by the male gaze under the camera lens.
Cinema studies scholar Barbara Creed states that the monstrous feminine is not a ‘feminist’ or ‘liberated’ representation. Instead, it is more about the fear and desire of male rather than about female desire or feminine subjectivity.
By making the audience to take up the Caleb’s point of view, Garland has forced all of us to complicit in his unethical gaze. As much as Garland has demonstrated a great extent of innovation with this well-crafted cinematography, he eventually reinforces that we women, like Ava, are still confined to these stigmas that exceed beyond not only the movie screens, but also the fine line between humanity and inhumanity.
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Beth (she/her) is a queer writer, poet, and an English major with a concentration in Literary and Cultural Studies. She is an advocates for environmental justice, feminism, and equality; and a scholar of life.
