EX MACHINA citation and annotation on the Wiki CLOCKWORKS 2: THE HUMAN/MACHINE INTERFACE IN SF. Discusses character names in EX MACHINA and the deeply traditional possibilities for form of the narrative, implicitly and explicitly dealing with EX MACHINA as a serious and important work in film history (and gender studies) from METROPOLIS to THX 1138 and further.
See Full PDF See Full PDFIn today's digital age, we are becoming more like machines and machines are becoming more like us. Donna Haraway's seminal essay, "A Cyborg Manifesto," proposes the cyborg as a transgressive figure capable of subverting oppressive power structures. While there is no denying this powerful imagery, what are the common trends in female AI narratives in mainstream cinema? This paper examines the films Ex Machina (2015) and Her (2013), which both feature male human protagonists and female AIs (Ava, a feminized robot in Ex Machina and Samantha, a female operating system in Her). Ava's and Samantha's highly sexual yet innocent characterizations and similar desires for freedom are reflective of societal anxieties surrounding male control over female agency. As gendered AIs continue to populate our media, one can only hope that we can live up to Haraway's vision of the cyborg, and expand the scope of our questions and concepts past male pleasure and women as research-fetish objects.
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Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung
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Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media
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Revista e-scrita : Revista do Curso de Letras da UNIABEU
The rise of artificial intelligence has transformed our concepts of reality and fiction as it relates to the human body. Fusions of bodies with technology are now raising ethical questions. Additional issues arise regarding artificially and emotionally intelligent robots, which is fodder for reflection about shared societal and cultural responsibility for the impacts of these advancements. This article offers an overview of body representations in these arenas, particularly the notion of “embodiment” as depicted in the film Ex-Machina. Consideration is given to the human/machine merge issue from progressive post-humanist critics. Counterpoints illustrate the fears and, thus, resistance that humans might mount to becoming post-humans. Between brave, bold, and bright-eyed portrayals and dark visions, suggestions are offered as to how humanity can accommodate the future by “working through” it. Ava, the protagonist cyborg of Ex-Machina, epitomizes what it is to be post-human when the h.
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The Problems of Literary Genres/Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich
The cyborg as a metaphor for cultural encodings of the interaction between humans and technology has been an accepted trope since the publication of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto. " Alex Garland's 2015 film Ex Machina shares many of its key themes and motifs with earlier science fiction films, from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. A first viewing of the film thus suggests an interpretation that focuses on the film's portrayal of its female cyborgs Ava and Kyoko as another version of the "pleasure model" in the mode of Lang's Maria or Scott's Pris. However, it is the tension between Ava's intelligence and visual attractiveness and her performance of a female gender identity that invites a closer investigation of the film's visual encoding of the female cyborg. As the film shifts its focus from the young male programmer Caleb and his encounter with his employer Nathan and the cyborg Ava to Ava's selfportrait, this chapter will take a closer look at the embodiment of cyborg identity.
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This article examines the 2015 film Ex Machina as a cultural text that exemplifies the technologization of gender within algorithmic culture. Analysing different textual elementsthe narrative diegesis, the marketing material, and the digital techniques used in the VFX post-production process-I argue that gender is consistently figured as a kind of technology. That is, gender is systematised, codified, and reduced to a programmed set of instructions that can be used by machines to manipulate and deceive. I argue that understanding gender through its figuration with the technological, specifically through code and algorithms, raises pertinent issues concerning surveillance, race, and bias. This is reflected in the film through a problematic representation of racialised figures, particularly techno-Orientalist tropes of labouring Asian bodies.
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Art Historical Moments in Cinema, Aracne Editrice, Roma
