Originally Written: 22 May 2020
Grammatical edits made before posting.
I must tell my own personal narrative to explain my evolving opinion on Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. It all started when I first saw the film: In theaters, 2015, I was a junior in high school, I could not get laid (I promise that detail is important), but I was excited to see this new science-fiction film about a sex robot. I left the theater pissed that day, not because I suffered two hours of pain, only about 60 seconds. I was completely enthralled by Ex Machina throughout 99% of its run-time during my first experience with it, but when it got to the climax, and I saw Ava betray Caleb, the hero of the film, the nice guy who was trying to save her from her abusive father, and escape with her to a happy ending full of love and romance, maybe even some intercourse with the help of those sexual organs Nathan hinted at her having, I left the theater fuming with anger. I felt betrayed. What is this film trying to say? Fear all technology because eventually it is just going to take over? That is not what Star Trek taught me!
For the next two years, whenever this film came up in conversation, I insisted to people that the ending ruined the entire picture, but I also could not get it out of my mind how much I loved the rest of the film. I believe I did watch it a second time around this point, and I still felt exactly the same: Brilliant movie up until the last 60 seconds when Ava betrays Caleb.
A short time later in life, I would become more well informed on gender and feminist studies, and how to apply them to my films studies, and since it had been almost three years now, and this movie I claimed not to like was still frequently on my radar, I decided to apply some of what I was learning about gender/feminist studies to the film and see if it would help me understand it a little better. The first aspect I started to question was why Ava had been created in the first place. She is a reflection of a certain type of idealized woman, and her creator Nathan seemed obsessed with making her as attractive as possible, at least to someone like Caleb.
I started to realize that this reflects how the entertainment industry, something run by men, and society in general, demand that women look beautiful, but also seductive and innocent, which is talked about in the You-Tube video Born Sexy Yesterday by Jonathan McIntosh. This made me start to question whether the film could be read, not only as a cautionary tale about A.I. and technology, but also about women becoming too powerful. I think there are a certain group of audience members that would watch this film and think it is telling them to keep women down so they cannot back-stab them like Ava does to Caleb and Nathan, but there are so many films that people can warp to fit their own negative agenda, that would not make this one unique.
On my third viewing, I finally decided to push any sympathy out of my mind for Caleb, and just try to look at the situation from Ava’s perspective. What have the only two humans she has known in her life done for her? Her creator is informing her that he is going to disassemble her because she is not “perfect” and he wants to start over. Caleb is just here to see if he can be won over by her charm and be convinced that she is human, “What happens if I fail your test?” as Ava and the tagline ask. You could even say it is confirmed for her that Caleb is only interested in her as a potential sexual partner because of how she manipulates him, agreeing to go on dates when the test is over, showing off her wig, etc. Ava has no reason to trust either of these men, they both want to exploit her in some way: Nathan wants to prove his engineering genius at the expense of her life, and Caleb wants a girlfriend that was modeled after the looks of his favorite porn stars.
Here is what I came up with sitting with the film this time: We have hundreds of films our culture sees as classics that portray men as the heroes, and women as props that make them look complete. Or sometimes, the women are killed to motivate the male protagonist to grab a gun and just start shooting people. Sometimes they are just the prize at the end of the movie for the hero that was able to shoot everyone. What Ex Machina is more than happy to do, is allow the female character to say, “Fuck my abuser, fuck my white knight, I’m taking care of myself. They are just here to use me. Even if one of them smiles and thinks he is the hero, he still expects me to fuck him by at the end of the day. I will not be anyone’s prize.” And now, I am comfortable and ready to admit, I was angry because I was Caleb. I thought girls should like me in high school because I was, “the nice guy.” I like to think I was never the most egregious of this type, but often when people I had crushes on complained about their current significant others, I would be thinking to myself, “Date me, I would never cause you such pain!” I wanted to see Caleb “save” Ava from her abusive father, and enjoy the endorphins that would have released in my brain from seeing the happily ever after where the nice guy beat the villain and got the girl. I would not say Ex Machina is responsible for my eventual capability to get away from this unhealthy worldview, but being able to realize how I was thinking, it creates my own little character arc in relation to how I have interpreted this film.
I can only say Ex Machina is a misogynistic film if you are not able to put your own fears and insecurities away for a moment, and just try to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone who is in an entirely different group category than yourself. If at the end of the movie, you are mad or even scared of Ava, and mad that Caleb did not win, ask yourself why that is.
She is Ava. Deal with it.
Work Cited
Garland, Alex, director. Ex Machina. Universal Studios, 2015.
McIntosh, Jonathan, and Jonathan McIntosh. Born Sexy Yesterday. You-Tube, Pop Culture
Detective, 27 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0thpEyEwi80.
Link to Image:
https://www.wallpaperflare.com/ex-machina-wallpaper-mpbyk
I do not really like this content creators, “make you feel bad for what you’ve liked in the past” attitude, but he does bring up a lot of good points and observations, and the messages he gives I stand by at their core.