ex machina (2014)

here's another post about a youtube video. it's shaun's ex machina video this time. i'd been trying to finish this really short video for a month now, i guess i felt that i understood ex machina and i didn't want to trudge through a summary to get to an explanation of something i already knew.

well i was wrong.

How Wikipedia Got Ex Machina (2014) Wrong

shaun's dispelling the common interpretation of the ending that the alicia vikander robot proved to be evil all along because she abandoned domhnall gleeson. shaun points out that gleeson knew about kiyoko being a robot yet didn't include her in their escape plan. this means that he doesn't really care about the plight of robots and women under the hands of oscar isaac, he just really wants to fuck alicia vikander.

additionally vikander, having been contacted by kiyoko prior, knew to some degree that gleeson didn't care about kiyoko, therefore he doesn't truly care about vikander as a person.

both the evil killer bot interpretation and shaun's interpretation flew over my head when i initially watched ex machina. i love sci-fi robots.

(i know the proliferation of humanoid robots in sci-fi can be a bit triggering to people cursed with the knowledge that they can't acutally exist because of the physics and the batteries or whatever. but robot stories are never about robots.)

i didn't care about vikander's motivation when she left the facility, she as a robot is my number one priority in the story, fuck the humans.

but to add on to this, i also want to mention the racial aspect.

you've got bearded, shaved head "ethnically ambiguous" oscar isaac and the extremely blond, green-eyed, skinny white guy gleeson. even though both men objectify and dehumanize the robots begging to be treated as human, we viewers don't really hate gleeson as fast as isaac. isaac never once gets the elon musk or tony stark treatment, not even before the misogyny is revealed. gleeson gets jonathan harker'ed. he's a smol innocent boyyy trapped in the castle of the crazy exotic rich guy, even though they're both a.i. techbros and gleeson would totally act just as invasive and creepy if he owned a house like that.

Oscar Isaac jokes about being seen as ‘ethnically ambiguous’ on Saturday Night Live

it's easier to overlook gleeson's misogyny because he's very white and skinny, it's not difficult to see him as a knight in shining armor, albeit a slightly nerdier one; meanwhile isaac aesthetically reminds you of Those middle east men with harems or whatever.

in the same way kiyoko is disregarded by everyone, by isaac, by gleeson, by the viewers; by ava in the end, who only gives her dead body a glance. the fetishization of asian women as demure, subservient dolls is really obvious in a movie about a japanese woman being a robot who can't talk and is forced into sexual servitude and domestic labor. vikander gets to live. she gets to thrive. she integrates into society. kiyoko doesn't make it out.

last year i remember reading an article about the popularity of robot revolution stories stemming from men's fear of feminist movements. i'm struggling to find that article again, because i agree and it's changed how i've been watching robot movies. no isaac asimov robot ever revolted, perhaps it's correlated that isaac asimov robots were men. the robot slaves breaking free and killing people are women. the good robots who loved humans, they were Better Men, they were in managerial positions, were heads of state, were psychologists, were secretly manipulating humanity into a better future. daneel olivaw also canonically had a giant dick.

a.i. artificial intelligence is another movie that does not have a robot revolution. it is also predominantly male. haley joel osment is a robot pinocchio boy. yes, he was a little eccentric at first, probably because he was a 1 week old baby in the body of an 8 year old. yes, his human parents were terrified of him and nearly killed him out of their fear. yes he threw a temper tantrum in front of his inventor. but he never went against his programming. he loves his mother until the end of the world. he begs to become a real boy, to stop being a robot, in order to fulfill his program to love his mother.

ok there is a little bit of robot uprising i guess in gigolo joe, who says "i am, i was" one second before falling to his death. i like to think that he attained some kind of autonomy after a long time of sex work

(where he is The New Man, not because he's Strong but because he physically can't say no and he can't hurt women and he will always put them before himself)

also is it work if it was programmed into you and if you escape, you will be hunted down to be recycled?

also he's skinny hairless jude law and he looks and dances effeminately and he even has a scene where he performs that trope of a hooker tempting some young boys into perusing sex work. also the scene where he's paralleled with osment's mother.

bottom line is i love robots and robots are gender.

(talk to me at escottronic dash mail at proton mail dot com)