EmpowerHertz: Special Cinema Segment

The hosts of the podcast Empower Herds discuss the film "Ex Machina" and its portrayal of women and artificial intelligence. They analyze the character Kyoko as a representation of fetishization and lack of autonomy. They also discuss the protagonist Caleb's acceptance of objectification and his manipulation by the female AI bot. They question whether the film can be considered feminist and note the director's comments on the topic. Overall, they believe that while there are feminist aspects, they may not have been fully intentional or conducive to societal change. Hello boys, girls, and enbies. I hope you're all having a fantastic morning, prenoon, noon, afternoon, evening, and night, wherever you are. We are live and alive from sunny Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Ibraj. And we're your favorite co-hosts, Kelsey and Carly. Welcome back to Empower Herds, where we will discuss everything from modern politics and American culture to historical movements through the lens of feminism. With me, your host, Aman. Surprise, surprise. Hey, I believe many guys find that they're more aligned with feminism and its ideas if it's presented by someone who looks like them. Last week, we discussed the prison abolitionist movement in America, specifically with Angela Davis. Today, we will have a more lighthearted segment on the latest blockbuster hit, Ex Machina. Before we get started, though, how are you two lovely ladies doing? I'm doing great. I'm so hyped to talk about this interesting film. I'm feeling as excited as Kelsey right now, because we have some great analysis coming up. Stay tuned. Just as a quick recap, in case you missed it, Ex Machina is a harrowing science fiction that may resemble our future in technology more than we think. The plot follows a young programmer, Caleb Smith, who gets to spend a week at an expansive estate of Nathan Bateman. An estate that just so happens to be in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, that too. Basically, Nathan is the CEO of the tech company that Caleb works at. So there are already some expected power dynamics at play here. Definitely. And to avoid any spoilers, the rest of the movie is just about Caleb participating in Nathan's experiment of his artificial intelligence project. And then they live happily ever after, right? Very funny, but not quite. If you haven't had the opportunity to watch Alex Garland's film Ex Machina yet, I suggest you save this episode for another time. It genuinely is a very good drama-slash-thriller film. And without further ado, let's go ahead and get this show on the road. Let's do it. So, Carly's already sort of mentioned Nathan's AI projects that he's been experimenting with. These are going to be our topic of analysis for this morning. We believe that the filmmakers intentionally designed Nathan's female AI products to criticize the perceptions and purposes of women in media and technology. I agree. Throughout the film, we can observe many different methods of communication that reinforce our idea that Ex Machina utilizes a variety of societal tropes and rhetoric to create discourse about the modern AI tech culture going on right now and the nature of human sexuality versus female anthropomorphic AI models. Starting with Nathan's foreign assistant, Kyoko, we can start to piece together what she represents. We believe that the writers of this film had a very specific reason for choosing to cast Kyoko as a Southeastern Asian woman. This is because Kyoko serves as a representation of Nathan's fetishization of Southeastern Asian women. At the start of the film, Kayla believes that Kyoko is a real human woman. Kyoko has no dialogue in the film because she is presumed not to speak English. This causes her to have no autonomy over herself. She cannot protest her living conditions, her wage, or her freedom. With the lack of autonomy, she has no other activity but to serve her master, Nathan, who makes it very clear through verbal abuse when she makes a mistake. This feeds into Nathan's insane power dynamic desires, where he has total control over this woman. That's so true. In another scene of the film, Kayla touches Kyoko to try to get her attention. Kyoko takes this as a request for sex, because she cannot speak English. When I was watching this film, I found this moment truly tragic, because it perfectly displayed Kyoko's lack of autonomy when she just immediately undressed this woman's touch and she just didn't even consent. Assuming he didn't try to learn her spoken language to explain what he wants sexually for her to learn this behavior and react the way that she did is a conditioned response to repeated behavior. In this case, it probably means that Nathan has raped Kyoko many times in this secluded mansion. We only find out near the climax of the film that Kyoko is the result of Nathan's experimentation and programming. Nathan desires complete control over women, and when he could not find that in a real woman, he created something else to satisfy his brutish needs. Through Nathan, the writers want to offer a critique of men and their views of women, both through Nathan's complete objectification of women and through Caleb's acceptance of this reality. Not only do the writers want us to understand that some men are explicitly misogynistic, such as Nathan to the extreme, others still have that underlying implicit misogyny that allows for this kind of behavior. More evidence supporting Yubaraj's earlier points are when Caleb searches through Nathan's computer and he sees Ava's predecessors. The first is a pair of legs without a body or name, and then a white woman without arms so she can't fight back. Jasmine, a black woman with no face is seen being dragged from room to room. The first combative creation is Jade, a Southeast Asian woman who yearns for freedom and actively destroys herself from attacking the barrier to try and escape. Her efforts prove futile. In his goal to create his definition of the perfect woman, with each iteration he is trying to strip away the autonomy and the freedom from the woman he creates. It is clear that he is in his worldview, the perfect woman has no autonomy and is subservient to him. I completely forgot about some of those points. Like, what was it about Caleb that allowed him to be so easily manipulated by Nathan's female AI bot? Near the middle and the climax of the film, I gathered that Caleb's desire to save Ava was contingent upon the fact that she had expressed romantic interest in him, found him attractive, wanted to escape her prison and essentially be an obedient and loyal companion. This is really demonstrated when Caleb stops performing his assigned duties from Nathan once Ava became suggestive. Caleb exposed himself and his lack of objectivity in a key scene. Caleb explicitly asks Nathan, why didn't you make Ava a grey box? Basically acknowledging that Ava's seemingly female anatomy changed his feelings toward her. One of my favorite aspects of the film is how the director strategically reveals that Caleb is really just a different side of the same coin of Nathan's misogyny. During one of the final scenes of the movie, Ava asks Caleb to wait in a lounge while she goes to change clothing. During this scene, Caleb walks through one of the glass windows to see Ava changing. It's a very intrusive and possessive gaze where Caleb is closely examining this woman as she is obviously aware that he's watching. And I truly believe that if Caleb saw Ava as a human woman with her own autonomy, he wouldn't have ogled through the glass out of respect and concern for her comfort and safety. While we are on the topic of artificial intelligence, I would like to thank our sponsor for the night, Jade. Jade is a cutting-edge robot assistant whose AI is so intuitive, it's like she reads your mind. She even bases her thoughts and actions on your liking. Imagine this, your favorite sports team? It's her favorite too. That playlist you've been failing to create? She has the perfect recommendations. There's nothing she can't do. They don't make them like this anymore. She's not even programmed to disagree. She even has a built-in feature where she'll just listen to a non-ending rant or subpar explanation. Technology is simply amazing. Makes me wish they made a male model, huh? They would never. Jane is my AI girlfriend. Well, that concludes our ad break. And don't forget to check out Jane, the best AI assistant in the game. Apologies for the interruption. Back into our discussion. A lot of the discourse surrounding Garland's film Ex Machina questions whether it could stand independently as a feminist film, or if the themes of patriarchy and feminism were left on the back burner for the audience's optional interpretation. After finishing the film for myself, I believe that Ex Machina may be less of a feminist manifesto than some believe. How so? Well, without any of my interpretation, Garland himself said in an interview that the themes of patriarchy are insignificant to his intended topics of conversation. Here's one of his quotes from an interview. The patriarchy, which is a buzzword at the moment for all sorts of completely good reasons, does not interest me, Alex Garland replied. Secondly, while watching the film, there were many moments where I felt Garland strayed from the path that a successful feminist lens would have taken. Firstly, the polar nature of the primary female characters, either completely nonverbal and subservient, or the opposite. Secondly, the narrative lacks a significant attempt to represent a woman's viewpoint. By the end of the film, Caleb is somewhat portrayed as a victim of his empathy and naivety, as opposed to a man trying to live his fantasy with an AI bot. Lastly, the film doesn't really ever condemn the creation of anthropomorphic femme bots, and can be interpreted as Caleb being a faulty researcher. Overall, I do believe that there are aspects of Ex Machina that could be interpreted as feminist, but I have trouble believing that they were fully intentional by the director or conducive to realistic societal change. It's important to note that Garland also acknowledges that 50% of a narrative is dependent on the audience's perception. Regardless of whether Garland intended for the film to have a feminist tone, that is what was interpreted by audiences worldwide. We're just about out of time for this segment. Any callers, feel welcome to pitch in your interpretation of the film and let us know how we did. I really enjoyed this. We should really dissect more films in the future. For sure. This discussion is so prevalent, especially today with the rise of female AI assistants and the misrepresentation of women in tech spaces. Same time tomorrow? You know it, Kelsey. For next week's specialty segment, we will be discussing gender representation in virtual reality content and how we can improve the future for women by altering the way we portray fictional female characters. We will also be hosting a special guest speaker, so stay tuned. See you guys next time. See ya.