Sunday, 26 April 2015

Fifty Shades of Grey: Why Didn't You Warn Me?

We all know the film, we’ve all heard of the book and we all know what a romantic ideal Christian Grey is. Don’t we? He’s the modern day Mr Darcy or Heathcliff for women, but with added grey ties. But, I hear you shouting at the screen, he’s not! He’s abusive, he treats her awfully, and pretends it’s all in the name of love. I’m here to tell you I agree, and that’s why he is the modern Heathcliff. He is just like the character who was so obsessed with a women that he ignored her own wishes for his own personal desires like Heathcliff did. He is just like Darcy who was abrasive to a woman he’d just met simply because of problems in his own past. The book itself even makes a comparison to a classic novel and character itself: Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Ana compares herself to Tess, and compares Christian to Alec D’Urberville and that is a problem. Oh is that a problem.
In the film it is a passing mention, a throwaway line there to signify that she’s a literature student who has read a book and to have a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that Christian is not like other men. The quote is this,

“Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks,”

Now here’s the context, spoilers for a book that came out 1891. Tess at aged 16 accidentally played a part in the family’s horse – their means for surviving – getting killed, and so to make up for that she was sent to her rich ‘cousin’ to work for him to provide for her, large, family. That ‘cousin’ then flirts with young Tess, very clearly against her wishes, and then proceeds to rape her in the woods. At aged 16 and feeling guilt ridden and questioning if she had a role in her own “debasement” she stays with him after but ultimately goes home and screams the above quote at her mother. She screams it, feeling betrayed by her own mother, her mother who knew that men raped and didn’t warn her. So why did Christian use that quote in particular? That’s what worries me.
I know E.L. James has read the book and I know she knows the context as this quote is after the rape. In the book there are more, other worrying references, to Tess of the D’Urbervilles but I can’t include them all so I will instead link to this great post on it here. Whilst some argue that the rape is ambiguous, it was written in the Victorian Era so rape could only be implied by Hardy, I disagree; Tess reacts with hate, disgust and anger at Alec and those who didn’t warn her. She even cuts off her hair and her eyebrows to keep men from finding her attractive later because the thought of being with a man is so repulsive to her – does that sound like the actions of someone who lovingly slept with an older man? No, I don’t think so.
So why does Ana, knowing the quote, simply shrug off that he used those lines to accompany the book? Is it simply because she’s impressed that he used a quote at all, is she too impressed to be given first editions of those books to question it, or is it because she – like the audience is meant to – reads the implied sexual deviance that those quotes suggest? But it’s a problem because Christian Grey is like a rapist in many ways in both the film and the book. He often ignores her boundaries – using the GPS on her phone to track her simply because she’s drunk. He often causes her pain and that she is to blame for his actions – she cries to her mother and gets away from him because he won’t let her be intimate with him. Christian Grey is an abuser who uses women and Ana is naïve and inexperienced in both sex and relationships, and she often leaves very concerning statements by him completely unquestioned – I did a piece of my thoughts as I watched it here so you can see what I mean.
Fifty Shades of Grey helped the world understand that women of all ages have sexual desire and needs. I understand that though I wish that a better book did it, and there are books out there with non-abusive men that have intimacy and a brooding male character for women to swoon over – such as this series. But Fifty Shades, in both book and film form, is not alone in creating abusive men who are not seen as abusive. Christian Grey is seen as a broken man, a man with a dark past that excuses the way he treats women, and as a man that a woman can fix.
I’m sorry women around the world but those men do not exist in the way you want. Yes there are men with dark pasts but they often go on to become abusers themselves, not ambiguously so but in ways that usually end up with them in jail. There are men who are dark and brooding but women usually see those men as arseholes. There are men who women desire to fix but here’s the thing: you can’t. You can’t do it with love, or with sex, those men need professional help. That is the problem with the Greys and the Heathcliffs, they teach women that the men who treat them badly do so because they can’t inarticulate their deep feelings, or because they love you. They don’t because if they did they wouldn’t be making you cry a few weeks into the relationship like Ana does.
This film is badly written, it has embarrassing lines throughout, the characterisation is poor and confused, and the colour scheme is so overhanded that it was infuriating but that is not the biggest flaw of this film. It is that it, amongst many others, teach women to take abuse, to romanticise it and that even if they stand up for themselves like Ana does at the end that their abuser will still pull them back in with lies about being sorry, as we will see at the start of the next film. Films and books like this aren’t just an affront to literature and to film but they send dangerous messages about a very certain type of man.
Ladies, if a man does any of these things they are not romantic and they are probably signs that you should get away from that man as fast as you can (all of these things are from the film):
  • Use your GPS to find where you are, without your consent and after meeting you twice
  • If they do not allow you to go to visit your family, if they get angry and possessive if you do, and especially if they track you down and find you when you do so
  • If they take it personally that you got drunk, that you have male friends and if you want to make decisions about yourself
  • If they send you expensive objects or electronics to communicate with without your permission – and if they sell your objects without your consent so they can buy you new ones
Whilst it may seem romantic to get gifts from your new boyfriend they should not be so expensive that you feel guilty or like you owe them anything – again, in Tess of the D’Urbervilles Alec sends Tess’ family toys and other things and she later tells him she wishes he hadn’t because it made her feel obligated to work for him. They definitely should not, after barely meeting you, be buying you electronics specifically so they can talk to you – that is something that stalkers do; do you really think Ana would feel like she cannot reply to his e-mails if it is on a laptop that he bought her? If you do you might not understand the control and hold that abusive men can have over women.
Abusers isolate their victims, they will want you all to themselves and whilst people might feel like that in new relationships abusers will go to great lengths to do so; Christian literally demands she lives in his home, he makes it clear he disapproves of her seeing her family when he doesn’t want her to, and he gives himself ways to find where she is at any given moment. Regardless of BDSM relationships and contracts they should not control what you eat, how much you exercise, what you wear, and what birth control you use – all things in the film and all things that abusers wish to control so you are the person they want you to be. They will do all of those things and then they will call them love, passion, caring. They will make you cry but have you blame yourself for your tears, they will cause you pain and blame a past they had no control over, and then by the time you wish to get away – to separate the pain and the love – it will be too late to get out without them tracking you down, and trying to hurt you.
The film, and the books, should be used as example of what relationships to avoid not what relationships to strive for. They should be critically analysed and discussed and they should not simply be allowed to exist unquestioned. This is not about the sex and it is not about a contract she hasn’t even signed by the end of the first film (though gaining sexual pleasure from committing violence against women should be questioned in the context of a patriarchal society - more on it here). It is about everything Christian does, everything he says and what his actions mean for what type of relationship he wants from Ana. It is telling that there is a variety of merchandise from this film, many people wanting a Christian Grey of their own, but that there is a distinct lack amongst those wishes of women wanting to be Ana anywhere outside of the bedroom.
Watch the films, read the books, read the classic novels but all I ask is that after you have that you go to google and research how abusive men act, how they operate, and the things they say. There are warning signs, there is help you can get before it’s too late, and I promise you there are women out there who might never read this simply because their partners control what websites they visit or if they use the internet at all. I promise you there is a way out, there is a way to help you avoid men like Christian Grey, and now it is up to women to understand that relationships like this don’t usually end with a happily ever after. They end up with women broken, bruised, and, heartbreakingly, dead.

So fuck you Fifty Shades of Grey.

Friday, 24 April 2015

Which film should I review next week?

Which film should I review next week?
 
pollcode.com free polls


The Hours (2002)



Irreversible (2002) [Mature Content]



Miss Congeniality (2000)




Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Fifty Shades of Grey: A Not-So-Live-Blog.

I suffered through this film so you don't have to. It is a flawed film from both logic and human emotion. I wrote down notes as it happened for a more thorough review but my a review will just not cover it alone so in lieu of that review I am putting up my running thoughts. They started out at least trying to come at the film from a technical perspective and then fail as time goes on. Enjoy.

Fifty Shades of Blargh

Opening shot of film is even grey. Ugh.

He has a wardrobe like a simpsons character.

Ana is blue - blue eyes, car, umbrella, cardigan, bowls, notebook?!, lift!

Initially reduces Ana's co-dependence on her BFF from book

Women who work for him are dressed in grey, white work space. All blonde/brown hair

Ana is clumsy, shy, why did she even agree to do this interview? I wouldn't.

WTF is his accent meant to be

He sits high, she sits low

He's already rude, 'seriously' at a ques., she didn't write

Already flirting about control - creepy, they've just met

Ana is at Uni - yet comes across as dim, uneducated

Her BFFs notes include that he's adopted but not about his business?

She is literally sat with a pencil in her mouth but totally asks ques. bravely that no one would ask

UGH. Read more books. She is a lit. student. I don't know about US curriculum but in UK out of Bronte, Austen and Hardy I only did Hardy at A Level. No other. They seem very rudimentary and narrow for him to ask which ones made her love lit. I know it's so she can say Hardy for Tess of the D'Urbervilles - for creepy dominant rape comparison - and so he can say he would have guessed Austen so HE can make comparison to douchey-bad past equals arsehole Darcy comparison but from a studying Eng. POV it doesn't make sense and two are stereotypical female authors for women to like. I'm more of a Wilde girl myself.

Ana is so pretty, odd she thinks so little of herself. I'm ugly but I think I'm bitchin'

SO much blue for Ana. Is it cause she's calm? Depressed? Dull?

Ana acts so unnaturally, talks weirdly, even for a shy 20 odd woman

BFF takes her sandwich, she lets her like its happened before - Ana is v. passive. Women talk about having a Mr Grey but not about being Ana. Want to be dominated in bed but not rest of time?

Film is full of 'nice guys' too

Her saying 'What the f-' seems so out of character

Do you really use masking tape in BDSM? Is it so it can be red? Stop sacrifing logic for films!

Why ask if she's a girl scout when she can tie knots?! She works in a hardware store!! There is a display on knots right there!!

Oh it's so she can say she's shy and reads books

As a book reading, shy, quiet introvert I take offence to being this stereotype - ESPECIALLY when it implies I need a man to dominate me. Fuck You.

Girl needs Feminism.

Haha nice serial killer joke! Lol!

Don't DIY naked! Files! Saws! Argh.

Dude who works with her asked to pack one bag of nthing for her I know it's so he can be jealous but it's creepy and rude

Now he's jealous over a 2nd random guy in her life. Creepy assumption any man she knows has to date her.

The grey/blue colour scheme is VERY over handed

"Are you romantic?" "Well I'm studying English lit. so I'd have to be." WHAT?! As someone who studied lit. as my favourite topic you SO do not. Plus so many books that are classics that are said to be romantic are so, so, so not and teach bad ideas about romance. She's so failing her class.

Good thing he saved her getting hit by a bike else she'd have obviously died!!

"I have to let you go now." You have only met three times!

Oh my god. When he sends her TotD the quote he uses, meant to be a joke that he is into BDSM, is actually very literally about Tess having a go at her mother that she never warned her that Alec might RAPE her like he did.

Also creepy af that of all Hardy's books he sends them with a quote from a book about (Spoilers for Tess of the D'Urbervilles - a book that came out a century ago but still) a rapist, a naive girl who gets impregnated, murders her rapist and then gets hung for her crimes.

Has E.L. James read the book? I assume as that quote is post-rape. Did she think Austen parallels were too cliche?!

Only time Ana is 'loud' is when she's drunk?! Also why is he acting like she needs rescuing from her being drunk?!

How is ANY of this romance?!

Why does this keep happening?!

Why dowe keep getting books with total arseholes as the epitome of women's male ideal?! See: Heatchliff etc.

Blue is so heavy handed. It's happening to me!!!

Really? Alice in Wonderland reference. About a child.... Again bit creepy.

"I didn't have much choice." About undressing her?! And that goes unquestioned?!

He just compared blacked out Ana to dead Ana. WTF.

Victim blaming a girl who did... nothing. Again unquestionaed. Apparently it turns her on?! UGH.

"You wouldn't understand." Fuck you. Rude. You know nothing about her.

Maybe if Ana paid more attention to Tess she'd know how to spot the signs of a dominant creep. See: Alec and strawberries and her lips and him. "I want to bite your lips."

Met four times, barely, before he kisses her without asking, forcefully, and after saying "Fuck the paperwork"... Are you for real?

He walks in on his brother naked, having sex on a sofa and acts like whatever, it's nothing?

Do we ever find out, like we do in the book, that he traced the GPS on her phone to find her?! (Note: If we did I missed it)

Literally so much blue.

Now HE is in a blue suit. Welldone girl who hooked yourself an abuser!

"No escaping now." - Things serial killers say.

Is flying a helicopter meant to be sexy?

His accent is so off putting, the Belfast creeps in so much.

I used to find Jamie D attractive, once upon a time and all that, but nothing is more unattractive than him saying "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard."

Honestly his red room just looks like it would be exhausting. Who cleans it up? I feel sorry for who does.

"I do it it women - with women - women who want me to!" Calm down, you don't care about sounding like a creepy rapist the rest of the time.

She doesn't know what a dominant is. How utterly sheltered is Ana? She's in Uni ffs.

At least now if you want to get sexual pleasure out of violently hurting women you can call it a kink and be told you don't get it if you disagree with it. Sigh.

In Twilight, seems as this is fanfiction of it, she's in high school so it makes sense she's a virgin but holding onto this ideal of women being pure only if they're virgins means he's now "rectifying" a 20 year old's "situation". Sorry to 20+ virgins.

Even her underwear is blue, and matching. Now that's unrealistic as hell.

Did he buy blue bedsheets to fit her colour scheme?

Did he just forcefully thrust himself into her?? Dude you do not do that to virgins!! Be slow, gentle, I don't care about BDSM that's basic manners.

His blue top matches his bed sheets. Just sayin'.

There is no soap on that sponge. He literally put a wet sponge on her all sexily. Nothing about this film is sexy.

Knowing that Dornan and Johnson don't like each other makes the sex scenes so awkward.

Oh the Belfast creeps in when he says mother.

I hope everyone whose surname is a colour decorates their rooms to match.

He's 27. He's had 15 woman subs. Does he get rid of one a year? What makes them leave? Is it cause he's a dick, cause he is.

So now Ana has a backbone. Well of course apparently sex makes a girl a woman (spoilers: it doesn't) so now she stands up for herself.

Sorry Christian I'm sure your ex-dom has heard the Mrs Robinson joke before.

He's saying he gaveup control but he was a teenager... he didn't have much to give up.

When he says 'laters baby' he sounds like a robot trying to imitate humans.

Why is she wearing white now she's with him? Colouring is odd.

Does he have to choose her healthcare? I'msure he doesn't. That's very very bad controlling. Also why does it have to be the pill? What if it's not right for her? Does her family have a history for heart disease? Does he even care.

So much of this contract is hideous.

Why would googling submissive got straight to sex images? (Note: It really does, parents please remember to have safe search programs in place)

As someone who adores pink I own clothes with other colours. Branch out Ana.

Did he go to scouts to learn how to do knots?

Yeah I always find it sexy when a guy takes off my socks.

For a guy who in the books says he'd never done "vanilla sex" until her he sure does do it a lot now.

How this guy got 16 women to get with him I have zero idea.

'Grey House' is super unoriginal

Can she even read that in the dark?

Does she even go to class? Have we even see her reading. I mean we can see she can read.

"What are butt plugs?" It's in the name but yeah a cheap laugh. Hah.

This is the tamest BDSM relationship ever.

"Cable ties"- Things serial killers use.

If her blushing means she has adrenaline flowing through her then according to the books she might have a medical problem with her adrenal gland considering how red her cheeks always are.

Did he just compare poverty and starvation to wanting to get laid?!

I think she's only worn three outsides with no blue so far.

Do they not make these cars in blue? Did he sell her car without asking?! That's out of line.

Boyfriends you've known for two seconds should not be making you cry.

Her joke about not being able to have sex when starting the pill shows he doesn't know enough about it to be in charge of who prescribes it. Also for what he does to her the least he could is read the leaflet the pill comes with.

Who taught him how to do plaits? Weird.

Tying a woman's hands above her head - things serial killers do.

These sex scenes are literally so boring.

Sniffing a woman's underwear in front of her - things serial killers do.

Even his Mum hires nameless blonde women.

I think this place is from an episode of Supernatural, it at least looks identical.

Ideas of fixing broken men is so toxic and dangerous.

His poor mother. A crack addicted prostitute. Nevermind you Christian it sounds like she had a rough life.

Being angry because she's with her famiy and not you and almost stopping her going is what abusers do - they isolate their victims

Also turning up uninvited and having her not be pleased = bad

"She's a child abuser". Yep.

Mother telling her it doesn't get easier, her relationship is brand new, they should be so happy and annoying

This overdramatic music does not fit. At. All.

It's a good thing he's up in the middle of the night, playing sad music else I wouldn't know he's such a tortured soul.

If there's no contract (yet) and it's not a BDSM relationship isn't it just abuse? All of it.

"I'm 50 shades of fucked up". Is this a universe where '50 shades' of anything is a saying? I know it's our universe now sadly but it never used to be.

Literally this isn't the worst pain or whatever Ana.

Never show this girl internet porn.

Nevermind Feminism - these two need Jesus.

Literally do not understand how the whipping scene was meant to be like the worst? Is it worse in the book?

The one time she says no and thoroughly meant it and he looks like someone hit him, for a change. Is it because no one ever says no to him or because it's the first time he's really heard it?

Aaaaaand thank god that is over. There's an hour and a half I'll never get back.

Sunday, 19 April 2015

The Babadook: The horrors mothers face.

The Bababdook is a horror film but one that is not for many of today's horror fans. As I sat in the cinema with my heart breaking at this film many laughed openly and loudly, for so long that one cinema go-er told them where to go. All I felt afterwards was anger, an infuriating need for them to understand the beauty of this film. As I write this I am watching it on Netflix as it was recently added and if you can I highly, utterly reccommend it. Now if you haven't I will wait and you can come back afterwards so I don't spoil anything. Right, good? Here we go.


This is a film about being a mother, it's a profound story about loss and grief and how difficult life can be when these two things collide. This beautiful story was written and directed by Jennifer Kent, a woman whose next work I eagerly await. The film starts with a worn out mother of a little boy called Sam. Many who have seen this film have called him irritating, annoying, and so on and that's the smartness of this film. You are meant to agree, you are meant to think that she simply can't deal with a child who has a wild imagination, who won't sleep in his own bed for no reason, and who always shouts and screams.
But Sam isn't a child living a normal life. He is a child who is alone, who has grown up with a mother who whilst there in physical form was not there for him emotionally at all. But oh she chastises others when they insult her son, when they refer to him simply as 'the boy'. Yet we can see in her face, in her actions that she is a bit cold and a bit distant. So Sam, in a way only a child can creates a monster. He creates The Babadook. Because of course his mother loves him but she just can't show it because the big, great Babdook won't let her.
We join the story when it has hit its peak, when his story of The Babdook and his promises to protect her when the monster comes has reached her and she begins seeing it too. The Babdook itself is a great towering thing, with slim arms and long fingers, a grey suit, a black hat and a completely spine chilling voice. Sam builds weapons to protect her, his love for her, he is sure, will be enough when the Babadook comes calling. But he can't fight it alone.
His mother, Amelia, works in a home for the elderly. She talks with colleagues, reads out bingo numbers, and she regularly sees her sister. Yet no one can see it. No one can tell what has been happening to her for all these years. No one is there when her eyes linger on kissing couples, when her days off are spent alone at the shopping centre, and in the lonely nights when her self pleasure is interrupted by a scared Samuel. Her sister chastises her regularly - her son scares her daughter with his talks of The Babadook. She doesn't see the reality that her sister is living.
Amelia is alone, lying about Sam being sick, and stopping her son playing with his Dad's things. His late Dad's possessions, which are all locked away in a basement. Sam poignantly declares "He's my Dad too, you don't own him!" and it's in that that we get closer and closer to the truth. We can slowly start to piece together Amelia's life. The film started with a dream of a car crash, of a male passenger, and now we see why Amelia is so alone. Why she struggles with Sam and why he struggles with a mother who screams at him, who hurts him and hates him.
But with the passage of the film it gets clearer and clearer and by the end of the film, after it's horrific climax we learn the full truth. We learn that on the night Sam was born, when Amelia went into labour she was rushed to the hospital and on the way there they crashed and her husband was killed. Amelia had to give birth to young Sam with her husband's death fresh in her mind and her heart. She had to give birth to a piece of him, a piece he would never see or help raise. So her heart broke. She let The Babadook in.
My father when he finished watching the film came to me and said "I don't get it". I was baffled. To me, from the start and from when I watched the short before I watched the film, it was clear. The Babadook represents her depression, but more specifically her post-natal/partum depression. It's important to make the distinction because post-natal depression is a harsh, cruel monster just like The Babadook. It takes your pain and your love for your child and it twists and destroys it and turns it into hate.
To me it was clear as day when Sam is screaming in a car for an imaginary monster to get out whilst his mother is shouting at him, begging him to be normal. It was clear when her sister tells her its time to let her dead husband go, because its been seven years and she should really move on already; as though her sister's loss and grief is nothing but an inconvenience to her. But that's what this film is about: moving on. It's about grief and anger and how people cope but it's also about a mother and her journey to overcome seven years of depression.
The film is perfect in its story writing, in its little hints of what is wrong, and in its beauty on the screen. Amelia's house is blue, a cold and depressing colour, and she is regularly dressed in white whilst her son is dressed in shades of black, blue and grey. It is a slow burner, telling you the story of Amelia and showing you her struggle before it gives you the jumps you were perhaps waiting for. It tells you what the monster is and why it is coming after her and you must sit and watch as helpless as she is as creature begs for her to bring it "the boy".
Then there's the book. The book of The Babadook. It shows up one day, out of the blue, and even after ripping it apart it simply shows up on her doorstep. It, like other films, shows the plot and teases you with where it might end up. It shows the mother killing her dog, then her killing her child, and then herself. We don't know how far that will go but that is what The Babadook does. It teases her, it taunts her, it calls her up and laughs at her. It is the voices in her head daring her to kill her son, to just end his whining. It is the voices in her head telling her to kill herself, to put an end to the monster that is Amelia.
But we don't see the monster either. Not until it's too late. We see Amelia paranoid, we see her yell at her screaming child and nosey neighbours but we don't see what Sam sees until she stands holding a knife, and until she is screaming in the climax, making him so petrified he wets himself. We see that The Babadook and Amelia are one and the same. We see that The Babdook is Sam's mother when she's tired, when she's angry, when she's had enough of him. He knows she loves him but that she can't help being angry because The Babadook is making her.
She kills their dog, rips out her tooth - a physical manifestation of her mental pain, and then she comes for her son. She cuts the phone lines, she screams at Sam that she wishes it was him who had died. She tells him that she wants to smash his face in because that's what post natal depression does. It makes mothers want to kill their own flesh and blood - a real life horror. Her kind neighbour makes her realise she's sick, it makes her realise that she has needed help for a long time and the kind words heal her for a bit. But Sam has clearly heard this before, he's clearly experienced his mother promising better until the monster is back again as he stabs her in the leg. The film starts with Amelia being the unreliable narrator but as her true self is shown it is perhaps Sam's reality we see.
But then, eventually, she overcomes. In the face of danger, in the face of death, in the face of losing her son as well as her husband she learns to let go. She learns to move on, to understand that her husband's death is not Sam's fault and that he needs her to love him. In what broke my heart and made me cry she puts herself between Sam and the monster, she stops him getting to her precious son and screams that if he touches her son she'll "fucking kill" it. She stands up for him and all at once realises that she's been plagued by a terrible dark cloud, a monster that was trying to stop her loving her son.
Yet as the film ends we get a truth about depression, The Babadook hasn't simply gone away but now it lives, amongst her husband's things, and she feeds it. For depression is a process, a long and tiring process that doesn't have to be tackled alone. It is the monster that lives in the basement, the thing that never quite goes away but that you can tame. With help, with love and care and talking, and yes with medication too. The Babadook is a cautionary tale not of the boogeyman, not of imaginary monsters but of real life problems with solutions. The Babadook is not simply a horror movie it's a story about a woman, a mother, and her journey to getting better.


Watch The Babadook now on Netflix or buy it on DVD.

If you feel like you need help, that you understand her pain and have a Babadook of your own then please get help, there are people who care and who can give you what you need to get better. There are many helplines out there for your country for both depression and specifically post-natal depression. As a film blog I don't feel qualified to give specific helplines but google can help. Best of luck.

Saturday, 11 April 2015

Ex Machina: A look at AI in the real world we live in.

Spoiler Warning: Will be discussing the plot so be warned.

AI films stretch across our past, present and future and each one of them aims to reflect how we would use and treat robotic beings. Yet many don’t necessarily do so quite as aware of the Patriarchal world we live in as Ex Machina does. It asks how exactly in the world where men are the default and the dominant would we create, sculpt, and use female AI. Most of AI films however focus on the question: What is human? When perhaps they could do with asking: How do we treat women or beings we perceive to be human? I think perhaps they don’t because they wouldn’t like the answer. Luckily, for me, Ex Machina does just that.
The film has four main characters and feels more like a self-contained play than the Hollywood Blockbusters that AI films usually are. The film follows Caleb, fresh faced and shy, who wins a weekend away with renowned inventor Nathan. Once there he is introduced to Nathan’s latest experiment – Ava - and is asked to determine just how human she is through long talks with her through a glass wall. It’s no grand, flashy AI from Spielberg, it’s no 80s dark and stunning Blade Runner, and it’s no quirky romance like Her. But what it is is a real, feminist look at the world we live in; it questions how noble scientists would really be with the ability to create robots with life like bodies. It’s questions of what is human, should we create AI, and what are the dangers of AI feel secondary, for me at least, to what happens if you create AI that is like a woman and treat it exactly like one.
Whilst it is interesting to look at humanity, and what we can extend that to, it must be understood that these questions do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in a world where women are not equal to men; in a world where women are objectified – which for men means seeing a woman as something not human, as a literal object. Ex Machina understands this and plays on it, in ways that other films rarely seem to do. Nathan is undoubtedly a misogynist, Director Alex Garland says he acts like a ‘dudebro’. For instance, he quite literally creates robots with female genitals so he can have sex with them, such as his ‘maid’ Kyoko.
Garland in an interview argued that Ava, perhaps like Kyoko and others, are genderless. Yet their voices and physical body is designed to be perceived as female. It is arguable whether Ava, and her silent female robot counterpart Kyoko, perceive themselves to be female. But I feel they are certainly treated that way by Nathan and Caleb – the only humans in their lives. Nathan uses Kyoko for sex but I think it is in fact very easy to argue that in fact what he does is rape her. If AI, like so many films argue, is indistinguishable from humans or at least should be treated that way then Kyoko is for all intents and purposes a human woman. Yet she cannot speak, and so she arguably cannot ever consent to sex. The reason she cannot speak, we can assume, is because her maker has literally taken away her voice.
By the end of the film Caleb goes into a room he shouldn’t: Nathan’s bedroom. In there he finds mirrored boxes that contain female robots in various states of disrepair. This may lead us to assume then that not only is Ava the latest in his experiments but that so is Kyoko. Perhaps in the past Nathan too used these discarded robots for his own sexual pleasure. Maybe they objected one too many times at being a literal tool to pleasure him, and so they were hidden away, with arms and other parts missing. Did he violently break them and tear them apart? Or did they break themselves in the fight against him as Ava does later?
On the surface the film fails the Bechdel test, a short hand to see how women are represented in films. Yet, due to Nathan’s wrath perhaps, it would be impossible for it to pass it. Kyoko and Ava are the film’s only named female protagonists and it is through unspoken looks that they ultimately revolt. It would be too simple to say it fails because it does not represent women; it is arguably too busy representing how we would treat hand-made women to pass. Moreover, if the roles in the film were reversed – something that would make it pass the test - it is arguable as to whether the film’s plot would ever happen. Would female scientists use ground breaking technology to make male robots purely for sex? It seems unlikely.
Then there’s Caleb and Ava. As the film’s protagonist we are asked to follow his journey, he is our unreliable narrator, and we are asked to sympathise with his struggle. He slowly falls for Ava, gets disturbed by Nathan, and is left, ultimately perhaps, to die trapped and alone. A male friend, upon leaving the cinema after watching the film, said: “Poor Caleb”. Yet Caleb’s fate is not the closing image of the film. For he is not, I feel, actually the protagonist; no, the protagonist is Ava. It is her journey to escape from her own prison to her final, innocent wish to simply be out in the world and watch people. That’s it. No goal to destroy the human race, no desire to be bigger and better and dominant. She wants what everyone wants: to fit in. She literally peels the fake skin off another female robot, takes her hair and her clothes – leaving the robot as the shell she once was – to go out and be ignored.
One discussion of the film mentions Ava’s sexuality or more accurately how she uses that sexuality to get what she wants: her escape. It mentions how male AIs in other films, such as Prometheus, were not sexualised and instead used their intelligence to achieve their goals. But I ask, is that not what Ava did? If we perceive Ava not as a male created character or a male created robot but as a human female with a mind of her own and great intelligence is it not at least arguable that she knew exactly what she was doing. When, later in the film, we find out that Ava was lying to Caleb and that she did not love him and that she was using him to get out of her cage are we meant to think that she is a bitch? Are we meant to feel that she did it to be manipulative? So she could discard Caleb as a pawn in her femme fatale game? I don’t think so.
Ex Machina exists as a film set firmly in the world we live in. In this world women are used as a product for sex, as a product to sell sex, and if they are seen as withholding sex it is simply taken. Ava is a genius, with access to the internet, and her conclusion from all of this was not perhaps that sex is a shortcut for ‘easy’ women but that it can be utilised. That the possibility of it can be used with little personal cost to the self to wield men and their egos and their penises so she can literally be free. Ava is not a pawn, she’s not a product, and she certainly isn’t anyone’s doll to be fucked.

Neither, for that matter, is Kyoko as the film plays out. Nathan is brutally stabbed by both Kyoko and Ava. This, I feel, is where AI might lead. It might be abused for men’s sexual pleasure. After all real, live, complex, hearts beating in their chest, women are. So why not metal robots? Yet this film sees just that and warns us, it tells us no. It tells us that we are not Gods, that we cannot build and make without consequence, and that patience and tolerance for men abusing women will run out. This is why my response, all fired up from watching a film that turned out to be so much more than the sultry images of Ava used for the advertising campaign, to “Poor Caleb” was “Fuck Caleb”. Fuck his feelings being bigger than Ava, fuck his story and character’s life being the lasting thought over Ava, and fuck his desire to date a pretty looking woman – robot or not – be more important than Ava’s freedom to watch humans simply be.