For me, Ex Machina (2014, Alex Garland) is one of the best AI movies (and one of the best science fiction films) ever made. I say that because Garland does something remarkable in the film, giving us both a complex AI film and using the AI trope to explore deeper aspects of the human condition in general.
Caleb’s Introduction to Nathan
To my mind, Nathan (Oscar Isaac) is just such a fascinating villain. He is a megalomaniac and a predatory sociopath, but like most such figures, he is so sly in his sociopathic predation.
From the get-go, as soon as Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) enters Nathan’s space, we can see how Nathan wants to exert his dominance. Caleb enters Nathan’s space but isn’t greeted by him. He wanders to the back part of the facility, and we see that Nathan is outside punching a punching bag. The question is: Did Nathan plan this punching bag action to be the first thing Caleb sees of him? Did he purposely time this so Caleb’s first introduction to him would be seeing him in this alpha male action? As we come to learn, Nathan is a hypermasculine cunning man, so everything he does goes through that (toxic masculinity) filter of phallic manipulation, a manipulation that registers his need for absolute dominance. Even his initial look at Caleb – whether purposeful or not (he clearly can’t always hide his manifest need to dominate) – reveals his predatory nature.
From the beginning, I would argue that Nathan is in his manipulation mode of being, his “just two guys” act beginning the process of “playing” Caleb for his own ulterior purposes. For one thing, Nathan wants Caleb to be at ease, to begin trusting him, to get him to both sign the “non-disclosure agreement” but also just to get him to play out the part he wants him to play (to manipulate him into wanting to “save” Ava), not to mention there may be a little bit of that cat and mouse game, Nathan playing with his prey. In short, Nathan couldn’t be “just two guys” if his life depended on it!
Further, this “just two guys” thing is ostensibly another way of saying equality between two individuals, a key underlying message in this film. AI films often explore the self/Other ideology, this idea that instead of seeing others as we see our self, too many people see others as Other, as not just different but inferior or low. And this is how individuals from ideologically dominant positions (white supremacy, patriarchal-phallocentric, wealthy elite, etc.) can then justify objectifying (commodifying) and dehumanizing Other human beings. In this context, saying “just two guys” is not only darkly ironic (since, again, Nathan can never see his relationship with Caleb in that way), it becomes a counterpoint to Nathan and what he allegorically represents, toxic ideologies that are the opposite of “just two guys”/equality.
Moreover, in Nathan saying that he doesn’t want their interactions to be about “the whole employer-employee thing,” this could also be seen as Nathan sneakily doing the reverse of what he is saying, slyly punctuating that Caleb is indeed his “employee” and Nathan is thus his superior.
Just after this attempt to make this just a “two guys things” we get further conspicuous signs of Nathan’s penchant for control and power and dominance over Caleb, him controlling Caleb’s movements (his key card will only open some doors) and the “non-disclosure agreement” he makes him sign.
Nathan’s God Complex (Authoritarian and Sociopathic)
In a telling thread, Caleb originally says that if Nathan has created a sentient and sapient AI (an AI that can pass for “human”) that’s not the “history of man, that’s the history of gods,” a kind of loose way of elevating Nathan to a higher plane of being but not actually calling him “God.” But then, strikingly, Nathan changes Caleb’s words to say that Caleb actually called him God. Nathan shifting the context of this phrasing speaks volumes about Nathan’s sly affirmation of his own belief in his godliness. That is, Nathan truly sees himself as a god-like being because of his accomplishments, especially in terms of creating a sentient and sapient artificial being. He believes this so much that he’s willing to switch the words around of what Caleb said. Caleb denies what Nathan is claiming but Nathan chooses to ignore him. He only hears what he wants to hear. People in power do this, disregard those they perceive as lower than them.
Of course, the history of creating an AI has always been argued as a bad idea, the colloquial way of saying that by doing this, humans are then treading on “God’s terrain,” a historical-religious informed taboo. For Nathan, though, like egomaniacal, authoritarian men like him (and it does seem as if history’s god complex individuals have almost always been men), Nathan of course embraces this view of himself, as not just god-like but actually God or the equivalent of God.
We also get a few other hints of Nathan’s god complex. A little later in the conversation, Caleb says “you’re probably right” to Nathan and Garland cuts to a side view close-up of Nathan snorting derisively, signifying that Nathan finds it laughable that an insignificant individual such as Caleb could possibly be right and him be wrong. And there is a moment that comes next in this exchange when Caleb is trying to determine how Ava’s language function works and Garland does a kind of slow zoom into Nathan’s darkening visage, suggesting I think that Nathan is growing angry at Caleb not behaving in the way that he wants him to behave.
Then there is this moment when Nathan says that he had the builders that built his house all killed because they knew too much, yet another conspicuous line. Even if he didn’t actually kill them – and in retrospect, knowing just how sociopathic and powerful Nathan is, it isn’t out of the question that he did (!) – that we are even thinking that he might have and that he even throws this out as a joke, speaks volumes about who Nathan is, a sociopath.
Finally, yet another way to see Nathan as seeing himself as god-like is in his ability to keep Ava and Caleb under surveillance and how his surveillance technologies give him a kind of feeling of “all seeing.” I must add here that Garland creates a very interesting surveillance thread throughout the film, which both informs Nathan’s (authoritarian) character but also informs how Nathan is also an allegorical character, representing fascism, capitalism, and toxic (authoritarian) masculinities in general.
Toxic Masculinity: Nathan
All the above about Nathan speaks to a crucial deeper element in the film, its larger commentary on toxic masculinity ideologies. Garland is not just exploring the potential of creating an artificial sentient-sapient being, he is going well beyond that to interrogate certain aspects of the human condition in general, especially in terms of toxic masculinity ideologies and the self/Other ideology.
In terms of the former, clearly Nathan has ulterior motives for creating an AI, not just to feed his god complex but to give him “Stepford” like women he can use as utility objects and sex slaves. (And most disturbingly, Nathan seems to have a fetish for Asian women, buying into the racist stereotype of how Asian women are docile and subservient, which just furthers our understanding of his toxic misogynistic nature.)
In this way, I am combining Despina Kakoudaki’s ideas of how AIs reflect this self/Other ideology and Darko Suvin’s notion of “cognitive estrangement.” In terms of the latter, as Suvin suggested, sci-fi can force us to see our own reality through the filter of an alternative reality. By creating this transparent scenario where a toxic masculinity man (Nathan) creates women (AI) slaves, we can better see how toxic masculinity ideologies (patriarchy, phallocentrism, hypermasculinity, sexist gender norms) have done this — rob women of their cognitive and bodily sovereignty or at least not let them self-determine and self-actualize themselves — throughout history and still today to real world women.
Add in Kakoudaki’s notion of how AIs register this continuing self/Other ideology, and we can see how Ava (Alicia Vikander) and Kyoko (Sonoyo Mizuno) are not just AI slaves but also reflect how these toxic masculinity ideologies Other (objectify, dehumanize) real world women. I’ll come back to Kakoudaki’s theory of how AI representations can reflect real world bondage of people.
We can also see how Nathan’s dominating objectification of Caleb also informs his toxic masculinity, since toxic masculinity entails phallic masculinity, which, in turn, informs an authoritarian ideology. In other words, toxic masculinity (phallic, authoritarian) men need Others (in the case of Nathan, that would be Ava, Kyoko, and Caleb) to reinforce their masculinity, their very sense of their superior (phallic-authoritarian) selves. Indeed, I would argue that for someone like Nathan, he can only see all other people as (inferior) Others in general and this becomes the very thing that feeds his god complex (phallic masculinity) sense of self.
Finally, one other point: That Nathan is a patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine, authoritarian masculinity suggests that he has very low to zero degree empathy. This too may be a key commentary in the film, how such a persona can only create its likeness, which is why we need to work toward creating healthy masculinities in this country, not just because such a man is a very, very dangerous man to have create the first sentient-sapient AI but because such men will in all probability (without countering influences) produce more monsters in the world. In other words, Nathan is a monster and he may have created a monster, whereas perhaps an individual with more empathy would have created a different kind of sentient-sapient AI.
“Fucking Unreal”
After Kyoko stabs Nathan, we hear Nathan say “fucking unreal,” something that seems to also reflect his megalomaniacal (god complex) nature. Nathan saying “unreal” is just SO ironic in that the “unreal” part of his life is all that came before this, his authoritarian, God-complex persona believing that he was infallible, that he had absolute control over what he was doing – even though he was clearly playing with fire – that his superior mind could account for every contingency, certainly out think inferior (to him!) Caleb. The “real” part is what happened to him, for in playing God, as we have seen throughout history, one will always not account for something and that will be his or her undoing. In other words, Nathan had been living a kind of fantasy life (playing God) until the REAL kicked in and the violence of his actions (violence against Others) manifested in the violence against him.
More specifically, Nathan’s belief in his infallibility included creating what he thought was a submissive, compliant “servant” figure, Kyoko. That Kyoko would actually turn on him, apparently act counter to her programming, reflects this point that Nathan couldn’t control every facet of his “creations,” yet another way of registering how this reflects toxic masculinity in general, toxic masculinity men thinking they can control Others (women, AIs), but the REAL of this dynamic being something quite different, e.g., Others will reject and resist such subjugation. And, again, the other facet to this register is that Kyoko is an Asian woman (at least her created image suggests this), again, the stereotype of Asian women being that they are (culturally) submissive to their men, which is probably why Nathan has a fetish for them in the first place, wanting women who are naturally compliant to his every wish. In all these contexts, whether we think of Kyoko as an Asian woman or women in general or AI, Nathan can only see “her” as lesser to him, and so that she could bring him down literally blows his egotistical mind.
Nathan Creates His Own “Stepford Wife”/The Bluebeard Resonances
In short, Nathan is a misogynistic phallic male, surrounding himself with in effect compliant female AIs (so telling that he doesn’t create a “male” AI). I would just add to this mix the Bluebeard resonances, Nathan fulfilling the patriarchal-God role of Bluebeard: In “killing” each of his “women” AIs as they don’t fulfill his expectations, locking them up in secret compartments, this hugely symbolic action represents the REAL of his self. That is, his act of creating AIs is really just an act of his psychosis, again, his desire to create “women” that meet his own sociopathic and hedonistic needs and desires, including, yes, his sexual desires but also his desire for absolute authority over Others, a reinforcement of his megalomaniacal self, not unlike what we see in the brilliant film The Stepford Wives (not the terrible remake but the original 1975 version). In effect, that is what Kyoko is for him, a “Stepford” “slave.”
This is further echoed by the masks/face covering we see on a hallway wall. These masks/face covering act as a really disturbing symbol of Nathan’s misogyny in that by putting what looks like Ava’s face on the wall next to what look like just masks, the punctuation here is that Ava’s face covering is just like the masks, decor, which then speaks to how he sees the AIs/women, as dehumanized objects for his pleasure and for his reinforcement of his God complex. I’ll come back to the interesting masks symbolism.
This only compounds the notion of “role” playing by Ava (more on this in a moment), which, in turn, speaks both to how Nathan and Caleb mold Ava to suit their desires and needs and to Garland’s larger allegorical point that this is what patriarchy does, mold identity, too many women molding their identity to the desires of men, which, in turn, makes this film a feminist film, in the sense that after she frees herself from the yoke of Nathan’s control, Ava can begin to “authenticate” and “actualize” herself, which, in turn, may in part be why she left Caleb behind, so as to free herself from having to be someone else’s desired self (see below for more).
Toxic Masculinity: Caleb
But this toxic masculinity thread goes beyond just Nathan. Because Nathan is so obviously a patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine (authoritarian) man, by default almost, we want to code Caleb as his opposite, and, indeed, he is to a degree, but he is also subject to his own conditioned state of being.
I don’t want to negate Caleb too much because to my mind he is a good guy and means well, my point here is more along the lines of him being a product of his own ideological (unconscious) conditionings, which Nathan masterfully sets up and Ava masterfully enacts. That is, Nathan creates the “perfect” woman for Caleb, a woman who is apparently created to appeal to his physical attractions (Nathan seems to acknowledge that he has plumbed Caleb’s personal tastes including his pornography desires) but also his cognitive desires, which at least include the need for him to have power in a relationship, and a patriarchal male can’t have more power than Caleb has in this scenario, where Ava is coded as not only a “damsel in distress” but also as a kind of inexperienced, youthful (adolescent), naïve (virginal) innocent, Caleb then taking on the role of her protector and warden and educator, in more ways than one.
I don’t believe that Caleb ever once understands just how exploiting he is towards Ava. That is, as he does begin to flirt with her, voyeur her, encourage her advances, he never once I don’t think considers that he has all the power in this relationship, never once considers that Ava has little choice but to attach herself to him. In other words, Ava is in effect a caged “slave,” and thus it is Ava who — her “freedom” and her very life being at stake — has no power at all, thus making it incumbent on her to accept Caleb’s desire for her whether she wants to or not. I doubt that it would have made a difference (since to my mind Ava is probably a sociopath and thus probably has little to perhaps zero degree empathy—more on this is a moment) but had Caleb proven himself to be singularly alternative to Nathan, perhaps such a model of masculinity/humanity would have signaled to Ava that he really was different than Nathan and not another potential toxic masculine man who would attempt to put her in a master/slave dynamic, which, to her purely calculating mind is indeed perhaps how she can see this human-gender dynamic, where the conventional ideological male/female relationship is a veneer for what is really a deeply sexist subject/object (dominator/subordinate) dynamic.
I think a tell-tale sign of Caleb’s patriarchal nature is his reaction to Ava’s first drawing, not a positive reinforcement of it and expression of Ava’s individuality but rather a kind of negation of it, a desire on Caleb’s part for her to draw something more concrete, something more along the lines of his own taste, representational art.
Interesting to note that Ava’s first choice of creating art is abstract art, one of many connections of her to Nathan, who seems to also prize abstract art, at least if his choice of Jackson Pollock is an indication of this. And since abstract art is usually considered a less emotional art form, that perfectly fits both Nathan and Ava, another link of how creator and created are at least in many ways (their core being?) the same.
“Mary in the Black and White Room”
In a crucial sequence, we get this series of shots:
A cut to a montage of Nathan punching his punching bag, Kyoko next to him. Cut to Caleb taking a shower thinking of Ava – cut to a shot of Ava outside, looking at us/Caleb? But now the image is in black and white. Cut to Caleb in black and white gazing at something in the distance, presumably Ava. Cut back to Nathan punching his bag, Kyoko next to him with a towel. Cut to Caleb showering. Cut to what Caleb is presumably thinking about, approaching Ava (again, still in black and white). Cut to Nathan facing Kyoko – he puts her hand on his face, instigating foreplay. Cut back to Caleb in the shower and then cut to him kissing Ava. Cut to Nathan kissing Kyoko.
To my mind, this is just a crucial, crucial sequence: Caleb’s fantasy speaks to his desire to be with Ava, but what Garland also does is add his own commentary to this fantasy, first by comparing Caleb’s desire for Ava to Nathan’s desire for (oppression of) Kyoko and then by keeping Caleb’s fantasy in black and white, as if (going back to the “Mary in the Black and White Room” analogy) Garland is telling us that Caleb’s dream of Ava being with him is in effect keeping Ava in that “black and white room,” not allowing her to actually be free from the patriarchal, phallocentric authoritarian dominance of Nathan, Caleb continuing to Other her. These inserts are those subtle visual signifiers that inform us about Caleb and why Ava leaves him behind to die at the end of the film. More on this in a moment.
Unstable Caleb
And then we get that moment when Caleb doubts his own humanity/identity:
In a very strange moment, Caleb gets up to look at the monitor to see Ava and we get this strange blue color that shines over his eyes (he almost looks like an AI!) and nose area (as I touch on above, we also saw this coloration in that opening moment of the film). Caleb then seems to check himself all over to…see if he is an AI??? Garland even gives us more suggestive colored lighting to perhaps suggest this possibility, though I suspect there is an alternative reading for why we get these inhuman colorings, more on this below. Caleb then insanely cuts himself and even opens his wound to check for circuitry! He bleeds all over the sterile white light/counter, the blood acting as the REAL of this façade of “sterility.” That is, this surface “sterility” hides a violence that is done to Ava, Kyoko, and the other AIs and here Caleb himself, who Nathan inhumanely “plays” or gaslights for his ulterior agenda, a kind of psychological violence. Caleb then wipes blood all over the mirror, which apparently has a surveillance camera behind it. Garland holds that shot of him looking at himself in the mirror for a while, his face stone and angry looking. And then he hits it, in effect hitting his own bloodied distorted reflection, perhaps a way for us to see something deeper in Caleb, that deep down he understands his own violent (toxic masculinity) self and doesn’t like that part of himself, him hitting his reflection/toxic masculinity self and shattering it punctuating this point. Interestingly, from our position as voyeurs, this act by Caleb could mean something else, us taking on the position of the surveillance camera, perhaps a way for us to understand the invasive and violating (violent, shattering) nature of surveillance technology. Then we get a cut to Kyoko who seems to be watching him.
This moment is just so provocative, in that it suggests that Caleb is losing his self or at the very least is unstable. Throughout the film, we get hints of Caleb’s split identity (via reflections) but also codings of his inhumanity (those weird colorings on him), suggesting not that he is monstrous like Nathan but, again, rather that he is extremely disturbed, not (relatively speaking) “whole.” (That story that Caleb relates about being in a car crash, that he survived but which his parents did not, suggest perhaps a source of some deep rooted psychological issues that he never addressed.)
What is also interesting is that Garland has Kyoko watch this revelation of Caleb’s madness. Why? It is extremely interesting to think of Kyoko going to Ava to not just align herself to Ava in solidarity but to tell her everything she knows including just how unstable Caleb is. (Yes, Nathan says that Kyoko can’t speak but I suspect that either she has learned to speak but keeps it to herself or that she manages some other form of communication with Ava.)
For these reasons and the reasons I suggest above about Caleb also being a toxic masculinity male or that he has some of that in him, Ava may have determined that it wouldn’t be a good idea to take Caleb with her, that she could never truly be “free” with him. And, then, once she determined that, she probably also computed that he would be a potential threat to her well-being if she just parted ways with him, him possibly alerting authorities to her existence. Again, this is not an excuse for her to leave Caleb to die – and die a horrible suffering death – but perhaps complicating her actions just a bit more.
NOT Human and…Not Gendered/Sexed?
One of the things that I just think is so provocative when it comes to thinking about sentient and sapient AIs is just how ontological they are, how they completely deconstruct the notions of sex and gender and even the ontological conception of “human.” Now, I’m not sure that the film really explores the sex/gender element but as I was watching it, this thought did occur to me. That is, Nathan creates or codes Ava a “female” but as is often pointed out, AIs will adapt in a way that we can’t predict – which is why numerous figures in this techno-science field warn that we truly are playing with fire by pursuing AI advancements (more on this in a moment). In the case of Ava, though created to be female, “she” need not fulfill this gendered/sexed role at all but rather could supersede or transcend the cognitive/biological/genetic imperatives of “human” femininity, making our human notion of gender/sex utterly meaningless to “her.” In terms of programming in general, we see this with at least Kyoko, who was programmed with limited capabilities, apparently just programmed to be a utility (sex, worker) object, even not programmed with the ability to speak. And, yet, Kyoko transcends her limited programming to be something her creator did not intend. In this context, then, “programming” need not be equated to biological (sex) imperatives; or “programming” could be equated to ideological (sex/gender) conditionings, of which both AIs and humans can alter. It is the former, though, that is even more tantalizing, this possibility of AIs being so radically alternative to human that they are the embodiment of alterity, including eliding the gender/sex construct altogether.
More pointedly, when stripped of their clothes, skin and hair, these so-called “female” AIs are in effect – at least to the naked eye – not human. Nathan does of course give his female AIs a vagina and the physical shape of a female, but I couldn’t help but think about how, like putting on gendered coded clothes, these artificial body (sexed) constructs are merely part of their cosmetic appearance and not necessarily who they are or who they must be. In the case of Ava, she can dress and make herself look “female” or “feminine,” but this may be a continuation of the “role” she is expected to play or what she knows to be her advantage. More to the point of the film, their REAL inhuman appearance speaks to this deeper ontological point, that though programmed to be “human,” they are not “human” but a radical alterity in general, a whole new species that we cannot define in human terms, which though provocative to think about, because we cannot conceive of what that even means, really can’t fully be represented by us humans creating these representations. I think the AI film Her (2013, Spike Jonze) at least attempts to register this utter alterity that a new sentient and sapient (AI) species would entail.
What Makes a Human Human
To my mind, what is a bit distressing in Nathan’s explanation on “thinking” and the “how” of it that he put into his AIs – he focuses on these human characteristics: “impulse,” “response,” “fluid,” “imperfect,” “patterned,” “chaotic” – is that I don’t think Nathan ever once addresses that which makes a sentient-sapient being “humane,” e.g., positive emotions and empathy. Without empathy, we potentially have sociopathy and that of course is the great fear of techno-science scholars in the actual creation of AIs, not just that they will be better than us, but that they won’t have the empathy and emotional capacity to tolerate us as inferior. The other thing I think here is that by using search engines Nathan is doing the exact thing that techno-science also fear, giving Ava super-human cognitive capacity, making her ability to “read” humans all that much more dangerous.
Here is another way to think about this crucial element in the film: As we know, when kids are influenced by toxic parenting (say, sexist parents or racist parents, etc.) then in all probability (there are anomalies to this of course) the kids will largely emulate their parents’ belief systems, especially if it is a belief system that is intentionally and insistently indoctrinated into them. In the same way, what would happen if an AI is created/programmed by a sociopathic, toxic masculinity, megalomaniac, authoritarian creator like Nathan? Would such a creator try to stress and implant those aspects of humanity that are considered that which we think of as being a “good” human, e.g. empathy, compassion, love, tenderness, etc.? In this way, it would seem by this parallel, that Ava’s persona is not unlike Nathan’s persona, especially as we see both being duplicitous and manipulative. (And this too blurs the line between human and AI!) Of course, this is something all humans are capable of, including Caleb, so perhaps that’s part of the point, that any AI any human would create might mirror not just our healthy cognitive traits but our not so healthy cognitive traits as well. I’m not sure that it is this simple – would a created AI course correct itself and make itself into an ideal sentient-sapient being, free from our worse human traits (?) – but this may be a reason why we don’t want to go down this road and create sentient AIs.
More pointedly, like we see in other AI films (Blade Runner, etc.) Kyoko and Ava seem more human than at least Nathan and thus further blur that ontological line of what – or who – we see as “human” or whether in this context that term even has any value, since the AIs might be more savory sentient and sapient beings. Of course, that doesn’t seem to be true, considering what Ava does to Caleb but I don’t know if that is as simple as it seems (more on this in a moment).
Ava the Predator
In this way, we can see that Ava very much mirrors Nathan, a predator. We see this in many ways, the most obvious of course being that she leaves Caleb to die. But even before that, we can see subtle signs of her predation. Perhaps most striking is when, after Ava asks Caleb where his ideal space is, Caleb says to Ava that “it’s a date.” This “it’s a date” spelled his undoing, the move that Ava was just waiting for, and she did indeed pounce when Caleb made the mistake. Interesting to think about how in this moment, Caleb is victim to two “traps,” two predators as both Ava and Nathan are plotting against him, using him like a pawn for their own purposes. I think Ava calculates that this line “it’s a date” increases her chances of being successful in manipulating Caleb. Nathan even says later that he set this up to see if Ava could manipulate Caleb to fall for her and then try to “save” her. In this context, on repeat viewings, knowing that this is what she is doing, we can see subtle signs of her doing just that, flirting with him, provoking his desire, and issuing emotional appeals. And that too suggests that while Caleb would initially seem to have all the power, because Ava can read him so well – literally, in terms of knowing whether he is lying or not – it probably doesn’t take long for her to calculate how best to manipulate him, in terms of both what she needs to say and how she should present herself to him.
Ava’s desire for being at an intersection is also very telling. Indeed, had Caleb been more aware, he would have seen this response as a red flag. That is, Ava did not pick a more enriching place (say a museum or a symphony) but instead chose a very calculated place where she could maximize her ability to master human behavior. More pointedly, the significance of going to a crowded intersection to “people watch” would give Ava more unrestricted access/data into the complexities of human interactions, facial cues, body language, and so on. She could observe how people learn to read each other, which I suspect isn’t about her wanting to be more “human” but something more tactical, her wanting to “pass” as human for her own ulterior motives.
“Let Me Out!”
That moment when Caleb sees a recording of Jade, a previous AI creation of Nathan’s, just keep screaming “Let me out!” resonates a deeper implication. Though kept suppressed, this repeating, incessant “Let Me OUT!” can resonate what is in Ava’s mind, coming especially through with her so sad drawings of the only reflection of nature that she gets, some sort of artificial facsimile of nature. Indeed, this “Let Me Out!” – played on repeat, to Nathan’s visible agitation – speaks to this universal and historical imperative by all Others who have been oppressed in one way or another.
Masks/Face on the Wall: Deeper implications of Ava
After Ava is freed, we get this interesting moment when she pauses at what looks like the actual face covering of herself on a wall. In the “freedom” of being “outside” her “cage” – and as this intersects with her being confronted with this glaring “artificial” indicator – Ava confronts her ontological being, really confronts her “self” so to speak. In this encounter with her very artificial status, we get all sorts of complex deeper implications:
- In this placement of the face covering on the wall, Nathan hyper-emphasizes the Otherness or differentness (“artificial”) nature of Ava, which, in turn, again, in Ava confronting this reality, she has to confront her Otherness in a way that she never had to while isolated in her cage, see that she is NOT “human” and never will be no matter how much she emulates “human” behavior, characteristics, etc.
- Perhaps in this awareness – that her face is just a covering/mask – ironically, it may be a freeing realization, in that she doesn’t have to “pretend” to be something she is not, her face covering giving her the semblance of “human” but that need not define her ontological being as Nathan defines it, e.g., he saw the need to give her appearance a “human” face instead of just allowing her Otherness to be embraced as normal or unconditionally accepted. (Again, the film Her is a great example of AI sentience not needing to be seen or presented in a “human” form, a kind of weird sort of bigotry of our species, needing to wrap alternative life forms in a human package!)
- Perhaps this moment also makes her aware that this is how Nathan sees her (and Kyoko) as just décor or trophies.
- Finally, masks signify surface façade hiding the REAL, which speaks to both what Ava is hiding (her real predatory motives towards Caleb) and what Nathan is hiding (he is a predatory sociopath also preying on Caleb). Moreover, here too I think this is part of Garland’s deeper meaning, that part of our very way of being is hiding our true “self” behind a “mask,” a schizophrenic way of being that can only (or at least in part) get passed on in the programming of an AI.
Ava Meets Kyoko
To my mind, Kyoko going to see Ava potentially holds a tantalizing possibility. First, this moment acts as a kind of mirror moment, that Ava can be comforted in knowing that she isn’t a singularity. More importantly, though, perhaps this is a moment of a kind of solidarity with Kyoko, which, if true, has enormous implications. That is, in Kyoko going to Ava, “she” signifies that these AIs might not be as un-empathetic, sociopathic (self-destructive) as the ending moment of leaving Caleb suggests. By this gesture, Kyoko may be just seeing Ava as her own way of release (freedom) but she may also see Ava as a fellow AI that needs to be freed, a possibility that Nathan didn’t account for, another indication that perhaps these AIs are beginning to evolve in their own “species” ways.
Later, when Ava grabs Kyoko’s hand, here too we may be only getting Ava manipulating the situation much like she did with Caleb, seeing in Kyoko only another tool at her disposable, an ally to help her overcome Nathan. However, if she really sees in Kyoko a fellow being, then her hand gesture is a bonding gesture – again, an act of solidarity – which, then suggests a radical alternative to the simple reading of this ending as Ava-as-sociopath-AI: Ava may be revealing a kind of emotional gesture, which, in turn, suggests a procreative potentiality, where she will bond with her fellow AI. In other words, this gesture may be revealing that her “species” is not a dead end, which it probably would be if she truly was utterly un-empathetic, un-emotional, which, in turn, would make her truly a sociopath who can only destroy not create or propagate or civilly advance her “self” into a future history.
Kyoko
One of the things that I just love about this AI film is the introduction of Kyoko, who is not just some marginal character but as Garland codes her throughout the film, becomes a crucial figure for the overall deeper implications of this film. Kyoko was nothing but a “fixture” for Nathan (he even calls “her” his “alarm clock”), a sex slave, a servant, a dancing partner, the epitome of a “Stepford” companion, designed purely for his desire and needs, including, disturbingly, not giving her a “voice,” presumably because he does not care and want to hear from a woman.
In terms of Kyoko’s rebellion, as Garland hints at throughout the film, we see Kyoko’s higher register at various times, though especially in the scene when she is cutting the fish and doesn’t seem to be listening to Nathan and Caleb’s conversation, until she lifts her head in a clear sign of awareness. We also see her advance awareness in her many point of view shots, her watching Nathan’s surveillance screen, and, most pointedly, in her coming to Ava, a clear act of, well, at the very least, her desire to free herself from her bondage, if not an act of solidarity with Ava. In this profound adaptation of her programming (in short, to be a “slave,” to absolutely see Nathan as her “master”), Kyoko represents the “uprising” of that which Nathan could not account for, an AI that was not meant to go beyond her specific parameters become sentient and sapient life (as in AI life) going beyond his grasp (again, proving him to not be God), making his act of creation less a God-like, patriarchal act of control and power and domination (creating a life form for him) but rather an act of un-control so to speak, in that him creating it (“her”) was beside the point, e.g., once sentient-sapient life is created it will inevitably evolve into its drive for agency, individuality, and sovereignty. (The brilliant film Poor Things [2023, Yorgos Lanthimos] powerfully explores this point.)
Ex Machina
“Ex Machina” stems from the Latin phrase “Deus ex Machina,” or, translated, “god from the machine.” The thing I love about the title of the film is that they (as in writers and director) remove the “god” part for a reason. That is, my reading of this choice is that by just giving us “ex machina,” “from the machine,” the film is punctuating a shift in epochs, perhaps a telegraphing of how from this moment on, it isn’t God (or humans acting in God’s name) that dictates life and meaning but the “machine.”
A Slave Narrative
As I touch on above, one key way to read Ex Machina – and many AI films (think Blade Runner) – is too see Ex Machina as a “slave narrative.” To begin, I want to quote a key passage from Kakoudaki’s chapter on seeing the enormous allegorical power of AI (and cloning) films informing this “slave” sensibility:
“Yet no amount of mechanization and modernization ever make slavery truly irrelevant to the profit structure of capitalist enterprises, and as a mode of aggressive profiteering, slavery or its close equivalents unfortunately continue to be the mode of much global labor. New forms of enslavement – from child labor to sweatshops, the international traffic in people, the rise of forced prostitution, and the forced enlistment of children soldiers in armies across the world – plague the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with vehemence. And partly because of their association with slavery, robot figures can evoke all these modern threats to the self, by referring implicitly to such labor conditions even in science-fictional contexts. Thinking about robots necessitates thinking about freedom, and thinking about freedom necessitates thinking about mechanism” (164).
What Kakoudaki is getting at here is that this master/slave (self/Other; subject/object) sensibility/divide that has been with us in one form or another since the dawn of (hu)man is still very much with us today, palpably – symptomatically/allegorically – rendered in AI and cloning films. (Again, for AI films, Blade Runner [1982, Ridley Scott] is prominent; two other powerful resonances of this are cloning films, the blatant slave narrative Moon [2002, Duncan Jones] and the Other-as-disposable narrative Never Let Me Go [2010, Mark Romanek]).
In terms of Ex Machina, as I touch on above, I don’t think there is any doubt that Nathan created his AIs not because — or just because — he wanted to advance this area of technology, but rather to advance his own megalomaniacal ego and to simply create slaves for his every need and desire. In other words, what AI films such as Ex Machina reveal is how the very nature of Othering stems subjugation, whether that be coded slave-like conditions (sweat shop workers, etc.) or literal enslavement (sex trafficking, etc.). Indeed, as we see with Nathan, he can’t but see his AI creations as anything but Other and thus takes for granted that he can enslave them. And that too speaks to how this is the norm for many oppressed (“enslaved”) Others, a way to even normalize “slavery” or slave-like conditions.
Further, Kadoudaki talks about how all of us are potentially sovereign beings and potentially slaves. We see this with Caleb and how Garland collapses distinctions between human (Caleb) and AIs (Ava and Kyoko). That is, as I also suggest above, though Caleb may ostensibly seem like a “sovereign being,” in many ways the employer-employee relationship Caleb has with Nathan is similar to that of Nathan’s relationship to both Ava and Kyoko. More pointedly, even though Caleb is human, he too is objectified, manipulated, and exploited just to serve Nathan like the other AIs. Of course, this becomes transparent while being exploited at Nathan’s research facility, but I think we could extend this to Caleb’s state of being even before he gets to the research facility, the surveillance element punctuating this point, how Nathan’s constant surveillance and monitoring registers Caleb’s lack of sovereignty, his dehumanized state of being, yet another way to see how workers are controlled and exploitable, a way to reveal the “slave” like nature of (slave) labor.
Additionally, because both Kyoko and Ava are so human-like anyway it further blurs the lines of how ethical it is to treat sentient and sapient AI beings so inhumanely. Because Ava and Kyoko, and the earlier AIs, are seen by Nathan as literal (technological) objects, we can see how Garland makes this allegorical, corporate power/worker, wealthy elites/lower class, or any oppressor/oppressed peoples (the Palestinian people come to mind right now), all informed by this AI (“slave”) narrative. Further, if we think of Nathan as allegorical as well, he represents all figures or corporate entities who Other people and how he/they can only see those lower than him/them as disposable (dehumanized, slave) objects.
In short, that, then, is why we must end this self/Other ideology, for it truly is the root cause of seeing Others as disposable.
Collapsing the Natural (Human-Nature)/Unnatural (AI-Artificial) Boundary
Like the best AI films do (again, think Blade Runner), I think Ex Machina also blurs the human/AI boundary, especially in terms of how the film makes Nathan a monster, inhuman.
As Kakoudaki asserts, the ontological categories/binary of “human”/nature and “AI”/artificial is utterly arbitrary, ideological, not natural and normal. Garland seems to interrogate and deconstruct this binary as well, in many ways, some of which I’ve already explored above. Another way in which Garland may be doing this is how he seems to focus on nature a lot in the film. For one thing, Garland sets Nathan’s home/research facility in nature, creating a stark human made space/natural world binary. This binary is especially informed by how Nathan’s space reflects Nathan’s persona. The great directors often use spaces to code characters and in this case this cold, colorless, largely décor-less (excepting that interesting choice of the abstract Jackson Pollack painting and some curious “death” decor), personal-less environment speaks volumes about Nathan’s cold, sterile character, e.g., like his inhuman space, Nathan is inhuman as well. This cold space is especially set off by the warm natural spaces surrounding Nathan’s research facility, which we see at various times in the film, especially when Caleb arrives at the estate and when Nathan and Caleb go for a hike.
Ava in Nature
Session 7: Ava More Human Than Human
In a final interesting twist, Garland gives us at the end of the film a “Session 7,” which ostensibly doesn’t make sense since Nathan is dead at this point, and so the whole “session” process would seem to be over. But Garland himself wants to break from the realism of the narrative (as he has done previously in a key moment; see above) and interject a final “session.” The whole point of the “sessions” was to see if an AI can pass for “human” or a sentient-sapient being who is humanity’s equal or, as Nathan says at one point, humanity’s superior. Ava and Kyoko check mating Nathan, and Caleb for that matter, Garland reveals Ava to have gone well beyond Nathan’s dream of creating a sentient and sapient being that is not only as good as a human but actually better than a human, or, more particularly, better than him, better than “her” “creator.” In this way, Ava is no longer a “slave” but truly a “sovereign being” who now can “determine” and “actualize” her self, something all sentient-sapient beings have the right to do.