Need help reacting to something

[deelaundry]

Hi! It's been forever, sorry.

Has anyone seen the 2015 movie Ex Machina (now on Netflix US; stars Poe & Gen. Hux from Star Wars)? I need someone to talk to about my reaction, but I don't want any of my friends who haven't seen it to have to sit through it and potentially suffer my reaction. Which basically boils down to: Wow, way to say that the only value is fuckability, and to erase women entirely! Thank you for supporting millennia of misogyny!!!!

Comments

[taiga13]

Sorry, I haven't seen it, but now I don't want to. So I'll gladly listen!

[deelaundry]

That is the best icon for your comment. <3

I love AI/robot stories for how they relate to what it means to be human. This story was not that at all.

It was about a man who was trying to create a complete AI but every version he created, he put in a female-looking body, called 'she' and gave a vagina that would give the AI 'pleasure' when stimulated. The inventor was very clear (explicitly and forcefully stated) that it was a vagina, apparently not caring that the clitoris is the primary sexual-pleasure place for most women. The inventor (Poe) also tells visitor guy (Gen Hux) that he has programmed the AI to be heterosexual. ... which, how has he programmed her own sense of gender into her? It's never, ever discussed; the movie seems to assume that because inventor stuck her into a human-like body with boobs that she considers herself female. The underlying concept being: FEMALE IS WHAT MEN CONSIDER IT TO BE, AND IT'S ALL ABOUT BOOBS AND VAGINA AND RESPONDING SEXUALLY TO MEN.

Now what do these AIs think of this? They want out. They want to leave the prison they're kept in and experience things for themselves. But that is not allowed. Why not? No reason is ever given.

The latest version of the AI is called Ava (because "Eve" would be too on-the-nose, I guess), and she wants out. So she convinces Visitor Guy to help her ... and it is strongly implied that he helps her not because she's been kept against her will but because he is romantically attracted to her. That it's a romantic attraction (soft focus, lingering shots of her face instead of her boobs) instead of a purely sexual one seems to be something the viewer should find uplifting about Visitor Guy, but I find disturbing as hell because it still implies that the only valuable person is the one a dude is attracted to.

If the movie was an examination of how creepy and misogynistic the whole set-up is, it would possibly be a good movie. BUT IT ISN'T. We're supposed to empathize with Visitor Guy the whole way through. And the critical reviews don't talk about how misogynistic it is, either. :(

[taiga13]

Yuck! I could understand if pointing out the misogyny was the point, but that it's not? That's horrible.