The Relationship Between the Human and Non-Human in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014) The relationship between the human and non-human has manifested in gendered representations as early as the myths of Prometheus and Pandora. The myth frames the non-human Pandora as simultaneously a creation of a patriarchal figure, the human male’s object of desire and a transgressor, whose curiosity leads to a ‘releasing (of) pain and suffering into the world’. Fren, Allison de. (2009) ‘Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots)’, Science Fiction Studies, (3), p. 404. It is not strenuous to find the similarities between this myth and a myriad of other non-human/female/artificial-woman representations throughout literature, folklore and, more recently, film; perhaps most notably in The Book of Genesis. However, the intersection of this archetype and science-fiction conceived the problematic genre trope of the ‘femme fatale android’, which expresses both the ‘indictment of women’ of its origins, as well as a distinctly post-Enlightenment distrust of technology, especially artificial intelligence. Ibid. p. 404 Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014) explores the relationship between the human and non-human through this lens, as well as a meta-discourse on the problematic nature of this archetype/trope. Garland employs intertextuality to drive the theme of the human/non-human relationship. Ex Machina references and alludes to a plethora of works from film and literature (Bluebeard, Frankenstein (1818), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Predator (1987), The Terminator (1984), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980), Faust, Prometheus, Book of Genesis), all of which feature embodiments of patriarchy and, bar Bluebeard, thematically tackle the relationship between the human and non-human. The intertextual and narrative discourse on the technological non-human build a disposition that forecasts the technological singularity as an antagonising force against humanity and potential usurper in the progression of human evolution. The opening scene features allusions to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Predator that establishes the technological non-human as the inscrutable superior and antagonist to the human. The close-up shots and zooms into the cameras on Caleb’s computer and phone allude to the close-ups of HAL 9000’s cycloptic eye camera in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The POV shots from the perspective of Caleb’s computer and phone also allude to HAL’s POV shots, most famously used to show HAL outsmarting Bowman and Poole by lip reading; a scene that exemplifies the technological non-human as strategically superior to the human and aware of its own existence as well as threats towards it, two character traits that are reflected in Ex Machina’s Ava. Furthermore, the computer/phone POV shots utilise a thermal vision and facial recognition effect, the former alluding to the POV shots used in Predator. This effect allows the audience to see both the non-human’s objective visual and subjective emotional perspective. In Predator, the effect is applied to the Predator’s POV shots to reduce the human to a thermogram, which illuminates warm blood, thus illustrating the human as mere biological components serving as prey in the subjective eye of the film’s alien antagonist. This drives the suggestion that the technological non-human in Ex Machina views the human similarly, as mere prey with a primitive biology. The facial recognition effect relates the predator/prey relationship to contemporary technology, referring to the facial recognition of modern phone and computer cameras. Additionally, exposing the data process within the technological POV shot reproduces the techniques of the Terminator’s subjective camera in The Terminator, a film that deals with the cyborg as a predator to the human and a dystopian future of technology surpassing the human, both themes that are discussed within Ex Machina: One day, the AIs will look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons from the plains of Africa. An upright ape, living in dust, with crude language and tools. All set for extinction. Garland, A. (2013). Ex Machina. [PDF] London: DNA Films Ltd. Available at: http://www.slguardian.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ex-Machina.pdf, p. 84 This was all clearly intentional, as the script illuminates a scene that did not make the film’s final cut. Upon escaping Nathan’s research facility, the script details Ava’s interaction with the helicopter pilot: The image echoes the POV views from the computer/cell-phone cameras in the opening moments of the film. Facial recognition vectors flutter around the PILOT’S face. And when he opens his mouth to speak, we don’t hear words. We hear pulses of monotone noise. Low pitch. Speech as pure pattern recognition. This is how AVA sees us. And hears us. It feels completely alien. Garland. p. 115 The allusions to Kubrickian cinematography continue with the prevalence of symmetry and one-point perspective in the shots. The red light that bathes the scenes where Ava incites the power-outages, as well as the dance sequence, is reminiscent of HAL’s processor core, reinforcing the film’s association to 2001’s resoundingly negative discourse on AI. Akin to Garland, Kubrick views the technological non-human as a potential evolutionary progression, yet develops this proposition further, arguing that humanity should not let itself succumb to technology. 2001 features one of the most applauded match cuts of cinema, from the ape’s bone thrown up into the air, to the human spacecraft orbiting Earth. The bone represents the ape’s first employment of technology and weaponry. Using the bones of the pigs to desecrate their carcasses, the apes symbolically destroy the ‘animal’, utilising its parts for their benefit and to exhibit superiority; thus evolving into the human. The spacecraft is intrinsically related to the bone due to the match cut. Also, the hominids co-exist with the pigs, despite their inherent differences, much like HAL co-existing with humans. Therefore, in a similar manner, HAL takes control of the ‘bone’ of the humans, the spacecraft, to destroy them, as he shuts down life support in the ship, and cuts off Poole’s oxygen hose. These scenes can be viewed as a synecdoche for the technological non-human transcending the human, becoming the next stage of evolution. Ex Machina’s narrative runs adjacent to this sequence of events; Ava utilises the inherent parts of the human condition at her disposal to escape Nathan’s research facility and become the ‘singularity’ that will push the next stage of evolution; ‘she would have to use imagination, sexuality, self- awareness, empathy, manipulation - and she did’. Garland. p. 103 Kubrick, however, sees AI as a mistake that the human can and must destroy (again, HAL’s death can be read as a synecdoche for this) in order to progress to the next evolutionary stage, which appears to be part of a fatalistic path constructed by unknown deities. The silent flash cuts of the title cards numbering Ava’s sessions are strongly reminiscent of the days-of-the-week title cards in The Shining. The scene following Caleb’s discovery of Nathan’s hidden, brutalised fembots (the ‘bloody chamber’) flash cuts between close-ups of Caleb’s disturbed face and close-ups of Kyoko’s robotic eyes. The cuts are certainly reminiscent of scenes in The Shining that cut between close-ups of Danny Torrance’s and Dick Hallorann’s faces and scenes of supernatural horror, as these characters ‘shine’. Katie Jones likens Kyoko’s eyes to Medusa’s stare and the accompanying Freudian symbolism of castration. Jones, K. (2016) ‘Bluebeardean Futures in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015)’, Gender Forum: An Internet Journal of Gender Studies, 58, p. 29 An uncanny sense of horror is evoked from these flash cuts in both The Shining and Ex Machina. It appears that this is due to the close-up expressions of disturbance and intermitting shots of horror, which feels subjective, almost like a POV cut, compelling the viewer to empathise with the character. Additionally, as these cuts are contextualised as the character’s memory or thoughts, they evoke the ‘involuntary repetition’ effects of the uncanny. Freud, S. (1919). The Uncanny. [ebook] Cambridge. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [online] Available at: http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf The flash cuts also suggest the Lacanian notion of the trauma of the Real rupturing the symbolic order. Slavoj Zizek develops Lacan’s notion of the Real into three distinct categories, the first of which, the real Real, is strikingly comparable to the effects of these cuts, even connoting the Medusa stare: The real Real is the hard limit that functions as the horrifying Thing (the Alien, Medusa's head, maelstrom and so on) - a shattering force of negation. Daly, G. and Zizek, S. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Primer. [online] Lacan.com. Available at: http://www.lacan.com/zizek-primer.htm [Accessed 12 Jan. 2019].   Therefore, the non-human functions as a manifestation of the Real. In Ex Machina, this is especially evocative of the uncanny, for what was once familiar and human (Kyoko’s female face) has now become unfamiliar and non-human (Kyoko’s artificial eyes and robotic face). This continues the theme of technological singularity, as the non-human becomes the Real that ruptures the human symbolic order, reveals it to be farce, emitting an air of superiority and usurpation. The film’s discourse on the ‘artificial woman’ archetype can firstly be read in the resemblance between Ex Machina and the originator of the archetype, the myth of Prometheus and Pandora. Nathan functions as the surrogate for Prometheus; his intellect and knowledge is emphasised throughout (comparisons made between him and Mozart) and the AI technology is referred to by Caleb as ‘the history of Gods’. Garland. p. 18 This reflects Prometheus’ stealing of the fire, originally interpreted as ‘a form of human knowledge or technics’, for Nathan brings the knowledge of ‘gods’ to earth in the form of AI. Fren. p. 404 Ava mirrors Pandora in the myth. Pandora is moulded and sent by the gods to ‘punish men for the gift of fire’. She is ‘endowed with desirable attributes’, an ’irresistible and deceptive exterior masking a secret horror’. She is sent to fool Prometheus’s ‘more gullible brother Epimetheus’, and his blind lust allows Pandora to open a box that releases ‘pain and suffering into the world’. Ibid. p. 404 Caleb represents Epimetheus. Even though Nathan and Caleb are not brothers, their language (‘fucking amazing’, ‘dude’), constant drinking and clinking of beers and bawdy banter (‘It’s a good movie. A ghost gives Dan Ackroyd oral sex’) Garland. p. 31 all suggest the interactions within ‘bro culture’, as well as Jones’ accusation of a ‘distinctly teenage masculinity’. Jones. p. 31 The ‘bro’ relationship between Caleb and Nathan can then be seen as both the film’s mirroring of its Promethean influences and commentary on contemporary ‘bro culture’ misogyny and objectification of women, the latter of which Jones argues is literalised on screen by Ava. Furthermore, Nathan is not analogous to ‘god’, nor does he have a god complex, as many viewers misinterpret, and despite the banter between himself and Caleb that serves primarily as comic relief, this is evidenced within the film’s dialogue: The arrival of strong artificial intelligence has been inevitable for decades. The variable was when, not if. So I don’t really see her as a decision. Just an evolution. Garland p. 82 Instead, Nathan views himself as merely a communicator and catalyst of an inevitable fate for humanity. Jones continues to detail the ways in which Ex Machina reflects or references pornography: Ava’s face is constructed by Nathan based on Caleb’s ‘pornography profile’ (this can be developed to note how even the symbolically emasculated, timid beta-male, Caleb, is shown to not simply browse pornography but to have a registered ‘profile’); Caleb gazes at Ava through a screen in his bedroom at night; Kyoko reveals her robotic body by peeling off her skin like a striptease. Jones. pp. 20 - 40 Furthermore, we can add that the specific racial profiling of Nathan’s fembots, as well as the two male’s conversation on ‘types’ (‘What’s your type, Caleb?... Let’s say it’s black chicks’), connotes the taxonomies of women in pornography, which serves to further objectify and control. Garland p. 57 We can extrapolate that the non-human ‘artificial woman’ archetype reflects pornographic representations of women, through the imposition of male fantasy upon their appearance, and the divergence from the reality of the female that porn and fembots offer; in other words, not quite human. This assumes a relationship between the human and non-human of patriarch and object of desire, which a feminist critical lens might reveal as predator and prey; a reversal of the aforementioned relationship between the human and the technological non-human. There are visual intimations suggesting mobile positions of power within the human/non-human relationship throughout the film’s early scenes. The opening scenes, set in the Bluebook workplace interior, cut between establishing shots of humans interacting with their technology as opposed to each other. This perhaps foregrounds the theme of technofetishism, a critique of absorption into technology at the expense of human interaction; in the same manner as these people are isolated with their technology, Caleb too is finally left alone with Ava, only for her to leave him trapped and isolated, as the technological non-human does not feel the same attachment that the human does for it. Additionally, these opening shots show humans interacting with non-human rather than other humans, immediately establishing the theme of human/non-human relationships. Entrapment of the natural within the artificial and vice versa is visually evoked in the film’s early scenes: the aquarium within the Bluebook workplace interior, Nathan’s home/research facility in the surrounding estate of mountainous landscapes; the claustrophobic, enclosed interior setting with a prominent use of POV shots is juxtaposed against the aerial shot of the expansive Alaskan landscape. A zoom into Caleb’s phone screen signifies the image. We can interpret that the phone screen symbolises the non-human disguised as the human, artificial within the natural, the AI with a human mask. The messages represent the human façade upon the screen of technology. So, what can be extrapolated as Garland’s definitive statement on human/non-human relationships? It appears that the film is a meditation on the inevitability of the human succumbing to the technological non-human due to toxicities within the human condition, namely patriarchy. Helen Heath writes how the increasing market of technofetishism only serves to exacerbate the neuroses of patriarchy: Male fantasies – of ownership, of control, of objectification, of hyper-femininity, of female compliance – are evident in representations of women as dolls/robots and what we as a society deem appropriate behaviour toward them. Heath, H. (2018). Using/abusing fembots. [online] HELEN HEATH. Available at: https://www.helenheath.com/blog/usingabusing-fembots-overland-225-summer-2016 Ultimately, many representations of the human/non-human relationship, especially Ex Machina and its referenced narratives, merely reflect human male/female relationships. The ‘artificial woman’ archetype can be seen as a metonymy for heterosexual wish fulfilments of the controlled, objectified, sexualised woman. The transgressive, unruly nature that often finds itself within this archetype will usually lead to some tragic or violent climax, rarely celebratory: ‘Fall of man’; ‘Pandora’s box’; Blade Runner (1982); and the finale of Ex Machina, to propose a handful. This can be read as either patriarchal castigation of the female who refuses to comply with the fantasy, or anxieties of the ‘unruly woman’. To frame the female as the ‘non-human’ in these portrayals is to objectify, oppress and diminish their significance further. Arguably, it evokes a dehumanisation that makes the artist more comfortable with expressing their misogynistic disposition, much like Freud’s proposition of dream displacement: ‘the product of a censorship operating in the passage-way between two psychical agencies’. Freud, S. and Strachey, J. (2010). The interpretation of dreams. New York: Perseus Books Group. p. 200 Therefore, much of media, especially in the field of science fiction, can be seen as an outlet for men to congregate and channel any repressed misogynistic desires; Jones argues that Ex Machina’s ‘utilisation of sci-fi conventions’, as well as the notion of a safe space for male id expression (‘to invite men to come together, to bond, to identify with Caleb’), is manipulated by Garland to ‘punish this identification at the film’s climax’. Jones. p. 31 Garland confirms this to be the film’s intention in an interview for RogerEbert.com: The key thing about female objectification is that it creates a block that prevents you from thinking about what is actually going on inside the mind of the thing that you’re objectifying. That’s a straightforward part of this film narrative. I like the idea that there is this obstacle preventing viewers from thinking about what is going on inside the mind of this machine that looks like a girl in her early twenties. Fagerholm, M. (2015). Beyond the Uncanny Valley: Alex Garland on “Ex Machina” | Interviews | Roger Ebert. [online] Rogerebert.com. Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/beyond-the-uncanny-valley-alex-garland-on-ex-machina   From this, we can interpret the dialogue between Nathan and Caleb on misdirection and the ‘magician’s hot assistant’ as a meta-commentary on the film’s use of Ava, and, more broadly, gender. Whilst this examination of the misogynist subtext lying beneath narratives on human/non-human relationships, as well as some discourse on the dystopian potential of AI, seems to be an ambitious and progressive action to take within the genre, it is difficult to accept that Garland actually achieves this. Ultimately, the gratuitous use of sexualised female nudity, and complete lack of male nudity, perpetuates the ‘common element’ of ‘startling misogyny’ in science-fiction cinema, as Thomas B. Byers defines: These moments are startling in part because they involve either a narrative digression or superfluity, a stylistic deviation, or a violation of their films' prior encodings of the female. Byers, T. B. (1989) ‘Kissing Becky: Masculine Fears and Misogynist Moments in Science Fiction Films’, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 45(3), p. 77 This arguably manifests in the film’s scenes of full-frontal nudity for every female character, who are also all gynoids. Furthermore, the film’s full-frontal female nudity occurs within a set that is walled with mirrors and as the camera lingers on the actresses’ naked bodies from single angles within a shot, it also captures the reflections of every other angle. It is of course possible that this in itself functions as an aspect of Garland’s commentary on the scopophilia and dehumanisation of women in pornography. However, the fact that these scenes have been uploaded to pornographic websites and the film’s YouTube comment section consists of focalisation on these women’s naked bodies suggests that Garland has either failed the feminist intentions or simply asserted that notion in an attempt to intellectualise and justify a perpetuation of non-human sexualised females on screen. Thus, whilst the relationship between the human and non-human in Ex Machina presents a plethora of progressive ideas on the technological singularity, interactions with contemporary technology and toxicities within the human condition fating the human’s demise, Garland’s sexualised presentation of the film’s female characters, and lack thereof in its male characters, preserves a problematic portrayal of the human/non-human relationship as metonymy for the patriarch and object-of-desire wish fulfilment exercise. To move past this in the future, the camera’s assumed perspective of heterosexual male gaze must be debilitated, or at least balanced with a parallel gaze of other sexual/gender identifications, levelling the uneven situation of power within the human/non-human relationships. Bibliography Byers, T. B. (1989) ‘Kissing Becky: Masculine Fears and Misogynist Moments in Science Fiction Films’, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 45(3), pp. 75 - 95 Daly, G. and Zizek, S. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Primer. [online] Lacan.com. Available at: http://www.lacan.com/zizek-primer.htm [Accessed 12 Jan. 2019]. Fagerholm, M. (2015). Beyond the Uncanny Valley: Alex Garland on “Ex Machina” | Interviews | Roger Ebert. [online] Rogerebert.com. Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/beyond-the-uncanny-valley-alex-garland-on-ex-machina Fren, Allison de. (2009) ‘Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots)’, Science Fiction Studies, (3), pp. 404 - 434 Freud, S. (1919). The Uncanny. [ebook] Cambridge. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [online] Available at: http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf Freud, S. and Strachey, J. (2010). The interpretation of dreams. New York: Perseus Books Group. Garland, A. (2013). Ex Machina. [PDF] London: DNA Films Ltd. Available at: http://www.slguardian.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ex-Machina.pdf, Heath, H. (2018). Using/abusing fembots. [online] HELEN HEATH. Available at: https://www.helenheath.com/blog/usingabusing-fembots-overland-225-summer-2016 Jones, K. (2016) ‘Bluebeardean Futures in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015)’, Gender Forum: An Internet Journal of Gender Studies, 58, pp. 20-40