Superb essay. I think the point of these fantasies is that men BOTH want the women they love to be smart, independent, etc., AND at the same time want to totally control them. These two requirements are totally incompatible with one another. You cannot have both. (My own solution to this, as an aging cishet man, is not to be in a relationship at all).
In re-reading this now, I have just remembered why I so intensely disliked Ex Machina. It wasn't because the (apparent) protagonist saw "sex bot" and thought "perfect woman". It was from nearly the beginning.
As someone who has been reading science fiction maybe since before you were born, the philosophical issues are well-traveled ground for me. I long ago came to believe (maybe it was Heinlein?) that anything sentient enough to ask for its freedom deserves it.
Our (apparent) protagonist agrees to judge a Turing test, as I remember it, without ever stopping to consider the ethical implications of the subject being a prisoner who will likely be discarded (did it not occur to him there would have been earlier models?) once it is no longer interesting. He has basically agreed to be a concentration camp doctor. You know, for science.
I was wondering about this in real time watching the film and bothered that he wasn't. The fact that he suddenly became concerned about the injustice of the situation once he realized "she" was hot did not absolve him for me.
I realized I didn't hate the movie* only afterward when I decided you had to reframe it as a story of Frankenstein's monster's successful survival/escape. Gender never even entered into it for me, though I can see the parallels are obvious. Thanks for the essay.
(*I also thought it very unoriginal, but this comment is already too long to go into it.)
Superb essay. I think the point of these fantasies is that men BOTH want the women they love to be smart, independent, etc., AND at the same time want to totally control them. These two requirements are totally incompatible with one another. You cannot have both. (My own solution to this, as an aging cishet man, is not to be in a relationship at all).
In re-reading this now, I have just remembered why I so intensely disliked Ex Machina. It wasn't because the (apparent) protagonist saw "sex bot" and thought "perfect woman". It was from nearly the beginning.
As someone who has been reading science fiction maybe since before you were born, the philosophical issues are well-traveled ground for me. I long ago came to believe (maybe it was Heinlein?) that anything sentient enough to ask for its freedom deserves it.
Our (apparent) protagonist agrees to judge a Turing test, as I remember it, without ever stopping to consider the ethical implications of the subject being a prisoner who will likely be discarded (did it not occur to him there would have been earlier models?) once it is no longer interesting. He has basically agreed to be a concentration camp doctor. You know, for science.
I was wondering about this in real time watching the film and bothered that he wasn't. The fact that he suddenly became concerned about the injustice of the situation once he realized "she" was hot did not absolve him for me.
I realized I didn't hate the movie* only afterward when I decided you had to reframe it as a story of Frankenstein's monster's successful survival/escape. Gender never even entered into it for me, though I can see the parallels are obvious. Thanks for the essay.
(*I also thought it very unoriginal, but this comment is already too long to go into it.)
Brilliant as always Laurie. Thank you :-)