Stereotypes In Alex Garland's Essay 'Ex Machina'

Ex Machina With technology always changing and improving artificial intelligence or AI for short is becoming a realistic goal for inventors. Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, uses this popular topic to create an engaging film that on the surface is about artificial intelligence but when viewers take a deeper look the audience will see that the film also covers issues in our society. Throughout Ex Machina, Nathan and Caleb are both testing a robot girl, Ava to see if she can function as a normal human. At first glance Nathan seems like the antagonist of the film, Caleb is portrayed as the protagonist, and Ava is the helpless female stereotype that is portrayed in many films. However, Garland puts an interesting twist at the end of the movie when Ava with the help of Caleb, kills Nathan but then betrays Caleb and leaves him to die as well. Many viewers now see Ava as another antagonist character for leaving Caleb after he helped her escaped. At first glance, this is an understandable opinion that the essays “Monster

Cohens essay discusses how people that break stereotypes are viewed as outcasts. This leads society to view people who step outside the social norms as monsters. His statement “This refusal to participate in the classificatory “order of things” is true of monsters…”(6 Cohen) backs up Cohen’s idea of people who break social norms are treated as monsters. This is why Ava who takes control over the men, is perceived as a monster. However, the real monsters in the movie are Nathan and Caleb who follow the negative stereotypes like feeling entitled to controlling women. Even though Nathan follows the gender stereotypes many viewers still see him as a monster like Ava, which contradicts Cohens Argument. The audience seeing Nathan as a monster shows that society has made positive progress towards gender equality to break away from these negative