I really like Science Fiction movies. They are thrilling, intellectually engaging, and kind of sexy, because they allow me to envision a future in which I don’t die young from climate change and/or overusing my Facebook. However, sometimes they piss me off, because feminism. Oh, Spike Jonze, you want to make a movie about Operating Systems that possess artificial intelligence? That sounds so awesome! And, the voice of the OS is Scarlett Johansson . . . greatttt. It’s a love story, you say? How shocking.
Why is it that when robots look like dudes, they go on adventures in space or start a social revolution, but when the machine is construed as female, their sexuality takes the center stage? Remember that Disney Channel Original Movie where the single dad builds a robotic house to cook and clean, until she gets possessive and psychotic? Yeah, that’s problematic. In fact, the only potentially feminine robot with a platonic plot that comes to mind is R2D2.
Now, I’m not the first person who has noticed/complained about this. If you want to learn about this from someone who is actually smart, check this link to an article about The FemBot Problem.
Assuming that you totally did not click on that link, let me explain it to you. Many people would insist that AI is genderless, but packaging sci-fi robots to seem “more human” usually involves assigning them a gender. The robot may then react to the constructs of this assigned gender, based on how much of society they are exposed to. For example, in the film Ex Machina, the AI Ava uses her sexuality to manipulate her Turing Test administrator into freeing her. This isn’t because women inherently do that, but because her creator was a misogynist creep, and the environment she was in shaped her to behave like a femme fatale.
That being said, what gives Hollywood? If intelligence doesn’t have a gender, there should be a wide array of AI movies, with different plots featuring robots with male exteriors, female exteriors, and hopefully some in between because it’s not a binary. Instead, we have a bunch of fem-bots.
There are a billion problems with this, but the one the irks me the most is Hollywood assuming that men will get turned on by sexy, complicit female robots. Forget feminism for a second – I feel left out! Where are the films that sexually exploit male robots? They exist (see this episode of Black Mirror), but they are few and far between.
I think that this a travesty, because I am so down for sexy robo-men. I don’t even care if they pass the Turing Test. Literally, so down. For example, I have always felt that Avengers was missing something, perhaps a love interest for Ultron. Is he metallic and evil? Yes. Does he have a sense of humor, and a great (self-assembled) body? Also yes! I would’ve enjoyed some kind of sexual tension between him and say, Captain America. (But also no, because Captain America is really vanilla, and no one can have true sexual tension with him. Let’s amend that to Thor. Ultron and Thor would have sent sparks flying – Fifty Shades of Gray Machinery.)
How about Prometheus? Talk about a squandered opportunity. Being a robot is literally the only way that Michael Fassbender could possibly become better in bed. And if you think that post-decapitation, I wouldn’t be interested anymore, you are wrong. I would still go for Michael Fassbender’s disembodied head, because 1/10th of the Fass is still superior to any other organism, robotic or not. Luckily, Ridley Scott has a sequel up his sleeves, in which he can set the record straight. I’m thinking an erotic scene where Noomi Rapace’s character reconnects David’s neck to his torso. Or he can just roll solo – that would be hot too.
Actually, I would love nothing more than to date a “men-bot.” It would capture all of the aspects of men that I enjoy (their physical exteriors, genitals, etc.), and leave out all of the man-splaining, mommy issues, and early-onset male pattern baldness. And obviously, men-bots would have a vibrating function. Apple, stop re-making the iPad, I have a new project for you.
Now, if only Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey would call me back.
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