Sengupta 1

ARNAB SENGUPTA
S0MAELIT20200292
M.A. ENGLISH LITERATURE
SEMESTER IV

The Male Gaze in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema" published in 1975, said that in
cinema, women are represented as objects of gaze because the control of the camera is decided by
assuming that the heterosexual men are the default target audience for most of the film genres. The
concept of the male gaze developed by Laura Mulvey mentions three kinds of gaze. First, is the
view point of the camera or the way camera follows the characters, second is the look of the
audience and thirdly the gaze of the characters within the film. Her contention was that the look of
the characters within the film subordinates the other looks and it essentially follows the existing
socially gendered practice where women play a subordinate role and are essentially the sources of
voyeuristic pleasure. Mulvey asserts,

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male
and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is
styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and
displayed, with their coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote
to-be looked-at-ness.” (Mulvey 19)

Baudrillard in The Consumer Society argues that a “…fashion model's body is no longer an object
of desire, but a functional object, a forum of signs in which fashion and the erotic are mingled. It is
no longer a synthesis of gestures, even if fashion photography puts all its artistry into re-creating
gesture and naturalness by a process of simulation. It is no longer, strictly speaking, a body, but a
shape.” (Baudrillard 133) Baudrillard explicates that the female body has gone beyond the object of
desire. It is simply seen as a functional object.

Mulvey argues that women’s position in the patriarchal order is to act as a mere signifier for the
male other which is “… bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and

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obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to
her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” (Mulvey 15)

In Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, we see Caleb has been selected to conduct the Turing test on Ava, a
functional female cyborg constructed by the male. Caleb’s primary task is to determine if Ava has
the capability to outwit a human. The Turing test, originally developed by Alan Turing, a
mathematician and a scientist developed this test to distinguish between a computer and a human. In
today’s post-humanist world, the Turing test is essentially used to examine Artificial Intelligence
and their capability to think and behave which can be compared to a human mind. In order to pass
the Turing test, the subject has to successfully deceive the examiner, that is the human.

Taking in consideration Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, we see Nathan, the Chief Executive of Blue
Book, appoints Caleb to conduct the Turing test on Ava. We see that there are frequent power cuts in
the facility during which the test is not recorded, and thus are not under surveillance. Ava takes this
opportunity to warn Caleb that Nathan is not to be trusted and that he would turn her off and destroy
her memory once the test is completed. Ava is somehow able to charm Caleb into thinking that he
likes her and eventually becomes attached to the cyborg, ultimately planning to escape with Ava.
Nathan eventually finds out about this ploy and reveals to Caleb that he wanted to see if Ava was
intelligent enough to manipulate Caleb to help her escape. Ultimately, Ava’s ploy to deceive and
manipulate Caleb was successful and ultimately she was able to reprogram the entire facility’s
security codes thus locking in Caleb and ultimately escaping from her creator, the phallocentric
centre.

Caleb questions Nathan as to why he developed the dimension of sexuality in his cyborgs. “Why
did you give her sexuality? An AI doesn’t need a gender. She could have been a grey box.” (Garland
55) Nathan’s response to this question is somewhat ambiguous and responds that his aim was to
make them “anatomically complete” so that the cyborgs have the “pleasure response.” (Garland 56)
This seems that Nathan follows the patriarchal order when he constructs the female body and
constructs the female based on the rigid patriarchal gaze and the roles that females are supposed to
fulfil. Nathan turns the female body into a docile, submissive body by which he is able to ravish and
exploit their bodies by equipping them with genitals. Nathan and Caleb are the primary versions of
the male gaze, who constantly observes the female cyborgs through the surveillance cameras.



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“Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal
order. In the highly developed Hollywood cinema, it was only through these codes that the alienated
subject, torn in his imaginary memory by a sense of loss, by the terror of potential lack in phantasy,
came near to finding a glimpse of satisfaction..” (Mulvey 16)
At the end of the film, we see Nathan with a knife, a phallocentric image of power and authority,
trying to prevent Ava to escape the facility. But Ava manages to overpower Nathan with the help of
Kyoko and ultimately stabs him to his death. The alienated subject here is Ava who tries to search
meaning beyond the phallocentric centre. She escapes the facility by replacing her body parts to
which she associates herself with. Ava morphs herself by reconstructing her fractured parts and to
appear more human like. Lacan talks of the specular image where he refers to “the reflection of
one’s own body in the mirror, the image of oneself which is simultaneously oneself and other (the
‘little other’). It is by identifying with the specular image that the human baby first begins to
construct his ego in the mirror stage.” (Evans 193) Similarly, at the end Ava is able to identify
herself and is able to acknowledge her ego and her body by constructing her female self beyond the
constrictions of the creator.

Mulvey asserts, “The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. . One is scopophilia (pleasure
in looking). There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the
reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at.” (Mulvey 16) Kyoko, another cyborg who is
programmed by the phallocentric centre to serve the male creator as the submissive and obedient
servant. Unlike Ava, Kyoko is denied of a voice and lacks agency. She is created by the male
fantasy to serve their needs and demands. She is sexually exploited and abused by her creator
because she was programmed to handle the male desires and fantasies. In Ex Machina, the cyborgs
are not only overly sexualised but also presents them as fractured, confined, and mutilated.

Such female figures are not only restricted to Kyoko and Ava. We see Nathan’s previous projects on
female cyborgs like Lily, a blonde cyborg similar to Ava who is naked and is “Rocking backwards
and forwards, in a gently autistic motion” (Garland 88) being monitored by Nathan. From the
CCTV footages which Caleb discovers, he also discovers Katya, who is lifeless and limping where
the footage reveals Nathan dragging Katya to get herself charged. Jade, an Asian cyborg who gets
into an argument with Nathan. She evidently turns insane and starts to destroy and dismember her
own body against the glass wall through which Nathan observes her. These horrific footages of
Nathan’s experimentation and cruelty on the female bodies reflect on the torture and fragmentation

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that is caused by the phallocentric centre of the female self. All of the cyborgs are nude and is
subjected under the male gaze which perhaps invites the audience and the spectators to participate
in voyeurism.

Mulvey asserts that women are “displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from
pin-ups to strip-tease…” (Mulvey 19) When Caleb meets Kyoko, he enquires as to where Nathan is.
To this question, “she reaches up to the top button of her shirt and pops it open.” (Garland 74) She
readily starts to strip herself without any expression as if that was what she was programmed to do
but Caleb eventually makes her stop. In the dance scene between Kyoko and Nathan, we see a
fanatic form of choreographed dancing where Nathan declares that Kyoko loves to dance although
she doesn’t express or speak anything.

Ex Machina can be analysed and understood critically through the constricting allegory of
patriarchy. The patriarchal order reflects how women are objectified through the male gaze and how
they are subjected to confinement and mutilation, unable to find their own identity. Ultimately, we
can understand that Ava is able to deceive and manipulate the patriarchal order, Nathan and Caleb
thus escaping from the periphery, ultimately showing us that she successfully passes the Turing test.

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Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Sage, London, 1998.

Evans, Dylan. Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, London, 2006.

Garland, Alex. “Ex Machina.” DailyScript, 2013, https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/

exMachina_script.pdf.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Visual and Other Pleasures, Palgrave,
New York, 1989, pp. 14–28.