Years ago I wrote about how the fantasy of so many men in tech re: AI was to create a woman that doesn't talk back. It's not an original idea--it populates sci-fi, like Ex Machina.
But it's also an easy point to argue because so many guys will just... say it.
it's so plain to see. they want women they can perfectly control. no disagreements, no talk back, nothing they don't want. it's an extremely dangerous trait.
when I was first brought in to produce/direct vr shit around 2018 one of my many early horrifying reactions was "creepy dudes are gonna try to use this to fuck celebrities" and sure enough we got deepfake vr
Oh crap, I just realized my comment could be read as justifying deepfake porn. ABSOLUTELY NOT. That is just wrong to do.
It was more that they can think it's real, making it even worse.
Sorry about the confusion!
The best iteration of this continues to be Weird Science because it's actually one of the only extant examples of a female trickster I have ever seen in fiction.
It's like they think it's going to be an episode of I Dream of Jeannie, but really it's a lot closer to summoning a demon who just happens to incarnate as Kelly Le Brock.
The interesting version was the TV show Weird Science. They tried to recognize the genie/slave nature of her and fix that. Wasn’t entirely successful. But they tried.
Possibly the remake with Brendan Fraser (?) of "Bedazzled" counts, since the Devil is played by Elizabeth Hurley, but that IS a remake.
Though, not having seen it, I don't know how much it differs from the source material. I remember it got bad reviews.
Yeah, I thought the reviews at release were overly harsh.
And the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore original was more clever than laugh out loud funny, anyways.
(Yeah, I said it!)
I mean, The Stepford Wives immediately springs to mind, and that is over 50 years old, and I'm sure that's far from the first story to be explicitly about supplicating women into mindless, unthinking trophies for weak-willed men.
Sad that you ask someone in tech what they most want in the world and a lot of shitty people raise their hand and say "slaves, but I don't want to feel too icky about it."
That's why Ruby Sparks hits like a freight train, because Zoe wrote it and starred in it (with her husband Paul Dano!) and it shows how a fantasy is literally just a nightmare you haven't thought all the way through to its logical conclusion.
Underrated and terrifying.
Uh he never talked to her, he outsourced that job, offered her sexually to his proxy, had tortured & killed multiple previous versions of her, stated his intent to kill her, and literally fucked his way through an entire wardrobe of almost silent female servant robots.
Did you even see the movie? 🤣
I think a far more defensible account is Caleb wanting to test Ava for ‘sentience’, while Ava is herself testing Caleb for basic humanity, to see if he treats her with agency or as an object to possess. If you don’t notice how he fails this test, I feel like you’re missing something important
I love the film, and I think the film itself is written to be interpreted either way; the film itself becomes an artefact that can help us detect the viewers own values in practice - does desire blind them to whether they’re treating their crush like an actual person, with agency of their own.
Alllllll of this. That mf couldnt be trusted. If you think he would her let her be free and not stuck in the same situation eventually because “ai safety!” you werent watching the movie. He wanted to be a savior boyfriend and would become a “im doing this for your own good!” type guy
It deeply bothers me how that movie is absolutely swimming in misogyny, but doesn't really condemn it in any meaningful way.
The focal character routinely engages in it, & at no point seems to come to terms with his own complicity in a toxic patriarchy.
It's just a theme they do nothing with.
Honestly, the whole narrative feels extremely undercooked.
And it's probably not the best idea to write a parable about the evils of a misogynist culture that fails to denounce that.
Probably not a great idea to have no women involved in crafting that narrative either.
There's a difference between resolving a plot point and portraying something as bad within the plot.
Showing pushback against misogyny in a story can happen while the story still ends with the misogynist culture intact.
You can criticize a system while living in it.
Casting Jared Leto alone and then putting him in a very gross scene with a naked woman just. I'll never co-sign Villeneuve's supposed allyship or talent with women characters. Kinda like how Sicario is mostly an excuse to beat Emily Blunt. Arrival is the only decent one.
