Gnana Selvam

Gendered Cyborgs?

I want to shed some light on some of the gender discourses surrounding the concept of cybernetic organisms and their representations in Popular culture. For this, I would be taking two academic journal texts and supplement them with a film each. These texts can also be juxtaposed with one another to paint a clearer picture of the idea of gender in the digital age.

I. Article: Fembot Feminism: The Cyborg Body and Feminist Discourse in The Bionic Woman

Cultural classification of genres such as action/adventure as low art in contrast with drama as high art affects other parameters of our judgment. The Bionic Woman, of the 1970s primetime television series, was subject to such prejudices. The paper discusses The Bionic Woman in light of the second wave feminism which began in the late 1960s. The author inspects the problems embedded in the television series which in a way was a response to the second wave feminism. The author argues that even though The Bionic Woman uses the technique of resistance and containment to conjure a picture of the ‘New Woman’, it ultimately succumbs to the narratives loaded heavily with traditional norms of femininity. The show could also be seen as a redressal measure to tackle the anxiety surrounding the ‘new woman’ and technology. This paper offers insights into the discourses of feminism and gender in the wake digital age.

II. Film: Ex Machina

The ideas kept forward by Sharon Sharp in her article Fembot feminism can be taken forth and laid over the 2014 Alex Garland film Ex Machina. In the movie, Caleb a computer programmer is made the human component in the Turing test for the humanoid A.I. robot Ava. The film gradually blurs the line between the human and the other and culminates with Caleb falling in love Ava. Albeit the narrative sets out seeming like a traditional damsel in distress narrative, later reveals a complex powerplay and agency at work. The idea of a ‘new woman’ imbued with traditional norms portrayed in the bionic woman, is subverted at multiple levels.

III. Article: Descartes Goes to Hollywood

Samantha Holland in her paper, Descartes goes to Hollywood: Mind, body, and gender in contemporary cyborg cinema, takes up modern cyborg cinemas to address the philosophical conversations enshrouding the ‘mind-body’ problem in them. The dualism of ‘mind-body’ paves the way and justifies for the existence of other dichotomies; human/machine, man/woman, culture/nature, etc. The concrete dualism(s) builds strict walls on otherwise fluid boundaries. She primarily argues against the cartesian dualism(s) that has pervasively prevailed through centuries working its way into its

cultural representations. She views cyborg films as a reaction to the cartesian dualism(s). Holland observes that cyborg cinema is radical and provocative, the films take up “fear of losing human ‘self1’” and in turn extrapolates it to the paranoia of the loss of masculinity.

IV. Film: Blade Runner series

The Blade Runner films, Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049(2017), have been a hallmark on the discourse of ‘The Other’ in the digital age. Both films tackle the issues of the nature of humanity, gender, and self. In the first film, we are shown how a human fall in love with a replicant (an android, a machine) and in the later film we are witness to the child born out of this wedlock, this attacks the fundamental axiom of ‘Human’, to be human is to have a soul, to have a soul is to be born. This idea of human was also the foundation for other concepts such as the idea of gender in society. Thus, film problematizes and questions very nature of gender in digital culture, and especially in the advent of cyborgs and robots.

Bibliography

Sharp, Sharon. “Fembot feminism: The cyborg body and feminist discourse in The Bionic Woman.” Women’s Studies 36.7 (2007): 507-523.

Garland, Alex. Ex Machina. Universal Pictures, 2015.
Holland, Samantha. “Descartes goes to Hollywood: Mind, body and gender in

contemporary cyborg cinema.” Body & Society 1.3-4 (1995): 157-174.
Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner. Warner Bros, 1982.
Villeneuve, Denis. Blade Runner 2049. Sony pictures home entertainment, 2018.