The Age of Robot Women
Why the best films about female robots flip the gender script
When we first meet Iris, we know little about her except the fact that she is a doting girlfriend eager to impress her boyfriend. But when another man at a gathering they attend tries to sexually assault her and she kills him in self-defense, we learn that she is not a human at all, but an advanced “emotional support” robot who is designed to love, support, and have sex with the man who purchased her.
Iris’s journey to self-actualization is about plotting a life away from being a mere toy for men, a common theme in films and TV shows that feature female robots. In films like Ex Machina and shows like Westworld, the female robot exists as a fetish-object to its creator. The hiccup that disrupts their “use” of these objects comes from the recognition that these man-made machines genuinely have the capacity to think and feel.
In these stories, the viewer is meant to emotionally connect with the machine woman rather than the person who owns her. Iris, played excellently by Sophie Thatcher, seems more human and multidimensional than her narcissistic boyfriend, who, in typical movie villain fashion, makes the odd, but narratively pleasing decision of tying Iris to a chair so that he can explain her backstory before destroying her.
There are male robots in Companion, but it doesn’t surprise me that the film is explicitly focused on a female one. We have a cultural obsession with female robots, perhaps because, unlike the Boston Dynamics and TESLA humanoid bots, they are most often built with a human face. While the shadow of The Stepford Wives hangs over 21stcentury female robot depictions, it’s clear to me that new robot “tradwives” unsettle us less because of the way they expose the patriarchy, than the fact they illustrate all the ways that modern technologies dehumanize even the most intimate of work.
Unlike the male coded robot, whose job often involves merely bringing a box from one end of the room to the other, the female coded robot ruptures the family. In Subservience, the nanny bot threatens because she is a replacement for the mother, both in terms of domestic tasks as well as sexual and romantic ones. In M3GAN, the artificially intelligent doll shifts from being a little girl’s protector and emotional confidant to becoming a violent and controlling parent figure. Both films make it clear that the robots are mere imitations rather than actual girls and women. And in a fun and campy fashion, viewers understand that real human survival may necessitate fighting back against these deceptive machines.
In contrast, both Companion and Westworld invite us to see female robots as victims of the system that created them. One of the most unsettling aspects of the Westworld theme park is the way that Dolores and the other female robots are designed to endure sexual violence, which is commonplace precisely because some men who “play the game” are actively seeking it out. And while The Man in Black seeks to dehumanize Dolores through sexual violence, her expression of terror at these habitual attacks is also what renders her real to viewers who can clearly see her pain and suffering
Companion makes a similar emotional bid: when Iris kills her rapist after he attempts to attack her, the viewer is meant to sympathize with her fears, rather than view her act of killing as unjustifiable.
In one of the most intriguing moments in Companion, the sole human female character explains that she doesn’t feel compassion for Iris. Rather, she resents her, noting that Iris’s very existence is a reminder that women are replaceable. One of the reasons I’m fascinated by depictions of women who create and buy robots is that it offers a counterpoint to the narrative that women are simply wary bystanders genuinely at risk of being “replaced.”
In Tove Lo’s music video “No One Dies from Love,” for example, we watch a female pop star purchase a female robot who charms and seduces her female owner, only to be replaced by a new model. Annie 3000 resists the clichés that dominate our look at female robots. She is more androgynous than curvaceous and her sexual and romantic awakening comes after they stand eye-to-eye to one another. When Annie 3000 is replaced with a newer model, we see the way she rips out her mechanical heart as a commentary on what it means to be human, not what it means to be female.
Similarly, Doja Cat’s playful video for “Cyber Sex” offers a funny and subversive spin by placing herself in the mad scientist role. It’s a move that renders Doja Cat the conductor of her own erotic fantasies rather than the object of someone else’s desires.
My favorite depiction that flips the gendered script on sexbots is the Black Mirror episode, “Be Right Back.” In it, we watch a woman grieving her dead boyfriend end up recreating him through his online footprint, putting together photographs, emails, and other remnants he has left to render a bizzarro version of the real man she loved. At first her recreated partner is merely a voice, but eventually he becomes a lifelike robot that she uses for both emotional and physical intimacy. If the story centered on a male character who lost his partner and replaced her with a machine lover, the premise would feel less original. But the “gender swap” shifts the focus away from our cultural fears about the female robot so that we can focus on a more original meditation on grief, one that is simultaneously creepy and moving.
In contrast, Companion is less interested in revolutionizing the genre than paying homage to it. The film is most successful when it is being playful, and one of the fun highlights of the movie is when we get to see the robotic perspective of what it’s like to undergo the process of being “love linked” to an owner. Each time, we see a cheesy pre-scripted “meet cute” that allows the robot falls in love with the person who purchased it. In one example, we watch a robot stumble upon her true love in a grocery store when he clumsily causes an entire orange display to fall to the ground. In another “love link” story, a different robot meets the love of his life at a costume party where he accidentally steps on his true love’s dinosaur tail before breaking into a dance sequence.
Despite these original moments, Iris’s story of forging her own freedom remains frustratingly hemmed in within the conventions of the genre. Unlike Ex Machina, which brilliantly plays with its viewers emotions by presenting a female robot who is decidedly not human, Companion wants viewers to see Iris as a woman. By the end, save for her exposed robotic hand from where her ex burned her, the fact that she is a machine is barely part of the emotional equation.