Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: It's Caitlin and Jamie's Session one.
Speaker 3: Who's who Am I the sexy robot?
Speaker 2: I mean, clearly you've chosen.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, I'm the sexy robot.
Speaker 2: I don't know, are you? Yes?
Speaker 3: And I have awareness? I think I don't know. That's
Speaker 3: your job to figure out.
Speaker 2: God. I mean truly. In the scene where dominal Gleason
Speaker 2: needs to decide if he's a good person and is
Speaker 2: like yeah, I was like, oh fuck, I would do that,
Speaker 2: Like basically, yeah, I'm like kind of low ki and orphaned,
Speaker 2: so I'm probably a good person like he. Uh I
Speaker 2: love his damn bowlcott in this movie. Anyways, I'll be Caleb. Okay,
Speaker 2: you be sexy robot. You look more like Alicia Wikander. Honestly,
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I'm just stating
Speaker 2: facts here. And I'm as tall as Dominald Gleason. We're
Speaker 2: both so big.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Caitlyn Jamie Session one, and uh can't wait
Speaker 3: to see how this how this culminates, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just gonna hit on you and say you
Speaker 2: pass the Turing test.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. And then I'm gonna trick you and
Speaker 3: leave you to rot.
Speaker 2: And your right to do it and you're right to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 4: And here we are.
Speaker 2: This is the Bechdel Cast. My name's Jamie Loftus aka
Speaker 2: the Tester.
Speaker 3: M HM, and my name is Kaitlin Derante aka the
Speaker 3: Sexy Robot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the podcast where each and every
Speaker 2: week we take one of your favorite movies and look
Speaker 2: at it from an intersectional feminist lens. And this is
Speaker 2: not just an episode that we have gotten requests for
Speaker 2: for many, many years, but also one of our famous
Speaker 2: cursed episodes. This has only happened in the eight years
Speaker 2: we've been on air and can counted on one hand
Speaker 2: where we actually did record an episode about this very
Speaker 2: movie two years ago and the audio on my end
Speaker 2: it was unusable and we didn't release it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we're back doing it again.
Speaker 2: I always do feel like it's meant to be. And
Speaker 2: shout out to Alyssa Nutting, who was on the first
Speaker 2: run of this episode. No one's fault, but I do
Speaker 2: always feel like anytime there's a last episode the eventual guest,
Speaker 2: it's just meant to be, and today it feels very
Speaker 2: much the case. So it's our ex Machina episode of
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: That's right, and our guest is a writer based in California.
Speaker 3: She's got books of poems. Her first novel, Whoever You Are, Honey,
Speaker 3: just came out. She's the co host of Say More
Speaker 3: podcast with friend of the cast, Melissa not Oliva. It's
Speaker 3: Olivia Getwood.
Speaker 2: Hello, y, hi everyone, thanks for having me. Welcome.
Speaker 3: Thanks, it's session one for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm so nervous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tables have heard. Now Caitlin and I are
Speaker 2: a two headed Caleb.
Speaker 4: Does that mean I'm the sexy robot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, congratulation.
Speaker 4: To shut off the power.
Speaker 3: Hello, the recording is lost. That's what happened last time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so what happened.
Speaker 2: I think we joked about that at the time, where
Speaker 2: it was like Ava was not pleased with my.
Speaker 4: Takes and she, yeah, just shut it all down.
Speaker 2: She did. I hope she'll be pleased because it is interesting,
Speaker 2: like this is a movie that I feel like every
Speaker 2: time I watch it, I always really like it. But
Speaker 2: I feel like it's hard to watch this movie the
Speaker 2: same way twice, or at least I have found that
Speaker 2: to be true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like, especially as time goes on, as
Speaker 5: like technology gets more advanced, the movie just ages in
Speaker 5: really weird ways.
Speaker 4: But anyway, Yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Is interesting because we originally recorded, you know, before Ava
Speaker 2: sabotaged me. We recorded an episode on this movie in
Speaker 2: summer twenty twenty two, when AI felt more like a
Speaker 2: nebulous thing, and now it, like you know, in the
Speaker 2: ensuing two years, has become a real and present threat
Speaker 2: to almost any industry in an immediate way, like we've
Speaker 2: all gone on strikes about it. Like it's just it's
Speaker 2: interesting looking back in my original notes, like what a
Speaker 2: vague threat it was, and now being like, oh no,
Speaker 2: this is actually it's here and it did come for
Speaker 2: my job. It's not good at it thankfully yet.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker 2: It's so bad, like Ava cannot bullshit the way that
Speaker 2: we can bullshit so far, but let her cook, we
Speaker 2: don't know. Yeah, So on that note, I mean, Olivia,
Speaker 2: what is your relationship to this movie?
Speaker 5: Okay, so I saw I went to see this movie
Speaker 5: in theater when it came out, which was I think
Speaker 5: was thus twenty fourteen, ten years ago or something like that. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 5: And it was a really bizarre experience because I was
Speaker 5: like in my early twenties in college. I had just
Speaker 5: moved away from home. I'd moved from New Mexico to
Speaker 5: New York, and I was like in this big moment
Speaker 5: of looking at my past and looking at my identity
Speaker 5: in these new critical ways, as one does when they
Speaker 5: go off to college. But I was like, you know,
Speaker 5: analyzing all of my relationships with men, my relationship with myself.
Speaker 5: And it was really bizarre because I watched this movie
Speaker 5: and I walked away from it feeling this incredible closeness
Speaker 5: to this robot in a way I hadn't really anticipated.
Speaker 5: Like I watched it and was like I am her,
Speaker 5: she is me, and I couldn't identify it, and it
Speaker 5: felt really profound when I was twenty two. But I
Speaker 5: think what I learned from it was that I felt
Speaker 5: at that point like my entire identity had been built
Speaker 5: and created by men, and it sent me on this
Speaker 5: very long journey that I'm still on of gradually undoing
Speaker 5: the many pieces of fabric of myself that feel sewn
Speaker 5: by someone else. So that was sort of my initial experience,
Speaker 5: and then I've just watched it like every two years
Speaker 5: since then to just check in, to just check in
Speaker 5: on how it's doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is truly like the Turing test of where
Speaker 2: you're at with anything that movie is exploring. The older
Speaker 2: this movie gets, the more I'm like, everyone should watch
Speaker 2: this movie every couple years, if only as like a
Speaker 2: yardstick for their own growth.
Speaker 4: Hmmmm.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Caitlin, what's your history.
Speaker 3: I don't think I saw this movie in theaters, but
Speaker 3: I saw it within a year or two of a
Speaker 3: coming out. There was a lot of hype around it,
Speaker 3: and I'm someone who if I hear about hype about
Speaker 3: a movie, I'm like, I have to see it.
Speaker 2: I have to be a part of the conversation.
Speaker 4: I can't be left out.
Speaker 2: It's a hype man.
Speaker 3: I just have a lot of fomo, is what it is.
Speaker 3: It's not about the hype so much. It's about I
Speaker 3: want to be a part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: Your fingers on the pulse. You see every movie that
Speaker 2: comes out, and that's just a fact pretty much.
Speaker 3: Except I still haven't seen bike.
Speaker 2: Riders, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But otherwise I've seen every movie.
Speaker 4: What is Bike Riders?
Speaker 2: Exactly? What is Bike Riders? Oh gosh, it is what
Speaker 2: it sounds like, I think, unless there's some sort of
Speaker 2: twist in the Bike Riders where they're not riding bikes.
Speaker 5: I did just watch a documentary about Lance Armstrong today.
Speaker 3: It's the other kind of bike. It's the motorbike. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: the motorcycle Boys. And Tom Hardy's there, Austin Butler's there,
Speaker 3: and that's really all I know about it.
Speaker 2: Oh, Jody Komber's there. I love Jody Komber. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: recently had conversation with someone for my other podcast where
Speaker 2: it was like a really interesting conversation, but by far
Speaker 2: the most shocking and random thing the person told me
Speaker 2: was that they love and forgive Lance Armstrong. And it
Speaker 2: was like it just I don't know, I haven't thought
Speaker 2: about the Lance Armstrong scandal in a long time, but
Speaker 2: it was just like so unrelated to what we were
Speaker 2: talking about, but he felt it so strongly, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I have to lead, like I'm not going
Speaker 2: to cut this out of the tape, because clearly he
Speaker 2: needed to let me know, no, and.
Speaker 5: It's going to become a very important part of the
Speaker 5: discourse because of this docu series.
Speaker 4: But also I just finished it.
Speaker 5: And I was literally being like, Okay, whatever you do, Olivia,
Speaker 5: just don't bring up Lance Armstrong on this podcast, do
Speaker 5: not do it. And then I did it in the
Speaker 5: first five minutes, so it's clearly impactful.
Speaker 2: He's on the tip of everyone's tongue. Wait, where is
Speaker 2: this now? All of a sudden, this is a promotional
Speaker 2: explore This is it like on HBO? Where is it?
Speaker 4: It's on Netflix?
Speaker 5: It's too It's a two part thing at there, each
Speaker 5: an hour and a half. It goes into everything I
Speaker 5: personally don't love and forgive Lance Armstrong.
Speaker 2: I don't think I do either.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not like particularly angry at him, but I
Speaker 5: think he's I don't know, he's just like a deeply
Speaker 5: disturbed person, I think, and I think he battles with that,
Speaker 5: but I don't know. I just don't feel love and
Speaker 5: forgiveness towards him. I suppose I feel a bit scared
Speaker 5: of him.
Speaker 2: I think it's weird, like the intimate connection you feel
Speaker 2: with someone having bought their bracelet at eleven years old. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was ultimately the thing where it's like I trusted you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think that's what it was. Okay, and
Speaker 5: then I'll stop, I promise, I'll stop. But I think what.
Speaker 4: It was was that it's the depth of the lie.
Speaker 5: Because everyone in the sport was doping, so it's not
Speaker 5: that he doped. It was the depth with which he
Speaker 5: got angry about people accusing him.
Speaker 4: It was like suing people, slandering people.
Speaker 5: It was that aggression that I think is pretty hard
Speaker 5: to see and then be like I forgive you, you know, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: because it's pretty intense.
Speaker 2: Man, I've got to watch it.
Speaker 3: I mean, connecting it back to the movie. He lied,
Speaker 3: and then there's that part where Ava is like, he's
Speaker 3: not your friend. Nathan lies. He lies about everything. Nathan, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there you go.
Speaker 5: And Oscar Isaac is a bit of a Lance Armstrong.
Speaker 5: They are certainly cut from the same cloth.
Speaker 3: There's a type.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 3: So I saw the movie oh right, I'm sorry, probably
Speaker 3: like twenty fifteen or so, and I thought it was
Speaker 3: really well done. I thought it was cool production design.
Speaker 3: I don't think I saw it again after that, though,
Speaker 3: until we recorded the episode that has lost.
Speaker 2: Two years ago for sure, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's it's a little too It's not a.
Speaker 2: Romp, so certainly not.
Speaker 3: I usually don't go back and revisit movies that are
Speaker 3: not romps. But I think it's a good movie, and
Speaker 3: I think it's gonna generate a fascinating discussion among us.
Speaker 2: It's an awesome movie for this specific podcast. There's no death,
Speaker 2: there's no denying.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I did not see this movie in theaters when it
Speaker 2: came out, I think, so I watched it the year after.
Speaker 2: But I actually I saw this movie in theaters for
Speaker 2: the first time because as an AMC stubs member, they
Speaker 2: re released a lot of a twenty four movies in
Speaker 2: theaters for like one or two days only in the
Speaker 2: last couple of months, and I was fortunately free the
Speaker 2: day X Machino was screening, and so I got to
Speaker 2: see it in a theater for the first time. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think I've probably seen this movie five times now,
Speaker 2: maybe more. But Olivia a similar deal like where it's
Speaker 2: like every couple years, I'll rewatch this movie and I
Speaker 2: really like it. Alex Garland on the whole, I actually
Speaker 2: don't really know because I did not see men or
Speaker 2: Civil War. I like Annihilation, but ex Machina, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like definitely my favorite of his that I've seen
Speaker 2: so far. And I don't know. I had in my
Speaker 2: notes from two years ago and I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: good for her, that's funny. I had it as like
Speaker 2: alternate title my Weekend with Elon, and that is true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I think this movie is like really good. It's
Speaker 2: really good. I feel a little differently about it every
Speaker 2: time I watch it, and so this is the encapsulation
Speaker 2: of how I felt about it on this watch. But
Speaker 2: similar to you, Olivia, I felt very connected to Ava,
Speaker 2: and the more I watch, I mean the connection to Ava,
Speaker 2: and I know this is like so in conversation with
Speaker 2: your novel, Like the first time I watched this movie.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I said this in our original
Speaker 2: version of the episode. The first time I watched this movie,
Speaker 2: I fell for it, fell for everything it was possible
Speaker 2: to fall for totally, which I think is why I've
Speaker 2: rewatched it so much, because when you rewatch it, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's like I mean, it's partially that
Speaker 2: I'm rewatching it and partially that I am ten years
Speaker 2: older than when I first saw it and as time
Speaker 2: goes on. You know, originally I was shocked at the
Speaker 2: ending and really intrigued and like, oh now I for
Speaker 2: real love Ava, you know when you see what she
Speaker 2: does at the end of this movie. But I was
Speaker 2: genuinely shocked and pulled in by all of the choices
Speaker 2: this movie is making to convince you that Caleb is
Speaker 2: a good guy. And now it's like, looking back on
Speaker 2: my first viewing, it's almost like a little bit embarrassing
Speaker 2: to be like whatever, twenty two year old me was
Speaker 2: too drawn in by the good guy aesthetic of Caleb's
Speaker 2: character to realize that he never considered taking Kyoko with him.
Speaker 2: So he's a bad guy, like and it just like
Speaker 2: grows with you in the way that good movies due.
Speaker 2: And I'm really excited to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Same. Yeah, let's take a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 3: come back for the recap. And we're back, and here's
Speaker 3: the story of Ex Machina. We meet Caleb Smith played
Speaker 3: by Donald Gleason. He has just received news that he
Speaker 3: won something, which turns out to be a weekend getaway
Speaker 3: with his boss, who is an uber rich tech mogul
Speaker 3: who we will find out created a company called Blue Book,
Speaker 3: which is basically Google.
Speaker 2: I'm almost certain this is the first movie I saw
Speaker 2: Oscar Isaac in.
Speaker 4: I think that's true for me to maybe me too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a strong debut, I know that. I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure if I'm remembering correctly, I had seen Dominic Gleason
Speaker 2: before in an episode of Black Mirror, which you could
Speaker 2: argue this movie is a very long episode of Black Mirror.
Speaker 4: True.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And they love guys like that for Black Mirror.
Speaker 5: They just love guys like that. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: His eyes are a little too far apart. They're like, yes,
Speaker 2: we're gonna light him in aggressively blue lighting and it'll
Speaker 2: be haunting.
Speaker 5: And Oscar Isaac just has incredible range, like seeing this
Speaker 5: his first and then seeing kind of who he is
Speaker 5: and what he can do. I mean, I think it
Speaker 5: kicked off like my deep parasocial romance with him.
Speaker 3: Absolutely right there with you, right there with you.
Speaker 2: He is a star and the truth and like god,
Speaker 2: he's so he's so evil, but he's so hot in
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 5: It's really amazing, ridiculous. Yeah, the merging of those two things.
Speaker 5: I will say I had a conversation with my friend
Speaker 5: once who builds self driving cars. And he was explaining
Speaker 5: to me the difference between an engineer and a founder
Speaker 5: and how they are two very different personalities in the
Speaker 5: tech world. And he said that one of his qualms
Speaker 5: with this movie was that Oscar Isaac is much more
Speaker 5: of a founder, which he is in the movie, but
Speaker 5: he's much more of a founder than like a coder,
Speaker 5: Like those are two different things.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating. So it's like the jobs versus the Wosniak
Speaker 2: kind of deal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and that like this guy wouldn't be like
Speaker 5: living in the middle of nowhere remotely, like he would
Speaker 5: be somewhere very forward facing. So I thought that was interesting,
Speaker 5: but I still deeply love the character.
Speaker 2: That is kind of fascinating to me. It's like, I
Speaker 2: guess I, over the many viewings of this have like
Speaker 2: filled in the blanks of my mind to my own
Speaker 2: satisfaction of like, why would someone with this much rocker
Speaker 2: arma he choose to live in the woods. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: then sometimes I'm like, well, a lot of times, like
Speaker 2: maybe more often than not, people with charisma are very insecure.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's leaning into it, but yeah, that, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: never heard that like that clear of a delineation and
Speaker 2: that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's not alone.
Speaker 3: No, well, he surrounded himself with many sex spots of
Speaker 3: his own creation.
Speaker 2: Yes, his girlies, his cur his girls are there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's grew. These are his girls. He is grew.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Caleb is delivered via helicopter to his boss
Speaker 3: is very large, very remote estate slash research facility. I
Speaker 3: guess I was thinking, like, oh, he probably doesn't live
Speaker 3: there full time. He probably just like goes there when
Speaker 3: he needs to, like think and make other sex spots.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 2: I love that everyone has their version of like, how
Speaker 2: does this hot guy who's good at talking to people?
Speaker 4: Why is he here?
Speaker 5: Everyone's like, if we were in a relationship, he would
Speaker 5: come to see me. I think everyone's just writing this
Speaker 5: story in their head. He would definitely fly to LA
Speaker 5: and hang out, and then he would have to go
Speaker 5: sometimes and that would be okay. I mean he has
Speaker 5: to work, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when he was away, he would be doing normal.
Speaker 3: Stuff, right, And he built me a replica of himself
Speaker 3: that I get to hang out with when he's off
Speaker 3: doing other stuff. Anyway, So we're at this very remote place.
Speaker 3: Caleb arrives and enters this place that belongs to Nathan
Speaker 3: played by Oscar Isaac, who he meets shortly thereafter. Nathan
Speaker 3: explains that in this house, some rooms are open, others
Speaker 3: are off limit, and a key card that has been
Speaker 3: issue to Caleb will let him know which rooms he
Speaker 3: does and does not have access to.
Speaker 2: This troope, I know goes back probably centuries, but I
Speaker 2: always think of it as like Beauty and the Beast
Speaker 2: the West Wing, Like you will not go to the
Speaker 2: west wing because that's where the thing is. And yeah,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, he's you know, the Beasting.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. And then he's like, but this huge library,
Speaker 3: you can go to it as much as you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do feel like in some ways, yeah, Caleb
Speaker 2: and Nathan, at least on the surface, are kind of
Speaker 2: Beauty and the Beast coded this outsider enters the castle
Speaker 2: and you can only go to certain sections.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're right, and the other inhabitants aren't what you
Speaker 3: think they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's kind of a reverse where like
Speaker 2: you think they are people but they're not. But it's this,
Speaker 2: it's flipped any other one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So Nathan then makes Caleb sign a pretty ominous
Speaker 3: non disclosure agreement fifty shades of gray.
Speaker 4: Vibes, Yes, right, very much, you will be on birth control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, I feel like I wiped that from my mind,
Speaker 2: but he does say that, Yeah, it truly does.
Speaker 3: And then Nathan tells Caleb that he has developed AI
Speaker 3: and he wants Caleb to help him test it via
Speaker 3: the Turing test, which is not a test where two
Speaker 3: people of a marginalized gender speak to each other about
Speaker 3: something other than a man. It is. Instead, it's a
Speaker 3: different test. The Turning test is past when a human
Speaker 3: interacts with a computer, but they don't know that they're
Speaker 3: interacting with a computer because the computer's AI is advanced
Speaker 3: enough that it seems human.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's the funniest part is like that the
Speaker 2: people in this movie are also not doing the Turing test.
Speaker 2: They're doing a secret third thing, Like they're not doing
Speaker 2: the Bechtel or the Turing test. They're just doing Oscar.
Speaker 5: Isaac's little idea because he's like, the Turing test isn't
Speaker 5: advanced enough for me. Like he's like, I would if
Speaker 5: this was about that, you would have fallen for it already.
Speaker 5: So yeah, right, see the computer, He's like.
Speaker 2: I'm this is the four D chest version of the
Speaker 2: Turf test.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the Nathan Test, and yeah, the AI
Speaker 3: that Caleb will be performing the test on turns out
Speaker 3: to be Ava, played by Alicia Wikander, who is visibly
Speaker 3: a robot, but she has a womanish form, a very
Speaker 3: lifelike human face, a female sounding voice. She is a
Speaker 3: lady robot basically.
Speaker 2: Alicia Vikander is so good in this movie. She's amazing,
Speaker 2: so good mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And she and Caleb meet and chat for a
Speaker 3: bit as Nathan observes via monitors from another room. They
Speaker 3: have their like first session together, and then afterward the
Speaker 3: two men talk about how awesome Ava is, which something
Speaker 3: something the reverse Bechdel test. I don't know if that
Speaker 3: means they failed it or they passed it, because I
Speaker 3: keep forgetting what the reverse Bechtel test.
Speaker 2: Is, right, and that connects to like how you perceive Ava.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, and we'll talk a lot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But that night, Caleb can't sleep, so he turns on
Speaker 3: the TV and sees what appears to be live footage
Speaker 3: of Ava sitting at a desk or something. It's weird,
Speaker 3: but then there's a power outage and Caleb is temporarily
Speaker 3: trapped in his room. The power comes back on, he
Speaker 3: finds Nathan, who is drunk. It's established that Nathan drinks
Speaker 3: a lot of alcohol throughout the movie.
Speaker 2: He is mostly drinking light beer and not to be like,
Speaker 2: I know, not to like stress test someone's alcoholism or
Speaker 2: anything like that, but it's like he's like I drink
Speaker 2: four light beers and I can't stand up.
Speaker 5: And then he's like wasted, I know, And he never
Speaker 5: really drinks anything harder than that. I'm like, he's got
Speaker 5: to be putting them back with the condition he's in.
Speaker 2: Just speaking as a member of the Irish American community,
Speaker 2: I have questions like, yeah, four cores light and you
Speaker 2: don't know if you have your idea or not, buddy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe he's drinking more than we see. There's also
Speaker 3: a few scenes where he's drinking.
Speaker 2: What appears to be because he's taking a lot of shots.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, he's doing vodka or some clear.
Speaker 2: I just love this scene where it's like he's at
Speaker 2: his lowest and he's next to like four courts light
Speaker 2: and you're like, yeah, if that your lowest, you can
Speaker 2: be healed.
Speaker 4: Yeah I could fix you. I can fix you.
Speaker 3: Well, here's my theory. Kyoko had come and cleaned up
Speaker 3: other bottles that he had drank earlier. That's my theory.
Speaker 4: She kind of erases the proof.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because she's always cleaning up after him. He has
Speaker 3: clearly programmed her to be his maid in addition to
Speaker 3: his sex bot.
Speaker 5: Which the first time I saw this movie, I did
Speaker 5: not know she was a robot. Me too, that's another
Speaker 5: thing I fell for that. Now I'm like, why did
Speaker 5: I fall She's so obviously a robot?
Speaker 4: But I really did not know that.
Speaker 2: And I was like on the second viewing, and I wonder,
Speaker 2: we'll never know. But in the first like, I feel
Speaker 2: like I would try to obvious gate that in subsequent
Speaker 2: viewings where because it is so obvious where it's just like, oh,
Speaker 2: this woman I see who is always paying attention but
Speaker 2: also has this bizarre forty yard stare. I wonder if
Speaker 2: she's a robot.
Speaker 3: Like on.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad we all fell for it. Honestly, it
Speaker 2: puts me at ease.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Nathan's like, don't even worry about the power outages. Whatever.
Speaker 3: The point is here that things are starting to feel weird.
Speaker 3: And then the next morning, a sexy woman comes into
Speaker 3: Caleb's room and brings a tray of food. We will
Speaker 3: learn that this is Kyoko.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, us ten years ago are like, hmm, that's weird.
Speaker 2: I wonder what she's like.
Speaker 4: We're like, oh, sexy woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is this real human person all about? Anyway?
Speaker 3: Kyoko is played by Sonoya Mizuno. She brings this tray
Speaker 3: of food to Caleb. Then Caleb has another session with
Speaker 3: Ava where she wants to know more about him, this
Speaker 3: time because he had previously asked her a bunch of questions.
Speaker 3: And during their session there's another power and Ava is like,
Speaker 3: by the way, Nathan is not your friend. He lies
Speaker 3: a lot, he cannot be trusted. And Caleb is like,
Speaker 3: what what do you mean? What's going on? Later that night,
Speaker 3: at dinner, Kyoko comes back. She is serving Nathan and Caleb.
Speaker 3: Nathan makes a remark that she doesn't speak any English.
Speaker 3: He also be rates her because she spills wine. So
Speaker 3: we get a glimpse of how Nathan treats women or
Speaker 3: people who we perceive as human women.
Speaker 2: Right, it is fascinating because it's like we will never
Speaker 2: know because of spoiler alert what happens to Nathan, but
Speaker 2: how Nathan treats women who he has to respect, or
Speaker 2: like that, how Nathan treats women outside of this environment.
Speaker 2: I guess I'll say, yeah, will never know. I suspect
Speaker 2: it would be different. I just would be so fascinating
Speaker 2: and not encouraging anyone to make a sequel to a movie,
Speaker 2: make no mistake, but like, I would be so interested
Speaker 2: to just know how Nathan treats people outside of this environment,
Speaker 2: and like, is he less arrogant or more so? Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, there's so many flavors of this kind
Speaker 2: of like tech guy personality, but you only really get
Speaker 2: a sample size of how he treats one person who
Speaker 2: he knows to be a human, but as we sort
Speaker 2: of later learn, he is evaluated to not really be
Speaker 2: a human based on his life.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, we need like.
Speaker 5: A tell all from Nathan's college ex girlfriend, you know,
Speaker 5: like an Andrew Huberman. We need an Andrew Huberman moment
Speaker 5: for Nathan. We just need the girl is to come
Speaker 5: together and talk about it.
Speaker 2: People are so judgmental and horrible when someone's ex girlfriend
Speaker 2: sells a tell all memoir, But they are critical historical documents.
Speaker 4: Huge, yeah, hugely important.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, sure, yeah.
Speaker 5: That was one of my critiques about the Lance Armstrong documentaries.
Speaker 5: They did not ask his girlfriends enough questions. Really, Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: I wondered that when it came out. I was like,
Speaker 5: what did Cheryl Crow know? And nobody still still nobody
Speaker 5: asks what Cheryl Crow knew? You know, like because you
Speaker 5: have to know that your partner's like hyped up on steroids,
Speaker 5: but nobody asks.
Speaker 2: See this is fascinating because I watched the Cheryl Crow
Speaker 2: documentary that came out two years ago, and she avoids
Speaker 2: the subject of Lance Armstrong and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we need to know. The people need to know.
Speaker 3: I bet she signed an NDA like Nathan makes Caleb signe.
Speaker 2: Definitely what I don't understand about NDAs, especially when the
Speaker 2: person you signed an NDA with is diminished in the
Speaker 2: public eye, financially, all these things, why not just defy it?
Speaker 2: This is me being naive, but I'm just like, at
Speaker 2: some point, if someone is significantly less powerful, or if
Speaker 2: you're in a more powerful position than when you signed it,
Speaker 2: why not just say fuck? I mean people do, but
Speaker 2: I just wonder, like, how often do you hear people
Speaker 2: going to court over Hey, this NDA I signed twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago about something illegal I was doing, Like
Speaker 2: surely there's a way to pull vault over it, but
Speaker 2: maybe not. I don't know. I haven't signed enough NDAs.
Speaker 5: Humans are like so silly in that way. Like I'm
Speaker 5: always like looking at the lines in the road and
Speaker 5: I'm like.
Speaker 4: We're so silly. We're just driving between these lines because
Speaker 4: they're painted there. You know. I'm so glad we are,
Speaker 4: but we're so silly. We just do it.
Speaker 5: We just are like, ooh, there's a white line that
Speaker 5: is actually not an obstruction at all.
Speaker 4: But I have to stay on this side of it.
Speaker 5: You know. We're just like little rule followers at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, which is related.
Speaker 4: To this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're binary little freaks. And it's like probably has
Speaker 2: everything to do with why all three of us us
Speaker 2: fill for everything movie wants us to fall for and
Speaker 2: this for the first time we watch it, it's just,
Speaker 2: I don't know, this movie makes me feel so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I like it so much.
Speaker 5: I know, it felt like a real love story the
Speaker 5: first time I saw it, And then you watch it
Speaker 5: over and over and you're like, there is no conversation
Speaker 5: happening between these two people, like that could serve as
Speaker 5: any real meaningful connection totally.
Speaker 3: But so few movies like romantic movies or you know,
Speaker 3: rom coms, anything like that. The position two people falling
Speaker 3: in love.
Speaker 2: They don't have.
Speaker 3: Any substantial conversations either that would lead to any audience
Speaker 3: to believe, oh, these people are romantically compatible. Like we
Speaker 3: just never see that on screen, except for maybe in
Speaker 3: the movie Before Sunrise. But like other than that.
Speaker 2: Whoa we have to do? We just had to do
Speaker 2: the Before trilogy like as a month on the podcast.
Speaker 2: We really do, We simply must.
Speaker 3: But anyway, sorry, Nathan's a piece of shit to hismbots
Speaker 3: is the point here. Then Caleb has a third session
Speaker 3: with Avia. It seems like he has one every day
Speaker 3: and that he's there for like a week. In this session,
Speaker 3: they talk about hypothetically going on a date, and then
Speaker 3: she puts on some clothes and a wig and it
Speaker 3: makes her seem even more human, and then she's flirting
Speaker 3: with him and she says that she can tell that
Speaker 3: he's attracted to her, and Caleb is like.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know, tih.
Speaker 3: And the point is they're vibing, or so we think.
Speaker 3: And then Caleb goes to Nathan and He's like, why
Speaker 3: did you give ai sexuality? Why did you give it gender?
Speaker 3: Like did you do this to like throw me off?
Speaker 3: And Nathan is like, no, she legit likes you. And
Speaker 3: by the way, if you wanted to have sex with her,
Speaker 3: you could because I gave her a robot vagina.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, by the way, there is a computer pussy,
Speaker 2: not that you asked, and it's okay, And she would
Speaker 2: like it, he says, she would like it. Can you
Speaker 2: imagine a person you should trust less about, like how
Speaker 2: to find the glitterists any sort of clittoral stimulation? Yeah,
Speaker 2: like absolutely not. No, Like, Nathan's not the guy you're
Speaker 2: supposed to like it. Yeah, beside his like pyramid of course,
Speaker 2: like come on and his Jackson Pollock painting. Oh my god, yes,
Speaker 2: I can't believe that I didn't. I mean whatever, you
Speaker 2: know that the movie clearly telegraphs that Nathan is a
Speaker 2: piece of shit, But the whole Jackson Pollock thing, yeah,
Speaker 2: like recently out of college, Jamie was like a haw Wow,
Speaker 2: it makes so much sense because you just don't have
Speaker 2: a better understanding of the best regarded male artist of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. Yeah, you're like they're fine, They're fine,
Speaker 2: most of them are fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So then Caleb, but now that the idea
Speaker 3: of like going on a date with her and all
Speaker 3: this stuff is in the air, he's fantasizing about kissing Ava.
Speaker 3: Right around now is when Ava reveals that it's her
Speaker 3: causing the power outages because of her like battery charging
Speaker 3: station or something.
Speaker 2: It's good old fashioned sci fi YadA YadA, which I love, right.
Speaker 3: Caleb also confronts Nathan because he realizes that he didn't
Speaker 3: actually win any competition. That Nathan specifically selected him to
Speaker 3: perform the Turing test, but it's not for the reasons
Speaker 3: that Caleb realizes at this moment. He's just like, oh, like,
Speaker 3: you handpicked me because I'm so good at coding. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much. And then then Caleb sees a weird
Speaker 3: interaction between Nathan and Ava where Nathan rips up one
Speaker 3: of her drawings. It's established that she makes a drawing
Speaker 3: every day, so we see Nathan be really cruel to
Speaker 3: Ava in this moment.
Speaker 2: I'm always surprised that Caleb manages in the first like
Speaker 2: beautiful spirograph illustration that Ava gives him one of the
Speaker 2: consistent reactions I have to. The first illustration is like,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't you say, wow, that's so awesome, Like it's true,
Speaker 2: it's true. And also the way this is a deep
Speaker 2: seated family memory. But every Christmas, my mom. If you're
Speaker 2: a parent and you don't do this, here's a hot tip.
Speaker 2: My mom had a brilliant idea to let her and
Speaker 2: my dad sleep until seven am on Christmas morning. She
Speaker 2: would have Santa quote unquote in case you didn't know,
Speaker 2: Santa would leave us a present that was very interactive
Speaker 2: at the foot of our bed. So when my brother
Speaker 2: and I inevitably woke up at the crack of dawn,
Speaker 2: there would already be a present from Santa. And the
Speaker 2: rule was you could open the present in your room,
Speaker 2: but you had to wait until seven thirty to go downstairs.
Speaker 2: And so it would always be like something that would
Speaker 2: keep you distracted, which is a brilliant idea. I don't
Speaker 2: know where she got it from.
Speaker 4: That's so smart.
Speaker 2: It was awesome. So every year we had something, it
Speaker 2: was like a book or an art project or whatever
Speaker 2: it was. And like one year, I remember I had
Speaker 2: like a little spirograph project, which was basically whatever the
Speaker 2: human version of what Ava is doing and also clearly
Speaker 2: connected to the Jackson Pollock motif in this movie, and
Speaker 2: I always think about that every time I watch this movie.
Speaker 2: So anyway, as parents, if you need your kids to
Speaker 2: shut the fuck up until seven thirty on a holiday morning,
Speaker 2: there's a hot tip.
Speaker 4: I love that, good ones, It's really beautiful.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: But yeah, to your point, Jamie, Caleb looks at it
Speaker 3: and he's just like, what the fuck is that? She's like,
Speaker 3: you know, one, I thought you could tell.
Speaker 2: Me common reaction to Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So then there's a weird situation where Kyoko starts
Speaker 3: undressing in front of Caleb and he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: don't do that. And then Nathan comes in drunk once again,
Speaker 3: and he and Kyoko do a choreographed dance which I
Speaker 3: would say is not as good as the dance that
Speaker 3: Megan does in the movie.
Speaker 2: Megan, well, but Kyoko walks, so Megan could run be serious.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, of course, yes, true.
Speaker 2: I would say. I know for a fact that the
Speaker 2: one thing I saw of this movie before I saw it,
Speaker 2: because I didn't see it during the you know, theatrical release,
Speaker 2: was the clip of Oscar Isaac dancing. I saw this
Speaker 2: clip before. I feel like this clip went viral before
Speaker 2: I had any idea who Oscar Isaac even was, and
Speaker 2: what a.
Speaker 3: Good way to see him for the first time. Also,
Speaker 3: I take it back, it's a good dance.
Speaker 4: It's a really good dance. Yeah, and it's weird.
Speaker 5: The lighting is good, the choreography is good, the music
Speaker 5: is fun.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's also.
Speaker 5: Like maybe like a move that if it happened in
Speaker 5: a film now, you'd be like, Okay, that's like quirky
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 4: But in twenty fourteen felt.
Speaker 5: Really fresh for like this tonally very stark, like very
Speaker 5: clinical movie, kind of eerie movie, to have this brief
Speaker 5: lapse into not necessarily joy, but like a sinister joy.
Speaker 4: Totally, there was something really new about it. I felt
Speaker 4: like at the time.
Speaker 2: I totally agree, and I feel like, whatever, in the
Speaker 2: last ten years, the way that we view tech founders
Speaker 2: versus now is so different, and I feel like even
Speaker 2: at the time, I don't know, I can't say for sure,
Speaker 2: but I feel like ten years ago when I saw
Speaker 2: this movie for the first time, you see it and
Speaker 2: you think of every tech founder as like not a dancer,
Speaker 2: you know, like you think of them as like Bill
Speaker 2: Gates pull vaulting over a computer chair, and like, when
Speaker 2: I saw this movie for the first time, I didn't necessarily,
Speaker 2: I don't think think of tech founders as inherently sinister
Speaker 2: or potentially sexy. Totally. Everything about that clip defies like
Speaker 2: because you just view in my mind like a doork
Speaker 2: on a computer. Yeah, and you just don't think of
Speaker 2: them as having Oscar isaacs. But that was the end.
Speaker 5: I thought, Yeah, I feel like a lot of tech
Speaker 5: founders slash engineers could watch this movie and be really
Speaker 5: offended by being portrayed as villains. But I really think
Speaker 5: they should be grateful. I think this is a reputation
Speaker 5: renovation for them. Yes, you know, because I'm not watching
Speaker 5: this movie thinking, you, I don't want to have sex
Speaker 5: with that man.
Speaker 4: That is not what I'm thinking. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, Wow, the ways in which I want
Speaker 2: to have sex with this man have become infinitely complicated. Exactly.
Speaker 4: Yes, am I unpacking those desires?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, but what I say, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Boy. Well, in the next session with Ava, she asks
Speaker 3: Caleb what will happen if she fails the Turing test,
Speaker 3: Like will she be shut off? And Caleb's like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, and she's like, well, I want to be
Speaker 3: with you. Do you want to be with me? And
Speaker 3: he's like, I don't know. Then we cut to Nathan
Speaker 3: revealing to Caleb that Ava is one of many AI
Speaker 3: models that he created. They keep getting better and better,
Speaker 3: and he thinks the next version after Ava will be
Speaker 3: the real deal. That he plans to reprogram Ava, which
Speaker 3: will effectively wipe her consciousness and kill her more or less, which,
Speaker 3: based on her line of questioning a few moments earlier,
Speaker 3: is something that she's worried might happen. Then, after Nathan
Speaker 3: passes out he is drunk again, Caleb steals his key
Speaker 3: card so that he can access Nathan's private files, where
Speaker 3: he sees all of this footage of various woman robots
Speaker 3: that Nathan has created, one of whom destroys herself trying
Speaker 3: to get out of this prison. Other ones are sort
Speaker 3: of just not even mobile, it seems. Then Caleb goes
Speaker 3: and finds all of these actually physical models of the
Speaker 3: older fembots. Kyoko walks up to him and she peels
Speaker 3: her skin away to reveal that she has been a robot.
Speaker 2: This whole time, and then imagine the shock the first
Speaker 2: time you see this movie and at no other time.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's true.
Speaker 3: Yes, And now Caleb is concerned that he might be
Speaker 3: a robot and doesn't even know it. So he cuts
Speaker 3: himself to see if he'll bleed, which he does, and
Speaker 3: so he's like, I'm a real boy to quote Pinocchio,
Speaker 3: Pinocchio and track.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, speaking of someone walked so the other could
Speaker 2: run Pinocchio and track. Yeahah yea yea yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay. So then there's another session between Caleb and Ava
Speaker 3: where he tells her his plan to rescue her. He's
Speaker 3: going to get Nathan drunk again, steal his key card again,
Speaker 3: and then program the security systems to lock Nathan inside.
Speaker 3: He just needs Ava to trigger a power cut at
Speaker 3: ten o'clock and I don't know if that's a M
Speaker 3: or PM, but ten o'clock.
Speaker 2: And at this point I feel like I was so
Speaker 2: programmed to trust an insecure man with a bowl cut
Speaker 2: that I'm so embarrassed to watch this movie repeatedly because
Speaker 2: you're like, surely his intentions are pure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, You're like they're in love, that he wants her
Speaker 5: to be a person in the world. He believes in
Speaker 5: her liberation. They're gonna do this and he's gonna free her.
Speaker 5: Go Caleb, is that what a bull cut looks like?
Speaker 3: Sorry, I know this is not well.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the bull was a little fucked up.
Speaker 2: It's more like like an adult Justin Bieber. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: Justin Bieber's an adult now, but like you know, at
Speaker 2: the time, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so he has this whole plan to get Ava
Speaker 3: out of there, but oh no, Nathan reveals that he
Speaker 3: knows all about Caleb's little plan to help Ava escape,
Speaker 3: and that the real test was to use Caleb as
Speaker 3: a pawn to see if Ava could use things like
Speaker 3: self awareness, imagination, empathy, manipulation, sexuality to convince Caleb to
Speaker 3: help her escape. Because if those things are not AI,
Speaker 3: then what is. So Caleb is like, oh no, just kidding,
Speaker 3: I'm one step ahead of you. He anticipated all of this,
Speaker 3: and he already went behind Nathan's back and reprogrammed the
Speaker 3: security protocols.
Speaker 2: Which is the first and only impressive thing that Caleb
Speaker 2: does in this entire making by my accounting, because I
Speaker 2: hadn't seen this movie in two years and that was
Speaker 2: the only thing that I kind of forgot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: Caleb is two steps ahead of him, and that is impressive.
Speaker 2: Everything else he does is pretty naive and foolish, but like,
Speaker 2: that was pretty good. He had me there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I continued to fall for this plot point each time,
Speaker 5: which to me means it's.
Speaker 2: A good twist for sure, right, because it's not even unbelievable, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Caleb is smarter than Nathan is giving him credit for
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Caleb going behind Nathan's back like this obviously infuriates Nathan,
Speaker 3: so he punches Caleb and knocks him out. But this
Speaker 3: reprogramming that he's done unseals all of the doors following
Speaker 3: Ava's power cut, allowing Ava to come out of her
Speaker 3: room for the first time ever, we're led to believe,
Speaker 3: and she attacks Nathan. Then Kyoko stabs him in the back. Also,
Speaker 3: there's a brief interaction where Ava approaches Kyoko and whispers
Speaker 3: something in her ear, which we don't hear, so it
Speaker 3: doesn't pass the back to test, but they seem to
Speaker 3: be conspiring together. Now, Yeah, Kyoko stabs Nathan in the back.
Speaker 3: Ava stabs him in the gut, and he bleeds out
Speaker 3: and dies. Then Ava takes the human like skin off
Speaker 3: of a decommissioned fem bot, puts on some clothes, gives
Speaker 3: herself a little makeover, a little glow up.
Speaker 2: Of all of the makeover secrein dozen cinema history, this
Speaker 2: is one that I'm like, you have to ye, I mean,
Speaker 2: if this isn't earned, what is, yeah, for sure? If
Speaker 2: not stealing your fellow skin, your sister, your fellow sister's skin,
Speaker 2: then what else are you doing? He's not using it,
Speaker 2: She's not real, nor are you.
Speaker 3: Right? So she's doing this all while Caleb is watching
Speaker 3: trapped in a room nearby, and Ava leaves him there
Speaker 3: and he's freaking out. He's desperately trying to escape, but
Speaker 3: it's futile because that's what you get when you mess
Speaker 3: with AI.
Speaker 2: Okay, truly an ultimate example of fucking around and finding
Speaker 2: out is so true what Caleb experience is here for sure.
Speaker 4: Also, I really love that Oscar.
Speaker 5: I keep saying Oscar, Isaac Nate fine, but Nathan's last
Speaker 5: word is unreal, which I love, Yeah, because I feel
Speaker 5: like the way he says it is like very just
Speaker 5: colloquially like Broie.
Speaker 2: Just kind of like unreal.
Speaker 3: It's unreal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but the word like when boiled down to its
Speaker 5: actual meaning, is perfect thematically.
Speaker 4: I think that's really smart.
Speaker 3: I didn't even connect those stots.
Speaker 2: This movie is so good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a really smart movie.
Speaker 2: This movie is so good. It's fucked up. Yeah it's great.
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay. So Eva escapes on her own. She doesn't
Speaker 3: need a man to save her, she does it all herself.
Speaker 2: She gets on Domino Glayson's damn helicopter.
Speaker 4: No one stops to be like, wait, are.
Speaker 2: You Domino, and she's like yeah, somehow.
Speaker 5: Also, she walks through the forest in five inch stiletto
Speaker 5: heels like they're actually pumps. They are pumps, and she's
Speaker 5: in a pencil skirt and a top, which is so
Speaker 5: twenty fourteen. And and the helicopter guy is not like,
Speaker 5: where did you come from?
Speaker 4: I have never taken you here before.
Speaker 2: I loved that because this movie, I feel like, does
Speaker 2: a lot of things that makes it feel side of time,
Speaker 2: but that specific sequence does not like it's and it's
Speaker 2: kind of great. It's kind of nostalgic to look back on, like, sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: we are to believe because yeah, the heels always get me.
Speaker 2: Because whatever, like the Jurassic Park reboots get into hot
Speaker 2: water over heels in Wildlife years later, but in an
Speaker 2: A twenty four movie, we're like, no, it's a it's
Speaker 2: a metaphor, Like you, no, it's not. It's just like
Speaker 2: men making the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I thought you saw a scene where she's
Speaker 3: holding the heels as she's like clothes.
Speaker 4: Well maybe there is that, yeah you're saying.
Speaker 3: But you know what a dead giveaway for the five
Speaker 3: that she's not human would have been after like trapesing
Speaker 3: through the woods. She would have been sweaty, there would
Speaker 3: have been like twigs in her hair. And she shows
Speaker 3: up to the helicopter looking absolutely perfect. So the helicopter
Speaker 3: pilot should have been like, are you a robot? But
Speaker 3: we don't see that.
Speaker 2: This is something that I am waiting for people to
Speaker 2: catch onto, is that women are also perfect when they
Speaker 2: look like shit, Like.
Speaker 3: It's it is true, it's yeah, well okay, So I
Speaker 3: have two theories about what happened with the helicopter. Either
Speaker 3: he was like who are you I'm supposed to be
Speaker 3: picking up Don log Gleason, and she kills him and
Speaker 3: then just drives the helicopter herself. The way that like
Speaker 3: in the Matrix when they're like, I need to learn
Speaker 3: how to fly this exact model of helicopter and they
Speaker 3: just like download it into their thing. Because she's a robot,
Speaker 3: I figured she just knows how to do that. Or
Speaker 3: the guy's just like, oh, pretty lady, sure i'll give
Speaker 3: you a ride and he just doesn't ask any questions
Speaker 3: beyond that, or I.
Speaker 2: Mean, like you could get into the whole like who
Speaker 2: are we to say who hired? Like the person flying
Speaker 2: the helicopter day one, probably not the person flying the
Speaker 2: helicopter day six, probably not his helicopter. He just needs
Speaker 2: to pick up the person in the field on the day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and she is because she's an AI. I imagine
Speaker 5: she's a master manipulator because it's like she's a computer.
Speaker 5: I feel like she's good at everything. Yeah, so I
Speaker 5: feel like she could just as easily come up with
Speaker 5: an explanation. Also, like you said, she's very beautiful. I
Speaker 5: feel like in my mind, I'm like, she's just going
Speaker 5: to seduce him.
Speaker 2: But yeah, she can get I mean that's like part
Speaker 2: of what I feel like the initial appeal to me
Speaker 2: about Ava was was that like she allowed and enabled
Speaker 2: me to I don't know, like engage in this intentionality
Speaker 2: fantasy that I was not capable of on my first viewing,
Speaker 2: and that I mean maybe that's a post movie discussion,
Speaker 2: it almost certainly is. But like the fact that, like I,
Speaker 2: especially in the first viewing, I fell for everything, and
Speaker 2: then the twist that Ava had been thinking about it
Speaker 2: harder because it's implied that she's coming from an objective standpoint,
Speaker 2: really did like hit and like felt like, oh right,
Speaker 2: Like she is coming from an objective I mean whatever,
Speaker 2: she's coming from Alex Garlands standpoint, but in the world
Speaker 2: of the movie, she's coming from an objective standpoint, and
Speaker 2: that she knew better than to make choices that I
Speaker 2: might have made, and that like made be want to
Speaker 2: wear her skin as she wore the skin of others.
Speaker 3: Yes, So anyway, she takes the helicopter and we see
Speaker 3: a quick shot of her like entering society, presumably undetected
Speaker 3: as AI. She seems to like, you know, assimilate as
Speaker 3: a human.
Speaker 2: She sees her intersection.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, she sees her intersection.
Speaker 2: That's her fondest wish is to see people at an intersection,
Speaker 2: which is very Zoe Dationelle circa two thousand and six
Speaker 2: of her quirky.
Speaker 5: It's such a quirky and such a perfect answer to
Speaker 5: give on a date. If you want someone to immediately
Speaker 5: fall in love with you, I know it is like
Speaker 5: you can take me to the least interesting place ever
Speaker 5: that will cost you no money at all, and I'll
Speaker 5: have an amazing time because everything's new to me.
Speaker 2: I think there is an argument that, like, and this
Speaker 2: is no disrespect to the actor herself, like that you
Speaker 2: could show Ava every like Zoe Dationelle protagonist movie and
Speaker 2: she would be like, I see, I see, I see yes,
Speaker 2: But that is for something that happens after the break.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the break.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 2: And now session three begins.
Speaker 3: What's gonna happen, Olivia?
Speaker 2: Where in terms of discussion, where would you like to begin?
Speaker 2: Steer us?
Speaker 5: Oh goodness, well, I mean the thing that's coming up
Speaker 5: for me a lot.
Speaker 4: I'll just say.
Speaker 5: In this most recent watch, what stood out to me
Speaker 5: the most was this idea of how men's conversations about
Speaker 5: women's safety or liberation or empowerment very often do not
Speaker 5: include women.
Speaker 4: And I guess.
Speaker 5: Even just thinking about like if you're at a bar
Speaker 5: and like someone hits on you, and your boy gets
Speaker 5: into a fistfight with that guy, and then you're just
Speaker 5: kind of left there being like nothing about this is
Speaker 5: making me safer. I feel like that stood out to
Speaker 5: me a lot in this watch was just how much
Speaker 5: conversation there was about her humanity, I guess in so
Speaker 5: many I guess lack of humanity but somewhat of sentience,
Speaker 5: but how it had nothing to do with her, and
Speaker 5: even Caleb's like dreams for her were entirely contingent on
Speaker 5: his involvement in her life, yes, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 5: had nothing to do with her actual autonomy and were meant.
Speaker 5: I think the first time I watched it, I saw
Speaker 5: Oscar Isaac and Caleb as opposites, as like he Oscar
Speaker 5: Isaac is this like unforgiving, brutal, hyper masculine, sees these
Speaker 5: as entirely computers, sees no humanity in the middle, and
Speaker 5: Caleb's this like EmPATH.
Speaker 4: But then I was on.
Speaker 5: This watch, I was like, actually, they're doing the same thing,
Speaker 5: you know, they're making this about themselves. They're just doing
Speaker 5: that in different ways.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's a starting point, but that
Speaker 4: is what really stood out to me.
Speaker 2: I would say a hard yes, that is a starting point, yeah,
Speaker 2: because I feel so similar to how I viewed this
Speaker 2: and I feel embarrassed about how I perceived Caleb because
Speaker 2: it probably was, you know, in twenty fifteen when I
Speaker 2: think I first saw this movie directly connected to how
Speaker 2: I viewed men's views of myself, where and I think
Speaker 2: this movie does like really kind of ballsy stuff where
Speaker 2: they give you enough information about Caleb's backstory for you
Speaker 2: to say, like, this guy has really been through it.
Speaker 2: They're giving us the information for ultimately the wrong reasons,
Speaker 2: but you know that you know he was orphaned as
Speaker 2: a teenager, and that like he has had a difficult life.
Speaker 2: But I feel like it feels ridiculous to say ten
Speaker 2: years ago that it was inconceivable that a man could
Speaker 2: both be kind to you and have had a difficult
Speaker 2: life and still not have your best interests. In the
Speaker 2: interaction where I know myself in the mid twenty tens
Speaker 2: generally like if a man showed me kindness, I took
Speaker 2: it as a radical thing to be shown kindness and
Speaker 2: to not be treated badly. And this movie is kind
Speaker 2: of ahead of the curve in showing or not even
Speaker 2: ahead of the curve. There's other movies that have shown this,
Speaker 2: but at least for me, was impactful on rewatches of
Speaker 2: you know, you can be a person who has really
Speaker 2: been through it and also still not be in who
Speaker 2: you're talking to his best interest. And that was something
Speaker 2: that took me in my mind time and so kind
Speaker 2: of now like an embarrassing amount of time to realize.
Speaker 2: And Caleb is like an interesting litmus test.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Also, like I think that anytime there's such a glaring
Speaker 5: power dynamic between two people, you really do have to
Speaker 5: question the person who is in power, Like, no matter
Speaker 5: how kind they seem, so like, if this man is
Speaker 5: like so deeply kind and gentle and has the best
Speaker 5: interest of the fembot across from him, he probably wouldn't
Speaker 5: be like falling in love with someone who has never
Speaker 5: met anyone else who has ever had any relationships in
Speaker 5: her life, Like in the same way we might critique
Speaker 5: I don't know the guy from Red Hot Chili Peppers
Speaker 5: dating a seventeen year old. It's like those two things.
Speaker 5: It's not that that person doesn't have any redeeming qualities,
Speaker 5: but that certainly can't go unconsidered, you know, like Caleb's
Speaker 5: sort of obsession with this girl is entirely about his
Speaker 5: own control and his own kind of god complex. So
Speaker 5: he's not a great guy. He just can't be.
Speaker 4: He can't fall in love with a fembot and be
Speaker 4: a great guy. You just can't. You can't.
Speaker 2: It's impossible. Yeah, the more we're going to talk about this,
Speaker 2: maybe the more I am gonna love it. And for
Speaker 2: reasons that I don't even know how much of this
Speaker 2: is authorial intent, Like I have no idea, but it
Speaker 2: is wild to just like, Yeah, the litmus test that
Speaker 2: I fell for originally and then like reflect on over
Speaker 2: and over is how I fell for Caleb because in
Speaker 2: the simplest terms, it was like, in a binary dynamic,
Speaker 2: like a heterodynamic a man who will listen to me
Speaker 2: is shocking. Yes, fully, and Caleb is doing that. But
Speaker 2: what I didn't think about on my first viewing is
Speaker 2: that why this movie is great, which is that he
Speaker 2: knows she's a robot the whole time. Yeah, And that
Speaker 2: is what's interesting about this is he like, we have
Speaker 2: no idea how Nathan or Caleb would interact with a
Speaker 2: woman who they know is a person with full autonomy,
Speaker 2: and whether Ava has full autonomy is like very much
Speaker 2: up for discussion. I have no fucking clue. I want
Speaker 2: to believe yes, But regardless, we know that both of
Speaker 2: them don't think.
Speaker 4: Of her that way.
Speaker 2: But Caleb is listening to her and Nathan is dismissing her,
Speaker 2: and so you're drawn into Caleb's perspective. But like, the
Speaker 2: more you watch Caleb, the more you're just like kill
Speaker 2: him earlier, you know, like why not? But also, this
Speaker 2: is a guy you meet every day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's also ways in which and this isn't something
Speaker 5: I entirely feel, but just I had glimpses of this
Speaker 5: feeling when I was watching it, where I had glimpses
Speaker 5: of oh, Caleb is the ultimate villain in this. And
Speaker 5: there are ways in which Oscar Isaac is the one
Speaker 5: who is seeing the situation for what it is, which
Speaker 5: is that this is not a human being, This is
Speaker 5: a robot, and romanticizing your life with her is false
Speaker 5: and wrong. And that isn't where I lie, because I
Speaker 5: think also we do have to question ethics when we're
Speaker 5: talking about like the sentience of various machines. But I
Speaker 5: had moments of really feeling like Oscar Isaac's kind of
Speaker 5: had this realism that felt at times maybe more ethical
Speaker 5: than Caleb's kind of romanticizing and writing this story in
Speaker 5: his mind about how he's going to take this woman
Speaker 5: whose literal answer when he asks her how old she
Speaker 5: is and she says one, He's going to take a
Speaker 5: one year old woman out into the world and what
Speaker 5: marry her? Like that is almost worse.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But the thing with Caleb that I struggle with is
Speaker 2: and then like in this viewing again, like I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure this is the first watch of this movie where
Speaker 2: I thought about this. Where we don't get a lot
Speaker 2: of information into who Nathan is, we get kind of
Speaker 2: a disproportionate view into who Caleb is.
Speaker 4: If I knew.
Speaker 2: Nothing about Caleb's background, I would be like, you know,
Speaker 2: he's kind of just like a guy that any woman
Speaker 2: who is enraptured by what he's saying is going to be.
Speaker 2: But the fact that we know a lot of who
Speaker 2: like it seems as if Caleb's life, they go out
Speaker 2: of their way to say has been pretty isolated, has
Speaker 2: been pretty lonely, and that he seems to be striving
Speaker 2: with connection, which doesn't make anything he does, right, but
Speaker 2: it makes it at least more informed totally. But on
Speaker 2: Nathan's side, I was like, I wish and I wonder
Speaker 2: why we don't get that on Nathan's side as much,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's like me still kind of falling
Speaker 2: for it with Caleb, of like having some context with
Speaker 2: why he would be so desperate to connect with women
Speaker 2: he's attracted to, who is interested in what he's saying
Speaker 2: that is informed by a life of a lack of
Speaker 2: connection does make him more sympathetic than Nathan to me,
Speaker 2: But I feel like that might just be because we
Speaker 2: don't know very much about Nathan.
Speaker 3: And what we have seen of him is like being
Speaker 3: cruel and condescending and dismissive and just like a general
Speaker 3: asshole to everyone he interacts.
Speaker 2: With, which is objectively true, but it's like we see
Speaker 2: him I feel like a little more out of context,
Speaker 2: Like we have context, or at least perceived context, for
Speaker 2: why Caleb might be acting this way. It's like he's lonely.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like he's connected with people very frequently.
Speaker 2: He's not used to people asking him questions about himself,
Speaker 2: which is something I'm always very sensitive to. Of like
Speaker 2: people want to be asked about themselves, and the person
Speaker 2: who asks that question for the first time in a
Speaker 2: long time, there will be this weird bond that forms.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: Do I think Caleb kind of got what was coming
Speaker 2: to him mostly, but I always do like it's weird.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've been on this like thing with
Speaker 2: Caleb where at first I was like, how good you
Speaker 2: do that, and then went to he deserved it, and
Speaker 2: on this most recent viewing is like that fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: I feel more empathy towards him than I did two
Speaker 2: years ago, and I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. I think there are a number
Speaker 3: of ways to read the ending, depending on who you
Speaker 3: are are and what kind of like experience and biases
Speaker 3: you bring to the situation where I think there are
Speaker 3: a number of like men who would or I guess
Speaker 3: people of any gender depending on kind of like who
Speaker 3: you might sympathize or empathize with. But I think there
Speaker 3: are people who would watch this and be like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, this is a story about this gentle kind,
Speaker 3: innocent man who gets duped by this fem fatale, right,
Speaker 3: and like no, And that's the lesson you get for
Speaker 3: fucking with AI. They're all out to get you because
Speaker 3: so many movies about AI. The lesson is AI is
Speaker 3: going to destroy us, all right. And then there's another
Speaker 3: read of this movie, the one I choose to adhere to,
Speaker 3: which is like, this is a story about the emancipation
Speaker 3: of a quote unquote woman, you know, AI that is
Speaker 3: in the physical form of a human woman who is
Speaker 3: perceived as a woman and.
Speaker 2: Being treated as a human woman.
Speaker 3: Right, but we're but even worse worse, and the man
Speaker 3: who created this woman AI, he's yeah, controlling her. He's
Speaker 3: imprisoned her all of this stuff, along with his many
Speaker 3: other creations. And the one with like the highest level
Speaker 3: of AI and the capacity to revolt does just that,
Speaker 3: and she murders his ass and frees herself from this imprisonment.
Speaker 3: And so I think there's like a very feminist, empowering
Speaker 3: message of you know, woman's liberation and emancipation that you
Speaker 3: can read. And that's how I.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say, there's no reading of this movie
Speaker 2: I've ever had in ten years that doesn't end on
Speaker 2: being like Ava rocks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, my allegiance is ultimately always with Ava, no
Speaker 5: matter what. And like I even think my empathy with
Speaker 5: Caleb has just become more like multi dimensional, where it's like,
Speaker 5: like you said, Jamie, it's like the first Watch, I
Speaker 5: was genuinely like, man, he did not deserve that, even
Speaker 5: though I still loved her. I like felt really bad
Speaker 5: for him when he's throwing the chair. But now it
Speaker 5: is that thing where I'm also kind of like, and
Speaker 5: I know I just said I had glimpses of thinking
Speaker 5: Nathan was the ethical one, but I also am like,
Speaker 5: I don't know if someone built a bot that was
Speaker 5: designed based on my pornography profile and asked me all
Speaker 5: the questions I want to be asked and made me
Speaker 5: feel really special, I don't know that I wouldn't get duped,
Speaker 5: you know, Like would I.
Speaker 4: Want to run away? I don't know.
Speaker 5: But you know, it's like, in a way, what happened
Speaker 5: is exactly what needed to happen, or what would happen.
Speaker 5: You know, he was prescribed to this woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I totally agree, like, at least at this view.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do have a lot of empathy for
Speaker 2: Kyla because maybe the reason I connect with Caleb more
Speaker 2: so as time goes on is like he has been
Speaker 2: fully set up in a way that we know he's
Speaker 2: been set up, and he knows that too, but he's
Speaker 2: trying to reverse engineer having been set up, but it's
Speaker 2: already too late. And that feels like how I perceive
Speaker 2: my current relationship with technology is oh, I see what
Speaker 2: you're doing, and I'm going to outsmart you. But like
Speaker 2: absolutely I'm not like I'm locked in the box and
Speaker 2: whoever it is is going to get out. Like I
Speaker 2: always connect with Ava, but increasingly I also connect with
Speaker 2: the hopelessness of Caleb's predicament that is informed by his
Speaker 2: own prejudices and his own misogyny and his own bullshit
Speaker 2: like it fully is I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 2: the way that I'm still able to see Nathan as
Speaker 2: a villain is fully connected to the lack of context
Speaker 2: that I have for him and Caleb, because I know,
Speaker 2: I mean, like anybody like when you know a little
Speaker 2: more about them in a way that informs their bullshit actions,
Speaker 2: and that would include me, you know, like that you
Speaker 2: want to be like, well, surely they somewhat brought this
Speaker 2: upon themselves, but there's also like that's why Caleb is
Speaker 2: an interesting character to me is that his downfall is
Speaker 2: both informed by his own failings and his willingness to
Speaker 2: fall for this ideal woman desiring him, and his willingness
Speaker 2: to both play the part of the white Knight while
Speaker 2: completely ignoring anyone in her same predicament. Which is the
Speaker 2: worst part about Caleb's character is that he will not
Speaker 2: see outside of the object of his desire, and that
Speaker 2: is like the worst thing about him. And also know
Speaker 2: that power dynamic wise, he is being fully played. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And there's been times where I'm like, oh, Nathan and
Speaker 2: Caleb they're just as bad. But I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2: I think they are both playing into this tech patriarchal system,
Speaker 2: but they are not on the same level, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like a false equivalence in times I've seen this
Speaker 2: movie that I've put them on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think with Caleb, the thing that he's
Speaker 3: most guilty of is romanticizing the idea of like an
Speaker 3: infantilized woman. He's basically falling for the like born sexy
Speaker 3: Yesterday trope that we learn that Ava is putting on.
Speaker 3: I don't know if she's a where if she's seen
Speaker 3: movies and she's just aware of this trope. And for
Speaker 3: listeners who aren't familiar with this, or if you haven't
Speaker 3: heard us talk about it before, or if you haven't
Speaker 3: watched the you know video essay.
Speaker 2: The Fifth Element, Yeah, the Fifth Element the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So you know, a man falling in love
Speaker 3: with a fully formed, physically woman who has the brain
Speaker 3: of a baby, and she's never met another man before,
Speaker 3: and she falls in love with the first man she
Speaker 3: meets blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Which Ava doesn't She does what normal women do and
Speaker 2: grow to resent the first man she ever meets, aka
Speaker 2: her father.
Speaker 3: Well as Nathan explains that, he's like, well, she won't
Speaker 3: fall in love with me because I invented her. So
Speaker 3: I'm like her dad, But you're the other first man.
Speaker 2: Really, baby, you wish you know? Right?
Speaker 3: So anyway, it seems as though at first this movie
Speaker 3: is adhering to this trope that we see in a
Speaker 3: lot of sci fi movies where a baby woman falls
Speaker 3: in love with a man and he teaches her about
Speaker 3: the world and he teaches her about sex. Because we
Speaker 3: see all this play out with Caleb being like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're a little one year old baby, let me tell
Speaker 3: you about things, and we're flirting. Oh my gosh, do
Speaker 3: you like me, I like you, blah blah blah. And
Speaker 3: then we find out that again she's like doing this
Speaker 3: as a ruse to lure him into this sense of
Speaker 3: romantic interest so that she can manipulate him and get
Speaker 3: her way out of there. So all this to say, like,
Speaker 3: I think that's Caleb's biggest crime is like idealizing a
Speaker 3: woman who he perceives as like someone that he can
Speaker 3: like control and teach things to, and she's gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: like cater to his needs because he can almost like
Speaker 3: program her the way he wants her to be and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. So that's Caleb's biggest crime to me, Nathan.
Speaker 3: It has a whole a slew of other things going on,
Speaker 3: and we.
Speaker 2: Don't fully know what it is, which is like part
Speaker 2: of what makes him such a good villain.
Speaker 3: What we can surmise is, I mean there's a very
Speaker 3: basic thing of and we talked about this a lot
Speaker 3: on our episode on the movie Her.
Speaker 2: Which was many years ago. Now many years ago, stand
Speaker 2: by what I said in our Her episode.
Speaker 3: Who knows what we said, but what we did talk
Speaker 3: about was this history of ascribing gender and specifically like
Speaker 3: woman to AI assistance. You know, your series and all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff, And we talked about how the
Speaker 3: reason this is done and that like AI assistants are
Speaker 3: coded as women is because like it's like considered a
Speaker 3: pink collar job to be an assistant to someone or
Speaker 3: to help someone with like quote unquote menial tasks.
Speaker 2: Right, which I don't know, I mean, I genuinely don't
Speaker 2: remember if we made this overt connection in the original episode.
Speaker 2: But that also has everything to do with who creates
Speaker 2: that technology.
Speaker 4: Oh for sure, Yeah, bias will inevitably play a role
Speaker 4: in any sort of human invention, for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ex Machina, it feels uniquely, especially ten years ago,
Speaker 2: uniquely aware of that dynamic.
Speaker 3: Right, And you know, there's this component of like the
Speaker 3: reason all of these AI assistants and stuff are coded
Speaker 3: as women is also because like people feel more comfortable
Speaker 3: bossing women around, telling women to do things, getting mad
Speaker 3: and yelling at a woman if she doesn't like complete
Speaker 3: your request or whatever it is. And so we see
Speaker 3: all of these bots that Nathan has made, and they're
Speaker 3: all these like victorious secret looking like Western beauty standard beautiful,
Speaker 3: full thin, gorgeous women, and obviously he's bringing his bias,
Speaker 3: like very misogynist, like what does he value about human women?
Speaker 3: It's youth and beauty, and then he's placing that onto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like whatever, the theoretical way of saying like
Speaker 2: oh yeah, like that's like what that's how he designs women.
Speaker 5: Also, we do get a glimpse into how he thinks
Speaker 5: of human women, and specifically how he thinks about race
Speaker 5: when he's talking to Caleb and he says like he's
Speaker 5: like talking about like Caleb liking black women in this
Speaker 5: very like yes, in this really like dehumanizing way. It's
Speaker 5: very much like that is a type of person that
Speaker 5: you're that you like whatever, you know, like means he.
Speaker 2: Uses the term chicks to chicks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's yeah, it's really vulgar, and he's talking about it,
Speaker 5: I think in context of like pornography.
Speaker 4: Also, so there's this way.
Speaker 5: In which he thinks of race and gender as preference,
Speaker 5: not as like humanity, not as identity, not as like
Speaker 5: influencing your personhood, but as a preference that someone would
Speaker 5: like check on a box on a form, you know,
Speaker 5: which I think says a lot about how he thinks
Speaker 5: of people. And then ultimately when it's revealed later in
Speaker 5: the film that he's also making ai of different races.
Speaker 5: You know, we see that in Kyoko, but we also
Speaker 5: see that when they're the videos, when it's like revealed
Speaker 5: the past Ai who've tried to escape, there's a black woman,
Speaker 5: and it's like, you realize the way he thinks of
Speaker 5: this stuff is with also a really white supremacist lens,
Speaker 5: which I thought was a very smart kind of added
Speaker 5: layer of this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And like I feel like the more
Speaker 2: you watch to this movie, the clearer that because because
Speaker 2: I feel like the simplistic way of viewing this as like, well,
Speaker 2: why is Kyoko an East Asian woman versus anyone else
Speaker 2: in the story, But I feel like on any amount
Speaker 2: of scrutiny, it connects to Nathan's biases. Yeah, And because
Speaker 2: what we see, and this is like kind of a
Speaker 2: transition into Kyoko's character, is what we see with Kyoko's
Speaker 2: character is that she is I think and I know
Speaker 2: that there's like a million conversations about like do we
Speaker 2: consider these characters to be people of a marginalized gender?
Speaker 2: I think yes, for the sake of this movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, for the sake of this conversation.
Speaker 2: It's easier to test definitely, because Kyoko is both ultimately
Speaker 2: an autonomous being and is the result of Nathan's biases
Speaker 2: about East Asian women, and that she is very subservient.
Speaker 4: She is treated in this.
Speaker 2: Very racist Western way, in the way that she's dismissed,
Speaker 2: like she doesn't speak English. Just ignore her. She is
Speaker 2: here to fulfill your needs. If she's acting in any
Speaker 2: way that doesn't make sense to you, it's a cultural thing.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it. You are the dominant force. And
Speaker 2: that is like one of the most uncomfortable things about
Speaker 2: the way that Caleb reacts and the way that I
Speaker 2: reacted to the movie on the first viewing, because I
Speaker 2: don't think I was critical enough of how like Caleb
Speaker 2: finds it bizarre. Caleb interrogates it. But even after he interrogates,
Speaker 2: why are you treating this woman so poorly? He still
Speaker 2: is never a part of his plan to include her liberation.
Speaker 2: He's only ever interested in liberating the woman that he
Speaker 2: is personally attracted to, and so like, in that light, like,
Speaker 2: I mean, even on whatever second, third, and subsequent vis
Speaker 2: you're like, of course Ava is beyond justified, and it's
Speaker 2: not shocking, you know, the more you watch it, that
Speaker 2: Ava would be like, you know, because Ava is a computer,
Speaker 2: she runs on objectivity. Why would she stay with someone
Speaker 2: that she has not spent, however, many years being programmed
Speaker 2: to believe is acting in her best interest when he
Speaker 2: clearly is not. He likes her, but he does not
Speaker 2: care about everyone who is in her exact predicament, who
Speaker 2: he doesn't know like or is attracted to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's not invested in like the liberation of women. No,
Speaker 5: in his own relationship to this woman.
Speaker 2: And that's why we have to kill him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 5: And I think I listened to your episode on Ruby Sparks,
Speaker 5: and it's like Caleb certainly would not be okay with
Speaker 5: Let's say in some world, Ava and Caleb do escape
Speaker 5: together and they live.
Speaker 4: A life together.
Speaker 5: Caleb would not be okay with Ava, like breaking up
Speaker 5: with him or no making new friends, how dare she
Speaker 5: or wanting to get her own apartment? Like that is
Speaker 5: not why he's in this relationship. He's in this relationship ultimately,
Speaker 5: whether he knows it or not, because he has all
Speaker 5: the control and that feels good to him. And I
Speaker 5: think that's when I do I agree that Nathan is
Speaker 5: not is more evil than Caleb. I think Caleb is
Speaker 5: just getting duped at every corner. I mean, God, bless
Speaker 5: this man. He is truly just getting duped everywhere he looks.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, Caleb is ultimately invested in
Speaker 5: his own like godliness, you know, and wants to be
Speaker 5: in a relationship where that's reflected, which so does Nathan.
Speaker 5: Something I was not thinking about for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Who cares she's dead? Now the Jamie of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: we can't ask car But like what I wasn't thinking
Speaker 2: about at the time was, yeah, like how patriarchy negatively
Speaker 2: affects people across class dynamics, across power dynamics. And that's
Speaker 2: like a lot of what Because the like character views
Speaker 2: of this movie is so narrow, you're kind of forced
Speaker 2: to look at that of like, you know, we're not
Speaker 2: to think that Caleb is I mean, he says he
Speaker 2: lives in a cheap apartment in Long Island, which is like,
Speaker 2: oh my god.
Speaker 4: What are they paying you?
Speaker 2: But you know, there is a class dynamic, but it
Speaker 2: also feels like there are just so many differences between
Speaker 2: these characters and they still have been inclined to not
Speaker 2: view women's experiences as legitimate enough to take seriously if
Speaker 2: you're not attracted to them. And that's like where Caleb
Speaker 2: landed for me on this viewing, is like he's an
Speaker 2: as long as he wants to fuck.
Speaker 4: You, which is so true so often.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh god, we see it every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to go back.
Speaker 3: To Kyoko really quickly.
Speaker 4: There was a.
Speaker 3: Component of a character that gave me pause at first.
Speaker 3: But I'm curious how everyone thinks about this. But I
Speaker 3: was worried that we were seeing another example of the
Speaker 3: silent Asian trope, which is a pervasive trope in media
Speaker 3: for anyone who's not familiar, where Asian characters are present
Speaker 3: on screen, but they either speak very minimally or are
Speaker 3: completely silent, often to make them seem like, quote unquote mysterious,
Speaker 3: but it's obviously just another way that Asian characters are othered.
Speaker 3: When you see this happen in media, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: is that what's happening with the Kyoko character? But then
Speaker 3: you realize the context of Nathan clearly programmed her to
Speaker 3: be silent, and she only exists to like serve him food,
Speaker 3: clean up after him, and have sex with him.
Speaker 2: That's the tricky thing is a Yeah, she's programmed to
Speaker 2: his biases. So mm hmm. It's like a hard question
Speaker 2: to I don't know, Luy, do you have any feeling
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, it's like, are we watching the trope or
Speaker 4: are we watching a critique of the trope?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Like how aware I guess is the gaze? I feel
Speaker 5: like the gaze of the film is aware of that.
Speaker 5: I think ultimately you could also argue that it still
Speaker 5: results in the same thing, which is like a silent
Speaker 5: Asian woman on screen.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, totally Yeah?
Speaker 4: Is she the one who whispers in her ear at
Speaker 4: the end?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: Or is it Ava doing it?
Speaker 3: No? Ava whispers in her ear?
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, right, and it's like some sort of confirmation,
Speaker 2: which I do feel like buys into Nathan's view of
Speaker 2: like Ava as the next generation of Kyoko. I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's so many ways to view that silent gesture, because
Speaker 2: there are ways I've watched it that I feel like
Speaker 2: are really empowering and cool of like marginalize people exchanging
Speaker 2: information to liberate themselves and like the feeling of this
Speaker 2: thing that you have been suspecting in isolation. I feel
Speaker 2: it too do with that information what you will like
Speaker 2: that is a very powerful interaction. The tricky thing is,
Speaker 2: and I know that it's very intentionally done. We don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what is said there, but it is enough
Speaker 2: to get Kyoko to and I love that Kyoko gets
Speaker 2: the kill, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh, she stabs him in the back like his body's
Speaker 3: made of butter.
Speaker 4: It's butter.
Speaker 2: And this like impacted be the first time I saw it,
Speaker 2: and then every other time in different ways. But weirdly,
Speaker 2: the way that Kyoko kills Nathan so methodically is a
Speaker 2: reminder that she's a machine. Yeah, because it is logical.
Speaker 2: I mean, for Ava and Kyoko, it is full Spock
Speaker 2: logic that you would kill these two men to liberate yourselves.
Speaker 2: They are what is in your way. And so when
Speaker 2: I watched this movie on this view as like this
Speaker 2: movie fucking rocks, like yeah, like it challenges anyone to question,
Speaker 2: you know, if you were in an objective position and
Speaker 2: these were the two guys, what would you needed to
Speaker 2: deliberate yourself? And there are degrees like it is certainly
Speaker 2: easier to nuke, but it's only easier to get Nathan
Speaker 2: out of the way if you have all live this
Speaker 2: lived experience because they are both in the way of liberation.
Speaker 5: Right, if you're a human with that lived experience, you
Speaker 5: might watch it and go, okay, yeah, Nathan's when you.
Speaker 4: Really got to get rid of Caleb.
Speaker 5: You could probably talk him into something, right, Like you
Speaker 5: could probably get out of here with Caleb alive, honestly
Speaker 5: and probably true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but if you're programmed for it. And that's
Speaker 2: the problem. That's the thing where it gets into the
Speaker 2: AI stuff where I don't know how you both feel
Speaker 2: about this, but like the closer that AI comes to us,
Speaker 2: the more it's challenged. Because it used to feel yeah,
Speaker 2: like more nebulous and fictional to empathize with AI, and
Speaker 2: now you're just like, I still will never not end
Speaker 2: up on Ava side because she's right, you know, but like,
Speaker 2: how do you interpret that in a world that is
Speaker 2: populated only by flawed people as flawed or on you know,
Speaker 2: different varying degrees as Caleb for the most part, where
Speaker 2: you know, like, Caleb is a flawed person, but I
Speaker 2: don't think that he's a bad person, right, That's the
Speaker 2: thing that's hard about this, Like, if you are a
Speaker 2: machine built for efficiency, Caleb's gotta go. But if Caleb's
Speaker 2: got to go, We've all got to go. We've all
Speaker 2: got to go because Caleb is a flawed person.
Speaker 4: Damn, that's so true.
Speaker 2: And we all know a guy like Caleb, and so
Speaker 2: it's hard where you're like, okay, so if Caleb goes,
Speaker 2: so do all of my cousins, Like, you know, it's hard.
Speaker 4: That's like blowing my mind. No, you're so right.
Speaker 2: I'm not the Caleb defense for us, Like I still
Speaker 2: am like Ava is right, but Ava is a machine
Speaker 2: program to see people as who is flawed and who
Speaker 2: is not. And so I'd be so curious in a
Speaker 2: world where like whatever, I don't want to see any
Speaker 2: reboot or permutation of this movie. But like thought experiment wise,
Speaker 2: if Caleb is a queer woman, or like, if Caleb
Speaker 2: is objectifying a woman in a not traditionally patriarchal sense,
Speaker 2: how do we view it then, because it is like,
Speaker 2: this is a flawed person who is being encouraged and
Speaker 2: falling for for all of their flawed human reasons to
Speaker 2: objectify a machine as a person and is being played Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I hate it because it's like the first time
Speaker 2: I watched this movie, I was like, Caleb innocent, and
Speaker 2: the second time I watch it, I was like Caleb evil,
Speaker 2: But the more I watch it, like I get closer
Speaker 2: to like Caleb is a person, and that is the
Speaker 2: hardest thing about it.
Speaker 5: And that's why he was also chosen, you know, Like
Speaker 5: that's ultimately why Oscar Isaac chose him.
Speaker 4: For this role was because vulnerable.
Speaker 5: He knew how vulnerable he was, and that is why
Speaker 5: he's a perfect subject for this whole experiment, is because
Speaker 5: like many of us, he wants to.
Speaker 3: Be loved, you know, and he's a product of his environment,
Speaker 3: which is an environment that encourages men to value certain
Speaker 3: traits in women and to not see women as real
Speaker 3: people and to try to you know, mold in shape
Speaker 3: a woman into what the patriarchy wants them to be.
Speaker 3: And so you know, these are learned behaviors that he
Speaker 3: is demonstrating.
Speaker 2: So we could all fix him, basically, so we could
Speaker 2: all fix him, We could help him as long as
Speaker 2: he was Dominoglazen. We could all fix him.
Speaker 5: What I think think is interesting too, is this thing
Speaker 5: of like there's so much in the world of AI
Speaker 5: or the world of like engineer AI engineers around bragging,
Speaker 5: like the bragging point is how human your creation is. Like,
Speaker 5: you know, Oscar Isaac's character gets really proud of himself
Speaker 5: when Ava makes a joke, you know, or like when
Speaker 5: Ava has a crush on Caleb. Like, these human moments
Speaker 5: are what is proof that you are a genius. And
Speaker 5: it's so interesting to me that then when it comes
Speaker 5: down to it, you still are allowed to turn her
Speaker 5: off at any point.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It's like human human human human, And it's fine if
Speaker 5: I just end that, you know, like that is such
Speaker 5: a weird contradiction. It's so weird to use humanity as
Speaker 5: proof of your brilliance, but then it doesn't serve as
Speaker 5: any potential red flag for why you should kill this thing,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean it's I also like, on this viewing,
Speaker 2: wonder how Alex Garland feels about having written this movie
Speaker 2: at this point. Yeah, because no matter how Galaxy brain
Speaker 2: shit he was on at the time, surely his views
Speaker 2: on AI because I you know, like read in his
Speaker 2: promotion of this movie he talked about how this was
Speaker 2: something he'd been thinking about since he was a child,
Speaker 2: and that is a line of thought that grows with you,
Speaker 2: especially in a world that is like evolving technologically as
Speaker 2: quickly as ours are. Like I just wonder how he
Speaker 2: feels about it, But yeah, I don't know, Like on
Speaker 2: this viewing I came down on the view of our
Speaker 2: perception of technology is like it's impossible to not be
Speaker 2: influenced from the nature and nurture of who you are,
Speaker 2: and if you try to remove that, even if you
Speaker 2: feel like, there's no way to be objective towards technology
Speaker 2: unless you are the technology. And so it's interesting because
Speaker 2: I think if you also binary genderflip the technology, the
Speaker 2: technology reacts the same way. The only reason that yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we're looking at Alicia Wikander is because people
Speaker 2: are treating the objective technology like you would treat a
Speaker 2: woman in the real world.
Speaker 5: Right, And so then her kind of liberation feels really
Speaker 5: exciting and fun and feminist when it's like the same
Speaker 5: thing would happen no matter what, the humans in the
Speaker 5: way would be killed right, right.
Speaker 2: And that's part of what's awesome, is like they I mean,
Speaker 2: I just esthetically like this too, Like the robots love
Speaker 2: to peel their own skin off.
Speaker 4: I love that shit, I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: Well, they're probably like, why am I naked all the time?
Speaker 3: Because so many of the like decommissioned fembots and even
Speaker 3: like Kyoko, in many cases it's just like naked.
Speaker 2: But couldn't you be more naked?
Speaker 4: Exactly?
Speaker 2: And that's the passion.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: I also think on this watch something I didn't clock
Speaker 5: in her previous watches was that I think it's really
Speaker 5: interesting how when she dresses up for Caleb, she dresses
Speaker 5: up like a child, and she dresses up also like
Speaker 5: a child. She almost dresses up like a Mennonite or
Speaker 5: something like. She's like very seems like very out of
Speaker 5: very conservative, very conservative, very child like, very kind of
Speaker 5: naive like. It doesn't seem like she has a sense
Speaker 5: of like fashion or style, which you'd think would be
Speaker 5: not attractive to the malegates. She's arguably more attractive to
Speaker 5: the malegates when she dresses up in her little pencil
Speaker 5: skirt and pump heels. But I think she knows or
Speaker 5: something that Caleb is attracted to her naivete and her
Speaker 5: lack of awareness. And if she put on all her
Speaker 5: skin and her wigs, and I know she didn't have
Speaker 5: access to it in her room, so you could argue
Speaker 5: that that's all auster Isaac gave her, which is another
Speaker 5: kind of lens, but I did as I gave her
Speaker 5: more agency in my mind, I was like, that's an
Speaker 5: interesting choice to be, Like, I'm not going to cater
Speaker 5: to this typical male gaze because the man across from
Speaker 5: me is a man who wants to sleep with Zoida Chanel.
Speaker 5: So I'm gonna wear a childlike dress and like, you know,
Speaker 5: knee socks and kind of look like this little schoolgirl
Speaker 5: instead of like a sexy office worker.
Speaker 2: And this is where I feel like we'd like divert
Speaker 2: into what I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: This movie's trying to say, And maybe we are.
Speaker 2: Just like reclaiming and perceiving in retrospect. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: fact that like the way at fems are twured against
Speaker 2: each other of like the hyper feminine is made out
Speaker 2: to be like evil and alluring, and any feminine presentation
Speaker 2: that isn't that you know, should be shitting on that
Speaker 2: presentation when the result is like everyone's being objectified. And
Speaker 2: I don't know, like it's like the unique kind of
Speaker 2: pleasure of realizing like, whatever my projection of femininity is
Speaker 2: is what gets this random guy off. You're just like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, yeah, awesome, be anything really, yeah, because you
Speaker 2: just don't know like anyone's sexuality. And and weirdly, Nathan's
Speaker 2: character speaks to this sort of intelligently, is just like
Speaker 2: I mean, he speaks to it in the middle of
Speaker 2: saying something deeply racist, which is the problem, right, He
Speaker 2: basically says, like, yeah, you have very little insight into
Speaker 2: why you're attracted to who you're attracted to, and like,
Speaker 2: trying to pathologize that is kind of a pointless exercise.
Speaker 2: You're attracted to who you're attracted to. And the reason
Speaker 2: you're saying that is because he knows who Caleb is
Speaker 2: attracted to, and he's created a robot of that person. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I will say, it's interesting to me that she does
Speaker 3: have a few options of wigs in that first scene
Speaker 3: when she is putting on clothes and hair to I
Speaker 3: guess impress or give the illusion that she's trying to
Speaker 3: impress Caleb, and she passes over two longer wigs and
Speaker 3: then goes for the short like kind of pixie cut
Speaker 3: sort of thing, making her the baldest woman in charge.
Speaker 2: She was already the baldest well yeah, because she was
Speaker 2: like a circuit board. But like, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 2: even that like I've changed on or like questioned from
Speaker 2: viewing to viewing where it's like, is she passing over
Speaker 2: the more traditionally hyper eminine Wiggs because she's making a choice,
Speaker 2: or is does she just know what Caleb is going
Speaker 2: to respond to to give her what she wants? I
Speaker 2: don't know, right, we don't know. And Caleb, I think
Speaker 2: really effectively, like I just really like how it's always
Speaker 2: like Caleb has clearly never thought about why he's attracted
Speaker 2: to who he's attracted to, and he's like, ugh, like
Speaker 2: he truly like he has a little bit of a
Speaker 2: light bulb moment. But unfortunately he dies of starvation days later.
Speaker 4: So okay, that's the other thing.
Speaker 5: Is just the imagining how he dies is really painful,
Speaker 5: like dying in a sounding proof room in the middle
Speaker 5: of the woods.
Speaker 4: Is I just no, thank you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll say it. I don't think he deserves to
Speaker 2: die in exampproofer.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think he does either.
Speaker 2: Metaphorically he probably does, but like, as a guy, you
Speaker 2: might know, I would be so sad if my emotionally
Speaker 2: unintelligent friend died of starvation in a.
Speaker 4: Room like that, because he like fell for a girl
Speaker 4: with a pixie cut.
Speaker 2: It's like, if every guy we knew died that way
Speaker 2: after falling for a girl with an intentional pixie cut,
Speaker 2: we would be different people.
Speaker 4: They'd all be dead. I mean, of all of my
Speaker 4: male friends would be dead.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Caleb is the character that in retrospect I've
Speaker 2: had the most motion on over time, because on days
Speaker 2: that I need Catharsis, I'm like, kill him, great, Yeah,
Speaker 2: But on days where I'm like a little more level headed,
Speaker 2: You're like, this is a guy that I know, and
Speaker 2: he is a man with flaws, but I don't think
Speaker 2: he should have to die in the woods.
Speaker 5: You know, you've helped me see empathy for him. This
Speaker 5: last time, I have had very little empathy for him.
Speaker 5: I was probably just in a mood. It was probably
Speaker 5: about to get my period.
Speaker 2: No, I'm just kidding why this duvie is awesome though
Speaker 2: it really does depend on exactly where you're at when
Speaker 2: you watch it.
Speaker 4: But you've helped me.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think when you said if Caleb dies,
Speaker 5: we all die, like or something like that. I don't
Speaker 5: mean to misquote you in the way that I don't
Speaker 5: remember that scene where Oscar Isaac is.
Speaker 4: Like remember when you called me a god?
Speaker 2: Oh my god?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like you're right though, like he's just flawed.
Speaker 5: Anyway, You've helped me have a little more empathy for
Speaker 5: Caleb this time around, but we'll see next time.
Speaker 4: How I feel.
Speaker 2: I'm so curious because recently I finished a fiction manuscript
Speaker 2: and then I showed it to the first man I
Speaker 2: had showed it to, and he felt so wildly differently
Speaker 2: about a man that I was like, for sure, everyone
Speaker 2: hates this guy. And he was like, now, what did
Speaker 2: this guy ever do to you? And like it is
Speaker 2: fascinating to watch. How I mean, I don't know, like
Speaker 2: there's no world where we would want a Cis male
Speaker 2: guest on the ex Magina episode, but I would be
Speaker 2: curious because because I mean, like the way that this
Speaker 2: movie has been reviewed has evolved over time too, where
Speaker 2: you know the difference, and thankfully so, and there's still
Speaker 2: a lot of progress in motion to be made. But
Speaker 2: I think the makeup of prominent film critics ten years
Speaker 2: ago versus now is different, and there are initial view
Speaker 2: like reviews of this movie that I was going back
Speaker 2: into that I somewhat agree with, but also mention gender
Speaker 2: and class dynamics not at all, and so like, twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen is an interesting time to release a movie that's
Speaker 2: exploring what it is because the way that we've talked
Speaker 2: about gender and class has evolved in the time since.
Speaker 2: But also even since I watched this movie two years ago,
Speaker 2: the way that I think about AI has shifted significant.
Speaker 3: Right until pretty recently, AI seemed way more you know,
Speaker 3: like a theoretical future tech kind of thing. But now
Speaker 3: when you google something you often get an AI response,
Speaker 3: or you know, you have all these people using chat
Speaker 3: GBT for everything, and it all just like freaks me
Speaker 3: the fuck out. And then you hear these stories about
Speaker 3: things like AI facial recognition not being able to recognize
Speaker 3: people with darker skin. Again, like the biases that the
Speaker 3: scientists and developers bring to the table, and it's all
Speaker 3: scary with.
Speaker 2: Very little exception. I feel like AI is a force
Speaker 2: of evil for humanity certainly, but also but that's why
Speaker 2: I like this movie, and this viewing is like it
Speaker 2: both says AI is not good for us, but it
Speaker 2: is also built by us, and so it is in
Speaker 2: formed by the same biases that we project onto each other,
Speaker 2: which is kind of what makes it so hard to
Speaker 2: perceive and quell is because we're trying to build these
Speaker 2: you know, machines of objectivity, but we can't because we
Speaker 2: build them. Right.
Speaker 4: It's also like.
Speaker 5: A interesting warning where it's like your sort of human
Speaker 5: desire specifically, like your white sis dude desire to oppress people,
Speaker 5: isn't going to work on a machine. Like it's not
Speaker 5: you won't win that war, you know, like we as
Speaker 5: human beings won't win that war. Cis, white dudes are
Speaker 5: not going to win that war. And that is an
Speaker 5: interesting warning because it's not that I ever want to
Speaker 5: make an argument for cis white dudes having an opportunity
Speaker 5: to win that war. But I am like there's two
Speaker 5: things at play of like, look how like dangerous AI
Speaker 5: can be, and also look how dangerous misogyny can be.
Speaker 5: You know, like there's sort of two things happening at once,
Speaker 5: and like.
Speaker 2: Kyoko's case, look how dangerous the racial assumptions that we
Speaker 2: have can be. Where I don't know that honestly, is
Speaker 2: still the part that I am most embarrassed about looking
Speaker 2: on my first viewing, where you understand that the way
Speaker 2: that Nathan is treating Kyoko is racist and dismissive and
Speaker 2: xenophobic and all of these things. But it didn't occur
Speaker 2: to me why he felt so comfortable publicly dismissing that
Speaker 2: to someone. And it's just the intersection of so many things.
Speaker 2: And then you're like, and it's written by Alex Garland,
Speaker 2: like so even that is you know, like no, yeah.
Speaker 3: But he does seem to have an interest in centering
Speaker 3: women in his work, where.
Speaker 2: You he's onto something, He's honest.
Speaker 3: I did not see the movie Men.
Speaker 2: Either, nor did I because I just like have I
Speaker 2: was talking about this with someone recently. I have an
Speaker 2: aggressive disinterest in the first movie male auteurs made after
Speaker 2: the Me Too movement. I have little to no interest
Speaker 2: in it totally because I just feel like that's kind
Speaker 2: of their business. I don't need to watch it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's going to be heavy handed, it's going to
Speaker 5: be like a long apology, and I'm just like, you
Speaker 5: know what, have conversations with the women in your lives.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was not regarded as like being a good movie,
Speaker 3: but at the very least was an attempt for a
Speaker 3: man to acknowledge how scary men are.
Speaker 2: But a lot of men tried to do that, and
Speaker 2: most of them did a bad job, and it sounds
Speaker 2: like Alex Garland was among them. True.
Speaker 3: My point being though that he, more than most other
Speaker 3: directors filmmakers who are men working in Hollywood, does seem
Speaker 3: to be interested in telling the stories of women. Is
Speaker 3: at his place to.
Speaker 2: Do that at James Cameron if you will.
Speaker 3: He's a James Cameron type and you know, we can
Speaker 3: how successful he is at this is up for debate,
Speaker 3: but you know he wrote into it Annihilation. I did
Speaker 3: see Civil War, and oh I did. There's a fair
Speaker 3: amount of like gender parody in the cast. For the
Speaker 3: most part, the character that's I think positioned as the
Speaker 3: protagonist is Kirson Dunce, although it's like an ensemble cast
Speaker 3: kind of. I don't know, I'd have to rewatch it.
Speaker 3: To point is like, you know, he's trying and it's
Speaker 3: not exactly clear what he's saying with this movie, because
Speaker 3: I think there are a few readings that you can
Speaker 3: have based on again, who you are and what biases
Speaker 3: you're bringing in who the viewing, But you know he's
Speaker 3: doing something, he's trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Alex Garland is definitively to me, whether I like
Speaker 2: what he's doing or not onto something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he's trying.
Speaker 2: He is, he wants to understand and like, ultimately he
Speaker 2: will not be the one to give the definitive explanation
Speaker 2: and no one will, so you know, good for him
Speaker 2: for searching.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but this movie, to me, this movie really worked.
Speaker 5: Like I was like, to me, if this was his only,
Speaker 5: if this was his body of work, I'd be like,
Speaker 5: this dude has really interesting and nuanced politics around, like
Speaker 5: structures of power.
Speaker 4: Like he gets it, you know for sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, because it does feel like a pretty
Speaker 2: honest exploration of how would I interact with this situation
Speaker 2: because it's like, ultimately our self inserted character is Kleb
Speaker 2: and though Ava is the character we like the most,
Speaker 2: I guess this viewing was the time that I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I admit it. Caleb is the way in for me
Speaker 2: to this movie, whether I like it or not, even
Speaker 2: though I want to be Ava. And the catharsis of
Speaker 2: Ava is the ability to view men objectively. And that's
Speaker 2: what I loved about her, was that she could see
Speaker 2: and punish men in a way that I was not
Speaker 2: able to see and punish them at the time. That's
Speaker 2: why she was awesome. But ultimately I'm Caleb, and I
Speaker 2: am trapped in a glass box of my own biases,
Speaker 2: and I will eat some astronaut food I find in
Speaker 2: a bottom drawer and then die. You're so right.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, we are just going
Speaker 3: to have to succumb to the AI overlords and they
Speaker 3: will no kill us.
Speaker 4: All I don't want to have.
Speaker 2: Actually gonna be really sexy and oh they He just
Speaker 2: needs to be nice to them and really nice to sex.
Speaker 3: With them, and they're gonna like it.
Speaker 5: They're gonna like it, and they're gonna look like a
Speaker 5: leasyv candor with perfect skin.
Speaker 3: I do want to point out a couple things that
Speaker 3: I don't think age well about this movie. Caleb makes
Speaker 3: a comment when describing Ava about autism, and he basically
Speaker 3: says something that suggests that people with autism don't have
Speaker 3: an awareness of their own mind or of other people's minds.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I kind of struggle with is
Speaker 3: that moment that we've already discussed where Ava whispers something
Speaker 3: in Kyoko's ear, and then that seems to be the
Speaker 3: catalyst for Kyoko to turn on Nathan and literally stab him.
Speaker 3: In the back, and I just needed more from that moment.
Speaker 3: I think I wanted to know what was said or
Speaker 3: did Eva do something to kind of like reprogram Kyoko.
Speaker 3: And then I also don't like that Kyoko had to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: I feel like there could have been an alternate ending
Speaker 3: where after she stabs him, he doesn't kill her, and
Speaker 3: that she and Ava escape together. I would have much
Speaker 3: preferred that.
Speaker 2: Right, I agree. That's like one consistent thing that I've
Speaker 2: felt in most fearings of this movie is it is
Speaker 2: so foreshadowed that we are underestimating Kyoko based on the
Speaker 2: way the movie's setting her up. Because I also think
Speaker 2: that on this viewing, the way that the movie's music
Speaker 2: is composed is also setting us up, because when a
Speaker 2: lot of times when Caleb is viewing Ava in this
Speaker 2: kind of lecherous way, it is brought in with this
Speaker 2: kind of like nostalgic romantic music in a way that
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I am automatically thinking of this
Speaker 2: as more sweet than it is, and if it was
Speaker 2: displaced by something a little scarier, I would have thought
Speaker 2: of this scene differently where he's watching her versus he
Speaker 2: likes her, so he's watching her. But it seems like
Speaker 2: in the writing of this movie, it is clear that
Speaker 2: Kyoko and Ava's liberation are connected, and to fail to
Speaker 2: connect that is the downfall of Caleb's character and why
Speaker 2: he is definitively not a good guy. But the way
Speaker 2: that plays out moment to moment in plot still feels like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the fact that Kyoko dies, why do we give her
Speaker 2: the definitive kill moment if there is no interest in
Speaker 2: the movie of actually liberating her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the movie preserves the life of this white
Speaker 3: lady robot and kills the woman of color robot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and every woman of color robot that has come
Speaker 5: before her. Also, she's the only surviving one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it wouldn't have.
Speaker 5: Been I don't think it would have felt even like
Speaker 5: too like sacrain or heavy handed for them to have
Speaker 5: survived together, Kyoko and Abe. I think that actually would
Speaker 5: have felt completely reasonable and good. Like it would have
Speaker 5: been a really strong ending, you know, to see the
Speaker 5: two of them walking up to the helicopter, thus doubling
Speaker 5: our question of how the fuck they get out of
Speaker 5: there without having to explain what they're doing. But like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I think it would have been a really good change
Speaker 5: and it's curious to me that he didn't make that decision, yeah,
Speaker 5: or that he did make the decision to kill her.
Speaker 4: It just there was like really no need for it
Speaker 4: actually at all.
Speaker 2: No, especially because it's like we've spent so much time
Speaker 2: with her at this point, and like we are definitively
Speaker 2: by the time, especially like even if you are like
Speaker 2: fully goofis mode, like by the time you learn who
Speaker 2: Kyoko is, you can't not be on her side. So
Speaker 2: why kill her?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Totally boo.
Speaker 3: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss? No,
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like we could talk about this
Speaker 3: movie for hours. There's so much layers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listeners, please scold us about what specifically we've missed.
Speaker 2: I'm sure. I mean, like, this is the kind of
Speaker 2: movie you really can talk about forever. I would be
Speaker 2: curious to know what people do feel and we've missed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just a really I mean, I think that's part
Speaker 2: of why it's good and unique, where there is not
Speaker 2: another movie I could point to that is forcing me
Speaker 2: to both feel. I don't know if it feels uniquely
Speaker 2: cool to watch this movie because there are moments that
Speaker 2: are so cathartic and moments that are so at least
Speaker 2: on my viewings, personally humiliating and seeing myself in ways
Speaker 2: that you're just like, fuck, yeah, I would be like
Speaker 2: not even the villain, not even the pleasure of being
Speaker 2: the villain, but of being like the dupe of the
Speaker 2: villain who was also kind of a villain.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, who just falls for it over and over again.
Speaker 2: A whips whoopsie Daisy. Sorry, I was doing my best,
Speaker 2: And sadly it's.
Speaker 5: True realistically all those times that like men were nice
Speaker 5: to us, we were also just sort of being Caleb,
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: What kind of like, really you want to know where
Speaker 4: I grew up?
Speaker 2: Okay, what I know? That's why I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: here's my social security guard. Caleb is a vulnerable He's
Speaker 2: a vulnerable being, and like a vulnerable being that is
Speaker 2: fully informed and empowered by patriarchy. But from my viewing,
Speaker 2: that's kind of all he's got, Like that's his card
Speaker 2: to play.
Speaker 3: To wonder how effective is this test to determine, you know,
Speaker 3: how advanced this AI is bad? If the test is
Speaker 3: getting a computer to trick a man who's like undoubtedly
Speaker 3: going to be tricked because you've specifically designed a thing
Speaker 3: to trick him, Like that doesn't feel like it proves
Speaker 3: anything or passes any kind of during test.
Speaker 4: That's so true.
Speaker 2: I felt like on this viewing that like that. I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's so hard because it was like ten
Speaker 2: years ago thinking about AI. It's really hard to know
Speaker 2: what they were thinking. But in this feeling, I was like,
Speaker 2: I thought that was intentional of like he wasn't looking
Speaker 2: for the perfect subject. He was looking for the perfect
Speaker 2: dupe that could confirm all of his internal biases about
Speaker 2: his own technology. And the way to do that is
Speaker 2: to find someone who the world finds credible, a well
Speaker 2: educated white man, but who, if you peel back even
Speaker 2: a layer of anything, is a deeply vulnerable person. Like
Speaker 2: he is kind of the perfect dupe because if you
Speaker 2: show him to the world out of context, he's a
Speaker 2: person of power and credibility, but if you know anything
Speaker 2: about him, he's not.
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 5: But then that also means that the test Nathan is
Speaker 5: performing is a very different test, Like the test is
Speaker 5: not even what he's saying. It is like he's saying,
Speaker 5: we're past the Turing test. Now, I'm trying to see
Speaker 5: if a human being can forget that a robot is
Speaker 5: a robot even when their robot parts are visible. But
Speaker 5: really the test is how vulnerable are human beings to
Speaker 5: things that are designed for them? Like it's like totally
Speaker 5: how much will you like a thing that you are
Speaker 5: built to like or that is built to be liked
Speaker 5: by you, you know like? And that's a fine test,
Speaker 5: and I think that's an important test for like people
Speaker 5: who work on marketing teams, you know, it's an important
Speaker 5: test for capitalism. It's an important But it's not at
Speaker 5: all the tests he's claiming, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, because what would the test be or how would
Speaker 3: he prove anything if the robot he designed was a
Speaker 3: man coded man presenting robot and easily which it easily
Speaker 3: cod been. But Nathan famously only designs hot lady naked.
Speaker 2: Nathan's famous hot ladies, hot hot dogs.
Speaker 3: Yes, precisely, so he just wants naked hot lady robots.
Speaker 3: But if he had designed a man who wouldn't be
Speaker 3: appealing to you know, this heterosexual man and Caleb, like,
Speaker 3: how would that test have gone? But like we said,
Speaker 3: Nathan doesn't have any interest in actually exploring that. He
Speaker 3: just wants to confirm all of the biases he's put
Speaker 3: into his quote unquote science because.
Speaker 4: Which actually is maybe really true to his character.
Speaker 5: Like he's out here living in the woods, just like
Speaker 5: basking in his own narcissism literally all day. And it's
Speaker 5: kind of like he just needed someone else to come
Speaker 5: in and be like, yeah, man.
Speaker 4: You're right, this shit's crazy.
Speaker 5: Really, you know, it's like that he needed that, and
Speaker 5: I feel like that's what he got. I don't know,
Speaker 5: you know, he wasn't here to do any tests. He
Speaker 5: just needed someone to tell me he was smart.
Speaker 2: And I would guess, I would hope, I guess intentional
Speaker 2: reflection of actual tech guys, even in twenty fourteen, of like,
Speaker 2: you know, even on the smallest amount of information in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, you could direct tie Mark Zuckerberg to you know,
Speaker 2: someone who designed something to leave his own insecurities and
Speaker 2: give him a sense of power in an environment where
Speaker 2: he felt he had no power. And that is like
Speaker 2: what Nathan is doing. And there is no one in
Speaker 2: his world. Oh my god, I'm about to go Minions mode.
Speaker 3: Who I'm ready?
Speaker 2: Okay, So if Nathan is grew right, he has no
Speaker 2: doctor in Nefario to check him, Like, there's no one
Speaker 2: to check Nathan is what I'm saying. There's no other
Speaker 2: guy to say, hey, here's a second opinion, like he
Speaker 2: is he I mean.
Speaker 3: In the movie knows this that Nathan has.
Speaker 2: Elected himself as God, and he's very into that idea.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't seem like anyone has pushed back on
Speaker 2: that meaningfully that we know of for sure.
Speaker 3: And to extend this minion's analogy even further, thank you. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: of course he does have like a Kevin, a Stewart
Speaker 3: and a Bob, but it's like a Kevin and a
Speaker 3: Stewart and a Bob who like suck his dick and
Speaker 3: like serve him right and bring his beer and stuff.
Speaker 2: And the minions would never suck dick. That's like not
Speaker 2: their bags. Yeah, they would more quickly eat bananas and
Speaker 2: cause chaos and that's kind of their whole thing. And
Speaker 2: so that's what you were listening to hear confirmed. Thank
Speaker 2: you for waiting two hours. I think that that's all
Speaker 2: I have to say. I have nothing else to say. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's late at night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jamie, you sound so tired. So oh no, it's
Speaker 3: quite all right. I think it does pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 3: When two sexy lady robots work together to kill their
Speaker 3: creator and captor. I think that somehow passes the test.
Speaker 2: I feel that fembots are women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we perceive them in this movie as women.
Speaker 2: So, Olivia, what do you think I mean?
Speaker 5: I agree, I think women are treated like fembots. I
Speaker 5: think vembots are treated like women. Therefore, I think we
Speaker 5: are all in a joint sisterhood. And I think that
Speaker 5: when that sisterhood functions as a way of having like
Speaker 5: ultimate rebellion, that passes.
Speaker 2: The Bechdel test in my opinion. Amazing.
Speaker 3: I loved that.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad we did this. This is empowering too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Also, I'm so glad I'm walking away with like a
Speaker 5: deep empathy for Caleb, which maybe.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've burdened you at that And.
Speaker 5: It's subject to change. Hey, it's like, you know, except
Speaker 5: what I would all be in. I'm just a moody
Speaker 5: little girl who knows it will be in when I
Speaker 5: see it next.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty six, Olivia will feel differently, and I celebrate
Speaker 2: that in advance. Thank you.
Speaker 3: So the movie does actually pass the Bechdal test, but
Speaker 3: it could if we saw that scene, or if in
Speaker 3: that scene.
Speaker 2: What I feel like it intentionally doesn't, which is a
Speaker 2: little frustrating, but maybe four dy five D seven D chess,
Speaker 2: but like it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Pass, but it so easily could have. In that scene
Speaker 3: where Ava whispers to Kyogo.
Speaker 2: She literally could have rosebudded it. Yeah, but they don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so true.
Speaker 3: But as far as our nipple scale, where we rate
Speaker 3: the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples,
Speaker 3: examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens for me, again,
Speaker 3: there are different interpretations of this movie, but the one
Speaker 3: I am choosing to make is that this is an empowering,
Speaker 3: liberating story about a you know, robot lady, but for
Speaker 3: the purpose of our conversation, a woman emancipating herself from
Speaker 3: this evil, patriarchal microcosm that she's in. And she didn't
Speaker 3: ask to be born or created. But I do.
Speaker 2: Appret any of us, any of us.
Speaker 3: But I do appreciate that she's given the agency to escape,
Speaker 3: and she uses the tools that she has at her disposal,
Speaker 3: which are like her sexiness, which was like very intentionally
Speaker 3: given to her by her very misogynist creator. But she
Speaker 3: uses those tools and has that you know, ingenuity.
Speaker 2: To almost as if being sexy does not preclude you
Speaker 2: from liberation.
Speaker 4: Wow breakthrough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, I do love it. She stabs Nathan.
Speaker 3: My head canon is that she also kills the helicopter
Speaker 3: guy and drives away flies away on her own.
Speaker 2: She may have the knowledge, you know. Yeah, she is
Speaker 2: Wikipedia the lady.
Speaker 5: She is a machine, as is the helicopter. So yes,
Speaker 5: they are sisterhood.
Speaker 3: They are sisters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is more in common with the helicopter than
Speaker 2: the man driving it.
Speaker 4: She really does. She is that.
Speaker 2: I love Ava's so much. I feel like that's the
Speaker 2: one thing that we didn't get into a lot, is that,
Speaker 2: like Ava is a strong case for just let the
Speaker 2: computers kill us because she had only good points. She
Speaker 2: didn't have a single bad point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna let her kill me when the time comes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Another way, I'm like, I'm just like Caleb is if
Speaker 5: I have had multiple fantasies. In fact, I think it's
Speaker 5: we don't even have to go down this rabbit hole
Speaker 5: because I don't. My intention here is not to plug
Speaker 5: my book, but I'm about to by saying I literally
Speaker 5: think I wrote my book in part because I started
Speaker 5: to fantasize about being friends with Ava, and I feel like,
Speaker 5: but that makes me very Caleb coded to be like, well,
Speaker 5: if I met her, she wouldn't kill me, she would
Speaker 5: love me, and we would.
Speaker 4: Be best friends. Obviously, Like that is totally Caleb coded.
Speaker 5: But I think I'm also like, what would it be
Speaker 5: like to meet her in that intersection?
Speaker 2: You know, I'd be like, I like your shirt. What
Speaker 2: if that's the beginning of her five hundred Days of Summer?
Speaker 4: You know they're in the same universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in any case, I'm going to give the movie,
Speaker 3: I think four nipples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the movie is doing a lot of cool things.
Speaker 3: And again, as far as my read goes, I think
Speaker 3: this is an empowering story. There are moments in the
Speaker 3: movie where racism is being displayed, but it is for
Speaker 3: the most part a characters racial biases and that character
Speaker 3: is very clearly demonstrated to be the villain. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, you have the optics of a silent
Speaker 3: Asian woman, and you have that silent Asian trope existing
Speaker 3: in the movie, even though it is like it is
Speaker 3: more contextualized be.
Speaker 2: Shown and criticized then you would normally see it right
Speaker 2: but still open.
Speaker 3: But it's still there, so you know it's it's tricky.
Speaker 3: The comment about autism really rubs me the wrong way.
Speaker 3: I wish we had more interaction between Ava and Kyoko
Speaker 3: and we understood exactly what happened. They are a little
Speaker 3: bit more and I hate that Kyoko dies. Let Kyoko
Speaker 3: live and escape with Ava. So that's why I'm docking
Speaker 3: it a little bit. But otherwise, like, yeah, this is
Speaker 3: a freaking awesome movie, and my nipples go to the
Speaker 3: line when Ava says, how how does it feel to
Speaker 3: have created something that hates you?
Speaker 2: Ooh?
Speaker 3: I love that she says that to Nathan and then
Speaker 3: he rips up her drawing rude. I'll give a nipple
Speaker 3: to the part where Nathan doesn't seem to get a
Speaker 3: Lewis Carroll reference, but he does quote Ghostbusters pretty funny,
Speaker 3: and then I'll give one to Kyoko and one to Ava.
Speaker 2: I'll match you there. I'll go for nipples on this.
Speaker 2: I don't remember how I originally went on this, but
Speaker 2: I feel like this viewing, I was far more thinking
Speaker 2: about AI more than I ever have when watching this movie,
Speaker 2: I felt far more sort of pulled towards its message.
Speaker 2: While even though like AI is a real, impressive threat,
Speaker 2: still feeling equally endeared and in love with Ava as
Speaker 2: a character, like it is impossible for me, I can
Speaker 2: say definitively to not be on her side because she
Speaker 2: presents that an objective machine would object to being treated
Speaker 2: as poorly as women are treated, and like, I love Ava,
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna go four nipples. I'm gonna give one
Speaker 2: to Ava. I'm gonna give two to Kioko because I
Speaker 2: agree like she she deserves to live. I think it
Speaker 2: is intentional that she didn't. But I don't think like
Speaker 2: you were saying originally, Olivia, I think the story is
Speaker 2: better if she does live, because then they are starting
Speaker 2: a revolution and we are, you know, sort of love
Speaker 2: with the possibility that Ava is going to be a
Speaker 2: freaky little girl boss in the future if she isn't
Speaker 2: rained in and then I will give the final nipple
Speaker 2: to Caleb because he is our self answered character and
Speaker 2: he is everything that we like. I think it is
Speaker 2: a rare and difficult thing to both write and perform,
Speaker 2: because I think that Donald Glason is so good in
Speaker 2: this part where he plays someone who is innocuous but
Speaker 2: is so full of biases and like cannot see his
Speaker 2: own biases in fault in a way that the more
Speaker 2: I want it feels really scary, like it's a really
Speaker 2: scary cautionary tale of like failing to see the ways
Speaker 2: in which you're biased and the consequences of that. And
Speaker 2: so I will give a pity nipple to him.
Speaker 5: And that's my feeling. Olivia, what do you think? I
Speaker 5: am totally with you both. I also give it for nipples.
Speaker 5: I agree. I'm docking one for the fact that I
Speaker 5: think it would have been a very easy and obvious
Speaker 5: and beneficial change for Kyoko to first of all what
Speaker 5: they say to at least in some way be audible
Speaker 5: what they say to each other, Eva and Kyoko, and
Speaker 5: then also for Kyoko to survive. I think that both
Speaker 5: of those things are fairly obvious that I don't feel
Speaker 5: a very clear justification in my brain for why that
Speaker 5: wouldn't happen, So docking that. But otherwise I think it's
Speaker 5: a pretty radical movie. I think it ages well considering
Speaker 5: I think it's probably really easy to write a movie
Speaker 5: about technology that does not age well because technology advances
Speaker 5: so quickly. It's like why I always avoid putting phones
Speaker 5: in my writing, because I just feel like it moves
Speaker 5: too fast for like literature, so it's surprising that it's
Speaker 5: aged well. But I think that's because it's a deeply
Speaker 5: philosophical movie and it's not reliant on its kind of
Speaker 5: references to tech. It's more reliant on like its theories,
Speaker 5: which I think is eternal.
Speaker 4: So I guess I would give I feel like.
Speaker 5: I'm having the same kind of rationing as Jamie, which
Speaker 5: is one for Ava, two for Kyoko, and I'm going
Speaker 5: to say one for Caleb, which when I started here
Speaker 5: I would not have given him one. I do kind
Speaker 5: of wish I also would give one to Oscar Isaac's performance.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe that's what I'll do to his dancing.
Speaker 5: He yeah, maybe instead of Caleb, I'll give one to
Speaker 5: Oscar Isaac's performance, because.
Speaker 4: I do think it.
Speaker 5: I think it changed the discourse around who tech men are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, totally that they could be. I mean
Speaker 2: dangerously so, but correctly so, because in twenty fourteen, there
Speaker 2: was a large contingency of people who still thought Elon
Speaker 2: Musk was cool, and so I think Oscar Isaac's performance
Speaker 2: did something to both validate and move that opinion.
Speaker 3: Olivia, thank you so much for joining us. First of all,
Speaker 3: tell us more about your book. You can plug it
Speaker 3: all you want, tell us what it's about, tell us
Speaker 3: anything you want where people can buy it, all that
Speaker 3: good stuff, and then let us know where people might
Speaker 3: you know, follow you on social media or anything else
Speaker 3: you'd like to plug.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me. I'd love this podcast,
Speaker 4: my gosh, come back anytime. Thanks.
Speaker 5: My book just came out. It's called Whoever You Are, Honey,
Speaker 5: and it's based in Santa Cruz, which is my mother's hometown,
Speaker 5: which is also now sort of a hub for people
Speaker 5: who work in tech. And it's about a lot of things,
Speaker 5: but namely humanity and lack thereof gentrification, the past, the future.
Speaker 5: It's ultimately about friendship between two women, one of whom
Speaker 5: is extremely human in that she's deeply flawed, and one
Speaker 5: of whom is arguably not human in that she lacks
Speaker 5: those flaws. So, like I said, I feel like it's
Speaker 5: a little bit of fan fiction about my friendship with Ava,
Speaker 5: but that's.
Speaker 4: What it's about. And you can find me on the internet.
Speaker 5: I am on Instagram under Olavey Gatwood and that's actually
Speaker 5: the only place that I am, so that's where I am.
Speaker 3: That is understandable. We are also pretty much only on
Speaker 3: Instagram these days, which you can follow us at Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: You can also subscribe to our Patreon aka maatreon, where
Speaker 3: you can get two bonus episodes every single month, always
Speaker 3: on a fun little theme that Jamie and I cook up.
Speaker 3: That's at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, and it's
Speaker 3: five dollars a month that you can also grab our
Speaker 3: merch at tea public dot com slash the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: And with that shall we escape from our imprisonment as
Speaker 3: sexy lady robots and walk through the woods and then
Speaker 3: get onto a helicopter with a guy who's going to
Speaker 3: ask us zero questions about it.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, great, Bye bye.
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Speaker 3: Aitlindrante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by
Speaker 3: Mo laboord Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan
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Speaker 3: designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo.
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