Female Subjects in Mustang and Ex Machina: Toward a Posthuman-Feminist Ethics of Care
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.28745Keywords:
Mustang, Ex Machina, subjectivity, posthuman feminism, ethics of care, close-reading analysisAbstract
This article compares two motion pictures, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang (2015) and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015), respectively classified as social realism and science fiction. Contrary to what it could seem, the movies offer several points of convergence and few of divergence regarding formal aspects, themes, and messages. Among the similarities, it stands out that the female protagonists, Turkish teenagers in Mustang and gynoids in Ex Machina, represent individuals that patriarchal humanism deems as the “other” (Haraway, 2004; Mohanty, 2003). The most important difference between the two productions concerns the treatment of ethics, being critical in the first case and posing questions in the second. My theoretical framework combines posthuman feminism (Bennett, 2010; Braidotti, 2021; Hayles, 1999) with the ethics of care (Gilligan, 2016; Tronto, 2020; Warren, 2000), while expecting to reinforce the ethical dimension of posthumanism. I put Ex Machina and Mustang side by side in order to explore the following hypotheses: close reading can be a fruitful method for film analysis; the unusual female protagonists may (partly) be qualified as posthuman subjects; a truly posthuman feminist society should practice the ethics of care. My conclusions urge to revise today’s social values and make care a central one; furthermore, signs of affection should be encouraged to counteract the side effects of technology.
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