A Sentimental Android? M3GAN (2022) and Monstrous Doubling as a Negotiation of the Gendered Neo-Liberal Self
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2024.633Keywords:
Horror Film, science fiction film, Automaton, AI, Robot, FemininityAbstract
This paper analyses the android M3GAN in the 2022 film of the same name, problematising recent framings that celebrate M3GAN as a gay icon, a feminist figure, or understand her as embodying our collective fear of artificial intelligence. Instead, I place M3GAN in a long line of narratives that mediate on the role of women in society, following the loosening of possibilities for woman brought about in the Enlightenment. I go on to suggest ways in which contemporary neoliberal values are forcefully communicated in popular culture and how in turn, the subject reacts and internalises ideology.
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