Pandora’s Myth and Cultural Trauma in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Abstract

Since its 2015 debut, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina has been conceptualized as a creation myth, as a succession myth, as the Pygmalion myth and as the Pandora myth, among others – each of these argumentations acknowledging the permeability between different interpretations. The author argues that Ex Machina recodes the myth of Pandora and creates a fertile ground to display cultural traumas that have been affecting women – such as female subordination and oppression caused by a patriarchal structure and stereotypical binary oppositions. Thus, Garland’s film also suggests that the old forms of female oppression might be reaffirmed in the context of the age of technological innovation.1

Keywords

• ex machina
• pandora’s myth
• humans and machines
• women
• patriarchy