A Moral Question: Gender and (Re)production in A.I. Artificial Intelligence 20 Years Later

In her revolutionary 1991 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” theorist Donna Haraway argues that a cyborgian existence—patently non-human and thus transcendent of all man-made systems of oppression—should indeed be one of inherent liberation.

“The machine is not an ‘it’ to be animated, worshipped, and dominated,” she writes. “The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they.”

Haraway’s blatantly utopian vision of how women and people of color would benefit from being relieved from the structural oppression of humanity’s (and above all, Western colonialism’s) rule, is responded to in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The film argues that the systems in place are in no position to be shifted or altered in the wake of powerful corporations wielding artificial life in order to serve “the human race in all the multiplicity of daily life.” Yet Haraway understands that when the power structure is not thoroughly obliterated, the distribution of power—particularly along gender lines—will continue to play out as they have for centuries. In essence, A.I. unravels what will occur to a society that never reckons with the inequalities of its social stratification—meanwhile, Haraway offers an idyllic blueprint for how the upheaval of this inequitable system would dramatically alter and empower the lives of marginalized individuals.

“Every story that begins with original innocence and privileges the return to wholeness imagines the drama of life to be individuation, separation, the birth of the self, the tragedy of autonomy, the fall into writing, alienation,” Harroway writes. “These plots are ruled by a reproductive politics—rebirth without flaw, perfection, abstraction. In this plot women are imagined either better or worse off, but all agree they have less selfhood, weaker individuation, more fusion to the oral, to Mother, less at stake in masculine autonomy.”

In this sense, both David and Monica exist within a system which devalues both of their multifaceted natures. Monica is only seen as fulfilled when she assumes the role of mother and nurturer; meanwhile, David’s “original innocence” is rendered without purpose when abandoned by the caretaker he imprinted on. Within the confines of the nuclear familial structure, both are stripped of true individuality and the ability to forge a new path for themselves.

Even when David supposedly overrides his internal circuitry—which was created to hinder his ability to make decisions and “follow his dreams”—it is with the resolute goal of finding the Blue Fairy, so that he can become a “real boy” for Monica. Frustrated with David’s lack of understanding, Gigolo Joe makes one final plea for David to abandon his plight before traveling to the perilous submerged island of Manhattan where he believes the mythical mother figure to reside.

“[Monica] loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them,” he begins. “But she does not love you, David. She cannot love you. You are neither flesh nor blood…[Humans] made us too smart, too quick and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That’s why they hate us.”

Joe’s words ring true right up to the emotion-shattering conclusion of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (though the entire film, admittedly, induces tears throughout). When David and Teddy travel through the flooded ruins of New York, they eventually stumble upon a gorgeous ceramic statue of the Blue Fairy in the aquatic rubble of Coney Island, a discovery which David becomes so obsessed and entranced with that he remains in her presence for 2,000 years, long after the power supply of his amphibious vessel has completely depleted. At this point, advanced mecha are the only remaining inhabitants of an Earth clutched by glacial freeze. It is they who discover David and Teddy in the icy depths, eventually housing them in a simulation of the Swinton household recreated via David’s stored memories. The advanced beings explain to David that he is the last remaining tether to human life and connection. Yet in lieu of focusing on the immense cruelty he and other mecha suffered at the hands of vindictive humans, David begs the beings to utilize their advanced technology to bring Monica back from the dead, presenting a lock of her hair as a means to harvest her DNA.

“All we want is for your happiness,” the advanced robots concede. Monica is only able to be brought back to life for one full day, after which she will die. David proceeds to spend the happiest day of his life with a reincarnated Monica—then goes on to defy the laws of his very programming, dying by her side that night.

“For the first time in his life,” Ben Kingsley’s narration concludes as David shuts his eyes for the first and only time during the film’s duration, “he went to that place where dreams are made of.”

Ironically, it is through death that David finds ultimate freedom from the brutal margins of his creation. Though this is not seen as “survival” in the literal sense, it is an act of self-determination that truly echoes the thesis of Haraway’s essay. “Cyborg writing is about the power to survive,” she writes, “not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as ‘other.’”

Conversely, Monica cannot escape the narrow identity of Mother even by means of resurrection. Though the bleakness of A.I.’s ending in large part stems from the tragedy of David’s self-induced slumber, there remains a distinct streak of melancholy when it comes to Monica’s own inability to escape the narrow label of Mother even when given life anew. In fact, there is little about her existence that is removed from her duties as wife and mother. Despite the inescapable presence of the nuclear family and dominant view of women as innately reproductive and servile, the film’s depiction of traditional gender roles outliving major coastal cities in the post-apocalypse is particularly salient.

However, Monica’s pleasant last day on Earth with David is not entirely depressing. Haraway argues that by being “out of place” (i.e. stripped from the hierarchy of her traditional family structure) and reuniting with David (“the machine”), she herself is able to engage in a cyborgian inversion of feminine expectations of child-rearing: “Up till now…female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females.”

In harnessing the biological phenomenon of mortality, David extrapolates himself from an existence without control. In spite of never being recognized as a “real boy,” David is nonetheless able to free himself of the burden of eternal devotion and naivete. In turn, Monica is retroactively manufactured in order to fulfill David’s desire as a mecha, inversing the method of creation (and the enduringly misogynistic society) which produced David in the first place. This power structure is not one of force and control, but rather one created with loving intention and with objective happiness as the goal. Within this compassionate framework, conjured via the adept minds of both Kubrick and Spielberg, the cyborgian entity is truly liberated.

Natalia Keogan is a Queens-based writer who covers film, music and culture, with particular interest in the horror genre and depictions of sexuality and gender. You can read her work in Narratively, Filmmaker Magazine and Paste, and find her on Twitter.