a starter pack of twenty female robots on film • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

Cyborgs. Androids. AI. Robots. Replicants. Synthetics. There are subtle differences between all of these—some franchise-specific, some rooted in real-world technologies, but they all pose larger questions about the nature of consciousness and what it means to be “human.” And, for some reason, their creators often assign them genders—even when there’s no practical reason to do so.

The specific subclass of female-coded androids (and cyborgs, and what have you) is rich in subtext, with these artificial women serving as conduits for their makers’ subconscious feelings about, and prejudices toward, women in general. These characters are often subjugated by the human men who made them, as literal sexualized objects or obedient mechanical wives and daughters; these men freely express their entitlement over their creations’ bodies, a fictional echo of the misogynistic violence that attempts to keep real human women in check. There’s a fear of women’s power coded into these characters, too, usually manifesting as an unstoppable killing machine.