Ella Christiansen
RATED: R
Abstract
As novel technologies like the internet and affordable camcorders increased the cinematic visibility of queer sex, democratized media-making destabilized heteronormative definitions of sex and demanded a fluid cultural reimagination of sexuality. Through the lens of genre cinema, queer artists reinterpret cybernetic monsters, or the intermingling of living and mechanical systems, as sites of disidentification from restrictive conceptions of humanity and sexuality. One example of this is the cinematic male fantasy of the fembot. Through historical and cybernetic analyses of films like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Shu Lea Cheang’s I.K.U. (2000), and Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021), one can conclude that ‘sex’ is merely a pleasurable technology of communication.
On and offline, friends and strangers question and ponder the particulars of queer sex. Rather, they probe and prod at the mechanics of sex between queer people. Stitched in the above sentences is a failure of diction; how does a culture in flux define a term as fraught as sex? “It doesn't really expose its true meaning, I feel, until it’s been incorporated into the human body,” (“Videodrome Director's Commentary”). Cult-classic filmmaker David Cronenberg once proclaimed this ineffability, not about sex but about technology, though the same could be said for the relationship to human sexuality. Cronenberg and other experts of the horror genre deftly depict their technological and sexual anxieties through cybernetic analogies in subgenres like body horror and cyberpunk science fiction. This intertwining of messy metaphors and academic assertions ensnares the body in the cords and wires that power the human experience. This mass of flesh we navigate the world in bears the wear and tear of systems of oppression, changing the way we use, develop, and define both technology and sex. Imposing questions about the mechanics – not the particulars but the mechanics – of queer sex can serve as a potent example of how traditional sexual power dynamics like colonialism and gender inform a culture’s approach to defining sex. This emergent cultural relationship between sex and technology can be observed through the lens of contemporary subversive genre cinema. Cinematic depictions of technosexuality are influenced by the emergence of digital technologies and demand a reappraisal of restrictive contemporary definitions of sex. This imperative to reexamine sex is best exemplified by the ever-changing depiction of the cybernetic fembot in films like Titane and I.K.U.
In From Counterculture to Cyberculture Fred Turner investigates the continued resonance of the academic field of cybernetics developed in Norbert Wiener’s Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. He endorses Wiener’s definition of “…cybernetics as ‘the study of messages as a means of controlling machinery and society’” with machinery seeming to include, by analogy at least, biological organisms,” (Turner 22). Inherent in the lexicon of cybernetics is the necessity of analogy to bring together the seemingly oppositional realms of the biological and the technological. In this lexicon of messages and systems, “Legitimacy exchange drew not only on rhetoric, but on material artifacts as well… cyberneticians created a variety of “monsters”—artifacts that seemed to straddle the line between mechanical devices and living systems,” (Turner 26). While these monsters are commonplace in contemporary American life, they take on far greater meaning when integrated into realms of fiction. The name ‘monsters’ invokes a long cinematic history of frightening and horrific creatures best exemplified by the early Universal Studios monsters like Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933) through which filmmakers represented fears rooted in a multitude of personal and social anxieties. At their most elementary level, cybernetic monsters are physical manifestations of machine-human interactions. Given that technosexuality refers to sexual desires or fetishes humans express for machines, technosexual experiences often serve as ‘monsters.’ One resonant example of this is the sexualized male fantasy of the ‘fembot.’
Cinematic reactions to the cybernetic fembot like Titane and I.K.U. reflect a queer optimism about technology’s ability to redefine sexuality as a project rooted in connecting systems rather than the heterosexual confines and power dynamics of reproduction. A contraction of ‘female robot,’ the term fembot was first employed in the show Bionic Woman which based its fembots on the Anita Berber-inspired Maschinenmensch from Metropolis (1927). A scientist character describes his hyperfeminine robots in Bionic Woman as “programmable, obedient, and as beautiful and as deadly as I choose to make them” (De Fren). He uses the word ‘beautiful’ to describe his ‘obedient’ hyper-feminine robots, coopting a conservative heterosexual power dynamic in which man controls the feminized machine. However, this gendered portrait is undercut by the reality of the fembot’s queer roots; cabaret artist Anita Berber who inspired the first fembot put to film in Metropolis was outwardly bisexual and far from obedient (De Fren). By programming the Maschinenmensch with taboo sexual dance performances in Berber’s image, director Fritz Lang unintentionally invokes Berber’s proto-feminist embrace of sexuality as a technology of pleasure or artistry rather than merely one of reproduction and maintenance of the cisgender heterosexual nuclear family. Thus, while the fembot has been burdened with hypersexual misogynist imagery, the cinematic assumption that robotic sex and hyper-femininity are inherently linked with misogyny adopts an unfairly gendered and heterosexual mode of analysis.
I.K.U’s cyberpunk subversions of the expectation of the pornographic fembot as passive presents a queer femme optimism that crafts its world around the “pussy as matrix,” critiques pornography’s unrelenting service of male sexuality at the expense of art, and exposes the elastic definition of sexuality in the face of emergent digital technologies. I.K.U. follows a programmed replicant named Reiko inhabiting seven different female bodies and endeavoring to collect orgasms with sexual partners across a futuristic Tokyo for “I.K.U.” programmers hoping to aggregate and capitalize off the data. The pornographic Blade Runner spinoff is deeply immersive, employing wide-angle lenses and extreme close-ups to welcome the viewer into the color-saturated and chrome-glitzed dimension of the film. Reiko’s sexual endeavors craft a narrative splintered across bodies and spaces in a new diegetic reality that filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang called the “pussy as matrix,” (Jacobs 216). The digital reality of the narrative is constructed by Reiko’s body in an oxymoronic blurring of the pre-cyberspace notion that “…the »nonspaces of the mind« opposed to a world that was run by tactile impulses...” (Deisl 3). The film’s I.K.U. program which modulates orgasms into data is integral to this new image of cyberspace which is traditionally defined as “A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system,” (Deisl 7). If data composes the reality of cyberspace, then I.K.U.’s cyberspace relies on the redefinition of sex as data. This image of female sexuality as bound with digital world-building is depicted both in Reiko’s reality and in the internet graphics the audience and programmers watch. In this way, “I.K.U. is a feminist intervention into the debate over and practice of corporate mainstream porn, by emphasizing the subversive sexual agency of its female characters” in uncensored explicit view (Jacobs 202). Not only does Shu Lea Cheang demand visibility of the ‘pussy’ in reaction to internet censorship of this body part which is deeply entwined with misogyny, but Cheang also predicts the employment of the femme-coded body as central to future capitalist expansions of cybernetic sex. Their insightful prediction takes on great truth in an internet cybersex culture rooted deeply in chatrooms and camming. Cheang’s insightful prediction of the “pussy as matrix” illustrates how the continued commodification of a femme-coded body and the emergence of new pornographic digital medias are profoundly entrenched. In this view of modern digital media, replicant encounters mining orgasms for data reconceptualizes sex as data, capital, and therefore, world-building.
Further, while I.K.U. heavily features what is socially considered ‘traditional’ heterosexual penetrative sex, Cheang takes care to trap these experiences in the experimental pussy matrix beyond the reality of the film’s beginning and end. The film is bookended by Reiko’s sexual experiences with Dizzy, a transgender man played by queer cult film figure Zachery Nataf who is known for founding the Transgender Film Festival in London (Rich 79). Through the film’s amorphous post-linear narrative structure which begins and ends with Dizzy, “Queer viewers are exposed to underground cult figures and digital cut-up techniques that demonstrate the impossibility of any ‘‘natural’’ sexuality in pornography,” (Rich 202). This post linear queered narrative structure takes on greater meaning when framed by the context of Reiko’s desire to have sex with Dizzy. Rather than a mere anthology of sexual experiences, Reiko’s narrative becomes a queer epic; just as Odysseus travels from island to island conquering obstacles, Reiko travels from partner to partner, gathering experience and orgasms in service of her and Dizzy’s pleasure (Rich 208). Thus, I.K.U. subverts the conventions of pornography, crafting a trans-genre queer epic that embraces sex as data that can be shared between individuals or commodified by insidious corporations.
Beyond the confines of the digital matrix, the fembot is often invoked in visceral science fiction and horror films like Ex Machina (2014), Blade Runner (1982), and Terminator 3 (2003) as well as television programs like The Twilight Zone (1959), Star Trek (1966), and Westworld (2016). Expanding on the critical thematic ideas of The Stepford Wives through the body horror subgenre, Julia Ducournau’s Titane deftly responds to the fembot by depicting the robot’s birth as a product of the violent unconditional love between genderless cybernetic systems of humans and cars/machines. Colloquially, religious groups opposed to queer relationships often cite sex for pleasure rather than reproduction as a reason for disavowing queer sex. Filmmaker Julia Ducournau challenges this assumption by crafting Alexia/Adrien as a feminine car dancer and serial killer who is sexually attracted to metal and consequently impregnated by a car just before she is forced to adopt the masculine image of a missing man to evade law enforcement. By binding her chest, cutting her hair, and breaking her nose, she ‘passes’ as a man while bearing a child which embodies how “…in holding two supposedly contrary genders at once, Alexia’s character independently makes a case that gendered categorization, be it binary or tri-polar, is ineffective at conveying identity,” (Pelous). Unconventional sex with a machine leads to the twin body modifications necessitated by pregnancy and ‘passing.’ This use of body modification for biological needs of survival reclaims the fear of corporeal injury from its deeply gendered connotations within the horror genre. “The body being harmed, injured or mutilated is one of the most ancient fears in human nature. Cinema has learnt to exploit it as a very valuable source to create anxieties in the audiences through displaying images of bodies suffering these actions, making explicit what our awareness prefers to hide...” (Revert 1). Conditioned by horror genre conventions, audiences anticipate bodily harm as an inherently violent and negative experience which is often depicted by a man with a phallic object like a knife or drill chasing and ‘penetrating’ a young woman (Revert 1). In Titane, the cybernetic act of penetration serves as consensual body modification which liberates Alexia from her domestic life, prevents her from actualizing her desire to kill others by penetrating them with a knitting needle, and allows her to find unconditional love in her adoptive father figure Vincent. When asked what the name of Alexia’s cyborg child was, filmmaker Julia Ducournau gleefully responded “Alexia,” (O'Connell, Sean, et al.). Because she erotically engages with a machine, Alexia is reborn into loving arms as a cybernetic monster, liberated from the distinctly human confines of gender. Thus, it is only through the image of the cybernetic monster that Alexia is healed by her found family and their unconditional love.
This analogy of the body as an organic technology is further cemented by young Alexia’s car crash which is depicted in extreme close-ups of “…the fusing of a metal plate to a young Alexia’s skull, melding shiny metal with spongy organic matter,” (Pelous). Similar to her gender presentation-bending makeover later in the film, young Alexia’s technological makeover is marked by “…an androgynous shaved head that confuses her gender,” (Pelous). The recurrence of this visual symbol equates the two examples, positing that any modifications to the body can be viewed as mere modifications to a technology. This treats both gender and technology as artificial aspects of reality that manifest and fester in the human body. This view of the technological body as a modifiable tool through which one experiences the world reframes sex as, stripped of its romantic grandeur, a means of communication between two entangled systems seeking a pleasurable outcome. Unlike Alexia’s opening dance performance upon the car for male onlookers, her sex with the car is profoundly internal; positionally, she occupies the traditionally ‘masculine’ role by entering the car while simultaneously embracing the traditionally ‘feminine’ position as the penetrated body which further undercuts the false binaries of gender and sexuality. Through “…a non-normative sexual arrangement that equalizes man and machine, Ducournau simultaneously humanizes the machine and automates the man, debasing traditional constructions of sexuality,” (Pelous). This equation of person with machine cumulates with the birth of Alexia/Adrien’s child who has an exposed titanium mechanical spine running up its back. An expansion on the notion of the fembot, this metamorphosis of Alexia from a human body bound by gender to a more freely technological form illustrates a vision of the cybernetic monster as representative of technology’s potential to liberate the queer body. Thus, the confusion of person with machine, mirrored by the morphing corporeal depictions of gender and sexuality in Titane illustrates a queer redefinition of sexuality as acts of communication systems engage in with the intention of pleasure.
Thus, subversive depictions of erotic fembots in contemporary cinema embrace the image of the cybernetic monster to redefine human sexuality. Reconceptualizing sex as occurring between a person and a machine inherently refutes the exclusively heteronormative image of ‘sex’ as an act in which a cisgender man penetrates a cisgender woman. Sex between a person and machine clears space to define erotic encounters between a person and a person as ‘sex.’ This is no more apparent than in queered depictions of the fembot which traditionally serves a gendered robotic male fantasy of female hyper-femininity and obedience. Films like Titane and I.K.U. explore sex as an experience rooted in a pleasurable process of communication and sharing data. This beautifully illustrates the similarities between sexuality and technology, both of which evolve to suit the needs of the inputs and outputs that compose their operating system. Thus, sexuality is a technology of communication and pleasure that “…doesn't really expose its true meaning, I feel, until it’s been incorporated into the human body,” (“Videodrome Director's Commentary”).
Works Cited
Cheang, Shu Lea, director. I.K.U. Uplink Co, 2001, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/iku. De Fren, Allison, director. Fembot in a Red Dress. Vimeo, 2016, https://vimeo.com/140950223. Deisl, Heinrich. “»Your Body Is A Battleground«: Lust-Machines, Cyberflesh and Man-Meat in
the Film TETSUO.” Visions of the Human in Science Fiction and Cyberpunk, 27 May 2014, https://www.academia.edu/5801514/Your_Body_Is_a_Battleground_Lust_ Machines_ Cyberflesh_and_Man_Meat_in_the_Film_Tetsuo_.
Ducournau, Julia, director. Titane. Neon, 2022.
Jacobs, Katrien. "Queer Voyeurism and the Pussy-Matrix in Shu Lea Cheang’s Japanese Pornography". Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, edited by Chris Berry, Fran Martin, Audrey Yue and Lynn Spigel, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 201-221. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384380-010
O'Connell, Sean, et al. “Palme D'Or Winner Julia Ducournau Talks 'Titane'.” ReelBlend, 6 Oct. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgKVrC-Lq3I.
Pelous, Annalise. “Titane and the Dissolution of Gender.” Spotlight, Spotlight, 1 May 2022, https://www.spotlightjournal.org/issue-iii/l30ra5hxfiwa5jhc5gjweuoxlv47a5. Revert, Jordi. “The Horror Body: Transgressing beyond the Anatomy's Boundaries.” Academia.edu, 21 Oct. 2015,
Rich, B. Ruby. "10. The I.K.U. Experience: The Shu-Lea Cheang Phenomenon". New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2013, pp. 76-80. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822399698-012
Turner, Fred. “The Shifting Politics of the Computational Metaphor.” From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008, pp. 11–41.
“Videodrome Director's Commentary.” Videodrome (1983) , Criterion Collection, 31 Aug. 2004, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2d5rnpDKLmVNHqaOES3vur?si=99a8ff4bfcd74c8f.