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Ava’s Musical Subjectivity in Ex Machina1
By Rebecca Fülöp
One aspect of film scoring that interests me most is not only what music is used to score
gendered characters, but also how that music is used to shape subjectivity—how is music used to
either allow or deny us access to a character’s point of view and interiority, and how does that
shape our understanding of both character and story? Robynn Stilwell suggests that,
“Experiencing a strong identification with a character in the film places us in another’s subject
position, creating an emotionally empathetic response. Film has many ways of coaxing the
audience into that position, from character development, narrative discourse and events, to the
more ‘visceral’ point-of-view shot composition and sound design.”2
If a film can thus invite
identification with a given character, the next question is, with which characters does the film
invite identification? My main questions today in approaching Ex Machina are: whose
subjectivity are we invited to share, and how does the music play a part in the construction of
that subjectivity?
Ex Machina was written and directed by Alex Garland with original music by British
composers Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, the latter of experimental rock band Portishead
fame. The plot is as follows: Caleb, a young computer programmer for the world’s most popular
search engine, “Bluebook,” wins the chance to spend a week with the company’s CEO Nathan in
his exclusive mountain fortress. Upon arrival, Caleb discovers that the contest was a ruse:
Nathan actually wants him to administer an adapted Turing test on an advanced piece of AI
Nathan has invented—a beautiful robot named Ava. Over a series of interviews with Ava, Caleb
1
This paper was presented at the April 7, 2017 spring conference of AMS Allegheny as part of a special session
2
Robynn J. Stilwell, “Sound and Empathy: Subjectivity, Gender and the Cinematic Soundscape,” in Film Music:
Critical Approaches, ed. by K. J. Donnelly (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 173.
187. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001.

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finds himself falling in love with her, and when he discovers that Nathan plans eventually to strip
her down and use her to build a more advanced AI—something he has already done to a number
of previous incarnations—Caleb plots to free Ava. On the day of the planned escape, Nathan
reveals that this was part of the plan all along: he had programmed Ava according to Caleb’s
own search profile (including his pornography searches) knowing he would be attracted to her, to
see if Ava could manipulate Caleb into effecting her escape. The trick backfires on Nathan when
Ava succeeds in breaking free of her prison and, with the help of Nathan’s silent robot
housemaid and sex slave Kyoko, murders him. After outfitting herself with a full human
appearance using parts from Nathan’s previous robots, Ava locks Caleb inside and makes her
escape.
Feminist critical response to the film was varied. A number of critics praised the film’s
twist on familiar sexist tropes. Katherine Cross from Feministing.com describes the film as a
“parable about dehumanization and sexual oppression,” calling it a “starkly filmed portrait of
what is required to escape from hopelessness.”3
The pseudonymous Film Crit Hulk praises the
film’s sly bait-and-switch for how it plays with our own character identification, demonstrating
that our reaction to the movie’s surprise ending “probably says more about you than it does
[about] the film itself.”4
Our reaction to Ava’s supposed betrayal of Caleb, that is, reveals
whether we identified with Caleb or Ava.
Others, however, criticized the film for not going far enough in its rejection of patriarchal
and racist narratives and for focusing on male subjectivity. Charlie Jane Anders from io9 argues,
3
Katherine Cross, “Goddess from the Machine: A Look at Ex Machina’s Gender Politics,” Feministing.com,
accessed March 7 2019. http://feministing.com/2015/05/28/goddess-from-the-machine-a-look-at-ex-machinas-
gender-politics/.
4
“Film Crit Hulk Smash: EX MACHINA And The Art Of Character Identification,” Birthmoviesdeath.com, May
11, 2015. http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/11/film-crit-hulk-smash-ex-machina-and-the-art-of-character-
identification.

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“in one sense, Ex Machina has no female characters—it features two men, whose attitudes to
women are illuminated through their interactions with Ava […]. Looked at that way, Ex Machina
is entirely about masculinity and the different ways the men try to exert control, not so much
about women’s experiences. Ava is merely the lens through which male attitudes are refracted.”5
Even Cross, whose review was largely positive, had to admit, “Ava’s interiority is not the subject
of the film, nor is the story told from her perspective. It would be a very different (and arguably
better) movie if it were. But we are still given a sense of the nature of women’s experience all the
same, what it’s like to be the ‘ball’ in a patriarchal game between two men...”6
I propose we address the question of how the film gives us access to Ava’s character and
whether or not we are invited to share her subject position through the lens of her musical theme,
and examine the relationship between this theme and both Ava’s and Caleb’s characters.
We encounter Ava, as Caleb does, through a series of six interviews that take place on
either side of a glass partition—Ava is not allowed outside of her cell, and Caleb is not allowed
in it. When Caleb glimpses her for the first time, we hear her delicate music box theme. Like the
rest of the soundtrack, it is atmospheric and not especially melodic, but apart from the bits of
pre-existing music we occasionally hear it is probably the most lyrical music in the entire film.
Its childlike, music-box feeling imbues Ava with an infantilizing quality belied by her sharp and
intellectual responses to Caleb’s questions. But while this timbre recalls childhood and
innocence, it also points to a mechanical source, rather than an instrument powered by human
breath or physicality. Although the theme doesn’t always accompany Caleb’s sessions with Ava
(mostly we hear a deep, throbbing drone), it does make a striking appearance during the third
session, when Ava tells Caleb that she wants to show him something [DVD ch. 6, 40:25–43:30].
5
Charlie Jane Anders, “From Metropolis To Ex Machina: Why Are So Many Robots Female?” io9, April 21, 2015.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/from-maria-to-ava-why-are-so-many-artificial-intellige-1699274487.
6
Cross

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Now at this point we understand certain things about Ava and her music based not on
what this specific film is telling us, but on what we as viewers have learned discursively about
what film music means based on films we have seen in the past, and on musical tropes that have
developed over the history of sound film. The trope being referenced here is of course the
feminine love theme, the theme that conflates a female character with her femininity and her
romantic potential.7
From The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) to The Lord of the Rings trilogy
(2001–2003) to Wayne’s World (1992), this type of musical scoring ostensibly gives us
information about the female love object, but actually it usually tells us more about the man who
loves her. The love theme, in acting as an aural equivalent of the male gaze, reveals the woman’s
romantic potential as her essential characteristic, as well as putting the audience in the subject
position of the male looker rather than of the woman herself. (A woman, even in a Hollywood
film, rarely sees herself as a love object.) In this scene Ava dresses herself up as a literal,
physical representation of Caleb’s fantasies; she describes the “date” she wants Caleb to take her
on, asks him if he is attracted her, if he thinks about her when they aren’t together. It appears that
the music is acting as typical feminizing love music, placing us firmly into Caleb’s subject
position. But what we don’t realize at this point is that Ava is manipulating Caleb, and so despite
what this scene seems to be setting us up for, what actually happens is quite different.
For Ava sees Caleb not as her savior, but as another potential captor. Caleb, as several
reviewers have pointed out, has no interest in saving Kyoko or any of the previous robots Nathan
has created.8
He doesn’t believe in “freedom for all robots”—he believes in freedom for Ava,
because he wants her for himself. As Dori Thomas wrote on her feminist film blog Words on
7
For more discussion of this kind of love theme, see Fülöp, “Heroes, Dames, and Damsels in Distress: Constructing
Gender Types in Classical Hollywood Film Music” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2012), chapter 1.
8
See Film Crit Hulk; J.A. Micheline, “Ex Machina: A (White) Feminist Parable for Our Time,”
Womenwriteaboutcomics.com, May 21, 2015. https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2015/05/ex-machina-a-white-
feminist-parable-for-our-time/.

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Films, “Caleb is far more concerned with Ava—a woman he watches on a screen in his bedroom
and is sexually attracted to—than with women as a group.”9
Or even more on point, the reviewer
from Feministing: “When she locks Caleb into Nathan’s office, we realize that Caleb failed
Ava’s test. He didn’t quite see her as a person either.”10
As Ava finally begins to assert her own will—not just carefully constructed
manipulation—in a scene fraught with complicated racial implications (she literally removes the
skin from a dismantled Asian-presenting robot and puts it on her own body), the musical score
reveals the trap we have walked into—that this is no conventional romance, and Ava is no love
object [DVD ch. 15, 1:33:45–1:42:20].11
Let’s unpack this a little. We hear Ava’s theme as she discovers Nathan’s previous robots
in their Bluebeard-esque closets and begins to create her new human appearance, recalling the
previous clip. But now she isn’t dressing for Caleb—she’s dressing for herself. By the end of the
sequence, the bell tones of her theme have been supplemented by a buzzy electronic timbre that
recalls a broken machine—one that perhaps has gone slightly haywire. But Ava isn’t
malfunctioning—she is finally taking actions toward her own rescue and self-preservation. The
dense buildup of dissonant noise underscoring the music box theme that accompanies Ava’s
progress, as Caleb watches her, is suggestive. Is it, to use Michel Chion’s terminology,
“anempathetic” sound, exhibiting “conspicuous indifference,” or does it underscore the violence
of Ava’s actions?
The sound of the music box returns to underscore Caleb’s desperate attempt to free
himself, perhaps mocking him with its similarity to the theme that once seemed to predict his
9
Dori Thomas, “Gender and Feminism and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina,” Words on Films, accessed April 2, 2017.
https://wordsonfilms.com/2016/01/23/gender-and-feminism-in-alex-garlands-ex-machina/.
10
Cross
11
An abridged version of this long clip was used for the purposes of the conference presentation. The full clip
contains full female nudity.

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happily-ever-after. Only in the final brief shots does the original theme return, as Ava finally
lives out the fantasy that she described in the earlier clip to Caleb—of standing at a pedestrian
traffic intersection to watch a “concentrated but shifting view of human life.” Clearly this music
no longer connotes gentle femininity and the promise of romance. But…what does it mean?
Ex Machina tricks us by giving us a frankly obvious villain—Nathan with his toxic
masculinity is a modern Snidely Whiplash twirling his evil mustache—to deflect attention from
an equally dangerous but less obvious one: Caleb. As Cross writes, “Nathan embodies the
brutish, physically abusive side of hegemonic masculinity, while Caleb is the Nice Guy™ who
affects kindness and gentility but who is ultimately no less entitled than his counterpart.”12
Caleb
knows he has earned his “princess,” and all he needs to do is find the right tower.13
The music
too tricks us into believing that this might be such a conventional love story, and that Ava will
happily fall in with Caleb’s plans because—what luck!—she feels the same way. As Kjerstin
Johnson realized in her review for Bitchmedia, until the film’s end Caleb and Ava’s “trajectory
was that of a captive princess and her white knight.”14
By using an easily recognizable musical
trope and not only turning it on its head but divesting it of all familiar associations, the score
demonstrates, as Dori Thomas writes, that “[w]ith its final section, Ex Machina declares that it
has little sympathy for men who like to think of themselves as gods among women.”15
12
Cross
13
Arthur Chu, “Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds,” The Daily Beast, May 27,
2014. https://www.thedailybeast.com/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds-1.
14
Kjerstin Johnson, “How ‘Ex Machina’ Toys with its Female Characters,” Bitchmedia.org, May 8, 2015.
https://bitchmedia.org/post/ex-machina-film-review-gender-and-ai-feminism.
15
Thomas

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Works Cited
Anders, Charlie Jane. “From Metropolis To Ex Machina: Why Are So Many Robots Female?”
io9. April 21, 2015. https://io9.gizmodo.com/from-maria-to-ava-why-are-so-many-
artificial-intellige-1699274487.
Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Edited and translated by Claudia Gorbman. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Chu, Arthur. “Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds.” The Daily
Beast. May 27, 2014. https://www.thedailybeast.com/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-
misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds-1.
Cross, Katherine. “Goddess from the Machine: A Look at Ex Machina’s Gender Politics.”
Feministing.com. Accessed March 7, 2019. http://feministing.com/2015/05/28/goddess-
from-the-machine-a-look-at-ex-machinas-gender-politics/.
“Film Crit Hulk Smash: EX MACHINA And The Art Of Character Identification.”
Birthmoviesdeath.com. May 11, 2015. https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/11/film-
crit-hulk-smash-ex-machina-and-the-art-of-character-identification.
Fülöp, Rebecca. “Heroes, Dames, and Damsels in Distress: Constructing Gender Types in
Classical Hollywood Film Music” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2012).
Johnson, Kjerstin. “How ‘Ex Machina’ Toys with its Female Characters.” Bitchmedia.org. May
8, 2015. https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/ex-machina-film-review-gender-and-ai-
feminism.
Stilwell, Robynn J. "Sound and Empathy: Subjectivity, Gender and the Cinematic
Soundscape." In Film Music: Critical Approaches, edited by K. J. Donnelly, 167–
187. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001.
Thomas, Dori, “Gender and Feminism and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina,” Words on Films.
Accessed April 2, 2017. https://wordsonfilms.com/2016/01/23/gender-and-feminism-in-
alex-garlands-ex-machina/.
Additional References
DeFabio, Cara Rose. “‘Ex Machina’ Review: Gorgeous Futurism, But Flawed Gender
Depictions.” Huffington Post. April 13, 2015.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/13/ex-machina-review_n_7052284.html.
Micheline, J. A. “Ex Machina: A (White) Feminist Parable for Our Time.”
Womenwriteaboutcomics.com. May 21, 2015.
https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2015/05/ex-machina-a-white-feminist-parable-for-
our-time/.

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Rose, Steve. “Ex Machina and sci-fi’s obsession with sexy female robots.” The Guardian.
January 15, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/15/ex-machina-sexy-
female-robots-scifi-film-obsession.
Watercutter, Angela. “Ex Machina Has a Serious Fembot Problem.” Wired. April 9, 2015.
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/ex-machina-turing-bechdel-test/.
Wilson, Natalie. “Ex Machina’s Failure to be Radical: Or How Ava is the Anti-Thesis of a
Feminist Cyborg,” Ms. Magazine. April 23, 2015.
https://msmagazine.com/2015/04/29/how-ex-machina-fails-to-be-radical/.