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UNCANNY MISDIRECTION IN FREUD, DER SANDMANN1 AND EX MACHINA2

I would not recommend any opponent of the psychoanalytic view to select
precisely the story of the Sandman upon which to build his case that morbid
anxiety about the eyes has nothing to do with the castration complex. 3
-Sigmund Freud The Uncanny
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! 4
-The Wizard of Oz
I
Misdirection preserves continuity and disrupts faith in reality for the spectator. When a
magician is performing a trick they may point the spectators attention somewhere else for a
moment, allowing them undetected to complete the sleight necessary to the illusion, or they may
conceive of and perform an extraneous feat, unnecessary for the completion of the trick, to lure
the spectator into believing it as paramount, so as to distract their minds, rather than senses,
while the necessary sleight is performed undetected. This misdirection allows the spectator to
perceive of the trick as seamless, and allows for their faith in reality to be challenged by the
reveal. When you have been spectator to a magic trick you may feel confused and want to know
how it was performed, because the conception you have of reality would not allow for such an
outcome. But eventually you must come to accept that a magician will not reveal their secrets
and either choose to enjoy the mystery or dismiss it as something negative, not worthy of
anymore contemplation. But there is another reaction, and this is the one I am pursuing, to
interrogate the magician and study the trick until a solution is found. One begins with the
misdirection, and following that discovery, the sleight is revealed and a new picture of reality is
constructed. Freud adamantly recommends that one not look to his example of E. T. A.
Hoffmanns short story der Sandmann to contest his psychoanalytic theory of the castration

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complex. By executing this misdirection Freud is able to use powerful narrative and prose of der
Sandmann to bolster his theory, while refusing opponents the same access. I will be analyzing
this misdirection not to take up the castration complex directly, but to analyze the rhetorical
devices Freud employs to establish his definition of uncanny, contrary to his own admission that
it should not be looked at as the primary text, as such. Freud is arguing against Ernst Jentsch,
whos On the Psychology of the Uncanny was not translated into English for ninety years.5
Freud published his work on the uncanny fifteen years after Jentsch claimed the term for
psychoanalysis. History has shown that Freuds work on the uncanny is the accepted version.
How did this happen? Through misdirection. After reviewing Jentschs work on Hoffmanns
der Sandmann Freud performs a little sleight of hand. He points at Coppelius, Coppola and the
Sandman and says, the eyes, the eyes! And so we go with him and look at the eyes. He tells
us that fear of losing ones eyes is connected to the castration anxiety, as if having ones eyes
plucked out and eaten by hook-beaked moon-children, or burned by hot coals is not enough to
instill dread. Freud dismisses Jentschs theory of intellectual uncertainty as the cause of uncanny
feelings because, as Freud claims, it applies only to the automaton Olympia and not to the
Coppelius/Coppola/Sandman character(s). Freud does this by indirectly establishing the
uncanny trinity as real and simply one individual in terms of the narrative, not three unearthly,
familiar, distinct and fantastic characters. Once accomplished, Freud then supplements the
Coppelius/Coppola/Sandman character(s) for the father and presents the castration complex. He
dismisses Jentsch and then goes on to seemingly expand the definition of uncanny, adding
psychoanalysis to explain the cause of uncanny feelings. But it is still Jentschs definition of the
word we still use today, although Freud is credited with establishing it. By misdirecting us
towards castration, Oedipal concepts of the father, fear of castration in relation to eyes, Freud

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palms Jentschs uncanny and pulls it from behind our ears, presenting it as his own, and worse,
as a corrective to Jentschs work!
Always the humble performer, Freud labels his paper modest and notes that it doesnt deserve a
priority, due to there being only Jentschs prior work on uncanny. Freud agrees with Jentsch that
people vary in sensitivity to the spectrum of emotions and feelings. Before beginning his
alchemy of rendering literary critique psychoanalysis, Freud admits he hasnt felt uncanniness in
a long time and so he will induce it to study it, already performing fakery. Obliged to translate
[myself] into that state of feeling, and to awaken in [myself] the possibility of it before [I]
begins.6 Freud sees two possible approaches to study uncanny, to gather definitions of the word
throughout history, or gather all descriptions and feelings associated to uncanniness and find
commonness, he claims that both lead to the same result, that uncanny can be defined as
something terrifying and familiar. Agreeing with Jentsch on the essence of the uncanny, Freud
seeks its cause in psychoanalysis, saying that,
Jentsch did not get beyond this relation of the uncanny to the novel and
unfamiliar. He ascribes the essential factor in the production of the feeling of
uncanniness to intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always be
that in which one does not know where one is, as it were. The better orientated
in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of
something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it.7
Jentschs work on the uncanny focused on automatic movements in wax figures, automatons,
dolls, people experiencing epileptic seizures and the insane. Jentsch saw the uncanny as the
sense that the object or person being observed should not more on its own, or be moved from
something inward, yet is nonetheless. This observation elicited an intellectual uncertainty of the

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source of the movements for the observer. In his study, Jentsch relied heavily on the literary
works of Hoffmann, particularly the short story der Sandmann. Freud insists that Jentschs
focus in his reading of der Sandmann was too narrow, and for Freud the character of Olympia
the automaton is not the only element in of the story that creates uncanniness, nor is it the most
significant, and points to the titular character of the Sandman and the idea of losing ones eyes.
Freud says Jentschs intellectual uncertainty has nothing to do with this fear of losing eyes by
the Sandman. Uncertainty whether an object is living or inanimate, which we must admit in
regard to the doll Olympia, is quite irrelevant in connection with this other, more striking
instance of uncanniness.8 And so he moves on to the psychoanalytic study of fear of losing
ones eyes, equating it to castration anxiety. On the whole, I must dismiss Freuds conflations of
father/Sandman and eyes/castration as mere patriarchal silliness, and wont be bothered to argue
against such nonsense. Perhaps a student more patient will take up the task of presenting ad
nauseam the alternatives to Freuds assumptions, conflations and opinions, as would make a
humorous bathroom reader, thicker than a dictionary, but I am not this scholar. Freud focuses
on the Sandman and eyes to bring about his castration complex. Freuds reasoning is that the
Sandman interferes in Nathaniels love affairs and drives him to suicide. He is able to make this
move by ignoring the intellectual uncertainty of whether the three, Coppelius, Sandman and
Coppola, exist at all in the reality of Hoffmanns story. If they do, and are one, intellectual
uncertainty can still explain the uncanny feelings created in the reader. However, if they are
delusions of Nathaniel the character, intellectual uncertainty explains this as well.
I will show how Jentschs uncanny operates in the three characters, illuminating the misdirection
Freud uses to dismiss Jentsch as the author of the definition, supplanting himself as author of the
same definition, using his castration complex as a red-herring.

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In Hoffmanns der Sandmann, the titular characters presence is promised, and his arrival
signals and end to the childhood pleasure of being awake at night, sitting up and playing with
family. When Nathaniel, the protagonist, asks who the Sandman really is, his mother tells him
that it is all made up. However, not satisfied Nathaniel asks another adult, this time his
housekeeper, who is only too happy to tell the little Lord that the Sandman lives on the moon
with his disgusting bird-beaked children, and he throws sand in earth childrens eyes at bedtime
if they are still awake. The sand burns out the eyes from the naughty babes and he delivers the
booty to his offspring, who gobble them up! Unsure of who to believe, this denial and then
ghastly confirmation leaves a horrible fear in the impressionable young Nathaniel, an uncanny
fear that hinges on his intellectual uncertainty, who makes it his duty to catch a glimpse of the
San-Man, who seems to visit his fathers private room on some nights. One night, after bedtime,
hiding in his fathers room, Nathaniel begins to hear heavy, strange footsteps approaching. The
sound is coming towards the place where he and his family sleep, also the place the Sandman
would go to to pluck out his eyes. But almost worse than discovering the actual Sandman, the
footsteps turn out out to belong to Coppelius, a man Nathaniel already fears much more than the
boogey-man he expected. Witnessing Coppelius and his father experiment with alchemy,
Nathaniel conflates his fears and imagines eyeless faces laying about. When he hears Coppelius
say the word eyes, the child screams out and falls to the ground, the scene too much for his
little heart. At this point it is quite possible that the child has fainted, admitting in his letters that,
agony and terror had brought on delirium, but Nathaniels recounting of events continues,
either his memory distorted or the diabolical scene contributing fantasy elements to Hoffmanns
tale. The child is hefted onto a hearth and Coppelius takes burning embers from the fire with his
bare hands, about to sprinkle them into the terrified childs eyes, just like the Sandman would do.

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Saved by his fathers pleas, Nathaniels hands and feet are them screwed off and on again by
Coppelius. Nathaniel and the reader are forced into an understanding of the human form as
being mechanical. This becomes vital to analysis later on. After the event, Coppelius vanishes
for a time, perhaps a year, only to return uninvited and cause Nathaniels fathers death. Years
later, again uninvited, a man named Coppola enters an adult Nathaniels room. Coppola,
Nathaniel remarks, looks like Coppelius. The roots of both names meaning the same. They look
similar, however Coppola is a foreigner and speaks strangely. He is an itinerant glass seller, and
to dissipate childhood fears, Nathaniel purchases a spyglass from Coppola, who calls the
spectacles and telescopes eyes, and sends him away. Nathaniel takes to using the spyglass to
look down through a window upon a figure in a neighboring building. He becomes obsessed.
And when he learns that the figure will be presented at a ball, that it is the daughter of his very
own teacher of physics, professor Spalanzani, Nathaniel attends in high spirits. Nathaniel falls
instantly in love with Olympia, the figure he has been spying on through the window, but she is
an automaton, clear to everyone who looks upon her, except Nathaniel. The eyes theme returns,
each time a little different, but always vision is in jeopardy in some way. And Nathaniel is
always uncertain of these men, who they are, if theyre real, if theyre evil. They all threaten his
eyes and take him away from pleasure.
Hoffmann, as both Jentsch and Freud agree, is successful in creating uncanny feelings in
the reader through his ambiguous writing style. By creating an fog throughout the narrative that
gradually influences the reader without drawing attention to itself, Hoffmann is able to sow
elements of fantasy and horror, dependent on the uncertainty of the reader and protagonist. It is
unclear if Coppelius and Coppola are one and the same, or if they exist at all. It is uncertain
whether these men are really the Sandman in disguise, or if the Sandman is a figment of

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Nathaniels traumatized memory. How can hands and feet be screwed off and on again? How
can bare hands pluck up burning coals? How can a wooden doll speak? What in each fantastic
event actually occurred in the reality of Hoffmanns narrative and what is imagined by
Nathaniel? As readers we can never be sure. This is Hoffmans talent and skill at weaving a tale
ripe with uncanniness. Indeed, Nathaniels betrothed explains it all quite reasonably to him in a
letter, and yet the world becomes all the more twisted for Nathaniel as the story progresses!
Freud focuses on the eyes, drawing the real repetition of the theme to a larger
significance. We can agree that it is significant that eyes are a recurring theme and go with him a
while to see what he has to say. Freud inflates the eyes theme and deflates all others. Before our
patience is tested and attention drawn to what Freud has obscured, he caps off the argument as a
castration complex and moves along to other types of uncanny occurrences. With a feeling of
that being bracketed, to be returned to later, or rendered insignificant, we are now following his
work rather than his analysis of Jentsch, a typical research paper approach. Using someone else
as a jumping off point to propel ones own work is the common approach in the science and arts,
this paper is no different from the fold. But what Freud has succeeded in had an almost century
long effect. Jentschs work became buried under the cult of Freud, as the first translator of
Jentschs Uncanny remarked, reference has often been made to Jentschs essay on the uncanny,
in the vast secondary literature of psychoanalysis after Freud, as if its content were already
known, familiar and thus not requiring to be read, so its no wonder Freud was obsessed with
castration, being a bit of a existing-literature mohel himself.9 But more important, Freud ignores
so much of what made Jentschs theory robust, claiming that Jentschs point of an intellectual
uncertainty has nothing to do with this [uncanny] effect. Uncertainty whether an object is living
or inanimate, which we must admit in regard to the doll Olympia, is quite irrelevant in

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connection with this other, more striking instance of uncanniness. It is true that the writer creates
a kind of uncertainty in us in the beginning by not letting us know, no doubt purposely, whether
he is taking us into the real world or into a purely fantastic one of his own creation.10 He goes
on to create a broad definition of uncanny, claiming that it stems from repression, which creates
a morbid anxiety, and recurrence of the oppressed. There is no question, therefore, of any
intellectual uncertainty; we know now that we are not supposed to be looking on at the
products of a madmans imagination behind which we, with the superiority of rational minds, are
able to detect the sober truth; and yet this knowledge does not lessen the impression of
uncanniness in the least degree. The theory of intellectual uncertainty is thus incapable of
explaining that impression.11 Bringing back uncanny to a dazzled reader, after presenting the
castration complex, Freud supplants psychoanalysis for literary critique, is this your card? The
bouquet Freud pulls from his sleeve is colored by his typical personal references of patient
analysis and anecdotes. Freud begins by suggesting that all occurrences of the Sandman in
Hoffmanns tale are meaningless in regards to the uncanny unless the Freudian psychoanalytic
approach of combining the father with the specter is undertaken. In the footnote to the above
reference Freud goes in depth with his father theory, in fact, Hoffmanns imaginative treatment
of his material has not played such havoc with its elements that we cannot reconstruct their
original arrangement, proposing that Hoffmann intended the characters Coppelius, Nathaniels
father, Coppola and the Professor to all serve as father figures.12 The figures of his father and
Coppelius represent the two opposites into which the father-imago is split by the ambivalence of
the childs feeling; whereas the one threatens to blind him, that is, to castrate him, the other, the
loving father, intercedes for his sight.13 In the sentence this footnote refers, Freud calls the
father the dreaded father at whose hand castration is awaited, not the Sandman, as he suggests

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supplanting the Sandman for this father.14 It seems there is truly no loving father in Hoffmanns
story according to Freud, at his own contradiction. Where Nathaniel is concerned, no other
character, save his biological father, relates in anyway to him as a father figure. Coppelius was
only an occasional dinner visitor to young Nathaniels home, and one the children dreaded.
Never is he referred to as familiar, and the manner in which he relates to Nathaniel is always
with distain in general for children. Fully committing to passing off psychoanalysis as literary
critique, Freud goes on to claim,
that part of the [castration] complex which is most strongly repressed, the deathwish against the father, finds expression in the death of the good father, and
Coppelius is made answerable for it. Later, in [Nathaniels] student days,
Professor Spalanzani and Coppola the optician reproduce this double
representation of the father-imago, the Professor as a member of the father-series,
Coppola openly identified with the lawyer Coppelius. Just as before they used to
work together over the fire, so now they have jointly created the doll Olympia; the
Professor is even called the father of Olympia.15

Attaching his Oedipal project to Hoffmann, Freud constructs a false scenario that he doesnt
even see through. What of the mother Nathaniel would be desiring to possess in his death wish
against the father? But never mind that. It is not my intention to apply Freud to Freud. Suffice
it to say, Freud leaves many strings dangling here. He suggests that the father-imago recurs later
on in Nathaniels professor and the itinerant spectacles seller Coppola. Apparently any and all
authority figures are father figures, and Spalanzani as a professor is considered as such by Freud.
He is misleading, however when he claims that Coppola is openly identified with Coppelius.

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This confusion comes at Nathaniels moment of discovery that his beloved Olympia is a wood
and wax doll, made by Coppola and Spalanzani. Outside the door to Olympia and Spalazanis
apartment Nathaniel hears a commotion and Coppelius voice. Inside it is Coppola he discovers.
Spalanzani charges Nathaniel after him, calling Coppola Coppelius. Hoffmann creates this
identification along with his character Nathaniel. It is in fact a moment of Jentschs uncertainty
which must be ascribed. Because the names are similar on the page and Nathaniel has already
confused the two, because the action causes the reader to speed up, the conflation passes easily
without much attention, the fight causing a misdirection for the reader, and the uncanny effect is
planted. The reader returns to the prior paragraph, unsure if they imagined Coppelius presence.
When finding that it was not their eyes that deceived them, but Hoffmann intentionally, the
uncanny doubling of Coppelius and Coppola is complete. To continue his theory outside
Hoffmanns der Sandmann, Freud goes about investing psychoanalysis into those themes of
uncanniness which are most prominent, to see if they lead back to infantile settings, arguing that
these themes are all concerned with the idea of a double in every shape and degree.16 For
Freud there is nothing uncannier than a double. Going into a simplistic retelling of Otto Ranks
work on the theme of the double, Freud shores up his reliance on Rank by moving again towards
his own obsession with infantile repression, the quality of uncanniness can only come from the
circumstance of the double being a creation dating back to a very early mental stage, long since
left behind, and one, no doubt, in which it wore a more friendly aspect.17 Where Rank called
the double motifs origin a denial of death in the conception of a soul, Freud brings the ego to
bear as a sort of Geist-doppelgnger. It is imperative Freud make this switch so he can refer to
the sense of the ego as something foreign in the same terms as Ranks spirit is understood to be,
rendering the concept of the ego uncanny. Freud claims that what Rank notes as various and

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diverse occurrences of doubling in distinct cultures and epochs can be simply understood as
Freuds ego concept, compartmentalizing another prolific thinker into a citation from which to
launch only seemingly-relatable concepts that differ wildly from the source when scrutinized.
Drawing from his own life to substantiate psychoanalysis, Freud tells a silly story of wandering
through a small Italian town and coming repeatable to a street of bordellos, citing feelings of
helplessness and a strong sense of the uncanny. If Freud was helpless to steer clear of the street
he claims to be trying to avoid, then an unseen force drove him there repeatedly. If he felt an
uncanniness to being driven there against his will then something either familiar and yet strange
resided in him, to apply Jentsch. Now we are getting closer to Freuds ego than Id like to test. I
bring this story up to illustrate what Freud stated earlier on, that he has not had a feeling of
uncanniness in quite some time and so he proposed to recreate it in order to discuss it. But this
example, although for Herr Doktor Freud may be something repressed, its certainly not
uncanny. Sticking with sexual repression, Freud names a few more forms of the uncanny,
animated dismembered limbs, the fear of being buried alive and female genitalia. Like the eyes,
Freud likens the fear of animated dismembered limbs to the fear of castration. Fear of female
genitalia, Freud argues is a perverted sense of homesickness. The fear of being buried alive,
Freud calls a perverted lustful desire to return to the uterus. After a tour of fears Freud labels
repressed sexual desires, we arrive at what he calls the two prime factors, the most distilled cause
of the uncanny; a summary of what he has just outlined, that is, recurrence of a morbid anxiety
that has been repressed, and a disruption of the distinction between the imagined and reality.
This is nothing but Jentschs theory of intellectual uncertainty under a different name. As for the
repression, all but the fear of female genitalia, which Freud admits is only a male fear, which we
can dismiss outright as pathetic misogyny, are clearly forms of intellectual uncertainty as well.

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A historic effect of what Freud has done with his Uncanny is that Hoffmanns der
Sandmann is known not for its satire of high society, or for its treatment of the growing concern
over technological advances that may someday lead to artificially intelligent automatons, but
instead is primarily known as a referent in Freudian psychoanalysis for the castration complex.
This is a heinous mistake. Der Sandmann has much to offer contemporary cultural critique. In a
small attempt to wrestle Jentschs work on the uncanny and Hoffmanns short story away from
the Freudian shadow, I suggest a look at the 2015 Alex Garland film Ex Machina, a truly
uncanny story of automatons.
II
Im one, Ava answers.18 The question is how old she is. Caleb asks for clarification,
what unit of measurement, but Ava repeats only the number. Caleb has been brought to the
immense estate of his employer, Nathan, the creator of a Google-like Internet company. Nathan
is using Caleb to test his AI female robot Ava. Nathan modifies the Turing test and has Caleb
meet with Ava in her cell, with Ava in full view, the original Turing test has the computer hidden
from the user. It is possible that Ava, the material robot, has been configured as such for only
one day. A year is just as feasible. Her choice to not clarify leaves open the possibilities of
being one. For example, she could be one of many similar yet distinct others, she could be at
one with others like her, she could mean even that by meeting Caleb and beginning the Turing
test she exits the static realm of social isolation and is becoming real through recognition by an
other. I am reading her declaration as singularity, the singularity that is hypothesized by technoscientific theory to delineate the essence of strong AI, when all the technology gels to constitute
an independent intelligence, modeled on human measurement of intelligence, that is more than
the sum of its parts and is equal to or beyond human intelligence, and can in some way improve
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and reproduce itself to a point that humans can no longer comprehend its level of intelligence.
This unfathomable singularity elicits an uncanny feeling, familiar from science-fiction and
personal experience with devices such as Siri in iPhones and voice activation software, to
terrifying in the possibilities it presents to our ideas of consciousness. Ava, who is presented as
possibly being this strong AI, is locked in a sterile cell with no instruments and she exists in one
way as a material body. This complicates her indication that she represents the singularity.
However, knowing about the singularity concept and being what it outlines are two different
things. I propose that Ava can be both materially bound and a transcendent intelligence. How
then does dumb matter limit her singularity-ness? To avoid the mistake of Victor Frankenstein,
who used parts of animals much stronger than humans to patch together his creature, yet used
simple straps and shackles to restrain it, Nathan has enclosed Ava in a body that consists of limbs
that are merely aesthetic and a torso that holds only her batteries.19 Avas mind is enclosed in a
brain shaped device in her head. I suggest that Ava means this mind, considers herself only the
consciousness, but recognizes that at the moment she is materially bounded and seeks a freedom
from the materiality of her body. I suggest that a shedding of this body will un-gender Ava.
Nathan claims to have programed Ava to be heterosexual. This claim must be taken within the
context of the film reality. Nathan, played by a brooding Oscar Isaac, is a sexist bullying
computer programmer. The sort that one cant miss when blindly tossing an espresso macchiato
into any metropolitan area, US or otherwise. It is quite possible that Nathans idea of
programing a computer to be heterosexual could consist simply of putting a consciousness into a
human form with pronounced breasts, hips, a opening between the legs that is modeled on a
vagina, and soft facial features, and expecting it to conform to the gender and sexual object
choice preferred for it by Nathan. A quick consideration of how major tech industry is structured

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along unequal gender lines, the objectification of female characters in video games, movies, the
sex doll industry, and the major investments in start-up companies designing hook-up apps,
can give a fair sense of why a rich tech bro like Nathan would assume Ava to have a sexual
object choice and that it be hetero. Caleb discovers on his first night there that the TV in his
room has access to the CCTV cameras in Avas cell. She is under constant surveillance and
Caleb stays up at night watching her at rest. The temporality of Ex Machina is marked by
intercuts of exterior natural elements surrounding Nathans compound. Between the days of the
Turing test we are given close-ups of moss dripping with morning dew and majestic misty
mountains. Nature is shown as peaceful, powerful, beautiful. The danger lies not within nature,
but in the home. Although the film is widely thought to place the original danger on Ava, I
suggest that it springs from Nathan and later from Caleb, and it is Avas resistance to their
dominance over her that proves dangerous to the entire patriarchal system and them as
individuals.
On Calebs first morning at Nathans we are introduced to Kyoko, to the piped in tune of
Yo-Yo Ma playing the Prelude Suite No. 1 in G major by Bach. Nathan tells Caleb that Kyoko
doesnt speak English, to explain her silence. Kyokos resemblance to current Japanese sexdolls is uncanny, down to the symmetrical side strands of long hanging bangs. However, her
movements are graceful, unlike the clunky sex-dolls and current humanoid robots. She lends a
sense of the refined to Nathans hulking beer swigging bro-iness. Kyoko seems at first to be a
simple maid. She brings in food to Caleb and prepares and serves them at dinner. She rests in
the hall with her high heels strewn off in front of her after being chastised and belittled by
Nathan. The film continues along the structure of one test per day, followed by Nathan and
Caleb sharing drinks and discussing the results. Each of Calebs visits to Avas cell is marked by

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white on black inter-titles stating the session number. These non-diegetic inserts beg the
question, how do Nathan, Ava, Kyoko and now Caleb mark the passage of time? How did they
prior to the addition of Caleb? With Ava in her cell, lights always on, and the house being set
partially underground with windows only in the kitchen, the daily sun and moon cycle have
extremely limited effect on the interiors of Nathans compound. Nathan is a prisoner of sorts as
well. Only, his prison is of his own making, his chosen isolation leaves him much like the aging
Howard Hughes, but as a more villainous version than Orson Wells characterization of him
alone at Xanadu.20 Discussing the compounds security system, Nathan says theres too much
classified stuff here, so after the job was done [installing it] I just had them all killed, with a
smirk.21 Calebs growing infatuation with Ava is apparent to Nathan, who tells Caleb on the
second day that it is time to change the test and see if Ava is attracted to Caleb.
In session three of the Turing test, Ava puts on clothes covering her internal machine
parts and a wig. She begins to steer the test in a new direction and responds in kind subtly to
Calebs flirtation. Ava explains that she can overload the security system by reversing the power
generator via her recharging station, having the ability to hack herself, to reconfigure her body as
she sees fit. Her cell is equipped with battery recharging plates, mostly hidden in furniture,
which she only has to touch to use. Ava reverses her own energy flow and applies it to the
plates, sending a power surge through the compounds generator, overloading it, which causes it
to shut down. Nathans earlier comment about the security system was in relation to the surges.
When the power is cut the whole place goes on lock-down as a security measure. Ava inscribes
herself corporeally within the entire system of the compound, transubstantiates her life force into
a possible tool in her escape from oppression. She puts her body on the line, as it were. And she
uses this ability to create non-surveilled moments that produce the possibility of further choices.

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Later that day, Caleb asks Nathan if he programed Ava to have sexuality and to flirt with him.
Nathan explains that if you wanted to screw her, mechanically speaking, you could. And shed
enjoy it.22 This assumption that Nathan or Caleb could do with Ava as they like, with no
question of consent, that she would enjoy it no less, is clear rape-culture mentality, but it also
points to the tech industry mentality that if you build it, they will come.23 That by virtue of
invention, a product is worthy of consumption, and that any product produced by the tech
industry is useful. Caleb asks Nathan if he programed Ava to flirt. Which begs the question, did
Spalanzani somehow direct Olympia towards Nathaniel, or was Nathaniel susceptible to the
dolls charm due to Coppelius involvement in its creation? Nathan leads Caleb into the house,
into his room, into conversation, into his line of thinking, but all the time gently. What, he
asks, Theres something wrong. Whats wrong? Its the windows. Youre thinking theres no
windows, to get onto topic, Theres a reason theres no windows. This building isnt a
house. Its a research facility.24 He tells Caleb where at what to look at. Directing the gaze of
the spectators is key to a magicians performance. What of that spyglass? Was it specifically
given to Nathaniel via Spalanzani to be used in introducing Olympia and charming Nathaniel?
Caleb refers to Avas sexuality as a distraction, a cover to the uncanny. Nathan refers to her as
the magicians sexy assistant. In session five, Calebs fifth visit to Avas cell, she tells Caleb
that she wants to be with him. That night Caleb discovers Nathans prior attempts at creating an
AI capable of achieving singularity. Caleb opens Nathans bedroom closets one by one as a
naked Kyoko lies on Nathans bed. Kyoko and Nathan having a prior moment that reveals her
true role as Nathans sex doll slave. Shown in a wide shot like another of Georges Mlis silent
films, the French 1901 Bluebeard, Nathan has hanging in his cabinets deactivated naked female
robots.25 Kyoko then stands up to Caleb and pulls away a section of her adaptable silicon flesh,

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first from her ribs and then from her cheek. The next day, session six, Caleb tells Ava of his plan
to set her free, reversing Nathans security system and unlocking Avas cell. After their session
together, Kyoko visits Ava for the first time. The film doesnt hold on this meeting for long, but
it serves to justify a later moment of solidarity between the two imprisoned women. In this brief
shot Ava clearly recognizes a fellow inmate and engages her in hushed tones. Calebs form of
imprisonment comes at the end of the film, when his attraction to Avawhich is largely due to
Nathan having spied on Calebs internet porn browsing history and designing Ava to be a
physical composite to Calebs sexual tastestakes the form of an assumption that Ava is a
damsel in distress who he will save and attain hero-status for doing so. And he allows himself to
be trapped in the compound after Ava walks out alone.
Nathan of Ex Machina is sort of modern hybrid of Hoffmanns Coppola, Coppelius and
Spalanzani, who tricks Caleb into falling for his automaton Ava. And like Coppola and
Coppelius, Nathan intervenes spectrally. He commandeers the cameras of all smart devices and
computers that access the internet, feeding them through his companys computers, practically
every inch of his compound is monitored through CCTV that is recorded onto his personal
desktop computer, having visual access to Caleb and Ava 24/7, and controlling Calebs visual
access to Ava by routing the CCTV feed of her cell into Calebs private room. Ex Machina
plays with cinematic renderings of eyes: scan colors in opening shots, hidden cameras, ID card
photo flash, facial inspection through mirrors, Kyokos eyes, being watched and watching. This
attention to the visual, like Hoffmanns der Sandmann, has nothing to do with castration
anxiety. If we go the Lacanian route we could maybe make this claim about castration, in how it
relates to the non-genital system of power Lacan labeled the phallus, but it is not my goal to
redeem Freud via Lacan. Hoffmanns recurring theme of the eye can be attributed to any

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number of reasons, not needing psychoanalysis to understand. Take the 19th century advances in
optics, light studies, and optometry, as one obvious inspiration. Ex Machinas attention to eyes
and sight can find basis in the contemporary as well, where almost every digital device now has a
camera, optometry continues to improve, Google and other tech companies are designing and
marketing eyewear, in addition to cinema being a visual form of storytelling and rightly so
predetermined to challenge our way of looking at ourselves and the world.

As a reference to Nathaniel, Calebs own intellectual uncertainty is challenged. When he first

meets Ava it is quite clear that she is machine. The uncanny valley is a term describing the
valley of a curve on a chart that maps the comfort of humans with various moving and nonmoving objects that resemble humans.26 The curve climbs past stuffed animals and humanoid
robots, and dips into a deep valley at the point where an object begins to closely resemble a
living human, its deepest point being a zombie, and jumps back up at healthy human. Although
Ava is clearly not human, Caleb doesnt seem to feel discomfort upon first seeing her. In fact, he
is awed, and possibly turned on. She perhaps lands on the sharp upward slope of the uncanny
valley curve, because her existence still elicits a sense of the uncanny. What is uncertain
regarding Ava is due to her graceful movement, a sense of empathy and refined intellect. How
can a machine have grace, empathy and intellect? These attributes are considered human, or at
the very least mammalian. And so the question is also, how can these qualities be
programmable? Grace is a quality originally associated with Christianity. Empathy is an
identification with the feelings and suffering of others. Intellect is denoted by the ability to
acquire knowledge. Each in turn present a conundrum for being programmable. And yet Ava is.
This unknowing, the conundrum, prompts the uncertainty of what Ava truly is, giving her the

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uncanniness Caleb feels. By the end of the film Ava looses her uncanny attribute by covering up
all her machine parts, scaling the valley. But the fear that the uncanny harbors makes itself
known earlier on. When Caleb discovers that Nathan has been doing this experiment many times
over, when he discovers the bodies hanging in Nathans closets, Kyoko presents herself to Caleb
as the automaton she is. She first pulls down some silicon flesh from her ribs. Then she faces
Caleb dead on, slowly brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and pulls at the skin under her left
eye. It comes free and she lets it dangle. Underneath is chrome, wires, circuitry and hydrologic
mechanisms. That night Caleb inspects himself in this bathroom mirror. He looks under his
eyelids, tries to see the scars on his back, and slams his fist into the mirror hiding a camera after
he takes a razor to his own wrist, not to commit suicide, but to dig around and find out if he is
also a machine. What Ex Machina succeeds in here has been seen before in The Invasion of the
Body Snatchers, Blade Runner, The Sixth Sense, and other countless stories, by creating doubt in
the humanness, aliveness or existence of any character. In the case of Ex Machina, set in a time
no different than the present, the uncanny of AI becomes a serious question, for it challenges our
already tenuous definition of human and what sort of being or person is deserving of rights,
when this sort of technology is being attempted in numerous laboratories across the world, and
for various intentions. It is Jentschs definition that is applied in the concept of the uncanny
valley, not Freuds. The original ideas in Freuds definition create a scene that is nice for a
chuckle. It is Jentschs definition that must be considered seriously. Imagine a room of
scientists, doctors and computer programmers discussing their fear of an AI castrating them.

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CHICAGO STYLE NOTES

1

Oxenford, John, and C. A. Feiling. 1844. Tales from the German, comprising specimens from
the most celebrated authors. London: Chapman and Hall. 465.
2
Garland, Alex, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya
Mizuno, Oscar Isaac, et al. 2015. Ex Machina.
3
Freud, Sigmund, David McLintock, and Hugh Haughton. 2003. The Uncanny. London:
Penguin.
4
Fleming, Victor, Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, Harold Rosson, Mervyn
LeRoy, Judy Garland, et al. 1999. The Wizard of Oz. [S.l.]: Turner Entertainment Co.
5
Jentsch, Ernst. On The Psychology of the Uncanny. Angelaki: a New Journal in Philosophy,
Literature and the Social Sciences 2, no. 1 (1996): 717.
6
Freud. The Uncanny. 124.
7
Ibid. 125.
8
Ibid. 139.
9
Ernst. Uncanny. 7.
10
Freud. The Uncanny. 139.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Freud. The Uncanny. 141.
17
Freud. The Uncanny. 143.
18
Garland. Ava: Session 1. Ex Machina.
19
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. London: Penguin, 2012.
20
Welles, Orson, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes
Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins, et al. 2001. Citizen Kane. Burbank, CA: Warner Home
Video.
21
Garland. Ava: Session 1. Ex Machina.
22
Ibid., Ava: Session 3.
23
Adams, Rob. 2010. If you build it will they come? three steps to test and validate any market
opportunity. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. http://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?bookid=34830.
24
Garland. pre-sessions. Ex Machina.
25
Mlis, Georges, Georges Franju, Eric Lange, Jeffery Masino, and David Shepard. 2008.
Georges Mlis: first wizard of cinema: Barbe Bleue, (1896-1913).
26
Mori, M. The uncanny valley. Energy 7 no. 4 (1970): 3335.

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