Pandora’s Myth and Cultural Trauma in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Since its 2015 debut, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina has been conceptualized as a creation myth, as a succession myth, as the Pygmalion myth and as the Pandora myth, among others – each of these argumentations acknowledging the permeability between different interpretations. The author argues that Ex Machina recodes the myth of Pandora and creates a fertile ground to display cultural traumas that have been affecting women – such as female subordination and oppression caused by a patriarchal structure and stereotypical binary oppositions. Thus, Garland’s film also suggests that the old forms of female oppression might be reaffirmed in the context of the age of technological innovation.¹