Engenderneered Machines in Science Fiction Film

The fear that human creations might backfire and attack their creators has been a mainstay of science fiction at least since Mary Shelley‟s Frankenstein. The misgivings become particularly acute when human-engineered imitations of human beings (i.e., robots and cyborgs) raise questions regarding how humans can be distinguished from machines. Assumptions about gender also infuse the ways humans conceive and react to their mechanical progeny (i.e., robots and cyborgs). Whenever human-like creations are embodied, they encounter the fundamental bodily quality of sexuality. The cinematic exploration "fleshes out" how posthuman technological innovations are engendered in their engineering. By problematizing the roles that gender can play in the very conceptions of what counts as human or machine, gender constructions infuse technological innovation in various challenging ways.