AI in rothenberg’s popular tv series the 100: Feminization or feminist representation(s)?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24136/10.24136/rsf.2024.021Keywords:
post-humanism, popular culture, AI narratives, feminist media studies, gendered AIAbstract
The popular AI landscape is one that has dominantly been presented through a masculine lens with 92% of scientists in popular movies presented as male characters (Cave, Dihal, Drage & Mclnerney, 2023), often with a “womb envy” (Lighthill, 1973). Moreover, the contemporary and evolving AI landscape has been criticized as one where female AI voices, such as Siri, Alexa and Cortana, are assigned roles of assistance, reinforcing gender stereotypes. In this paper, the gendered narratives and spaces of popular culture are analyzed through the dual lenses of feminization and feminist representation(s) in Rothenberg’s The 100 (2014-2020). Rothenberg’s sci-fi popular TV series is one that plays with this duality with a female AI scientist that challenges the popular male AI scientist ‘brilliance bias’ through her creation of an AI, presented in her own image. Drawing from this complex creator/creation relationship and representation in The 100, this paper investigates the extent to which AI is feminized or shaped through a feminist lens in popular culture.
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