Center for Adaptation Studies

The Home Box Office (HBO) channel's new series Westworld (2016-present) presents a created space, the Westworld park, in the deliberate style of a sandbox videogame, completely controlled and scripted while presenting the façade of freedom. However, though this created space is populated by artificial hosts and all its environs and inhabitants are likewise mechanical creations or shaped by machines, it is the reality of the underground complex, through its dystopian, sterile, monochromatic people and areas, that seems artificial. Even the guests who come to the park lament the lack of agency within reality and so come seeking a space in which they can feel autonomous and find purpose. This juxtaposition of real-artificial and artificial-real is further enhanced by the scenes within the complex that clinically reveal the artifice of the park, making the complex the uncanny space of unreality. The world construction, both literal and figurative within this series, serves to emphasise the constructed nature of reality, perceptions, and personalities and how a desire for purpose, even artificially simulated, can foster acceptance of that artificiality. Just as each host is controlled, so too are the guests controlled by the sandbox nature of the park. The transgression and blending of these spaces through the actions of Maeve, Dolores, Ford, and Arnold unites both spaces and violently creates a world of uncanny uncertainty exemplifying how Westworld toys with the audience's suspension of disbelief in its worldbuilding, deliberately drawing attention to its artificiality, thus creating growing uncertainty towards the characters and the spaces they inhabit. Rebecca Jones MA, is an American currently in the first year of her PhD studying at De Montfort University in the Cinema and Television History department. She is researching the depiction of sentient, female artificial intelligences and robots in postmillennial science fiction film and television. She completed her Masters in Adaptation Studies at De Montfort University focusing on the adaptation of Shakespeare within science fiction film and novels.

The television series Westworld (2016-present) is full of returns. Not only as an adaptation of the 1973 film, but in the hosts' programmed loops, the returning guests to the park, the reprogramming and returning of the hosts to the park, and the characters' returns to past behaviours and actions. By establishing these returns, Westworld distracts and confuses its viewers while slowly revealing the full story. This in turn emphasises the most important return: Maeve's for her child. As a host, all her previous actions were due to her programming, but by stepping off the train she performs the first autonomous act of the series. She chooses to return for her daughter rather than continue her mainland infiltration programming. By this Westworld not only shifts to a host centred story, but starts a new story, alongside the violent, robot rebellion, about a fight for sentience and autonomy.

Female characters within Gothic horror are often 'woman-in-peril', objects acted upon or kept captive, a domestic side-character there to build up the tension and unease, or a ghost who haunts the space acting as monster or helper. Ex Machina (2015) plays upon the tropes of both Gothic and horror films with its setting and characters to present a story of deadly, female agency. Ex Machina creates the eerie, growing disquiet of a Gothic horror narrative replete with captive damsel, silent staff, labyrinthian mansion, and outsider instigating the action, while also incorporating the violence of horror films. However, rather than conforming to the standard tropes of Gothic horror, it plays off preconceived expectations associated with both genres. This transformation of story and tropes allows this production to be a Gothic of our time using artificial intelligences and an automated home rather than the supernatural and an ancestral mansion, as the story's catalyst and setting. Through the character of Ava, this film shows how a 'woman-in-peril' can also be the homicidal monster of a horror film, and by so doing, make herself the final woman. A close, textual analysis of Ex Machina unpacks these tropes, reveals new iterations and combinations, and presents a poignant feminist image of the created rejecting her creator. Rebecca Jones MA, is an American currently in the first year of her PhD studying at De Montfort University, Leicester in the Cinema and Television History department. She is researching the depiction of sentient, female artificial intelligences and robots in postmillennial science fiction film and television. She completed her Masters in Adaptation Studies at De Montfort University focusing on the adaptation of Shakespeare within science fiction film and novels.

While various iterations of the 'true love's kiss' trope have been used in literature, comics, and on screen, a recent trend in filmed adaptations of fairy tales has been revising and reversing this trope. These alterations prioritize female characters, empowering them within the narrative and creating female driven stories more appealing to modern audiences, providing relatable, positive figures for female and male viewers. These variations go beyond the basic romance narratives, wherein the man pursues the woman, by giving greater attention to familial love and by often empowering female characters with the spell-breaking 'true love's kiss.' These adaptations present women surpassing the challenges in their lives and becoming stronger in order to protect their loved ones and overcome their villains; rather than needing to be rescued by men's actions and romantic love: they are equal partners working together. By reemphasizing and reorienting the forms that love takes, these adaptations often reverse the trope so the woman rescues the man, often kissing him to break the spell he is under. Looking at films and television series released from 2010-2015, demonstrates these feminist revisions of 'true love's kiss' with in fairy tale adaptations. Each work studied presents the women giving and receiving 'true love's kiss' as empowered equals to their male counterparts, thus updating these stories and characters and telling new stories of empowerment and equality rather than submission and discrimination.

In 2009, Gregory Doran and the Royal Shakespeare Company produced a new film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Doran’s shooting style took the perspective of a person standing on stage, watching the actors perform around them. The main set is a large open room with a glossy, reflective floor in the midst and mirrors along the walls. The lighting and costumes are modest and mute in color, security cameras, or what the British call Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) are on the walls in each room and there is a hidden room behind a two-way mirror along one of the walls. Although the abundance of these mirrored surfaces complicates the filming process by prominently displaying mikes, cameras and the crew, the reflective set and the many watching eyes allow Doran to create an atmosphere of emotionally oppressive observation in his film. All this preparation helps convey the connecting motif of mirrors within his film. Not only are there physical mirrors but also characters mirrored in one another, and a doubling of Claudius and King Hamlet in a character mirroring. The viewer also sees the effects of these mirrors and oppression on various characters though out the film. Doran’s use of literal, physical, and metaphorical mirrors to further the theme of observation, as well as that of character, spirit and self in his production.

Sarah Connor is considered the among the first examples of capable women in science fiction and action films because she is among the first women seen saving themselves, others, and, more often than not, the world. Since Connor’s first appearance in Terminator in 1984 she has either been in, mentioned, or her recordings are played in every subsequent Terminator production, the most recent being Terminator Genisys in 2015. Over the course of these works we see Connor in a spectrum of roles that are flipped either within that production or in subsequent ones. She goes from damsel to warrior between Terminator 1 and 2, from rescued to rescuer in Terminator Genisys, from present force to absent guardian in Terminator 3 and Salvation, and from reactor to proactive combatant in Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. By tracing Connor’s depiction through these works most critics and reviewers discuss her actions in terms of assumed masculinity or ‘transvestitism’, however, contemporary critics such as Sue Short and Jeffrey Brown question the usefulness of this discursive method, suggesting that such capable women be addressed not as women acting like men, but rather have their actions stand as example of women acting like women, presenting them as a capable sex. I propose breaking down the gendered boundaries around the language used concerning Connor’s character to posit a new method of discourse that transgresses gendered hierarchies to attempt to change how we talk about capable female characters.

The main women in George R. R. Martin's novel Game of Thrones, first published in 1996, and the adapted television series in 2011, are empowered female figures in a world dominated by male characters. Analyzing shifts in the characters’ portrayals between the two mediums conveys certain valences of the cultures for which they are intended. While in the novel the characters adhere to a different set of standards for women, the television series portrays these women as more sympathetic, empowered, and realistic with respect to contemporary standards. Using literary archetypes of queen, hero, mother, child, maiden and warrior and applying them to Cersei Lannister, Catelyn Stark, Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, and Daenerys Targeryen, provides a measure for the differences in their presentations. Through the archetypical lens, the shifts in societal and cultural standards between the novel and series’ airing reveal changing pressures and expectations for women. By reading the novel and watching the series with the archetypes in mind, the changes in gender norms from 1996 to 2011 becomes clear. The resulting shift shows the story’s changes in the realm of fantasy in relation to the American society that consumes it

‘Everything you want’ promises a giant billboard among many in Blade Runner 2049. However, this advertisement is selling Joi, a female-presenting AI that protagonist K owns and is only the latest in a long line of artificial ‘women’ who exemplify toxic-femininity and the problems inherent within it. There are two definitions for toxic-femininity and they are opposites: one uses it to mean a woman presenting aggressive and assertive masculine traits in an undesirable and unappealing way, the other uses it to mean an exaggerated form of hyper-femininity that reduces a woman to embodying complete submissiveness in line with what might be considered want a ‘proper lady’ should be. I will be applying this latter definition and tracing its monstrous manifestation within science fiction films through AI and gynoid (female-presenting robots) characters considering how these characters are presented, their final fate, and how other women, artificial or natural, are presented in the same film. Starting with The Machine from Metropolis (1927) to Joi in Blade Runner 2049 (2017), perfect women created by men to obey and be their version of perfection, present the repeated story of the dangers of toxic-femininity and the fate of those made to perform it. Their obedience and programmed helplessness in turn often ensures these characters cannot save themselves or others from harm or threats that they face, or result in them causing harm as they execute the commands given by their creators or male masters solidifying the problems inherent with a ‘perfect woman’.

Set in an alternate 1920s, matriarchal Asia, comic series Monstress (2015-present) creates a world of Kantian sublime, decadent horror. Using its fantasy setting, it deals with the aftermath of war, persecution and enslavement, with an almost entirely female cast that is diverse in race and fictionalized culture. Writer Marjorie Liu, inspired by her Chinese grandparents' experience of WWII, wanted to explore how a person can remain human after the dehumanizing experience of war and persecution. Drawn by Japanese artist Sana Takeda, the art of this series is as hybrid as the characters within: mixing manga and western-style comic art with art deco and steampunk, resulting in a rich world of sublime decadence that makes the actions of its inhabitants even more disturbing and horrific. Through the hybrid character of Maika Halfwolf, Monstress presents a bridge character who is mixed race, mixed blood, hosting a demon, and missing her left arm. She is an imperfect character, who defies her oppressors and the monster within her, fighting every step of the way to transcend her circumstances and find answers about her mother and herself. This article examines the presentation of Maika, the world and artistic style of Monstress, and its treatment of women's bodies and how Monstress uses style, folklore, the past, race, and women's bodies to exemplify hybrid storytelling on multiple levels. This article argues that there is both consumer demand and critical need for stories of diversity, hybridity, and transcendence within the contemporary comics industry.

Sex-bots or fembots, female-presenting robots made to be used for sex or presented in a sexually objectifying way, are a mainstay for female-presenting artificial characters in science fiction films. While male examples have their own archetypes and standards of verisimilitude, female artificials are predominantly seen as, or expected to be, little more than mechanical Galateas. My research studied 121 years (from 1897-2018) of live-action films, focusing on American and British productions, in an attempt to more accurately examine the representations of these characters, more specifically to discover if these characters were ever more than fembots. With a scope of 119 films I assert that there are three main archetypes that encapsulate the generic verisimilitude of these characters: Artificial Sexuality, Lethality, and Service. Additionally, running throughout these three archetypes is a fourth: Individuals, characters who are sentient, autonomous, and have achieved a kind of personhood beyond their created role. As time progressed, the representations within the three archetypes all began to favor Individual archetype characters over the previous incarnations who were more object than sobject. I posit that this shift in representations is indicative of the progress women in film overall have made, women’s equality progress off screen, and the evolution of real robotics and industrial AIs.

The female-presenting robot (gynoid) has been in live-action science fiction (SF) films for over 100 years. These sexless artificial creations present gender signifiers that allow them to be read and understood as female. How they employ these signifiers allows us to explore how SF cinema’s understanding of femininity has changed over the years from one strongly linked to subservience to presenting active defiance of those expectations. Despite the range of gynoid depictions within these films, these characters are typically described either as fem-bots (female robots) or sex-bots (sex robots), both of which speak to a focus on their gender presentation and sexual use over all other representations. Ursula K LeGuin describes SF as ‘the mythology of the modern world,’  hence, by tracing the history of these characters, I argue that inorganic creations act out a fabular femininity where heteronormative, cisgender, male fantasies construct an understanding of femininity. Since these modern myths tell us stories of idealised femininity, it is significant that within this fabular space there is a representational shift away from objectified hyperfeminine presentations, towards agentic persons as of the end of 2021. Using a taxonomy and a film survey of over 300 films, I assert how gynoids’ representational trends are shifting towards depictions of agentic autonomy, speaking to the changes and overall shifts in the fabular tales SF is telling by the end of 2021.

The female-presenting robot (gynoid) has been in live-action science fiction (SF) films for over 100 years. These sexless artificial creations present gender signifiers that allow them to be read and understood as female. How they employ these signifiers allows us to explore how SF cinema’s understanding of femininity has changed over the years from one strongly linked to subservience to presenting active defiance of those expectations. Despite the range of gynoid depictions within these films, these characters are typically described either as fem-bots (female robots) or sex-bots (sex robots), both of which speak to a focus on their gender presentation and sexual use over all other representations. Ursula K LeGuin describes SF as ‘the mythology of the modern world,’  hence, by tracing the history of these characters, I argue that inorganic creations act out a fabular femininity where heteronormative, cisgender, male fantasies construct an understanding of femininity. Since these modern myths tell us stories of idealised femininity, it is significant that within this fabular space there is a representational shift away from objectified hyperfeminine presentations, towards agentic persons as of the end of 2021. Using a taxonomy and a film survey of over 300 films, I assert how gynoids’ representational trends are shifting towards depictions of agentic autonomy, speaking to the changes and overall shifts in the fabular tales SF is telling by the end of 2021.

The graphic novel works by Kay O’Neill (they/them) present a diverse range of ethnicities and hybridities through the anthropomorphised animal and fantastical races that populate their fictional worlds. Additionally, they depict a range of physical abilities, identities, and orientations across their works. O’Neill’s whimsical tales deal with brokenness, grief, loss, and finding one’s place and purpose in and through the support of queer communities. Throughout their series, O’Neill presents worlds where individuals are not empowered through violence or power, but by their strength of character, kindness, ability to accept themselves, and the encouragement and acceptance of others. Their series repeatedly shows how inclusive communities can be possible through their presentation of deaf, genderqueer, homosexual, and disabled individuals all existing in provincial and urban Fantasy spaces. These spaces embrace rather than ostracise, presenting potentialities: worlds with loss and pain, but also support and healing. Applying José Esteban Muñoz’s definition of a queer utopia, this article argues that O’Neill’s graphic novels Princess Princess Ever After (2016, PPEA), The Tea Dragon Society trilogy (2017-2021, TDS), and Aquicorn Cove (2018, AC) present different ways queer community spaces are utopias-in-progress that shape individuals’ ability to recover, accept themselves, and find purpose, presenting “blueprints of a world not quite here” to inspire readers and present a “realm of educated hope” (Muñoz 97; 3).

Animation allows for an infinitude of bodies and forms, yet it is greatly dominated by able-bodied characters rather than exploring the narrative potentialities of those with prosthetics or who are differently abled. While there are disabled and cyborg characters in American animation due to its adaptations of comic books, they are typically a part of an ensemble cast of characters rather than being the protagonist of their respective narratives, with How to Train Your Dragon’s Hiccup being an exception. Alternatively, within anime there are multiple instances of disabled and cyborg protagonists who are both common figures and uncommon within their respective series’ worlds. These protagonists speak to the ways that being disabled or cyborgs at times distances them from the rest of their societies. These characters find new places to belong, are driven by personal goals, or are trying to understand what it means to be human after the horrors of war. Through the representation of Major Motoko Kusanagi from the Ghost in the Shell films (1995-2015) and multiple anime series (2004-Present), Edward from Full Metal Alchemist anime series (2003-2004), films (2005 & 2011), and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood (2009-2010), Hiccup from the How to Train Your Dragon films (2010-2019) and Dragons television series (2011-2018), Violet from the Violet Evergarden anime series and films (2018-2020), and Levius from the anime Levius (2019-Present) I will show how these cyborg bodies are presented as a norm within futuristic settings, a point of concern speaking to personal sacrifice within fantasy settings, and how these cyborg characters explore questions of human dignity in the face of augmentation, mechanization, and personal connection.