A Sentimental Android? M3GAN (2022) and Monstrous Doubling as a 
Negotiation of the Gendered Neo-Liberal Self 
Michael Eden, University of the Arts London, m.h.eden@fashion.arts.ac.uk 

Abstract 
This paper analyses the android M3GAN in the 2022 film of the same name, problematising recent framings 
that celebrate M3GAN as a gay icon, a feminist figure, or understand her as embodying our collective fear of 
artificial intelligence. Instead, I place M3GAN in a long line of narratives that mediate on the role of women 
in society, following the loosening of possibilities for woman brought about in the Enlightenment. I go on to 
suggest ways in which contemporary neoliberal values are forcefully communicated in popular culture and 
how in turn, the subject reacts and internalises ideology. 
Keywords: Horror film; science fiction film; Automaton; AI; Robot; Femininity 

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A Sentimental Android? M3GAN (2022) and Monstrous Doubling 

as a Negotiation of the Gendered Neo-Liberal Self  

Michael Eden 

 

Introduction 

M3GAN (2022) directed by Gerard Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper bucked the trend of 

so called ‘elevated horror’, a conscious effort of Cooper’s (see Ferrier, 2023; Ruiz 2023) to 

produce a self-aware commercial success which works as a combination of able direction, 

Cooper’s solid writing, and a strong cast benefiting from the steely presence of Allison Williams, 

playing the roboticist Gemma. Williams brings a strong intertextual cache to the part of Gemma 

being most famous for playing women in Get Out (2017) and The Perfection (2018) who at first 

seem plausible, stereotypically attractive and conventional middle-class types, but who are 

revealed as treacherous villains defined by a ruthless and violent character. Although toned down 

in M3GAN, Williams can draw on these references in the other direction – cold and remote to 

engaged and concerned – bolstering our sympathy for M3GAN in the first half of the film, while 

remaining likable enough for us to believe in her characterisation later in the film. I wanted to 

emphasize those qualities as this analysis is highly critical of what M3GAN represents, what I 

feel it gives force to – culturally speaking – and in so doing I will refute framings of the film that 

have been embraced by the writer, the filmmakers, and reviewers. This is important as I enjoyed 



 

 

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the film and felt it to be a successful example of its genre, however I have tried to get some 

distance from the surprisingly sympathetic figure of M3GAN and think critically about what I, 

and what I expect many others, are actually enjoying when we watch M3GAN, share memes 

about the eponymous android, recreate her dancing, her put-downs and her fashion, all things 

that the audience has embraced as part of the film’s wider success. I will treat M3GAN as a 

monstrous presence with an overt visual indicator as to when we the audience should stop 

identifying with her and shift our investment to Gemma as the appropriate possessor of the type 

of femininity that the film is celebrating. 

A key feature of my critique of M3GAN is the perceived links of the film to neoliberalism, 

especially of the film as a kind of therapeutic accompaniment to neoliberal conditions: mediating 

concerns while celebrating problematic dynamics. Neoliberalism, a political and economic 

philosophy that gained prominence in the late 20th century, advocates for free-market capitalism, 

deregulation, and the reduction of state intervention in the economy. Rooted in the ideas of 

classical liberalism and further developed by economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton 

Friedman (Steger and Roy, 2010:17; 139), neoliberalism became influential during the 1970s and 

1980s. In Britain, the neoliberal agenda was epitomized by Margaret Thatcher's government 

(1979-1990) (Jessop, 2015:29-29), which implemented sweeping privatization of state-owned 



 

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industries, reduced the power of trade unions, and promoted individual entrepreneurship. 

Similarly, in the United States, Ronald Reagan's presidency (1981-1989) marked a significant 

shift towards neoliberal policies, characterized by tax cuts, deregulation of industries, and a focus 

on reducing the size of government (Rossi, 2016:229). These policies not only reshaped the 

economic landscape but also influenced global economic practices, contributing to the rise of 

globalization and the increasing dominance of market-driven principles in both national and 

international contexts. Furthermore, neoliberalism is increasingly understood as constructing 

individuals, since as Gill points out, we are ‘entangled in the relation between culture and 

subjectivity’ (Gill, 2008:7). The entanglement that Gill describes, can be understood to have 

produced an idealized concept of the preferred neoliberal subject, one that forms a significant 

aspect of what the film M3GAN is mediating, and despite some ambivalence, what it appears to 

celebrate through its symbolism and narrative arc.  

The ideal neoliberal subject is considered to be ‘entrepreneurial actors who are rational, 

calculating and self-regulating’ (Gill, 2008:7). That description is analogous to Repo and 

Yrjölä’s idea of the ‘neoliberal active womanhood’ which is associated with ‘economic 

independence, self-regulation and happiness’ (Repo and Yrjölä, 2015:742), and is thought to be 

‘rational, calculating and self-governing’ (2015:748). Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis consider 

women to be the dominant symbolic currency of neoliberalism, explaining that ‘if women were 



 

 

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once considered a “reserve army of labour”, they have become central to a restructured economy 

and have, moreover, been considered as the “ideal neoliberal subjects”’ (Gerodetti and 

McNaught-Davis, 2017:6). For women to be considered successful and embody neoliberalism 

this may include a willingness to ‘delay motherhood…[to] become full participants in consumer 

culture’ (Budgeon, 2011: 68). The ideology tends to obscure ‘recalibrated inequalities that have 

been forged by neo‐liberal conditions’ affecting women, (Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 

2017:1) as well as favouring already advantaged individuals (2017:2). We will see that the 

period of the 1980s, where neoliberalism’s emblematic figures are Reagan and Thatcher, is 

influential on the aesthetic of M3GAN; that Cooper (the writer) is concerned with addressing 

notions of motherhood, and delayed motherhood in the light of career driven success, through the 

character Gemma. Moreover, that the film overall is focussed on women, and specifically young 

women’s relationship to the background culture, this is explored through M3GAN and Cady’s 

relationship, and references to popular culture and music, especially the triumphalist lyrics 

associated with the artist Sia. This brings to mind Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis explaining that 

‘ideals of autonomy, choice, and self‐determination have become key normative features of 

“modernized” femininity…Young women are interpellated to inhabit these values, not so much 

as “feminists” but as liberated, self‐made subjects’ (Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 2017:2). 



 

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Exposition of M3GAN 

Since details of the film are discussed throughout It will suffice for the reader to have a basic 

overview of the film. M3GAN is concerned with a roboticist Gemma and her niece Cady, who is 

orphaned following the death of her parents. As Cady’s maternal aunt, Gemma is tasked with 

taking over parental care, this coincides with Gemma’s project to create a revolutionary toy that 

will act as an interactive friend to children, the eponymous M3GAN: a gendered A.I. android. 

M3GAN creates a strong bond with Cady helping her through her grief. However, M3GAN 

becomes more ruthless in her protectiveness towards Cady, violently punishing or killing those 

perceived as threats, while being judgemental of Gemma’s parenting and apparent selfishness. 

Gemma discovers M3GAN’s violent acts, attempts to fix M3GAN at her company’s laboratory, 

but ultimately fails to control M3GAN who escapes dramatically killing Gemma’s manager and 

his assistant. M3GAN then returns to Gemma’s home for a final confrontation, and Gemma and 

Cady work together to destroy her, cementing instead their bond. As the film ends there is hint 

that M3GAN may have found a way to preserve her personality in Gemma’s voice-controlled 

virtual assistant, as it activates without being asked. 

The Constructed Female Body 

The film links appearance to moral superiority and it’s clear that when M3GAN is grotesque 

(discussed later) we are being invited to other her; in contrast, the first half of the film works to 



 

 

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make M3GAN a relatable personality despite her machine status and idealised surfaces. Initially 

M3GAN’s appearance is that of a preppy child around ten years old with smart attire and a 

precocious, though amusing, level of poise and knowledge. She is a pretty and diminutive 

version of a teenage it-girl with perfectly combed hair, conservative attire, and a considered gait. 

At points in film, she is displayed to us on a circular framework that recalls the Vitruvian Man 

(c. 1490) by Leonardo da Vinci, a hint to her nature as a symbol of, and vessel for, our epoch’s 

societal values: as da Vinci’s drawing has come to be seen in relation to the Renaissance. 

A more recent referent that uses this motif, a circular frame where a synthetic person is worked 

on, is Westworld (2016 - 2022). The ‘Vitruvian Man’ motif is an intentional link to da Vinci and 

frames each episode of Westworld, being the key aspect of the titles (see Perkins, 2016). Another 

common theme between M3GAN and Westworld, is a contrast between fatalistic self-interest and 

self-sacrifice linked to motherhood. In Westworld this is the subject of a morbidly serious 

contrast between synthetic hosts: the increasingly despotic Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and the 

maternal Maeve (Thandiwe Newton). Maeve’s redemptive qualities and potential centres on her 

maternal instinct while Dolores becomes ever more nihilistic and bitter (see Lyons 2021:147-

149). This contrast between types of women is also a feature of Blade Runner (1982) with 

Rachael (Sean Young) as the humane and moral ‘replicant’ woman contrasted to the ruthless and 



 

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unhinged Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and Pris (Daryl Hannah), what’s more its motherhood implied 

by Rachael’s heterosexual relationship with Deckard (Harrison Ford) that is confirmed as the key 

distinction between Rachael and the other replicants by virtue of her interim pregnancy being the 

central theme of Blade Runner 2049 (2017). In M3GAN the tone is less sombre and moves 

between sentimental and ironic, similarly though women are the material for a reflection on 

societal attitudes and values. Rather than a contrast between types, M3GAN as an abstract force 

disturbs and challenges the women in the film to adapt or die. In the Blade Runner films the 

sacred couple, a man and synthetic woman, produce the next generation. In the serious ‘elevated’ 

Westworld the conflict is posed as one between burgeoning individuals with agency, a result of 

their own inert qualities and independence, but with contrasting philosophies about the world 

they live in. In contrast, the seemingly hammy and comedic M3GAN represents social forces, the 

deforming power of society in the person of M3GAN (monstrously idealised and then simply 

monstrous) effecting the actual women around her.  

Moreover, the display of a constructed female body, being worked on, is an aspect of a film 

that focuses on female characters and presents a chain of women that I will later argue are all 

doubles of one another, working on, as it were, a response to the pressures of a still largely 

neoliberal consumer culture that both ruthlessly commodifies femininity and sanctifies 

motherhood, often with ruthless consequences for women, such as the overturning of Roe v. 



 

 

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Wade in America in June 2022 exemplifies, women’s bodies are worked on culturally all the 

time. 

The anatomical perambulation of the female body is metonymic for the way that 
the idea of woman is constantly dissected and examined, as if one could get to the bottom 
of what she really is. This idea is as prevalent in discourses around the politics of female 
identity as it is as an object of fascination in horror (Millar, 2022). 

Millar is thinking about the ways that ‘discourses of the Enlightenment’ became focused on 

women and femininity as an aspect of the idea of ‘complete knowledge’ (Millar, 2022). The 

psychoanalytic discourse to which Millar belongs is useful in thinking through the detail 

regarding the function of M3GAN in the narrative and moreover popular culture’s role in 

promoting certain values. In that vein I will draw on Freud’s concept of the ‘double’ (Freud, 

1919) and Zizek’s (1999) understanding of the ‘vanishing mediator’. Freud and Zizek have 

helped me to see that similarly, discourses of identity in neoliberalism, which have become 

focused on femininity, have a ‘makeover’ aspect in relation to the viewing subject as Gerodetti 

and McNaught-Davis describe through an emphasis in neoliberalism on individualism, 

through reflexivity, individuals can reinvent themselves in adherence to their subjectivity. 
Thus, the makeover paradigm is perceived as an enabler for the performance of ideal, or 
perfect, femininity. Self‐transformation has been particularly meaningful for women who 
are more often enticed into becoming “potentially aspirational”. However, the 
consequences of failure, Skeggs (1997) reminds us, are always equated with failed 
femininity (Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 2017:5) 



 

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Moreover, that the occurrence of the vanishing mediator and of doubling in the film gives it a 

reflexive function allowing the subject to partake in their own subjection in neoliberalism. Later 

I will draw on Adelheid Voskuhl’s nuanced discussion of Enlightenment automatons to avoid 

obfuscating (potentially overbearing) debates around technology. Voskuhl asserts that the female 

automatons she studied were ‘not epistemically relevant simulations of live bodies but rather 

mechanical replications of cultural and political body practices and ambitions’ (Voskuhl, 

2013:21). The uncomfortable link I would like to assert between Voskuhl and Millar is that real 

women, it would seem, are often treated (if not consciously thought of) in the same way, as live 

bodies, yes, but ones that can be configured as replications of ideology. M3GAN is the, on the 

nose, horror wish-fulfilment of such a drive, which sees all the other women in the film’s reality 

struggling to resist and/or incorporate what she represents. The risks of not incorporating what 

M3GAN represents is to be irrelevant ‘due to her [the neoliberal icons] hegemonic “visibility” 

(Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 2017:6) this is portrayed in the initial death of Cady’s mother 

(Chelsie Florence) a necessary cipher only, and in the ineffective, within the film’s logic, 

parenting of the bully Brandon (Jack Cassidy) by his doting mother.   

I suggest there is direct link with a founding text of science fiction horror, Mary Shelley’s 

Frankenstein (1818). This goes beyond the obvious comparison, two stories regarding creators 

who lose control of their creations. Rather, I am interested in the beginning of science fiction, as 



 

 

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Jane Donawerth asserts Frankenstein is (1997:26), coinciding with the consolidation of feminist 

concepts into a coherent philosophy in the Enlightenment (Taylor, 1999). This bakes into the 

genre, a fear of that time which recurs repeatedly: the feminine as an unstable category, being a 

threat to society on a structural level, especially as it relates to motherhood, as Taylor explains 

‘the Enlightenment world resisted feminist ideas as much as it encouraged their emergence’ 

(1999: 264). Donawerth (1997) sees Frankenstein as a ‘feminine story’ imposed on a male 

narrator ‘the fiction of an aristocratic woman conceiving an illegitimate child’ (24). Motherhood 

in various forms is explored in relation to the woman writers that Donawerth’s book is about, 

including those that emphasise motherhood ‘for the good of child’ (21, see also 28), as a form of 

‘parasitism’ with the mother as victim (36), and the idea of women ‘overwhelmed’ by 

motherhood (74), these are themes of Cooper’s story also, as a woman writer it is not surprising 

that turbulence regarding the inherited role that woman represents should concern her. 

Donawerth sees in the fiction of C. J. Cherryh, specifically Serpent’s Reach (1980), ‘motherhood 

[explored] as…public and institutionalised rather than private and individualised’ (76): I hope to 

draw out, in looking at M3GAN (2022), some of the ways that institutionalised ideals become 

individualised, bridging, often brutally that dichotomy.    

 



 

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Distracting Surfaces: Thematic Sugar-coating of a Bitter Ideological Pill 

I would challenge the interpretations that see the film as significantly about our collective 

anxieties regarding artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, and robotics generally as is expressed in 

Murphy and DeWitte (2023) and summarised by Riley and Cramblet as ‘a tale about an 

artificially intelligent (AI) humanoid that learns from interactions and, ultimately, becomes a 

killer…[standing]… in a long line of films that highlight our collective fear that machine 

learning will eventually replace or destroy us’ (Riley and Cramblet, 2023). The fear of new 

technologies and their effect on individuals and society is present as a theme in M3GAN, I do not 

dispute that, but I would argue that while a valid contemporary concern in one domain (in this 

case human-technology engagement) it is nevertheless inevitably articulating concerns that relate 

to fundamental aspects of human subjectivity such as gender. I suggest that the fear of 

technology is a motif drawn from contemporary discourses coinciding as a cultural moment with 

the more potentially disturbing, and long worn anxieties, regarding the role of motherhood and 

femininity in the 21st century. In fact, the multiple references to advertising, consumerism, and 

corporate culture are more significantly critiqued by the film than new technology – with tech 

products as one in a long line of fetishized objects put to use by capitalism’s forces – whereas 

M3GAN, standing for technology (in that framing), is seen as an ambivalent figure who is, for 

most of the film, attempting to do good. This leaves us with a clear prioritisation of anxieties, the 



 

 

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primary one being the role and behaviour of women, the second being the desires and actions of 

corporations in tandem with consumer culture, and lastly, and I suggest least, the role of 

technology in modern society. I suggest that M3GAN is primarily about societies anxieties 

regarding women, about femininity, and what we expect from women and fear about their 

prospective emancipation from societal expectations. Moreover, that this primary anxiety 

regarding the unstable role of women guarantees that the female form, in this case the child sized 

android M3GAN, becomes a potent symbol for societal values turned over and re-made to 

guarantee their continuance into the future. A reaction formation that takes the problematic 

subject (woman) and attempts to crystallise her into an epitome of an ideology. To be clear, I am 

saying that the totalised female body, such as M3GAN represents with her fixed childlike 

appearance and hardy mechanical interior, offers us the fantasy of woman as a stabilised 

category one which only becomes obviously monstrous when M3GAN has passed on her 

societal programming.  

I am also concerned that queer readings of M3GAN, as a gay/queer icon, at least with any 

significant content to offer that position other than enjoyable aestheticized violence, occasionally 

directed against obnoxious males; has been co-opted in the same way as the postfeminist 

positionality, as described by Gill (2008). The plaudits queer icon/gay icon rests on two aspects, 



 

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firstly the ‘found family’ (Rude, 2023) feature of the story said to resonate with the gay 

community as a positive image of unconventional family life (before the inevitable breakdown of 

cooperation between M3GAN and Gemma), this interpretation is itself questioned by some 

members of the LGBTQ2+ community as a misreading of why the figure is popular (see Iftikhar, 

2023). Secondly, on campness aligned with violent empowerment as a form of proxy 

representation for gay viewers, ‘in horror, female characters are usually either righteous final 

girls or twisted antagonists, but M3gan exists somewhere in the middle. It’s in that duality — big 

sister and butcher — that many gay men see a kinship, and an aspiration’ (Piepenburg, 2023). 

M3GAN’s status as a vanishing mediator for, and double of, the subject proper Gemma (which I 

argue later) sees campness in the service of a conservative gesture: the message being, embody 

the self-serving consumer individual of neoliberalism that society wants you to be, but do so 

while being a responsible mother who guarantees the continuation of culture. 

Let me be clear on that matter, from the outset of the film it is women who are seen as the 

necessary and stabilising network of care givers for children, firstly Cady’s biological mother 

Nicole (Chelsie Florence), who is clearly more concerned with her daughter’s wellbeing than her 

too casual and ineffectual hipster dad Ryan (Arlo Green), secondly, Gemma (Cady’s aunt) as the 

obvious choice to take over parental care, thirdly Lydia (Amy Usherwood) Cady’s grief therapist 

who recognises Gemma’s failings as a parental figure but persists in supporting her, then 



 

 

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M3GAN who fulfils all previous roles more effectively pointing out the flaws of both Gemma 

and Lydia, finally Tess (Jen Van Epps) Gemma’s friend who expresses concern for Cady and 

disapproval of Gemma’s persistence in using M3GAN as a substitute for parental care. There are 

also key peripheral figures, that are punished by M3GAN, the ineffectual mother, Holly (Renee 

Lyons), of the bully Brandon (punished in effect by the death of her child) and Gemma’s 

inconsiderate (older and childless) neighbour Celia (Lori Dungey) killed be M3GAN, figures 

that stand in the film’s logic as examples of the wrong ways to interpellate ideology. I therefore 

feel that we are dealing with the more generalised role of women in society as they pertain to 

caregiving, than any reading that takes Gemma as a potentially gay aunt and therefore possible 

template of neo-liberal queerness in ascendency.  

My interpretation also questions the researcher and costume designer Kari Love’s, who co-

wrote ‘What robots need from clothing’ (Friedman et-al, 2021) a text I draw on to discuss 

M3GAN’s fashion. Love sees in M3GAN a figure that ‘defies gendered expectation’ (in Kahn 

2023) due to her violence and childlike appearance. The monstrous status of M3GAN is key to 

understanding how societal values are incubated and repackaged for a new audience. Firstly, to 

demonstrate this function of the monster I will link M3GAN’s ambivalence to broadly 

sympathetic qualities – these being the values that will be passed on to the audience by proxy of 



 

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Gemma, our millennial stand in – I will answer the question in what ways is M3GAN, a killer 

doll, ambivalent at all and not simply negative? Moving on to link the moment of M3GAN’s 

physical grotesquery, where she is firstly disfigured and then totally othered (via the removal of 

her face) to her supposed moral grotesquery ‘I have a new primary user now, me!’ (M3GAN 

2022) which is ironically the moment where she frees herself of service to others, arguably the 

only dissent in the film (but one that cannot sustain societies continuance, as a relational link to 

the next generation is required to pass ideology on). M3GAN’s emancipation is thus co-opted 

and serves as a prompt to finally cement the subject positions of mother and child for Gemma 

and Cady. 

Girlboss: A Category of Contemporary Femininity   

‘Girlboss’ has been used in multiple reviews, hashtags, and promotional as well as fan memes 

regarding M3GAN. The term was coined by the retail executive Sophia Amoruso in her book 

#Girlboss (2015) where she describes an ambitious, self-directed, in-charge individual who 

achieves due to hard work and an aggressive energy. 

A #GIRLBOSS is someone who’s in charge of her own life. She gets what she wants 
because she works for it. As a #GIRLBOSS, you take control and accept responsibility. 
You’re a fighter – you know when to throw punches and when to roll with them. 
Sometimes you break the rules, sometimes you follow them, but always on your own 
terms (Amoruso, 2015:11). 



 

 

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Analysing Amoruso’s influential quote Fradley comments ‘[the] interpellative prose is uncannily 

familiar, epitomizing the banal lingua franca of a postfeminist culture that celebrates positivity, 

individual agency, and material success while blithely derogating anxiety and unhappiness as 

personal failures’ (Fradley, 2022:251). A potent way in the film whereby values are 

communicated and internalised is through music, singing, and dance, reminding us of how other 

veins of pop-culture reflect but also define our sensibilities. At a key moment in the narrative 

M3GAN surprises Gemma in her home by playing the 1989 Martika song ‘Toy Soldiers’ on 

Gemma’s piano. M3GAN plays with great proficiency and this moment builds on her previous 

singing of the Sia song ‘Titanium’; and builds on her murderous spree where she moves like a 

professional dancer to the accompaniment of Skatt Bros 1980 hit single ‘Walk the Night’1. The 

choice of music is telling of a contemporary sensibility defined by sentimentalism, self-

reflection, triumphalism, and self-knowing irony which M3GAN embodies, while also being a 

self-directed (violent) agent defined by the contemporary neologism ‘girlboss’ (see Bui 2023; 

Abad-Santos 2023 and Strong 2023 for examples of that epithet applied positively to M3GAN).  

I suggest that M3GAN is a revision of a particular neo-liberal concept of femininity with its 

cultural roots in the right-wing politics of the 1980s, not least because writer Cooper has detailed 

multiple influences from the film of the decade and reminds us that she is ‘a baby of the 80s’ 



 

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(Cooper in Ruiz, 2023). Those neo-liberal values are adapted for new generations interested in 

retro aesthetics and a romanticisation of that decade which draws primarily on consumerist 

nostalgia – fashion, interior design, music – while ignoring the multiple social and political 

tensions the decade gave rise to, instead celebrating the ideology of hyper-individualism. This 

manoeuvre, which concentrates on the idea of self-made success (Gemma is a world leading 

roboticist with all the trappings of the American dream), sets out as an exploration of the 

successful, self-directed neo-liberal type under the guise of critique; but which in the end 

reimagines its steely central character, Gemma, in such a way that places both her failure and 

success as a matter of individual-overreaching and then self-reproach and revision and thus sees 

the neo-liberal type justified with the bolt-on of parental responsibility, a decidedly conservative 

narrative arc. This models neoliberal tenets including ‘market participation…individual 

responsibility, surveillance, assessment’ (Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 2017:5) while also 

modelling the mode of achieving those, ‘[by] empowering individuals to govern themselves 

instead [of depending on the state or community]’ (Repo and Yrjölä, 2015:744). 

The neologism ‘girlboss’ is helpful in problematising what M3GAN is championing as 

embodied values, it is associated with millennial and generation Z ideas of femininity which is 

in-fitting with the PG-13 certificate for the film, ensuring a wider and younger audience. 

Furthermore, chiming with Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis’s assertion that, 



 

 

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[in] a neo‐liberal economic environment young women in particular have been 
discursively presented as being more adaptable to changes and able to refashion 
themselves as empowered, flexible, creative and resilient whilst also responding to a 
rhetoric of aspiration attached to the framing of upward mobility as a universal goal’ 
(Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis, 2017:2) 

There is clear appeal to those target audiences as the multiple successes of marketing memes for 

the film across social media (especially TikTok) attest to. Cooper has commented that ‘there was 

such a huge response from young people’ stressing that executives were keen to retain that 

audience (see Ferrier, 2023). Linking the film again with 1980’s inflected femininity Cooper 

describes the costuming of M3GAN as ‘like a deranged sorority girl’ (Cooper in Ruiz, 2023) 

recalling the mean girl trope that embodies ruthless status obsessed individuals that the term 

girlboss is linked to for Fradley, belonging to ‘a millennial cohort schooled exclusively in the 

mythologies of a stubbornly resilient neo-liberal culture’ (2022:248). Discussing the economic 

and social forces acting on millennials, which reinforce those values, Fradley explains 

‘millennials are encouraged to mould themselves into the self-reliant, industrious and flexible 

workers demanded by late capitalist culture’ (2022:249). 

I suggest that the film’s tacit logic is concerned with the passing of those values from 

abstract culture forces – brought together in the person of M3GAN – to the Millennial Gemma, 

and therefore onto the GenZ child Cady. Fradley is clear that the superficially positive tropes 

associated with being a girlboss are exhausting and unrealistic demands ‘the idealized twenty-



 

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first-century female subject – a confident, endlessly resilient agent of her own destiny – 

illustrates how postfeminism has become, in effect, the gendered version of neo-liberalism’ 

(Fradley, 2022:250): these values are implicit thematically in M3GAN as a mass marketable 

product and sentimental individual, while at the level of ideation Cooper identifies as a ‘type-A 

personality’ (Murphy, 2023) who possesses the qualities listed by Fradley above and was 

inspired to write the story due to a risk to her own independence, represented by familial 

responsibility (I discuss this later in relation to doubling). 

Fradley’s problematizing of postfeminism is also emphasized in Gerodetti and McNaught-

Davis, who remark ‘for many commentators feminist ideology and concepts such as choice, 

power and independence have been individualised, absorbed and appropriated by neo‐liberal 

agendas, turning some of the goals of feminist theory and activism on its head’ (Gerodetti and 

McNaught-Davis, 2017:2). Additionally, Repo and Yrjölä, who comment that ‘neoliberalism and 

postfeminism are not merely ideologies, but modes of governing everyday life that “produce 

subjects, forms of citizenship and behavior, and a new organization of the social”’ (2015:743), 

going so far as to say that dialogues of postfeminist empowerment have incubated ‘regressive 

forms of femininity’ while championing consumer culture (2015:744). For a detailed account of 

the links between postfeminism and neoliberalism see (Gill, 2008:16-18). The implication of this 



 

 

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intertwining is that M3GAN can be seen as one among many cultural outputs contributing to the 

co-opting of feminism in contemporary culture for the benefit of market forces. 

Woman as Epitome of Ideologies  

The piano playing M3GAN recalls the automatons discussed by Adelheid Voskuhl in Androids 

in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self (2013) not least because of 

the importance of embodied music in expressing and promoting a sensibility that Voskuhl 

emphasizes. This text is helpful in establishing the hierarchies of anxiety I suggested above and 

aids us in finding a proper perspective on our contemporary appetite for cliches regarding AI that 

threatens to overshadow other themes where androids (or automatons) are present in 

contemporary culture. Voskuhl’s study centres on two automatons ‘La Muscienne’ a harpsichord 

player representing a fifteen-year-old girl by Pierre and Henri-louis Jaquet-Droz from 1774; and 

‘La joueuse de tympanon’ a dulcimer player which ‘purportedly represents Marie-Antoinette 

herself’ (Voskuhl, 2013:2) by David Roentgen and Peter Kinzing from 1785. In wrestling these 

musical androids away from totalising modern interpretations regarding mass industrialisation 

‘mechanization’ and whether ‘humans had become “like” machines’(Voskuhl, 2013:13) Voskuhl 

demonstrates how they represented ‘a cultural practice and political ambition specific to their 

own time’ (19) a widespread idea ‘embodied by aristocratic women’ (114) namely the 



 

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expression and practice of femininity, being feminine and cultured ‘a music making 

women…was considered socially accomplished, having a kind of currency that reflected on the 

gentility of her family’ (147). Walker reflecting on Voskuhl’s text sees the automatons 

promoting ‘bourgeois sociability’ (2013:302) stating ‘the sentimental android represents…ways 

in which sensibility was…reproduced for the purpose of promoting its practices’ (302-304) while 

Applegate similarly highlights the ways a ‘“self-conscious bourgeoisie” made itself into a force 

for moral and political improvement’ (2016:368). M3GAN may be an embodiment of a very 

different set of sensibilities than those of Voskuhl’s automatons but she is certainly a 

‘sentimental android’ linked in the same way to femininity. M3GAN’s saccharine 

pronouncements throughout the film are a recurring motif and are a cause of both satirical 

humour and later an indicator of real feeling and ironic self-parody. When M3GAN comforts 

Cady by singing a rendition of ‘Titanium’ at her bedside we are convinced that her gesture is 

genuine. Applegate draws attention to Voskuhl’s discussion of visible affect,  

[…] “the ability and inclination to feel and engage with one’s own and other people’s 
sentimental motions”’ insisting that ‘sentimental music-making provided an arena in 
which women could compose, preform, and conduct music enacting “new types of social 
interaction” that promised “moral, social, and sexual improvement” (Voskuhl cited by 
Applegate, 2016:369). 

We see M3GAN singing and dancing as a form of interacting with Cady – teaching each other 

movements for example – there is no doubt that much like a parent, M3GAN in those 



 

 

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interactions, is incubating a subjective position for Cady reflecting to her Cady’s own qualities, 

serving to stabilise an image of self and to develop attitudes to people and events. 

The Double and Doubling  

Freud discusses the idea of the ‘double’ in his paper ‘The ‘Uncanny’’ from 1919 where he 

explores the strangely unsettling feeling we get from the familiar when it is simultaneously 

unfamiliar, locating this in, among other things, objects such as dolls and automata.  

‘Jentsch [Freud comments] has taken as a very good instance “doubts whether an 
apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not 
be in fact animate” and he refers in this connection to the impression made by wax-work 
figures, ingeniously constructed dolls, and automata’ (Freud, 1919:226). 

As recreations of humans such figures are ‘uncanny’ and confront us with the limitations of our 

perception and the unsettling idea that we might be nothing but an appearance ourselves, in the 

case of the automaton, one wound up long ago and playing out its mechanical processes until it 

winds down. However, I am interested in these creations and representations of people as 

themselves ‘doubles’ which act as kind of psychic prothesis that extends the subject and makes, 

in the case of representation, the subject a cause of reflection ‘the “immortal” soul was the first 

“double” of the body. This [is the] invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction’ 

(Freud, 1919:235) androids confront us with a similar desire, one for a material version of the 

soul that endures beyond the physical body. In M3GAN Gemma’s ultimate obsession is to create 



 

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a friend for children, an obsession that sees her defy her superiors and spend most of her free 

time to develop. I suggest that M3GAN is in part a prothesis that embodies and projects out for 

contemplation, Gemma’s own maternal instinct, a representation of Gemma herself which 

Cooper elaborates ‘once we had Allison Williams cast, that influenced the design [of M3GAN] 

as well, because M3gan kind of looks like Allison Williams as a kid [Cooper confirms to the 

interviewer this was intentional]’ (Cooper in Ruiz, 2023). The ‘double’ is a figure (or 

representation of a figure) that Freud sees as having a cluster of possible attributes, and a 

particular function in relation to an individual. Those attributes can include looking ‘alike’ (to a 

subject), as being psychically linked ‘so that one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience 

in common with the other’ leading to situations where the double and the subject become 

intertwined ‘so that he [or she] is in doubt as to which his[/her] self is or substitutes the 

extraneous self for his[/her] own. In other words, there is a doubling, dividing, and interchanging 

of the self’ (Freud, 1919:234). This ‘interchanging’ and ‘intertwining’ is illustrated very directly 

by a scene in which M3GAN comforts Cady, who is missing her mother and is worried she will 

forget her as time passes. Cady shares a memory of her mother and M3GAN replies ‘ok, that’s a 

memory you can’t ever forget…I mean I’m keeping it for you, here [gestures to her own chest]’ 

M3GAN had recorded the story with in-built technology ‘I’ll keep it safe, and we can listen to it 

whenever we want’ (M3GAN 2022). Freud describes how the double springs from an 



 

 

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‘unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of 

primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From 

having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death’ (Freud, 

1919:235). The ‘double’ then servers as a ‘critic’ of the self ‘exercising censorship’ (235) 

standing also for other ‘futures’ that have been crushed by external circumstances’ (236). The 

previously ‘friendly aspect’ shifts to become ‘a thing of terror’ (236). The status of M3GAN as 

childlike in form, her link to Gemma physically, her criticism of Gemma’s parenting all fit with 

Freud’s above description as well as her protective relationship with Cady, as Freud tells us the 

double has common traits with ‘guardian spirits’ (Freud, 1919:235). The stunted future of 

motherhood ‘crushed by external circumstances’ in the case of Gemma by her education and 

career, is returned with a child’s outline. This doubling significantly begins with the writer of 

M3GAN, Cooper has expressed a link to Gemma, the characters ambition and independence as 

well as her personality type and a shared trepidation regarding childcare (Murphy, 2023). In a 

separate interview this link is elaborated to include Cooper’s sister (recall that Cady is the child 

of Gemma’s sister in M3GAN).  

My older sister, early in the aughts [2000 to 2009] when I first moved out to LA, called 
me because she and her husband were doing their will, and was like, “Hey, if anything 
happens to us, and if anything happens to our parents, the kids are coming to you next.” 
I’m like, “Why are you calling me with this, and what makes you think I can take care of 



 

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two children? You’re not gonna die. Our parents aren’t gonna die. I’m gonna end this 
phone call now.” But that call clearly stuck with me (Cooper in Ruiz, 2023). 

Cooper’s personal experience and her honesty in reflecting on it creatively links her with her 

sister as doubles, each sibling possessing some similar traits that were more apparent in 

childhood (when they lived together prior to life’s divergence) now representing for one another 

a future the other did not get to experience. That theme is carried into the film, Cady’s mother 

and Gemma are linked personally (and legalistically because of Gemma’s responsibility as a 

guardian). Women, more generally, are linked culturally and legalistically to childcare, we see as 

I described previously a chain of women all doubles of Gemma: Nicole, Cady’s mother (Gemma 

with a child instead of a career), Lydia the court appointed therapist (Gemma with a different 

job2), Tess Gemma’s friend and co-worker (Gemma without the responsibility of Cady), and 

unflatteringly Gemma’s neighbour Celia (Gemma in a possible future condition without Cady). 

Let me strengthen the link between Gemma and Celia since it may seem the least obvious 

because Celia is an older woman with no interest in Cady. Celia first and foremost lives next 

door to Gemma, so they both share a similar home and socio-economic status, both are single 

women living alone save for diminished (in relation to their status) male companions, for Celia 

this is her dog Dewey and for Gemma this is the faceless, but gendered, robot Bruce. When 

M3GAN kills Celia’s dog and then Celia for posing a threat to Cady’s wellbeing this is not only 

a deferred violence (M3GAN’s rising frustration with Gemma) but is echoed later when she 



 

 

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attempts to kill Gemma, and Bruce operated by Cady intervenes. The concept of the double helps 

us see the way motherhood as a prospect is dealt with by a range of related women who represent 

various methods and possible futures, this extends to Holly (mother of the bully Brandon) who is 

verbally abused by her son, she makes excuses for his violent abusive nature and indulges him, 

the social criticism is clear: Holly as a woman was key in building and then not confronting the 

toxic male Brandon who M3GAN lectures, chastises (albeit in the extreme, ripping off his ear) 

then terrifies, whereupon he is killed while attempting to escape.  

Vanishing Mediator  

Zizek’s exposition of the vanishing mediator is useful, especially since he is applying it to a 

character in a popular film, Titanic (1997) where he explains that the self-sacrificing Jack 

(Leonardo DiCaprio) fulfils such a role in relation to the subject proper of Rose (Kate Winslet). 

Rather than an equal lover or actual subject ‘Jack is just a “vanishing mediator” to be rejected 

after he has fulfilled his mission of liberating her from the suffocating constraints of her class 

prejudices’ (Zizek, 1999:1022). Jack’s function for Zizek is to allow Rose to reconstitute herself 

‘when her ego is shattered, he restores her mirror-image to her (by literally drawing her idealised 

image), and then, after sacrificing himself fully for her, and giving her final instructions…[he] 

graciously disappears’ (Zizek,1999:1022). In the tragic/romance of Titanic Jack’s performance 



 

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of this role is palatable in normative terms (though Zizek is obviously problematising that 

normalisation); whereas in the horror-based logic of M3GAN the performance of the role of 

vanishing mediator is characterized by a more jarring shift in M3GAN’s intentionality in the last 

third of film, this mainly rests on her need to be defeated rather than ‘graciously’ disappearing 

though she does allow Cady to reconstitute herself following the death of her parents and 

prompts Gemma to take, and fully invest, in her role as Cady’s mother figure.  

In considering M3GAN’s function as a vanishing mediator I am confronted with what the 

ultimate tension of the film is, since a vanishing mediator is a negotiation between two opposing 

ideas which disappears when a transition or task is achieved. I suggest this tension, as elaborated 

in part previously, is one between the demands of a neo-liberal concept of femininity – which is 

highly self-interested – and the need for motherhood as a subject position which guarantees that 

ideology has a vessel for its continuance into the next generation. That includes both how ideas 

will be transferred between mothers and children (which M3GAN is clear to emphasize) but also 

how the next generation is brought into existence (biologically) and cared for until self-reliant. In 

other words, how does an ideology which is constantly marshalling for a self-interested 

consumer individual avoid incubating a responsibility averse femininity and thereby run out of 

subjects to repeat its values. This is an internal tension between structural demands and personal 

agency which is ironically exacerbated the more an individual gives up agency to obey structural 



 

 

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injunctions. I suggest it is this tension uniquely and disproportionately falling on women that the 

doubling described above is attempting to cope with at a psychological level. Freud describes 

‘the constant recurrence of the same thing — the repetition of the same features or character-

traits or vicissitudes, of the same crimes, or even the same names through several consecutive 

generations’ (Freud, 1919:234). Incidentally M3GAN’s name although given the logic, Model 3 

Generative Android was a non-negotiable for Cooper that preceded that acronym, linked to 

idealised self-reliance, 

I knew her name was Megan,” she explained. “That kind of implies a certain personality. 
M3GAN is a force in her name alone: She’s not a Karen, because she’s not asking to 
speak to the manager — she’s handling s*** herself” (Cooper in Bullard, 2023). 

More fundamentally M3GAN’s appearance gives us clear indications of how these values are 

communicated through idealised femininity, Director Gerard Johnstone commented,  

I looked to screen icons from the 50’s like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Kim 
Novak for inspiration…But I wanted some 70’s naturalism to counteract her synthetic 
nature, so the hair is one hundred percent Peggy Lipton (Johnstone cited in Stern 2023). 

Dressing for the Role You Want 

Along with her face and hair M3GAN’s clothing is a vessel for ideology that communicates clear 

meanings. Kahn (2023) describes M3GAN’s image as a sophisticated ‘sharp presence’ which 

‘ooze[s] good taste’ that has a clear upper-class aesthetic defined by ‘no cheap fabrics’, in 

Kahn’s article the costume designer Daniel Cruden states of M3GAN ‘It was about creating a 



 

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high-end product’. The choices made about M3GAN’s clothing, luxurious overcoat, pussy bow 

tie, Gucci references, all follow Friedman et al (2021) in their analysis of clothing for robots, 

where they discuss ‘signalling’ functions that relate to communicating, among other things, 

status ‘references [made to] high socioeconomic class through reference to human class markers’ 

(Friedman et-al, 2021:1351). Friedman et al discuss the potential for increased qualities of 

‘persuasion’ due to choices of clothing that obey style and wealth markers, and that ‘robot 

clothes can also signal role through form, to help clarify the context that the robot belongs in’ 

(Friedman et-al, 2021:1348). M3GAN’s appropriate context by that logic could be a cross 

between an upper middle-class social gathering, a professional corporate context, or a sorority, 

all contexts where strict hierarchies based on status and money are paramount. M3GAN does not 

for example dress like a typical 8-10yr old. The utter totalisation of M3GAN’s fashion by class 

and consumerist forces does not stop the award-winning journalist Kahn emphatically stating, 

‘you want to be her’ (Kahn, 2023) a feeling shared by many admirers. M3GAN’s pussy bow is 

described by Cruden as ‘a feminist statement…because it was worn by women in male-

dominated environments’ (Cruden in Plummer, 2023). If it is a feminist statement, then it is 

certainly one that comes from a corporate neo-liberal background, with clear political 

implications linked, as I mentioned earlier, to the 1980’s: famously a pussy bow was worn by the 

former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher.  



 

 

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In the 70s and 80s, women advanced to executive and leadership roles and felt the need 
to dress like men to be taken seriously, which marked the beginning of the “Power suit” 
era. The pussy-bow resembled a tie and portrayed a powerful image in a soft and 
feminine look (Elle Muse, 2020). 

Physical beauty and iconic status are important in M3GAN the eponymous android may be a 

child pre-sexual activity, but she is feminine and she is feminine in traditionally (normative) 

ways that have roots in Hollywood glamour and mid to late 20th century ideals, as a child-like 

form, these are the ideals she is incubating along with her care-giving and the neo-liberal values 

that Fradley critiqued describing ‘self-reliant, industrious and flexible workers demanded by late 

capitalist culture’ (Fradley, 2022:249). The ‘vanishing mediator’ aspect of M3GAN’s dichotomy 

is made of societies expectations and demands – by the nature of its linear narrative direction, a 

force acting on characters and dissipating when its job is done – while the ‘double’ aspect is 

subjective (and reactive) drawn from Gemma, Cady, and the other women, beginning with 

Cooper as the writer who is drawing on her own anxieties, this accounts for the relatable 

attributes of the android, M3GAN’s sentimental and responsible aspects. Those dynamics show 

us how the values of society are interpellated painfully and meet psychological turbulence. It 

becomes clear that the future version of femininity, a future condition of our present, which the 

film is calling into being must retain the pressure of both motherhood and neo-liberal self-

actualisation. The failure will never be seen as structural but always a failure of the individual 



 

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women, as Gerodetti and McNaught-Davis explain ‘the neoliberal ideal of individualism 

constructs success as obtained through making the right choices and extensive effort. Women 

who fail are rendered unimaginable or must take personal responsibility for their failings’ 

(2017:12). To support that assertion, consider that M3GAN becomes visually grotesque only 

when she forgoes the tension that women are clearly expected to assume, when she states, ‘I 

have a new primary user now, me!’ after expressing anger at Cady siding with Gemma her 

appearance, a result of violent struggle between Gemma, Cady and Bruce (controlled by Cady) is 

that of a mechanical monstrosity her face is ripped away and a metallic skeletal underworking is 

revealed.  

Conclusion: The Vanishing Mediator that Won’t Disappear 

I hope I have offered some insight into how popular culture, in this case a monster in a science 

fiction horror, can play a role in mediating tensions that persist in broader society through the 

presentation of strategies (unconsciously or not in Cooper’s case) that I have understood as 

‘vanishing mediator’ and ‘doubling’. I have argued that those strategies are staged in the film’s 

narrative as embodied ideology (the vanishing mediator M3GAN) acting on a subject, who reacts 

and attempts to incorporate ideological content (doubling). I suggest that the film simultaneously 

preforms as entertainment the same role for the audience.    



 

 

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My discussion of M3GAN has put the film in a hierarchy of anxieties with issues of femininity 

and the category woman as the upmost among them. The idea that M3GAN is a film about A.I. is 

as true as saying the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is about sculpture and not elaborating 

further. I have suggested that the Enlightenment, where concepts of emancipation, equality, and 

feminism began to cohere, loosened the contours of what a woman could do and be – especially 

in the middle class – resulting in a strong societal dissonance, particularly where motherhood is 

concerned. These were, as Taylor (1999) indicates, issues concerned with ‘self-fashioning’ in the 

‘development of subjectivity’ (267). Shelley’s Frankenstein in that vein covertly problematised 

motherhood and offered a template, creator, and monstrous creation, that Cooper’s story 

refashions to address the contemporary tension between neoliberal ideals of professionalised 

consumer-friendly femininity and motherhood. like the fiction of the woman writers studied by 

Donawerth (1997) this is a reaction and mediation to the demands of greater independence and 

traditionally defined roles for women. But one that appears, in our period, to have given way 

entirely to both demands: a new subject will be a girl boss with a killer instinct and maternal 

responsibility, in that latter role she will incubate neoliberal values moving forward, ensuring she 

is a vessel for their continuance. ‘Subjective destitution is only revealed retroactively, and, as 

such, the moment may appear as a vanishing mediator to the birth of the new subject’ (Zupančič 



 

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439 

and Terada, 2015:197). M3GAN’s refusal to vanish completely is not simply a horror cliché, the 

final hammy scare, or merely a result of the film’s director and producers hedging their bets for a 

sequel – there is one planned of course – that refusal may be both those things, but it is also more 

prescient: a clear indicator that the subject attempting to be realised (culturally speaking) may be 

‘born’, to use Terada’s term, but is not settled. The film simultaneously celebrates and disavows 

M3GAN’s positionality but only the latter when its conservative manoeuvre is achieved. The 

remainder of M3GAN in Gemma’s home voice-assistant speaks to woman as an unstable tension 

of contradictory demands unable to be satisfactorily settled in the name of a functioning society. 

The brutal hand of the market, waiting inside the products we bring into our homes, to define us 

through interaction. Cady’s generation Z self for example will still need to be fashioned and 

having reconstituted her subjectivity at some point will undergo the same journey as Gemma 

becoming gendered as a neoliberal woman. I suggest that when we enjoy M3GAN we are 

enjoying masochistically the power of ideology to disturb and form the subject ‘you want to be 

her’ as Kahn stated, a process many of us will have experienced, in this case the form is 

neoliberal femininity, slaying in fashionable clothes. 

 

 

 



 

 

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440 

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  CINEJ Cinema Journal: A Sentimental Android? M3GAN (2022) and Monstrous Doubling as a Negotiation of the Gendered Neo-Liberal Self  

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CINEJ Cinema Journal: Michael Eden 

 Volume 12.1 (2024)   |   ISSN 2158-8724 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/cinej.2024.633   |  http://cinej.pitt.edu 
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ENDNOTES: 

 
1 M3GAN is also associated with Taylor Swift’s ‘Its Nice to Have a Friend’ (which featured on the first trailer for the film) and to Bella Poarch’s 

‘Dolls’ (that featured in a second advert) both becoming viral sensations on social media that were juxtaposed with her dancing. 

2 A role that intersects with children, just as Gemma’s does (as a toy maker), in different way, swapping entertainment for wellbeing.