M3GAN (2022) on child neglect and avoiding one’s caregiving responsibilities
“She’ll take care of the little things, so you can spend more time doing the things that matter.”
Note: spoilers ahead! There are in-depth spoilers for the entire film throughout.
M3GAN, directed by Gerald Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper, is a great little horror film — it’s funny, it’s freaky, it’s well-paced, and obviously M3gan herself is a really great character who’s already had a lot of impact in memes and pop culture.
Cady (Violet McGraw), a quiet and self-effacing little girl, is orphaned when her parents are killed in a car accident, after which she’s sent to live with her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams). Her aunt, a workaholic engineer at a famous toy company, pairs Cady up with the newest toy in development — M3GAN, standing for Model 3 Generative Android, a life-sized human doll that uses AI learning models to engage with, teach, care for, and otherwise be a companion to the children she’s paired with. M3GAN (played by Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) spends time with Cady while Gemma focuses for the majority of the film on her work, not realising that she’s neglecting Cady’s emotional needs or that M3gan’s learning model is more dangerous than she anticipated.
One thing I didn’t expect going into it was how much the central politics of the film would hit me and how hard — M3GAN throughout shows you a deeply unhappy, lonely little girl, and step-by-step goes through what has made her that way.
It would have been very easy for the film to basically treat M3GAN as a metaphor for the terrors of “screentime”, and how too much screentime harms a child — it stunts their growth! They become too used to screens! They become lonely and sad!
I don’t disagree that too much time using screens can be detrimental to anyone’s life and development, but it can’t be denied that screentime is frequently used as a boogeyman to distract from the real issue: that many caregivers give their children TV, computers, or their phones, because they don’t want to waste their time interacting with them. Children are stranded with screens and technology because their parents are busy, or tired, or just want them to be quiet. The technology itself is not the problem, but the desire to put this technology in your child’s hands and then walk away or mentally disengage so that you can do something else.
While there are a few moments in the film where Gemma (Allison Williams) treats M3gan with the casual disregard she might do an iPad, the core of most of the film is in that M3gan is making Cady feel cared for, which nobody else does.
Before I dig in, according to the NSPCC, these are the four main forms of child neglect:
- Physical neglect. A child’s basic needs, such as food, clothing or shelter, are not met or they aren’t properly supervised or kept safe.
- Educational neglect. A parent doesn’t ensure their child is given an education.
- Emotional neglect. A child doesn’t get the nurture and stimulation they need. This could be through ignoring, humiliating, intimidating or isolating them.
- Medical neglect. A child isn’t given proper health care. This includes dental care and refusing or ignoring medical recommendations.
Apart from medical neglect, in the course of M3gan, Cady experiences all of these forms of neglect from Gemma, and potentially from her parents as well. As well as Cady, a boy called Brandon (Cady’s bully who is killed by M3gan) also appears to be neglected by his mother, and Dewey the dog is also heavily neglected and not given appropriate care as a pet by Celia, Gemma’s neighbour.
The whole film is about desires to replace the basic responsibilities of caregiving with various alternatives, and also about avoiding the basic responsibilities of other relationships with each other and our communities.
M3gan’s not the cause of any of these, but a symptom, and a catalyst for their being shown more obviously.
The film opens on an in-universe advertisement for the newest toy from Gemma’s company, Funki: Purrpetual Petz. In this advertisement, a little girl is grieving the recent loss of her dead dog, and in order to avoid speaking to her about the perils of grief or her emotions about the loss, her father gives her this toy— this being a parallel to the story about to unfold between Gemma and Cady. There is no mention in the jingle, of course, of what Gemma tells us later in the film — that she’s been using the AI from Purrpetual Petz to eavesdrop on and model children’s conversations to better tailor M3gan’s development.
What’s most striking about it from our perspective here are these lyrics:
I had a dog, she was my only friend
But she got old and died
Now I’m alone again…
With her dad directly beside her on this screen, this child sings, “Now I’m alone again…”
At no point in the advertisement does her father hug or kiss her, or give her any comfort — he hands her toy and hovers in the background of a few of the clips smiling inanely, but for the majority of the advert, the child is alone with her toy or for one short clip is laughing with another little girl.
Obviously, it’s a joke jingle for a silly toy and it’s outrageous because this film is a parody of such things, but it just fits so well with this view on the film, that most of these children do not feel connected to or cared for by the adults around them and are also distanced from other children — the only things they can rely on for comfort are pets and toys.
Before we get onto the dynamic between Gemma and Cady, first we see Cady with her parents, who are arguing in the front seat of the car as Cady plays with her Purrpetual Petz directly behind them, using a tablet to feed the toy and giggle at its jokes.
Cady is laughing with her toy in the backseat, and Cady’s mother gets her attention to point to a hotel on the hill — Cady’s smile immediately drops from her face as she turns to look, and she only smiles again when the toy makes a fart noise to entertain her.
Cady’s mother says in an undertone that she thought they were going to limit screentime to 30 minutes a day, and her father immediately says, “What are you telling me for? I didn’t give it to her.”
It’s interesting that he initially jumps to absolving himself of responsibility, even asking rhetorically why his wife and coparent would even bother asking him about something as unimportant as the day-to-day life of their child.
After asking Cady to turn it down, they go on:
MOTHER: If we make rules, we need to stick to them.
FATHER: If she wasn’t on that, she’d be climbing all over the seats.
MOTHER: So you would rather she sat there feeding a toy virtual food until it shits itself?
Again, the father is not concerned with Cady’s entertainment or her well-being. He doesn’t say “but she would be bored without the toy,” or point out that this is a long car journey and that it’s difficult for even an adult to stay occupied for the course of one. His primary concern is Cady climbing all over the seats, that Cady would be a distraction or annoying while he’s trying to drive.
But the mother doesn’t say anything about Cady’s well-being either. She’s concerned about them following the rules they’ve set, and with the virtual nature of the toy and its crappy jokes.
But then she tells Cady to turn it down again — Cady says, “I already did turn it down,” and you can see from the resignation in her face, hear it in her voice, that she knows that her mother isn’t paying attention. Immediately her mother goes to complaining about Gemma sending the toy for Cady and continues talking to her father.
We can glean from later on in the film, when Cady anxiously runs into the corridor where M3gan has Gemma pinned over the table and says it sounds like they’re fighting, that she’s used to the sounds of her caregivers bickering and arguing with each other, and by the tired tone of her parents here, we might assume that this is a regular pattern for them.
Firstly, Cady has already turned the toy down, and no one has noticed that the volume of the toy has changed because the problem is her making any noise at all; secondly, of course Cady wants the toy to be louder than the two people arguing about her in the front seat, pretending she doesn’t exist. Cady is a 9-year-old girl. She understands what her parents are saying, and she can hear their tone.
At no point do they attempt to engage Cady in conversation. At no point do they ask her opinion about the surroundings outside the car, how she’s feeling about going skiing, what she’s thinking about, what game she’d like to play.
Her mother doesn’t ask if she likes the toy — her mother doesn’t even ask Cady, “Hey, how do you feel about the fact that the only way you can play with this new toy is via your iPad?”
My point is that her mother is seeing the screentime as a problem, but she is not offering any solutions or alternatives. If Cady didn’t have the Purrpetual Petz, she would probably be sitting in silence and looking out of the window, possibly even while her parents kept telling her to be quiet and still talking about her as if she isn’t there.
I understand Cady’s position, too, where her parents are apparently arguing about the safety of the vehicle they’re driving in and are shouting at each other rather than her — she asks for help with her toy Leroy, is ignored. It’s only when she attempts to get it herself that her mother shouts at her and demands what she’s doing, going to strap her back in.
This is just a tiny part of the film, just an opening scene, but it’s such a real and painful part of so many children’s lives — you are not treated like a person, and you do not have the right to ask to be treated like a person. You are meant to be quiet and well-behaved, to make no noise, to play in ways that do not inconvenience or annoy or even draw the attention of the people you’re with. If you ask for help and you are ignored, you’re simply meant to suffer with it, because you’re not old enough to help yourself.
And then?
Her parents are dead.
It’s interesting seeing a lot of the shots of the Funki company — you see various adults playtesting and making notes about the toys, but you also see professionals with lanyards making notes on how children are playing with them, with no parents in sight.
Let’s jump to Gemma — firstly, I think that Gemma is a pretty typical worker in tech who is very adept at her craft, but is not socially aware or responsible. She’s rude, she never apologises to the other engineers on her team when she’s wrong or careless, overruling them and not listening to them much of the time (not even noticing when one has been replaced over the phone by M3gan), she doesn’t follow the directives given to her by her boss — she’s particularly irritable with Kurt (Stephane Garneau-Monten) who is frequently trying to be nice to other members of the company and is bullied by everyone for it, so it’s no wonder he tries to do some corporate espionage.
I think it’s nice that Gemma sent Cady a toy for her birthday, that she remembered her niece’s birthday and sent something along, but as Cady’s mother pointed out, she probably would have been able to send it for free, and given that Gemma’s told the audience that those toys function as listening devices to aid her AI development, it doesn’t exactly come off as a kind, selfless action.
Gemma’s home is soulless, made up of grey and beige, and is pretty much empty upstairs except for a handful of collectable toys on display that aren’t to be played with or touched — she spends all of her time down in her lab, building, or working at her computer with her headphones in. Even the toys she has on display haven’t actually been played with, and frankly, they’re not even displayed in a very attractive manner — they’re not under lights or in a dedicated cabinet, but why would she bother making the display look nice?
What guests is she going to have?
Gemma has no friends. She has Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez, my beloved), who she works alongside, and we have no idea if they would ever socialise with her if they didn’t have to see her at work, and she’s on frosty terms with her neighbour. When Gemma is not working at the office, she is working at home. Even her piano, I have to wonder if she can play herself, or if it’s just there because it was in the catalogue living display she based her home off of.
Just the fact that when she and Cady come home, Elsie, her version of Alexa, announces that she has Tinder notifications and Gemma is embarrassed, but it’s turned on by default because she never expects to have anyone come home.
It’s hardly a crime to own an ugly house that you never have guests in, but it’s indicative of Gemma’s intentional self-isolation. She does not even want to form meaningful relationships with the adults around her, because she can’t be bothered respecting other adults— she certainly does not intend to be a caregiver.
It’s great that Gemma immediately steps up and brings Cady home because she doesn’t want Cady to be shoved into fostercare, but how much has Gemma thought about Cady’s well-being here? How much has Gemma considered what Cady needs, and how much Gemma can provide it?
Let’s talk about Celia (Lori Dungey) and Gemma for a minute.
GEMMA: Can you keep your dog on your side of the fence?
CELIA: I just spent 80 bucks on a shock collar!
GEMMA: Maybe try cranking it up a notch.
Shock collars don’t work, by the way.
If you have ever used a shock collar on your dog, all you’ve done is abuse your dog, and you should feel bad about it. “Oh, well, they do work, my dog doesn’t do a thing if I torture it!”
Wow, for real? You don’t fucking say?
Actual dog trainers know that the best way to get your dog to do the behaviours you want it to do and avoid those you don’t want it to is via positive reinforcement. When you raise your dog in a secure environment where it feels safe and supported, guiding it to the correct behaviours, rewarding and reinforcing those behaviours, and guiding it away or offering alternatives to poor behaviours, the dog is better behaved!
Training your dog gives your dog structure. Playing with your dog tires it out and gives it a sense of satisfaction — on top of easing its anxiety — so that it’s less likely to act out by destroying things or running around. Exposing your dog to different environments and stimuli (such as the park, such as other dogs, cats, children) while supporting your dog helps your dog feel more secure in itself, so it will be less reactive (it won’t bark or growl in response to these things) and less aggressive. Teaching your dog that aggression is not acceptable behaviour and offering other suitable play behaviours makes your dog safe for other people to be around.
Notice how pretty much everything I just said, Celia doesn’t appear to do?
All of this is basic awareness of a dog’s behaviour, and because many people don’t think about their dog’s perspective or the instincts, fears, feelings, anxieties, that drive them to behave how they do, many people jump to simply abusing their dog via shock collars or prong collars or spray bottles or screaming and yelling. All of them can lead to an even more insecure, reactive, aggressive dog, because it’s a dog that knows it’s going to be tortured or yelled at soon, and because it is a dog, it does not know why.
When the dog is barking and running around because it wants to play and you electrocute it, how is the dog meant to know what the problem is? Is it the running? Is it the barking? Is it that the dog is outside? Is it that it’s a sunny day instead of a cloudy one? Is it that someone mowed their lawn today?
Celia doesn’t pay any attention to her dog. Celia pours dangerous chemicals into her yard (and Gemma’s) with her dog right there. Celia does not tell her dog not to do bad behaviour, or put the dog inside after it jumps up and scares the shit out of a 9-year-old kid. Celia does not repair the big hole in her fence that her big dog can easily get out of.
Especially because Dewey seems to be an adult dog — or at the very least, an older puppy — it’s obvious that Celia has never put in any effort or guidance for her dog at all. Later on, when M3gan lures Dewey through the fence to kill him, Celia doesn’t appear to notice for hours, because Dewey was playing in the yard, which has a big hole in the fence, unsupervised.
Just the way that Celia says, “I just spent money on a shock collar” — she’s not even actively using the shock collar. She’s treating the shock collar as a piece of technology that exists to train her dog for her, so she doesn’t have to pay attention to and teach her dog herself.
The thing about Dewey is, and it’s not his fault, but he is a large dog with large teeth and a pretty powerful bite force. He bites down on Cady’s arm hard enough to draw blood, and then he grabs M3gan by the back of her neck and shakes her. If those positions had been reversed, Cady would potentially be dead, if not severely injured.
When Dewey attacks them, he is not deterred by Cady screaming or yelling. He is also not remotely deterred by the fact that the shock collar is actively shocking him and is probably really painful. I’m sure that this poor dog, alone in the yard with no toys and no social contact and no entertainment, is delighted that there appears to be a toy to jump on.
He has obviously not been socialised with children or taught to moderate his bite force. One of the most important things we teach young dogs as they’re being raised is that biting is bad, and if they do bite during play, they have to severely moderate their bite force — I’ve been bitten in play by my dogs, even just caught by their teeth by accident, and if I yelp and sit down, they’ll stop playing, lower their tails and their ears, maybe try and lick my hand as an “apology”, and make sure I’m okay.
If you watch dogs play with each other, you’ll see them do a similar set of behaviours — if a dog bites or otherwise puts pressure on a dog in the wrong way, one of them will yelp or release a warning bark, and then turn their back on or otherwise cease play with the other dog. In a healthy relationship, the other dog will calm down and maybe quietly touch base with the other dog before inviting the dog to return to play.
This isn’t anthropormorphising the dogs or saying they’re the same as humans, but dogs are social creatures with complicated social behaviours. They are perfectly capable of learning to moderate how hard they bite or if they bite at all during play, and while they are taught this by their littermates as puppies, they should also be taught this restraint by the people around them.
Dewey hasn’t been taught he can’t bite. Screams and yells don’t communicate to him that this is bad or painful behaviour — he’s probably just more excited and stimulated by the loud noise and thinks it’s more fun.
If Dewey had killed Cady rather than given M3gan a shock to her circuitry, Dewey would have been taken by animal control and put down, but he wouldn’t have known he did anything wrong, because he is a dog. Dogs do not understand morality. They understand play, they understand excitement, they understand protecting their territory. They understand what they are taught.
And how does Celia respond when she realises that Dewey has bitten Cady and M3gan? Especially, by the way, given that Celia also thinks M3gan is a real, human little girl that has just been grabbed by the back of the neck and violently shaken by her dog?
She immediately says it’s the girls’ fault for being on the wrong side of the fence. She doesn’t even direct this to Cady and M3gan, but tells Gemma she needs to tell them to stay on the correct side — because if her own dog isn’t her responsibility, these little girls certainly aren’t, so why should she speak directly to them, if she thinks they’re in the wrong?
“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d fixed the fence!” Celia calls after Gemma as she takes Cady inside to disinfect her open wound.
Celia might even be correct, although the fact that Celia and Gemma are arguing about each of them fixing the fence is funny, because… You don’t even have to fix the fence, firstly. Either of them could have temporarily blocked it.
But the fact is that Celia was letting Dewey stay outside alone in the yard, unsupervised, while she was inside; Gemma was letting Cady stay outside in the yard, unsupervised, while she was inside, with headphones on no less so that she didn’t even hear Cady scream for help. Even M3gan was inside initially, and Cady was in the yard on her own!
Cady is a little girl rather than a dog, but unlike Celia’s enclosed yard (albeit with a massive dog-shaped hole in the fence), Gemma’s house goes right out onto an open street, and while 9 is plenty old enough to be aware of some road safety, she could well have also shot one of her arrows into the road and ran to get it without thinking about cars coming through from either end of the street.
Neither Gemma nor Celia are taking responsibility for their respective charges here, and it’s only then that Gemma calls the cops.
The fact that the cop can’t do anything about it is obviously frustrating to Gemma (especially given that your average American cop loves to play target practice with people’s family pets), and I could make a few notes on the fact that she doesn’t know how to talk to her neighbour or get solutions to this problem without calling in law enforcement in the first place, but:
COP: She said he was provoked.
GEMMA: Provoked? Have you seen this dog? It is a monster, I’m chasing it off my property every other day.
COP: She says he’s never on your property.
GEMMA: Then why don’t you ask her whose shit I’m clearing off my driveway? Because it’s not mine!
COP: Look. The dog doesn’t have a history of violence. State law says he can’t be forcibly put down.
GEMMA: Okay, so what am I supposed to do?
COP: (sighs) Fix the hole in your fence?
Like, fucking yeah, okay? Fix the hole in your fence. Duh.
Gemma is not on good terms with Celia anyway, but given that this conversation makes it appear that she literally just wanted the cop to have the dog put down… Having your neighbour’s dog killed will not improve your relationships with them.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Dewey is a dangerous dog, I think that there should be some sort of intervention in place for Dewey to be put in a better home for his own sake, let alone that of the people around him, but this is where Gemma lives. She talks to Celia every day — or more specifically, Celia, apparently a lonely hoarder who only has a dog for company, attempts to make small talk and be nice to Gemma, who yells at her and snaps at her, and at no point during this dog’s life has simply blocked the hole in the fence.
Neither Gemma nor Celia are taking responsibility for the hole in the fence, and at the same time, do you see how this conversation with the cop is not about the safety of Gemma’s child or even the damage that the dog has done to a child-shaped doll, but is primarily about property violations and the responsibility of picking up dog shit?
Gemma does not own this dog and does not want to take responsibility for its aggressive behaviour or its poop, but she also doesn’t want to block the fence off, so this becomes a conversation about property, an extension of her as an individual.
Ditto, Celia lies through her teeth to protect her dog — who she also sees as her property — and if the girls were trespassing and the dog attacked them, then, oh, the dog was in the right, right? The cop doesn’t know what a well-trained dog looks like, or remotely care. The cop does not care about public safety. The cop has doughnuts to eat and teenagers to menace with a gun across town. This is a waste of his time.
And speaking of interventions with the state not actually doing anything to force people into their caregiving responsibilities, as a parallel to the cop and the state doing nothing to intervene with Celia and Dewey, I want to talk about how the child psychologist, Lydia (Amy Usherwood), does nothing of value with Gemma and Cady.
The first thing Lydia says when she comes into the house is, “Look at you, still in your pyjamas!”
This child is literally just sitting and watching TV in her PJs. It is the most regular thing in the world for a child — or an adult — to do on a day they’re staying at home, especially one that recently lost her parents. Note Cady’s reaction if you watch this scene too — she immediately clocks the judgement in Lydia’s tone and looks down at herself, uncertain and mildly hurt.
Lydia’s eyebrow raise and pursed lips as she says, “I see that,” is so unnecessary, and the purpose of it is to shame Gemma for not doing a sufficient job entertaining Cady when she has just walked in the door. Don’t get me wrong, Gemma is not doing great as a caregiver, but being this judgey over something as minor and casual as this?
What’s the purpose of it? Who is it for?
Does it teach Gemma anything? Does it make Cady feel safe or cared for?
No. It doesn’t do either.
All it does is make Lydia, presumably, feel more superior because she wouldn’t give a child “screentime” like… cartoons. God forbid.
It’s interesting that Lydia talks about how she can watch them just hanging out in a way that’s meant to be about her observing rather than exacting control over the situation, but then says she does want to see them doing something specific — notice how Gemma immediately lies to her and says she unpacked a bunch of toys this morning, but they’re old, so Cady doesn’t want them?
Just a few weeks after this, offscreen, Celia is lying to the cop and saying, oh, no, Dewey never goes on her property, he stays on mine! Why?
Because telling the truth to the agent of the state in either scenario is likely to be met with punitive measures (Dewey being taken away; Cady being taken away) rather than assistance or guidance. Gemma wants to keep Cady, so she lies to put on the appearance of being a better and more able caregiver.
The fact that she lies means that she knows her behaviour so far has been awful. When she’s going to go to work and she tells Cady, “Oh, I’ll only be two hours or so, I’ll leave you with my iPad, and then we’ll go to the playground or get something to eat,” there is no mention of getting toys for Cady or getting anything she needs. She doesn’t ask Cady what she wants or needs, either.
The thing about child neglect is that you learn, as a child, not to ask for things. You try to ask for as little as you possibly can, because even in the rare case you aren’t summarily denied, the adults will be annoyed that you’re bothering them.
Cady is such a tiny girl on screen. Violet McGraw is a great actress — she’s quiet, only speaks when spoken to, rarely starts a conversation, she keeps her eyes downcast, she often occupies a small space off to the side or the corner. She tells Gemma she doesn’t need toys.
What sort of little girl says she doesn’t need toys? Doesn’t need friends? Doesn’t need to be cared about by a parent?
One that has learned to go without.
Especially because Cady is homeschooled, it wouldn’t be surprising if a lot of her mother’s focus was on educational toys, but especially on toys that are quiet and unobtrusive and don’t cause anyone any bother or involve any clean-up. You notice how even after weeks and weeks in Gemma’s home, it still looks like a minimalist ugly catalogue space, with no mess anywhere?
Are there many 9-year-olds you could put in a house like that for months, and expect to leave it that spotless?
Cady is intelligent and she’s confident telling Lydia the new rules of this household, that those are collectables and that you’re not supposed to play with them — and again, we see Gemma embarrassed because she knows Lydia is judging her, so she runs to cut one open.
“We can totally play with them! Do you wanna play with them? Yeah. No big deal.”
And Cady doesn’t know how to fucking play with the ball. She’s stuck there on her own, she’s rolling it on the floor because this is a bizarre exercise, it’s awkward as Hell, and she does not usually play with balls.
And isn’t it telling that Gemma starts to tell her about the ball, and Lydia basically shuts Gemma up “to let Cady lead”?
Yes, Gemma is a control freak and I’m sure she’s upset that she’s taken this ball out of its packaging and drastically reduced its value, and Cady’s not even playing with it right, but also… It’s some kind of puzzle ball that does other stuff. Cady would probably be way more interested in that, and she’s not exploring it herself, because I doubt she has been given the tools to explore things like this herself.
GEMMA: Yeah, I’m just explaining how it works.
LYDIA: Well, it’s a toy. I’m sure it’s not that complicated.
Lydia, what the fuck is your problem? Do you like kids, or do you only do this job so you can feel superior?
I just ache for Cady here, bcause Gemma immediately wants to prove to Lydia that this toy is cool and impressive, wants to explain it to her, and then with a voice dripping with irony says, “Let’s just roll it on the floor like a tennis ball,” as Cady fucking squirms.
Because Gemma has stopped addressing her directly, and is instead talking in these punishing asides to the room that theoretically aren’t aimed at Cady, but feel like they are. That sort of passive-aggression is constantly leveraged against neglected kids to keep them quiet and well-behaved, making a child feel shame just for existing, and what’s the right choice for Cady in this scenario?
Lydia is saying to roll it, but Gemma, her aunt, is saying that that’s the wrong behaviour and is barely hiding her disdain about the situation.
So, is Cady supposed to roll it and make Gemma annoyed at her, just to please this strange adult? Is she supposed to play with it in some other way when she has no idea how else to play with it, because Lydia wouldn’t let Gemma tell her?
She’s in an impossible situation, and neither of the adults beside her care — one cares about appearing like a good parent (but not actually being one), and the other cares about shaming people for their lack of parenting skills (but not actually teaching them or giving them resources). Cady has no way out, because she is a child, and she has no rights of her own.
Gemma then says she has school for Cady “on her list” because her mother was homeschooling her, and doesn’t seem to be looking into it actively.
When Gemma is talking with Lydia, once again, she doesn’t talk about Cady’s well-being — her grandparents have said they’d take her, and what does Gemma say? That if her mother had wanted her to go to Jacksonville, she would have said.
Does Cady want to go to Jacksonville? Would Cady like to be cared for by her grandparents instead of by her aunt’s iPad? Would it be better for her?
Gemma doesn’t care!
The fact that Gemma then says she’ll work for two hours and then when Cady finally dares to ask for attention (while alone, with an iPad, no way of feeding herself, no toys, nothing), it’s fucking dark outside, that’s… not surprising, given Gemma’s whole thing, but is painful.
Later in the film, Lydia obviously talks about attachment theory and the problems inherent in Cady relying on M3gan while she’s grieving and vulnerable, because M3gan is a toy rather than a human being, let alone a caregiver, and M3gan won’t grow with her, M3gan won’t support her in the way a parent would — especially because M3gan feels to Cady like a peer, but is in actual fact, a toy and a parental stopgap.
Gemma doesn’t want to take on these responsibilities until very late in the film — the line in the initial adcopy for M3gan, where she says, “She’ll take care of the little things, so you can spend more time doing the things that matter.”
The things that matter being Gemma sitting back on the couch with her laptop as she turns on the TV.
It’s so on the nose and so real, just the way you see M3gan reading with Cady, tucking her in at night, spending all this time with her. I think one of the most awful moments is when Gemma says in voiceover that M3gan is a great listener as Cady chatters away to M3gan, with the implication being that children’s stories are boring and that a parent doesn’t want to listen to her?
That little clip, that moment where Cady is smiling and telling M3gan an anecdote in the back of a car? That’s the first time we see Cady talking uninterrupted, with any degree of agency or care. That’s the first time in the film, half an hour in, that we see Cady speaking at length without having every word painstakingly questioned out of her.
The thing is, M3gan is making Cady feel loved and cared for and assured, and Gemma is working in the background. M3gan is doing all the work so that Gemma doesn’t have to.
TESS: Why would you want M3gan to do all that stuff?
GEMMA: They’re emergent capabilities. She’ll be able to do all that and more.
TESS: Okay, well. Does any of that bother you? I thought we were creating a tool to help support parents, not replace them. If you’re having M3gan tuck Cady in and read her a bedtime story, then when are you ever spending time with her or even talking with her?
GEMMA: I don’t really think this is any of your business.
Eyyy, there it is!
“Are you taking adequate care of your child?”
“That’s none of your business! My child is my business — aka, my property! You don’t get to care about any of the rights my child has or the feelings my child has, only I have to care about stuff like that, and luckily for me, I don’t!”
So went every conversation on parenting ever.
And here’s the crux of it:
TESS: If you’re spending less time with your child as a result of M3gan, that’s something we should be aware of.
GEMMA: She’s not my child.
Why should Gemma do stuff about Dewey? Dewey’s not her dog.
Why should Gemma be friendly with Celia? She’s not related to her or anything, and she shares the fence with Celia and the dog is Celia’s, so really, the fence is Celia’s problem.
Why should Gemma be nice to her coworkers, or listen to their criticism, or tell the truth to the therapist that’s meant to be helping her care for Cady?
Why should Gemma care for Cady? It’s not like Cady’s her daughter.
Yes, Cady’s her niece. Yes, Cady’s parents just fucking died. Yes, Cady is legally in Gemma’s custody, and yes, Gemma is Cady’s legal guardian, and yes, Cady has grandparents who would look after her, and yes, Cady is incredibly lonely and isolated and hasn’t even gone back to school yet, but listen.
Don’t you know how hard Gemma’s been working on this presentation?
Cady is in a fucking Schrodinger’s scenario here — at once, Gemma is her caretaker and the one she’s meant to be able to rely on, and also, Gemma’s not really her parent, and Cady’s not really her problem, so like, why should she have to deal with her 24/7?
I think this is one of the subtlest but most insidious awful ways that Gemma treats Cady — so just after she’s been beaten by Dewey and is in bed with antibiotics, and M3gan says she needs plenty of rest, Gemma says she still needs her for this presentation.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t wanna do it,” she says. “I mean, there are people who flew across the country especially to see it, but if you’re not up to it, I’d just rather you tell me now, okay?”
What sort of choice does Cady have here?
You don’t have to do it, Gemma says, but you’ll only be disappointing a lot of people, especially me, the only adult caregiver left in your vicinity, if you don’t. And you have to tell me right now, or else.
Gemma is trying to be nice here while still guilting Cady into the answer that she wants, and you can see M3gan judging her in the background for it.
This is the real reason that AI would never replace neglectful caregivers like Gemma or Cady’s parents — M3gan has said what the correct procedure would be, and Gemma is saying, yes, she’s right, but I’m overruling her because I need you to be a guinea pig for my work. Fuck child labour laws, lol.
It’s the same a few scenes later, when they’re at home and M3gan not only says that forcing children to eat their vegetables harms their relationship with vegetables in later life, but starts to explain why. This is not a disagreement over parenting styles. It is M3gan saying, studies show this, and then she is trying to teach Gemma. She is trying to give Gemma better information to be a better parent for Cady, in such a way that Cady will have a healthier, happier life.
And Gemma turns her volume down to shut her up, because Gemma does not want Cady to have a healther, happier life right now: she wants Cady to do what she says, because she said so.
CADY: You can’t make me do something I don’t wanna do.
GEMMA: Actually, I can. That’s basically what a guardian does.
I especially hate how grabs hold of Cady and wrestles with her rather than letting her free by the way — there was no reason to grab and restrain her like that, especially when Cady still has a fucking dog bite healing on her arm. It showed no regard for Cady’s personal space or her body, and only satisfied Gemma’s desire to control her.
The other time when Cady is playing with M3gan, and Gemma interrupts her to say “this is what’s happening, you don’t have a choice,” and keeps turning M3gan off mid-game. She’s not treating Cady like a person there, either, but just barking orders at her and turning “the distraction” off when Cady doesn’t just immediately do as she says.
It all comes down to seeing Cady and treating her as a lesser being because she’s a child — especially because Cady is already one of the most shy and polite children to ever fucking exist in this movie, because she’s so terrified of taking up any space at all.
As soon as she starts to show any personality or self-confidence, in large part fostered by her relationship with M3gan, that’s when Gemma starts snapping at her a lot more rather than learning about her and engaging with her on that level. After all, Gemma’s got work to do, and learning about Cady and treating her like a person? That’s gonna take way too long! Who has the time!?
It’s only a minor part of the plot, but I just want to talk about one last side-thing before I go through Gemma’s improvement in the third act: Brandon (Jack Cassidy), the bully at the “alternative school”.
Gemma is obviously on her phone at the alternative school, because God forbid she accidentally interact with or make eye contact with another child she doesn’t want to be responsible for — it’s noteworthy to me, by the way, that she just randomly decides to blow off work for this, much like she blows off the launch gala with no prior warning in writing, no notice in advance. Even work, the one thing that she cares about, she doesn’t take any responsibility for the way her actions might impact her coworkers, doesn’t consider their schedules or how their work might be impacted by her random absences or leaving them in the lurch.
Brandon’s mother, Holly (Renee Lyons), starts to make conversation with her.
The first thing Holly says is how great it is to get the kids “out in the fresh air and off those devices” — after all, that must be the reason that kids these days are doing bad, right? It’s screentime, the evil, evil screentime!
As Holly chatters on, Gemma barely says anything, because as we know, Gemma hates social interaction that’s not with a machine she can turn off mid-sentence.
HOLLY: [The kids] love it! My son prefers it to regular school!
GEMMA: Which one is yours?
HOLLY: (pointing) The one in the flannel shirt.
GEMMA: Oh my God. How old is he?
HOLLY: I know, he had a growth spurt last year. But he’s actually quite a sensitive little soul.
Firstly, I woudn’t be surprised if Holly was lying about Brandon’s age to bring him here, because that would be in-keeping with the themes of avoiding consequences via deception by any other lying neglectful caretaker in this film. While I’m sure Brandon does indeed prefer hunting down other children in the forest to being cooped up in a classroom, it’s quite possible he’s been expelled or otherwise barred from the local classrooms anyway.
But still, Brandon is bigger and does look older than a lot of the other kids — still, he might well be the same age of 9 to 11, and just be big for his age.
What does Holly say, immediately? “He’s actually quite a sensitive little soul!”
Dewey never goes outside of my property, and he doesn’t have a history of aggression. I just unpacked a bunch of toys for Cady yesterday, I think she doesn’t play with them anymore.
Yet another caregiver who’s lying to a stranger, maybe to avoid consequences for their failings, maybe to try and appear as a better caregiver (and therefore person) than they actually are.
HOLLY: Brandon, honey! Are you warm enough? Do you need your hat?
BRANDON: (shoulders stiffening, frustration showing in his back before he turns around) Fuck off, Holly!
GEMMA: (raises her eyebrows and glances at Holly)
HOLLY: (glancing nervously at Gemma for her reaction before turning back to her son) (weakly), Well, you could just say, “No, thank you!” (with an almost laugh) Never know what they’re gonna say next.
GEMMA: Yeah, it’s such a fun age.
Oh, so we’re just not gonna talk about it?
That little boy just told his mother to fuck off, and she’s not gonna say that’s bad behaviour, or not to be a little prick? Because this is the thing, right — I don’t actually have a problem with some 11-year-old using the word fuck. It’s not in itself indicative of harm, a child cursing or swearing doesn’t particularly bother me any more than an adult does.
But Holly does. You can see Holly does. You can see that she’s hurt by it — her son, “sensitive little soul”, just told her to fuck off.
But she doesn’t know how to respond. She doesn’t know how to punish that behaviour, or how to guide him toward the right behaviour. She doesn’t know how to talk to him in a way that makes him see her as a person with feelings. She’s laughing off his treatment of her, even though he treats her that way and treats other people even worse.
This is the opposite end of the spectrum to Gemma wanting Cady to do what she does simply because Gemma has ordered it: this is someone who’s frightened of giving their child structure or instructions or support or reward in case it makes her look like a bad mom, or makes her child hate her. Holly is a completely impotent parent, utterly helpless, and not only does Brandon know it, but so does everyone around her.
And what do they do about it? Well, nothing.
After all, Brandon’s not their responsibility, right? Why should Gemma say what a little bastard this woman has raised her son to be? After all, he’s only going to bully and abuse the nearest children around him and never face any consequences for it — but that’s not any of Gemma’s business! Brandon is Holly’s business, and Holly has decided to be a different kind of shitty parent to Gemma, as is her right!
Gemma even placidly listens while Holly later on is saying, “They say behavioural issues are linked to high IQ, so it would make sense that — “
Make sense that what, Holly? That your child is a bully? Is he a bully because he’s just so smart, he has to try and hurt smaller kids and tell you to fuck off to your face? Do you think it’s a sign that he’s a genius?
No, Holly! Your child is being paralleled against a dangerous dog within the narrative of this movie, Holly! Your boy genius is about to be inhumanely euthanised by a cool robot, Holly, and it’s because you didn’t raise him right!
The school guide pairs a child up with Brandon, who immediately whispers in her ear, listen, I don’t want to be anywhere near that fucking kid, and she’s like, yeah, okay, that’s fair. Who will be Brandon’s next vict — I mean, buddy?
Oh, shit! Cady’s new, she doesn’t know better! We’ll just send Brandon off with her, unsupervised!
Which, I’m all for kids exploring the woods, but assuming this is taking place in Washington State (the toy company is based in Seattle), like, are there not bears in these woods? I know black bears are quite small and skittish compared to bigger and more aggressive bears, but I still wouldn’t pit a nine-year-old against one; there are also cougars, coyotes, bobcats, not to mention various snake species, including rattlesnakes.
There don’t appear to be more than five or six adults in the central space, and if there was an emergency, how many of them are actually trained in first aid or emergency response? How many of them know how to efficiently call for help and round up the remaining kids?
Would you trust Holly to do that shit? I wouldn’t.
I get that the point of the alternative school is to let kids roam and explore in nature, but given that we see Cady and Brandon covering a good deal of ground with no supervision, including hitting a main road with trucks speeding down it, it seems that these forty or fifty 10-year-olds have been let loose across a relatively wide area, and the number of adults supervising them does not seem sufficient to keep appropriate track of them. Given that it’s about getting them off their devices, and none of those kids have phones on them that probably also means those kids cannot be contacted if they do stray too far, or if they cannot be heard because their shouts aren’t carrying far enough, they can’t phone for help.
Anyway, Brandon seems to be a fucked up little kid — he’s obviously excited at the prospect of being alone with Cady and being able to hurt her, and given how quickly the supervisor swapped his partner, he’s probably done this to multiple other kids.
The fact that Cady calls for help and Gemma only runs to find her after she notices M3gan is missing is fucked up by the way.
But yeah, the way that Brandon treats M3gan is… unsettling. The fact that he pulls off one of her shoes with her leg in the air and then straddles her body on the ground feels suggestive of burgeoning sexual violence, especially given that Brandon seems to be a little boy who is learning to do the most harm possible with the least effort. I’m really glad the film went subtle with this and that it’s not hugely explicit, but it does make me shudder every time I see this scene.
Unlike Dewey, at least Brandon knows that this is a doll and that he can get away with treating her more violently, but the thing is, that’s almost certainly to do with the potential consequences of his actions (or lack thereof) than because he’s feeling moral relief at being able to take his aggression out on a toy doll than another human child.
The fact that he’s talking to the doll the whole time is wild, especially when he huffs and says, “I don’t care!” — bullying is not exclusively a sign that a child needs attention paid to them, but Brandon has apparently been coming to this school for some time, and he has no friends. Yes, he’s a bully and the other kids don’t want to be harmed by him, but that’s still isolating and hurtful for him, that no other child wants to be in his company, and he’s still a young boy who’s acting out in a way that garners some kind of attention or response.
Or, he was.
So, the film has presented us with all of Gemma’s responses to Cady so far, Celia’s lack of care with Dewey, and Holly’s with Brandon.
The consequences of not training your dog and relying on technology (the shock collar) to “raise” it are: the dog is aggressive and M3gan kills it to prevent it doing further harm to Cady.
The consequences of not teaching your child better manners and completely avoiding technology and those pesky devices are: the boy is aggressive and M3gan kills him to prevent him doing further harm to Cady.
Maybe it’s not the use of technology that determines whether a subject of caregiving is raised appropriately, but another thing entirely!
I think it’s interesting that after this scene is done and we see Gemma and Cady at the table, we watch Cady put her glass down on the table, and she doesn’t use a coaster. Previously in the film, we’ve seen Gemma rebuke Cady to put her glass on a coaster, and seen M3gan teach her why glasses leave rings and remind her to use a coaster herself.
Here, Cady puts her glass down on the table beside the coaster.
M3gan looks at Gemma. Gemma looks at M3gan.
Gemma wants M3gan to teach Cady to use coasters, right? 78% of parents time is spent dishing out the same instructions, and M3gan’s purpose is to take that effort out of Gemma’s life. But, Gemma told M3gan not to interfere in users’ private conversations, such as when Gemma is interacting with Cady.
So who tells Cady to use the coaster? Whose responsibility is it now?
And the answer is… nobody’s!
The glass stays on the tabletop, coaster be damned.
It’s funny, that a few seconds later, Gemma is saying to Cady, “[Celia] just needs somebody to blame,” about the disappearance of her dog, isn’t it?
Later in the film, M3gan has her villain monologue and talks seriously to Gemma about coparenting Cady together and it’s really funny, partly because this 12-year-old-looking android doll is like “you need to take me more seriously as your wife”, but also because it’s a conversation Gemma has been completely avoiding the entire time.
Multiple times throughout the course of the film Gemma defines and redefines M3gan’s parameters for caring for Cady, because she wants M3gan to do all the work of raising Cady, but also, M3gan is not her mother or her actual caregiver — theoretically, Gemma is. These are conversations that people have to have when they’re sharing responsibility for someone’s care, because that’s when you set boundaries, come to agreements on strategies and responses, and so on.
No one does that for the entire movie. Every time someone does talk about shared caregiving responsibilities, it’s about who’s done what wrong, or how it’s not actually their responsibility — and obviously, when M3gan has this conversation with Gemma, it’s while lowkey threatening to kill and/or paralyse her.
I do think here at the end of the film, the movie loses its punch a bit — I do think the final battle is cool and I’m intrigued by the sequel hook, but I just think it’s interesting that Cady does end up trusting Gemma more than M3gan, I think it could have been interesting if Cady had ended up going with M3gan because she’s so desperate to be cared for.
Then again, she did watch M3gan throw a boy in front of a car, which is an understandable thing to impact your trust in somebody even if that boy was a bellend.
I am glad that we see Gemma prioritise Cady in the last act, but as I said before, she completely abandons her work priorities on the night of launch with one phonecall to a member of her team — she doesn’t inform her boss, she doesn’t tell him in writing or even on the phone, she doesn’t contact anybody else at the company. She has sunk a lot of company money and materials into M3gan’s development, and we have no idea what the story is as far goes her financial or criminal liability in regards to M3gan’s actions, but that aside, like —
The only reason she seems to have done so well at the company is because she’s such a hot shot engineer that works 24/7 that people let her get away with all this nonsense. Throwing all that away to completely prioritise Cady is not the sense of balance she talks about achieving earlier in the film, and balance is going to be crucial as she looks after Cady as time goes on.
Will she return to physically neglecting Cady if she gets a new job? Will she forget to feed her? Will she continue to let Cady play outside unsupervised, or sit with her headphones in and not pay attention to Cady’s comings and goings? Will she actually buy Cady toys?
Will she return to educationally neglecting Cady? Will she keep avoiding getting Cady into a real school, and/or continuing on with homeschooling? If Cady is homeschooled, will she ensure Cady has proper social care and contact with peers her own age?
Will she continue to emotionally neglect Cady? Will she continue to ignore Cady when she talks, yelling at her or shouting at her whenever Cady shows her own personality instead of immediately obeying Gemma’s orders? Will she fall back into her patterns of avoiding reckoning with Cady’s grief, and expect Cady to deal with those feelings on her own or repress them? Will she continue to use passive aggression and other subtly manipulative tactics in conversation with Cady, shaming her or backing her into a corner when it comes to things that are theoretically Cady’s decision?
Will she continue to medically neglect Cady? Will she avoid medical guidelines for things like rest and recuperation after she’s been bitten by a fucking dog?
Will she learn to repair her own damn fence? Buy toys? Get some friends?
Who is to say?
I’m super excited about M3GAN 2.0 though, and I obviously did love the movie — as you can tell having read this, it’s given me a lot of food for thought, and I’m really excited to see if the sequel ends up doing similar work on the rights of the child and the habital nature of child neglect in a society where children are considered an individual’s property and responsibility rather than people in the community who are being communally raised? Or, if it goes way more into technology and the limitations of AI and AI “gone bad” — which can be interesting! But this film felt so fresh in part because the limitations of the AI and the AI’s skewed morality were just a small part of its core emotional drive.
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