Film Theory: The Feminization of Labor in Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer

I wanted to respond to Wells’s assertion in The Scar and the Node: Border Science Fiction and the Mise-en-scene of Globalized Labor that the design and implementation of the nodes imply a feminization of labor, and thus influences how the feminine nature of both labor and the human characters is meant to be understood. She writes:

“The nodes and their requisite orifices, which the camera lingers on through detail shots, imply feminization; workers are “penetrated” by wires that leave them exposed to the perils of a globalized economy in the form of electrical surges” (79). 

In the sequence when Memo is plugged into the wires at the sleep dealer, and is thus “plugged in” to his robot that Memo is performing the labor through, Memo catches a glimpse of his robot form in a reflection in a pane of glass. Here, Memo gazes at “himself” - though he is not staring at his organic form. Rather, Memo is confronted with himself-as-machine. He has “transformed” into a cyborg via the penetration of the nodes. The human self of Memo has been, as Wells would say, “disassembled and reassembled as reserve labor force,” which she would also quantify as a vulnerable, and thus feminine, state of existing (79).

Yet when Luz interacts with Memo in the bar, we see her interactions reflected in a mirror. In the mirror is reflected her human face and form, her skin, and her soft, organic body. As Wells notes, cyborgs often take a feminine form in films, such as in Bladerunner or Metropolis. For me, this begs the question: are we meant to understand Luz, in her femininity, as intrinsically robotic, unable to separate herself from an easily disassembled and reassembled identity which is her nature regardless of whether she is connected to the wires of her nodes? For Memo, his connection to the nodes transforms him at a fundamental level; we see him confronted with his “new nature.” We never see this explicit transformation for Luz, as though Luz (and her womanhood) cannot be disassociated from the concept of labor. Whereas Memo, as a man, must take on a new nature of labor and thus femininity; Memo can theoretically separate himself from this identity once he detaches himself from the wires.     

Luz sees her human self reflected in the mirror.

Memo is confronted with his new form.