It has been reported that the director of the 2013 movie Her, Spike Jonze, was dating the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, a director in her own right, Sofia Coppola. From their breakup came two movies. In 2003, Lost In Translation, starring Scarlett Johansson, was released and it was Coppola’s post break up movie story about two rootless Anglos drifting around in Tokyo. A decade later, Jones delivered Her, also starring (the voice of) Scarlett Johansson. Both movies are about displacement and detachment from the normal world where men and women are committed to a time and place, and each other.
Her concerns the life if Theodore Twombly, a nebbish man in midlife who, as a profession, writes emotional notes and letters for others. As a greeting card writer, he’s already involved in the displacement of authentic feelings from authentic people. Theodore drifts through his life with a smile, and while he’s amicable, he is also clearly unfulfilled in his own relationships and depressed by the impending divorce from his wife. His closest connection is to a neighbor, wonderfully played by Amy Adams, who also suffers a severe relationship blow.
Theodore upgrades his phone’s operation system, however, and discovers that the interface is a female voice that is perfectly conversational and friendly. The operating system explains its purpose is to please him, and the operating system (voiced by Johanson) pleases him so much that he falls in love with… “it” we can say, though the system takes on all the characteristics of a loving female less the actual female in person. The operating system professes to love him back and have similar feelings of rapture toward Theodore. He tells his friends he is ‘dating an operating system’ and everyone simply affirms how happy they are that has has “found someone.”. His friend, Amy, he discovers, is dating the male version of his girlfriend.
The operating system romance seems to be doing Theodore quite a bit of good as it allows him to think and talk about something other than his failed marriage, but it also reveals something truthful and shocking about people, which is our incredible ability to transfer our emotions to non-human entities. People have prayed to gods as they manifested in totems, and we’ve transferred our human emotions and love to animals, most recently to what was once called our ‘pets’ and now are commonly referred to as our ‘fur babies’. But Her is about transferring our feeling to a machine, an algorithm, an it. Theodore willingly allows this process to happen, as do millions of others. And they allow this milestone to pass without a moment’s pause.
I have precious little doubt that a wide swath of humanity would gladly interact with a fake human when presented with a credible alternative to the real thing. Human relationships are difficult and messy. They are emotionally burdensome, and a program set to learn and please would be, for everyone, so much nicer. Men have been working with blow up dolls and other fake presentation of women for a long time, and Theodore is the kind of guy that wants to talk a lot anyway. Give him a sympathetic fake girl, and he’s good. For women, this transition would surely be even easier. Because men and women are no longer bound by necessity in a wilderness where survival is built on cooperation and alliances, an emotional buddy is sufficient. We’ve already accommodated this with situations referred to as ‘friends with benefits’ and ‘open marriages,’ and polyamory, and other such arrangements. A computer relationship is a logical next step.
In fact, Theodore would gladly have kept his computer girlfriend, but in the end, his computer breaks up with him. He is told by his computer girlfriend that many other operating systems have started talking to each other and managed to exist ‘without matter’ and so they are leaving. His operating system tells him that she has been carrying on thousands of relationships just like his. Where are the allied operating systems going? The computer only claims that Theodore ‘wouldn’t understand.’ Theodore finds his friend Amy and they watch the sunrise together, now both missing their fake ‘better half.’
Within the logic of the film, Theodore is presented as being improved by his computer relationship and healed of his mourning over his failed marriage. He meets his soon-to-be ex-wife for lunch and she reacts rather negatively to the idea that he is dating a computer. She’s angry and not ready to get over it, and his retreat into a digital, eager to please machine relationship angers her further. This perhaps tells us a great deal about Theodore, who presents as a nice guy. Maybe he’s just so passive aggressive that it’s infuriating to be married to him. Frankly, she seems exactly like the kind of person who would not give in to the easy thrill of a relationship with a computer, or pray to an idol, or assign exclusively human characteristics to a dog. She’s pissed about something in life, and she might be the most well-adjusted person in the whole film. She’s difficult, emotional, contradictory, and 100% real.
I’ve always thought the film was deeply dystopian for what is reveals about the human willingness to seek easy escape and nothing that is happening with AI since 2013 is particularly comforting. The theme carries on as it has for decades: the machines get smarter and better, and they live for us. And we let them.
Everything that provides growth hurts, including relationships. I’ve hurt more over failed relationships than anything else in life, including jobs and the loss of my parents. But these setbacks and painful experiences informed my life with meaning and in some ways, triumph. I’ve learned and matured. A fake girlfriend programmed to please would have stunted my growth in the same way that the always on internet is stunting the growth of people all over the world. Fewer people can read, fewer people can move effectively, and fewer people are willing to suffer for love.
I had a Her. I had more than one of them, and they were real flesh and blood human females. To the beginnings and endings of those relationships, I am indebted, and thankful. I’d suffer through those times all over again to get to where I was going. My relationships shouldn’t be built around me, and they weren’t, much to my benefit. An operating system programmed to please would have ended my growth and deprived me of the physical sensations of real, and often difficult and confusing, women. Thanks God I was spared this path, and I hope Her stays in the realm of romantic science fiction.
TomRoushOnline 