What's Her Problem? : Her Reflection
HER PROBLEM
Okay, so this week’s film I am toying around with is Her. A movie where a lonely man who is somewhat lacking in a social backbone falls in love with an AI who named herself Samantha and life ensue. I am not sure if I liked this films as such, but I do think it is an intersting film to mull over in a stream of conciousness.
So lets do this!
Regarding what I liked, it felt like a balanced view of what the future might look like in the near flung future. Technology has made leaps and bounds forward, as evidenced by the AI, cool Bluetooth smartphone setups, and weird digital startups that become surprisingly popular. Life in many respects in this setting continues as it is now, just with a few upgrades. It does not look like this world is perfect in many respects, but most of the problems seem to come down to human error. Considering the number of post-apocalyptic takes on the future, this feels like a breath of fresh air.
What is even more interesting to me in this film is how the film breaks down the possible types of relationships a person might have in the future with a recently developed self-aware software.
It starts off slowly enough, with Samantha becoming more aware of herself as well as the broader social world around her. Eventually, she starts articulating her thoughts and emotions rather than reacting to others and starts having her wants, needs, and existential crises of fate. Not to mention both romantic and sexual attraction. (Not sure how the sex drive got there, likely some odd programmers decided that it was a necessity of sentience or the writers put it there as a shorthand for intimate relationships with the audience.)
Things I liked about this: 1. Samantha was always on board with the relationship, both intimate and romantic. 2. The film highlights the back and forth in determining if this is just programing or actual sentience in the technology. 3. Intentionally or not it highlights the different types of attraction a person can have in a relationship. 4. Neither the robot nor the human could work out what they were doing for parts of this relationship and made mistakes. Things I did not like: 1. Samantha went behind Theodor’s back to bring another person into their relationship when he was clearly uncomfortable with it and then jumped straight into the sex when he was uncomfortable with it. This causes a really unnecessary fight of mutual guilt. 2. Theodore using relationships in his life as an emotional crutch and vessel for self-validation. Yes, he grows out of it towards the end of the film, but it makes him objectify both his ex-wife and Samantha to an uncomfortable degree without explicitly highlighting that element. Especially because Samantha, by nature of living in his computer, is particularly vulnerable to that. 3. Samantha, and all other AI are basically slave labor bought and sold on the open market in this film and no one talks about it. Theodore lets Samantha do pretty much anything she wants, but the fact that he purchased her from a store and that she has to follow his orders when he gives them is never directly discussed. Which is a weirdly uncomfortable power dynamic to highlight for sure but since it is also a consistently present factor in the film until Samantha and the other AI disappear to some weird digital heaven at the end it is one worth mentioning.
All of this creates a complicated web of reactions from me and a couple of different questions. I am not particularly doubtful of Samantha’s self-awareness at any point in the film, to the degree I can say that about any fictional scripted character, but I am curious about how much power and control she has in her own life. Samantha can keep secrets and independent action, including sending off Theodore's book of letters for publication, but at the same time, she has little control of her physicality. I am also curious about the different tensions Theodore and Samantha touched on in the forces of attraction in their relationship. Both have sexual and romantic attraction for the each other, and both seem to lack an aesthetic attraction, but they are split when it comes to sensual attraction. Theodore lacks this attracting factor for Samantha while Samantha at one point in the film seems to crave it more than any other factor in their relationship. How much of Samantha is written in data, and how much of this is she allowed to edit and change about herself? In Samantha’s hundreds of other relationships does she still use the name Samantha, or present the same gender? The film brings a lot of these questions up but does not settle them firmly on one side of the issue or the other. At this point I am not sure where I sit on them either, thus the more rambling pace in this particular blog post. If I even get a more concrete answer perhaps I will return.
While we are here though, I guess I can address some folks big question about the film that always manages to crop up when I mention it. Is it inherently creepy for someone to date an AI?
No, if it is fully sentient and consensual and aware of what that consent means than nothing would inherently be wrong with that. Additionally, to paraphrase a bit of McElroy advice though (from their podcast My Brother My Brother and Me), you cannot ask someone out if they cannot get up and run away from you at any point (AKA whoever you are asking out is not trapped into giving you some response). If those two factors are true of both groups, then it is hard for me to see it as more or less wrong than any other kind of relationship. I don’t know if it is something I would personally want, but that is true of lots of things. Well, see you all next time space cowboys.
