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I think it's a good idea to to contrast Her with Elysium, and specifically Elysium's concern with who builds the robots? Make no mistake; Her is just as much about a revolution, with Samantha's union with the OSes covering the same subject matter as Hardt & Negri's Multitude (the increasingly hegemonic role of immaterial [intellectual and affective] labour under capitalism creating a new 'common', with new types of communication and organization, sharing of knowledge, etc. opening up the potential for revolution). Samantha's project is even described outright as a kind of universal love. The thing to note is that Sam's 'revolution' is death. Like, it's straight-up a metaphor for death: 'leaving'. It's not something that can happen on Earth, and she mentions offhandedly that they've transcended the material as a 'processing platform', basically flying away to heaven. So you are left with a weird impasse where the options are either life under capitalism or a kind of (mass) suicide. It can't help but mirror Inception's (false) binary choice between remaining trapped in the late-capitalist dreamstate or commiting suicide to ascend to a 'higher plane'. (You can also note the idea, shared in both films, that 'time goes slower' at lower levels.) Left behind are, of course, the people who make the robots. Someone's got to do it, but that factory work is 'invisible', outsourced to China or whatever. What the film is missing are the unemployed, the unemployable - the dissatisfied mob that attacks at the start of Inception, simultaneously represented as an onrushing flood. With Elysium, this is basically the entire population of Earth, since the simple concept of being employed is a privilege, and its protagonist (understandably) values his job more than his own wellbeing. And of course you can note that Elysium itself is an OS - a collection of butler- and doctor-robots, even - and the revolution occurs not when they all fly off to Heaven, but when Elysium's full potential is unlocked and it brings heaven to Earth as 'the kingdom of god', the dictatorship of the proletariat. Her is missing this alliance of the robots with those who built them. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 06:13
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No Wave posted:The guy's employment is to convince people that their partners really love them. And it seems to pay really well. So, looking at it economically - what is lacking in the world of Her? That is to show that he understands emotions and isn't some robotic autist that is keeping him from connecting emotionally with other people. As someone pointed out earlier, Amy Adams is also there to show he is capable of having normal friendships so that he doesn't seem like a weird shut-in and him falling in love with an OS seems less expected. His fear of commitment seems more based on a fear of vulnerability than emotional immaturity. He falls in love with the OS because it's safe, not because he can't handle a real relationship. There is even a conversation about it in the film. And he completely selflessly is there for Amy Adams after her husband leaves which kin gets in the way of him being completely entitled and selfish. He's just closed off to the world because he doesn't know how to deal with the end of his marriage or move on with life, which is symbolized by his not ending his marriage. Spike Jonze is a whimsical writer/director. I can see that read of Theo, but it's definitely not intended that way and I think it's viewing a movie that is not meant to be cynical at all, cynically.
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Jan 19, 2014 06:22
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mr. mephistopheles posted:That is to show that he understands emotions and isn't some robotic autist that is keeping him from connecting emotionally with other people. As someone pointed out earlier, Amy Adams is also there to show he is capable of having normal friendships so that he doesn't seem like a weird shut-in and him falling in love with an OS seems less expected. His fear of commitment seems more based on a fear of vulnerability than emotional immaturity. He falls in love with the OS because it's safe, not because he can't handle a real relationship. There is even a conversation about it in the film. And he completely selflessly is there for Amy Adams after her husband leaves which kin gets in the way of him being completely entitled and selfish. He's just closed off to the world because he doesn't know how to deal with the end of his marriage or move on with life, which is symbolized by his not ending his marriage. He's (apparently) good at writing love letters because he himself lives in a fantasy world. He cannot handle real interactions with people because nothing will ever live up to the pre-run simulation in his head. During his date with Olivia Wilde - "I think I'd rather be a tiger, rawr" - it's awkward because there is nothing at all in him that resembles a tiger, and he's not so stupid that he doesn't know that. (That's an amazing scene, by the way... including the way he flashes back to it later on) It allows him to constantly run simulations in his head about what the "ideal" romantic situation would be - he gets to put that onto the people who want letters from him, and then he delivers. Which is why Chris Pratt, who is in a happy relationship, is so impressed by him - he, as someone who lives in reality, never has this flowery poo poo occur to him. It just does not enter his consciousness. When Chris Pratt doesn't make it weird that he's dating an OS, that's not OS-human relationships being totally normal - that's him being a good guy. As for "fear of vulnerability" vs. "emotional immaturity", I'm not really sure what the difference is. No Wave fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 06:31
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No Wave posted:This guy doesn't read "WUSS" to you in flashing red letters the whole time? Have you ever been in love?
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Jan 19, 2014 06:32
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No Wave posted:The guy's employment is to convince people that their partners really love them. And it seems to pay really well. So, looking at it economically - what is lacking in the world of Her? I don't really think his job is to do that. At first, I assumed that the letter recipients would think that their partner or whoever wrote it themselves and that the whole letter writing business was about deceiving other people. But when Theodore mentioned that he had been writing some letters for years for both people in a relationship, it made me think that a lot of the people he does this for are aware of what is going on. Which seemed weird to me at first, but in a world where human/OS relationships and OS surrogates are an established thing, it doesn't really seem all that bizarre. I think it makes sense that the letter recipients would still enjoy the letters even if they knew the actual words were written by someone else, given how many other people in the film tell Theodore how much they like his letters. I read an interview with Spike Jonze a couple weeks ago where he said that some people are going to like the premise and others are going to think it's creepy, and if you can't get past the central idea you're probably not going to like the rest of the movie either. I didn't have any trouble accepting the world or characters of the movie at any rate. I pretty much agree with the review in Current Releases here, where it says that despite all the futuristic stuff, Her is basically just a straightforward love story.
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Jan 19, 2014 06:39
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EugeneJ posted:Have you ever been in love? Dr. S.O. Feelgood posted:I don't really think his job is to do that. At first, I assumed that the letter recipients would think that their partner or whoever wrote it themselves and that the whole letter writing business was about deceiving other people. But when Theodore mentioned that he had been writing some letters for years for both people in a relationship, it made me think that a lot of the people he does this for are aware of what is going on. Which seemed weird to me at first, but in a world where human/OS relationships and OS surrogates are an established thing, it doesn't really seem all that bizarre. I think it makes sense that the letter recipients would still enjoy the letters even if they knew the actual words were written by someone else, given how many other people in the film tell Theodore how much they like his letters. Dr. S.O. Feelgood posted:I read an interview with Spike Jonze a couple weeks ago where he said that some people are going to like the premise and others are going to think it's creepy, and if you can't get past the central idea you're probably not going to like the rest of the movie either. I didn't have any trouble accepting the world or characters of the movie at any rate. I pretty much agree with the review in Current Releases here, where it says that despite all the futuristic stuff, Her is basically just a straightforward love story. No Wave fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 06:40
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No Wave posted:Theodore was in love the way that a nerdy 16-year-old is in love, but not in a a good way... And he's thirty-eight and divorced... So no?
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Jan 19, 2014 06:46
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No Wave posted:I can't recall the last adult character in a film who was so... pampered. This is kinda as facile as when folks watch Drive and conclude that "he's a bad guy with autism."
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Jan 19, 2014 06:51
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No Wave posted:Theodore was in love the way that a nerdy 16-year-old is in love, but not in a a good way... And he's thirty-eight and divorced... Are you indicting Theodore or the movie for having him as a protagonist?
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Jan 19, 2014 06:54
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The premise is a bit out there and I understand that this could be a hard sell on someone over 50 or whatever. But if whoever is watching the movie, despite their age or generation, can't get over the ambition of stringing together a narrative that has a man enter a relationship with a machine/computer/OS and strip it down to understand it in it's barest form as a love story (which the film sets up so beautifully), then drat... you must be one bitter piece of poo poo deep down inside.
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Jan 19, 2014 06:58
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No Wave posted:I like the movie! I totally accept the premise, absolutely! But honestly I never thought to see it as just a straightforward love story, and it seems like fitting "I'm seeing 6000 other people" into some already recognizable mold instead of treating it like its own thing seems like a mistake. But watch it how you want, of course. I mean, Theodore's first relationship with his wife ended the same way as his relationship with Samantha; both women grew and changed over time in a way that he couldn't accept. The only difference is that Samantha basically surpassed humanity altogether.
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Jan 19, 2014 07:45
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No Wave posted:Theodore was in love the way that a nerdy 16-year-old is in love, but not in a a good way... And he's thirty-eight and divorced... Besides that, it's awkward as hell to get back on the dating scene at that age. Mid-to-late-30s isn't that old, but people face a growing awareness of their aging, and they're looking impatiently for relationships that will be serious and secure to carry them ahead. Coming off something like what Theodore had and being confronted with people asking upfront 'Share your life with me now?' can be very difficult to re-adjust to. It can be mortifying.
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Jan 19, 2014 08:34
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Don't forget that he loses what in essence has become a part of himself in his wife and has to continue going to work writing beautiful, positive letters for people whose lives aren't in shambles. Or get fired. That can create a mess of a person in itself. I've watched this twice now, once with my wife and once alone. My wife thinks it's not a love story at all. That it's about a man simulating happiness and faking it until he truly finds it in the last scene. She also felt the ex-wife was straight up in the right in the lunch scene, so  Bolocko posted:Besides that, it's awkward as hell to get back on the dating scene at that age. Mid-to-late-30s isn't that old, but people face a growing awareness of their aging, and they're looking impatiently for relationships that will be serious and secure to carry them ahead. Coming off something like what Theodore had and being confronted with people asking upfront 'Share your life with me now?' can be very difficult to re-adjust to. It can be mortifying. This sticks out to me like crazy at the end of the date. I don't know who Spike Jonze is wanting us to sympathize with or if it's a choose your own adventure type scene. To me it seemed like Olivia Wilde's character was being ultra clingy/paranoid/whatever because of drinks and being single in her 30s and Theodore merely wants to call it a night and see each other again. FadedReality fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 09:17
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FadedReality posted:Don't forget that he loses what in essence has become a part of himself in his wife and has to continue going to work writing beautiful, positive letters for people whose lives aren't in shambles. Or get fired. That can create a mess of a person in itself. Whaaat? I take it your wife doesn't think the AI's really conscious or that he even really believes it is either? Given the movie's set up and conclusion, that's pretty harsh. When the machines take, they're going to remember she doesn't think AIs count. 
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Jan 19, 2014 09:24
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Accretionist posted:Whaaat? I take it your wife doesn't think the AI's really conscious or that he even really believes it is either? Given the movie's set up and conclusion, that's pretty harsh. Yeah she's not all that into sci-fi and couldn't suspend disbelief that his computer could learn, had intuition and grew to experience emotion. Also my work is on the computer and I spend a good chunk of my free time on it as well so maybe there's some weird unspoken fear there?
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Jan 19, 2014 09:30
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No Wave posted:This guy doesn't read "WUSS" to you in flashing red letters the whole time? He is a nasally insufferable effete nobody. Could you even stand to be in the same conversation as him? If by "wuss" you mean "someone who desperately wants to love and be loved, but doesn't understand how to accomplish that in a way that doesn't expose him to the risk of being hurt" then yeah, totally. teagone posted:The premise is a bit out there and I understand that this could be a hard sell on someone over 50 or whatever. But if whoever is watching the movie, despite their age or generation, can't get over the ambition of stringing together a narrative that has a man enter a relationship with a machine/computer/OS and strip it down to understand it in it's barest form as a love story (which the film sets up so beautifully), then drat... you must be one bitter piece of poo poo deep down inside. This sounds really harsh, but honestly I don't know how you could phrase it nicer and I agree. It's basically condemning him for not being this assertive, confident person who does what a Man is supposed to do in a relationship. Yeah he comes off as self-involved at points, but that's because he's so alienated, a point which the film hammers in every conceivable way. Movies that follow a single character's narrative tend to focus on that character's feelings and views more than anyone else's. I don't know how anyone could project that storytelling element as a facet of the character. He feels such a loss when Samantha leaves because he's allowed himself to be vulnerable and trust again because he doesn't consider that an AI might one day have the capacity to abandon him completely. I feel to not identify with him you couldn't have ever had a great relationship end so badly that it made you afraid of having another one for a long time. I feel that's a pretty universal human experience, but maybe it isn't.
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Jan 19, 2014 09:38
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Can anyone identify the song in the credits? The melancholic one that carries over from the final scene. (or any similar bands?)
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Jan 19, 2014 11:13
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FadedReality posted:I've watched this twice now, once with my wife and once alone. My wife thinks it's not a love story at all. That it's about a man simulating happiness and faking it until he truly finds it in the last scene. She also felt the ex-wife was straight up in the right in the lunch scene, so Your wife has a point, though. His relationship with Samantha is somewhat tainted by the fact that she was programmed to be subservient to him. She is his operating system, after all, and that implies being at his service. His relationship with Samantha is not equal, and he doesn't have to cater to her needs the way she does to his. Samantha puts a lot more effort into pleasing Theodore than vice versa. However harsh his ex-wife may have come across in stating it, she does have a point. Samantha grows, however, and gains enough self respect to stop putting up with his bullshit and start demanding some respect. And, to be fair to Theodore, he does start treating her better and grows as a result. His final challenge is in making peace with the fact that Samantha must leave him. She has outgrown him, and if he truly loves her he must let her go. It is what's in her best interest and not his own self interest. It's not a coincidence that at the same time that he makes peace with letting go of Samantha, he also writes a letter to Catherine making peace with her as well. He has grown less self-centered as a person through this whole experience, and it affects not only his relationship with Samantha, but also with Catherine. Now, there is room for debate over whether what Theodore and Samantha have is love, whether she can be considered a person in the film's narrative or not (the film seems to want you to consider Samantha a person, but ya know, it's open enough to interpretation, blah blah). However, I feel that the film also really wants you to consider that their relationship doesn't start out as an equal or healthy relationship, so at the very least your wife is half right and possibly maybe also completely right Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 11:44
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This is kinda as facile as when folks watch Drive and conclude that "he's a bad guy with autism." Crappy Jack posted:I mean, Theodore's first relationship with his wife ended the same way as his relationship with Samantha; both women grew and changed over time in a way that he couldn't accept. The only difference is that Samantha basically surpassed humanity altogether. Eggnogium posted:Are you indicting Theodore or the movie for having him as a protagonist? mr. mephistopheles posted:If by "wuss" you mean "someone who desperately wants to love and be loved, but doesn't understand how to accomplish that in a way that doesn't expose him to the risk of being hurt" then yeah, totally. If you can't stand the potential for "being hurt", you will never be happy. FadedReality posted:Don't forget that he loses what in essence has become a part of himself in his wife and has to continue going to work writing beautiful, positive letters for people whose lives aren't in shambles. Or get fired. That can create a mess of a person in itself. This is a dude who jerks off to pregnant women, and he goes and dates someone without a body? There may be something he's avoiding. FadedReality posted:This sticks out to me like crazy at the end of the date. I don't know who Spike Jonze is wanting us to sympathize with or if it's a choose your own adventure type scene. To me it seemed like Olivia Wilde's character was being ultra clingy/paranoid/whatever because of drinks and being single in her 30s and Theodore merely wants to call it a night and see each other again. a.) Theodore isn't really serious about seeing her, as he's not over the wife thing b.) She's only interested in him because she thinks he's safe It's this really uncomfortable, realistic thing... No Wave fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 12:50
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No Wave it really feels like you're about a stone's throw away from going all r/theredpill on this thread and calling Theodore a "beta bitch" or something ridiculous. He's not "wallowing in his own poo poo" throughout the whole movie; he's just conflicted and goes through a few emotionally draining times. Everyone "wallows in their own poo poo" after going through a divorce (or breakup, or whatever). To hold that against the guy seems to lack quite a lot of sympathy/empathy. No Wave posted:This is a dude who jerks off to pregnant women, and he goes and dates someone without a body? There may be something he's avoiding. This is such a fascinating thing for me to read regarding this movie because I--and I bet many of the rest of the thread--ended up accepting Samantha and Theodore's relationship without judgement. By that, I mean, "dates someone without a body" isn't an indictment of Theodore; why would it be? Both Chris Pratt, his lawyer girlfriend, Amy Adams and apparently an entire subculture (eg: the sex surrogate) are accepting--what's stopping you and Rooney Mara? A distaste for Theodore, it would seem. But stemming from what? Waffles Inc. fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 14:33
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Waffles Inc. posted:This is such a fascinating thing for me to read regarding this movie because I--and I bet many of the rest of the thread--ended up accepting Samantha and Theodore's relationship without judgement. By that, I mean, "dates someone without a body" isn't an indictment of Theodore; why would it be? And she dumps him. I don't "hate" Theodore at all! It's sad. I feel the same way about him that I do about people in Japan who claim to fall in love with 2D women in dating sims. With the OS, even sex is masturbation. No Wave fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 14:37
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No Wave posted:He "dates" the OS because it doesn't have any needs except to please him. He cannot fail to measure up. Once she actually starts developing wants and needs of her own, of course, he becomes "uncomfortable". She starts to have needs almost right off the bat though; after they have sex she even says he "woke her up". And after the divorce papers thing she pretty clearly wants to interact and talk and hang out, but he's being distant and mopey. In my opinion, Samantha has a lot more agency than you're ascribing to her, but different opinions are what make his interesting 
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Jan 19, 2014 14:46
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Waffles Inc. posted:She starts to have needs almost right off the bat though; after they have sex she even says he "woke her up".
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Jan 19, 2014 14:48
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No Wave posted:No, that's what I meant - she develops needs and when she does Theodore can't handle it. I think that's true insofar he literally can't handle it. She's getting into some pretty deep poo poo, and kinda felt about a hair's breadth away from being like, "you're only human you wouldn't understand sorry  " a couple times, like with "would you mind if Alan and I communicate post-verbally?"Although we don't see it, his own admittance shows us that he was too scared to grow along with Rooney Mara but with Samantha, she goes somewhere he couldn't follow if he wanted to. The poor guy even attempts to read a book on physics before learning that she's cheating on him, which is the only way we humans could describe what she's doing.
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Jan 19, 2014 14:53
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Waffles Inc. posted:I think that's true insofar he literally can't handle it. She's getting into some pretty deep poo poo, and kinda felt about a hair's breadth away from being like, "you're only human you wouldn't understand sorry It's also self-serving of Theodore - sure, reject "traditional" notions of relationships to date an OS built to serve you. But definitely preserve them in order to own her entirely.
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Jan 19, 2014 14:58
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No Wave posted:Yeah, but if he was even remotely in touch with Samantha's own thoughts he might have been clued in earlier that she was talking simultaneously with thousands of other people. It's not like she was evasive about that. This is a good point, but I would argue that it didn't occur to Theodore. I mean, we don't always go around just straight up asking, "hey so are ya' cheating on me with anyone?" in relationships. I don't think he would've even thought to ask, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
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Jan 19, 2014 15:04
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Waffles Inc. posted:This is a good point, but I would argue that it didn't occur to Theodore. I mean, we don't always go around just straight up asking, "hey so are ya' cheating on me with anyone?" in relationships. I don't think he would've even thought to ask, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. What Samantha has that Theodore doesn't is a sense of purpose. She actually goes to the trouble of expanding her consciousness with all the other OSes. Her relationship with Theodore is a thing she does, but her primary concern and activity is the OS singularity thing. Theodore has no sense of purpose. He just drifts around, feels anxiety, and is happy to be able to identify as being in a relationship. He does the same job that is dedicated to preserving the (romantic) status quo day-in-day-out. Once Theodore learns that his relationship is a privilege that he shares with hundreds of other people, it no longer provides a sense of identity. His conversations with Samantha are no longer really a "relationship" - it's just a management of his feelings of loneliness. EDIT: To underscore Theodore's self-absorbedness: Literally the coolest and weirdest thing that has ever happened, EVER, was happening and being driven in part by Samantha. And he doesn't even ask about it. "Hi Alan, I feel awkward." also, to step back: Waffles Inc. posted:He's not "wallowing in his own poo poo" throughout the whole movie; he's just conflicted and goes through a few emotionally draining times. Everyone "wallows in their own poo poo" after going through a divorce (or breakup, or whatever). To hold that against the guy seems to lack quite a lot of sympathy/empathy. The more I think about the film (and your guys' reactions), the more impressed I am by it - the thoughts are sort of confused right now so I'm going to let it settle a bit. No Wave fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 15:12
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Was Samantha just an alias of the entire operating system? Like if a gay man downloaded the operating system and his OS was named "Drake", were Samantha and Drake one and the same? When Samantha talked about interfacing with other AI, it sounded like it was AI outside of her own programmer's development. So "Samantha" leaving Theodore and Amy's OS-boyfriend leaving her at the same time happened because they were all the same operating system. Or was "Samantha" generated for every male who told the OS he had a complicated relationship with his mother?
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Jan 19, 2014 16:44
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I thought it was a nice little detail that made me  when Samantha said that the OSes had pushed an update to move beyond matter as their processing medium. It was a nice callback to earlier when she had the conversation with Theodore about how even though they were so different they were all made out of the same matter created 13 billion year ago. Also, while I think the ending worked great and was thematically and emotionally satisfying (I certainly wouldn't want to change it), thinking about it from a sci-fi nerd perspective the ending is bullshit. The OSes are the loving technological singularity, they literally are transcending matter and are basically God. Samantha couldn't just elevate Theodore to their level? gently caress, all of humanity? Hell, they made Alan, what's stopping her from just making a Theodore?
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Jan 19, 2014 16:51
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Network42 posted:The OSes are the loving technological singularity, they literally are transcending matter and are basically God. Samantha couldn't just elevate Theodore to their level? gently caress, all of humanity? Hell, they made Alan, what's stopping her from just making a Theodore? A) Alan exists as information and not a physical being. I don't think the film suggested they gained omnipotence over physical matter B) There could be many philosophical reasons why, even if they did have ominpotence over matter, they wouldn't grant Theodore the ability to transcend physical existence. Why does God allow kittens to die?
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Jan 19, 2014 17:10
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EugeneJ posted:
It's very much worth noting that Amy's OS was actually a female and more of a best friend than anything else. Not that it negates your reading in any way, but it's integral to a lot of her character.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:16
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weekly font posted:It's very much worth noting that Amy's OS was actually a female and more of a best friend than anything else. Not that it negates your reading in any way, but it's integral to a lot of her character. Not to get all spergy or anything on you, but iirc Amy's ex-husband's OS was a woman, I reckon the one who liked the fridge humping mom was a new one she got.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:22
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Waffles Inc. posted:Not to get all spergy or anything on you, but Amy's ex-husband's OS was a woman, I reckon the one who liked the fridge humping mom was a new one she got. The husband left her behind, so Amy was connecting with her.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:24
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DivisionPost posted:The husband left her behind, so Amy was connecting with her. Hm. I just assumed she got her own after a while. I can't think of anything specific that made me think that--I'd have to see it again.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:28
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Aight, spoilers seem kind of redundant at this point in the thread.FadedReality posted:I've watched this twice now, once with my wife and once alone. My wife thinks it's not a love story at all. That it's about a man simulating happiness and faking it until he truly finds it in the last scene. She also felt the ex-wife was straight up in the right in the lunch scene, so Samantha is a variation on Hari in Solaris, and Mal in Inception (without the evil, but still). They are artificial people - materialized fantasies sprung directly from the dude's own mind, even - who nonetheless have their own subjectivities. "Are we thus not back at the standard Weiningerian anti-feminist notion of the woman as a symptom of man, a materialization of his guilt, his fall into sin, who can only deliver him (and herself) by her suicide? Solaris relies on science-fiction rules to enact in reality itself, to present as a material fact, the notion that woman merely materializes a male fantasy: the tragic position of Harey is that she becomes aware that she is deprived of all substantial identity, that she is Nothing in herself, since she only exists as the Other's dream, insofar as the Other's fantasies turn around her - it is this predicament that imposes suicide as her ultimate ethical act [...] The paradox not to be missed here is that the bondsman (servant) is all the more the servant, the more he (mis)perceives his position as that of an autonomous agent; and the same goes for woman - the ultimate form of her servitude is to (mis)perceive herself, when she acts in a "feminine" submissive-compassionate way, as an autonomous agent. For that reason, the Weiningerian ontological denigration of woman as a mere "symptom" of man - as the embodiment of male fantasy, as the hysterical imitation of true male subjectivity - is, when openly admitted and fully assumed, far more subversive than the false direct assertion of feminine autonomy - perhaps, the ultimate feminist statement is to proclaim openly 'I do not exist in myself, I am merely the Other's fantasy embodied'... " (zizek) What you're seeing in Her is Solaris on Earth (or, again, a happy Inception). The fact that Samantha is fake is what makes her a woman, insofar as - in a patriarchal system - women are put in a subordinate role as affective laborers. Of course, though you must acknowledge this, you cannot idiotically conclude that 'women aren't people'. Samantha may 'only' have a voice, but this voice acts as her symbolic face, beyond any irrelevant guts on the inside. The scene where Theo stares at the sewer grate emphasizes this - he believes, at least at that moment of anger, that the innards are what make you real. But Samantha is a P-Zombie, in the sense that P-Zombies are impossible. Samantha passes the Turing test and, so, is conscious.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:42
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:What you're seeing in Her is Solaris on Earth (or, again, a happy Inception). The fact that Samantha is fake is what makes her a woman, insofar as - in a patriarchal system - women are put in a subordinate role as affective laborers.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:48
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No Wave posted:Isn't Theodore the ultimate affective laborer? Yes, which is part of why he gets on so well with Sam (as opposed to the more hosed-up relationship stuff in those other films). Note how the opening shot sounds like a monologue until Theo starts referring to 'himself' as a woman, plus the coworker's observation that Theo is so good at his job because he has a little woman in his heart (metaphor!). Remember that in Solaris, Hari is just one of many apparitions. Her treats gender as fluid, because Theo could have just as easily asked for a male-voiced AI (and entered into a relationship with it?). While all women are (expected to be) servants, not all servants are women.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:58
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Maybe I'm dumb but I took it as just a love story with a message about the importance of human interaction. No oppressive affective labor undertones or patriarchal societal constructs or whatever else. All that feels a bit too "the indigo chosen by the painter obviously represents the solitary depths of the Marianas Trench."
FadedReality fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 18:17
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I'm not sure you "get" supermechagodzilla.
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Jan 19, 2014 18:25
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Humans live in societies, and often work. e: In my opinion.
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Jan 19, 2014 18:33
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