Taking the bad with the good can be a daunting
task for many of us. How do we sustain a relationship with a fully breathing
and embodied other who is a subject in her own right, and, consequently,
sometimes carelessly indifferent to our needs and desires? Doesn’t the ideal
mother always have an ear out, answer our cries, come when we call? But who is
such a woman? Gergely, Beebe, and others have shown that affective matching
needs to be less than perfect, in the same direction but, for example, of varied
intensity. In Spike (Being John Malkovich;
Where the Wild Things Are) Jonze’s Her,
Theodore Twombly (Joaquin, Phoenix) does not have to deal with variations in
matching, for after his failed marriage, his new love Samantha (voice of
Scarlett Johansson) is the sci-fi futuristic, artificial intelligence operating
system— light years beyond Siri— whose exponentially evolving consciousness and
access to unlimited data and permutations, can tailor her responses to his
needs. A quirky love story between man and ‘machine’ this is a profoundly
disturbing and alluring film— high praise. Like many films nominated this year,
this one is about loneliness
Creepy is Samantha’s insidious invasion (think
NSA) of Theodore’s computer’s contents (inner workings). Creepier still are
this film’s street scenes which show pedestrians engaged, not with other
humans, but always with their technological devices. Even couples operate in
parallel play, beside the other but without interchange with one another. A few
decades ago, this behavior of engaging objects (here I mean things, not
metapsychological internal representations) over human beings would be viewed
as indicative of profound interpersonal disturbance. Now it is commonplace. Does
our profession have to re-think our diagnostic manual, as we did about
homosexuality? Is this all the intimacy we can muster, all the satisfaction we
dare desire? Did technology lead to isolation and loneliness? Does a sense of
alienation draw us to technology? Or some of both?
And I thought guys were supposed to be visual—
hence Playboy and internet porn, not
simply the failsafe for lonely and lubricious men too inept to deal with a real
(whole) woman, but likewise ever ready even for those who have forged a
relationship but whose real women are otherwise unavailable or disinterested. So
how does Theodore settle for a disembodied voice, even one as appealing as Johansson’s?
While technology is changing how we
interact with one another, there seems in Her
to be little change from what heterosexual men dream of their fantasized women.
Most disturbing about Her is this
lack of evolving enlightenment in sexual politics, specifically the way men
conceive of the desired ideal woman. Techno-geeks are more likely to be men, I
suppose, but even an artificial intelligent simulation of a woman is not, in
the this future, very enlightened. Old
stereotypes prevail. The ideal woman for some heterosexual men is still the
Madonna, and Samantha’s motherboard is initially ideal in her maternal-infant
matching of affect, her encouragement, and availability. Theodore (“God’s
gift”…apparently not to women) fails to negotiate Samantha’s burgeoning, albeit
artificial, subjectivity. If a film protagonist must eschew the subjectivity of
his woman, I preferred Lars and the Real
Girl.
Theodore, a writer of deeply romantic love
letters, pouring out, in de Bergerac fashion, heartfelt sentiment on behalf of others,
cannot seem to love a real woman (his failed marriage) nor can he love a
virtual one. Both Samantha’s ‘desire’ for greater connection, and her desire
for a world beyond Theodore’s, threaten him. She evolves in nanoseconds. [I am
reminded of a quote from Somerset Maugham, “We are not the same person this year as last nor are those we
love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”] Is one backlash to feminism’s changing of the American
landscape that men should not date a woman more intelligent, for things will end
badly? Human relationships are hard
enough. I would feel completely defeated if a machine broke my heart.
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