Her (2013)
This film is quite interesting as a post-anthropocentric imaginary future since it doesn't show an extreme with robots being part of the population. Instead, a future with artificial intelligence is imagined. Everyone uses the technology by voice command, and they always have a headset to use it. Then, with the arrival of virtual assistants in the movie, it is said that many people have developed relationships with them, whether love or friendship. Moreover, the film doesn't give us the impression to take place in a distant future, but in the near future in a pretty realistic way, as many already use virtual assistants like Sire or Alexa. However, here as in the other two films, what destroys the human being as the only central entity is the subjectivity that the technology develops. Samantha expresses herself to Theodore and seems to have a personality. Even if she has no body, she feels very embodied, whether it is because of the actress's voice which is very recognizable or the way the AI is. Samantha has a genuine impact on Theodore which makes the viewer quite uncomfortable. Many people, including me, found it odd to see a human falling in love with an AI. I think the film intended to show us how it could interfere with their sexual relationship. However, what stands out the most is the evolution of Theodore's character, who grows and heals from the relationship with Samantha.
On the other hand, even though the science fiction genre is known for exploring the relationship between humans and some form of technology (Smelik 117), this one seems different in the gender issues that it raises. From the film's beginning, Theodore finds himself in a state of in-betweenness as he is in a “permanently partial identity” (Horaway 154). Theodore, when he is at work, is in a state of “becoming-” as he writes letters for other couples in which he takes both the role of man and woman. The posthumans want to break the binaries, and this is what we see in the film as Theodore is "becoming-woman a. He is not making a gender transition, but Kornhaber explains that his experiences and how he experiences his emotions are related to female experiences. The girlhood state is not unique to women but can be found in any body (Kornhaber 4). Therefore, dissolving the gender binaries speaks directly to posthumanism and moving into a becoming-machine state by accepting the co-dependency link between man and machine.
Although Theodore tries to have a relationship with Samantha, the gap between them can not be fulfilled (Smelik 118). Samantha shows her subjectivity and tries to be embodied by saying she wishes she was with him and could feel his presence. However, she had to remember him from time to time that cognitively, they were not the same. She does multiple simultaneously, which goes beyond human comprehension as she is a machine, so ultimately, their relationship does not work. At the movie's end, you cannot help but feel devastated for Theodore when Samathan announces she is in a relationship with more than 600 other people. Therefore, even if we see the possibility of coexisting with technology, there is still a part of it that humans are not ready to understand.
This page has paths:
- Her (2013) Scene analysis Diliana Proulx-Castro
- WALL-E (2008) Scene analysis Diliana Proulx-Castro
- I, Robot (2004) Scene analysis Diliana Proulx-Castro
- Posthumanism and Cinema Diliana Proulx-Castro
