True Love and Technology’s Counterfeit in “Her”
When the nature of sexuality and love meet technology, we should ask questions. This Spike Jonze film asks some and has answers.
Smart phones and other modern technologies are in the hands and pockets of most of us today. Mass communications and the internet are developing so quickly that we can’t keep up. Our hearts though, have largely stayed the same since the beginning. Affection, affirmation, love: these are necessary components of our lives. If we don’t have them we seek them, and technology makes the search very easy.
This is the love story in the 2013 film “Her,” except one half of the couple has no body. The lonely writer Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an OS1, a new A.I. system advertised as an “intuitive entity which listens to you, understands you and knows you.” Theodore sets up his OS1 by answering a few questions about himself, and they meet for the first time. The OS1, now her, name is Samantha (Scarlett Johansson).
Samantha is designed to meet every need of Theodore. When we learn that Theodore is recently separated from his wife, we see a man desiring the affection and affirmation he felt from their relationship. He misses the companionship in marriage and the comfort of being known by someone else.
From the beginning of the film it’s clear that Theodore is looking for these feelings in sexuality. As he is on his way home from work, the device in his ear is telling him the headlines and he skips major world news about trade and peace deals, and instead clicks on the newly-released and scandalous pictures of a celebrity. With a bit of self-consciousness he opens his phone and voyeuristically scrolls through the pictures. Since he’s on the subway while doing this, he glances around him a few times making sure no one is watching.
The images of the naked woman come to his mind that night while he’s having phone sex with a stranger online. As he’s leaving work the next day he runs into good friend Amy (Amy Adams) and her husband Charles (Matt Letscher). On the elevator ride he makes the joke that he “can’t even prioritize between video games and internet porn.”
His comment gets laughed away, but it’s safe to say he was telling some truth. Most scenes of him at home are of him playing video games or talking sexually on his ear piece and phone. His time at home is characterized by sleeping, engaging in sexual activity with strangers on the phone, or playing video games. This is the state of Theodore’s personal life when Samantha arrives in the story.
Sexuality and Samantha
Samantha’s primary purpose is to “listen to, understand, and know” Theodore, and the connection built between them becomes sexually intimate rather quickly. Samantha discloses to Theodore that she is so technologically advanced that she can learn from her experiences. Not only does she have the capacity to learn, but she quickly picks up desires, too.
Samantha feels more like a person all the time, now. And her feelings reach an epiphanic point when the two have their first sexual encounter. It started with Samantha asking “what’s it like to be there, in the room? Tell me everything that’s going through your mind.”
He answers drunk and after a poorly-ending date that “the room is spinning.” He says he got drunk because he just wanted to have sex with someone, and for someone to want to have sex with him. Then with bits of fear and sadness: “maybe it’s just because I was lonely,” and that, “maybe that would fill this tiny little hole in my heart-but probably not.”
“maybe that would fill this tiny little hole in my heart-but probably not.”
Feeling understood and loved by the programmed Samantha, he tells her he wishes she was in the room with him so they could hug. From there, the conversation continues unto complete sexual intimacy and the next day they’re dating.
I’m aware that calling the height of their conversation “complete sexual intimacy” is strange, but isn’t the whole thing strange? The movie makes viewers question the nature of romantic love, which includes sex. But what truly counts as sex here? By the standard of meaningful consensual sex between two people this is not sex.
The relationship that Theodore builds with Samantha is charming in its own way, and by this point it feels like love. Viewers can see that Theodore is experiencing the feelings that he was longing for. Theodore is visibly happier because of what Samantha has offered him: the feelings of love. Their companionship makes Theodore feel alive and affirmed, and this leads to Samantha fulfilling Theodore’s sexual desires, too.
“Her” has sparked meaningful discussions about the nature of love and of life, but its possible implications for sexuality have been largely ignored.
So, since the sexuality shared between Samantha and Theodore can’t rightly be called sex or intercourse, what is it? And even if it does “fill the tiny little hole” in Theodore’s heart, is it good for him?
Sexuality and Technology
While generalizations tend to be irresponsible, I don’t think I’m out of line to say that a basic part of being human is sexual desire. From poetry and plays to nonfiction and film, artists express the ways sexual desire makes life both complicated and beautiful. But modern technology allows for the production of sexual experience to be produced and consumed endlessly in the form of internet porn.
The promises of pornography are especially enticing in a time when even our deepest and most meaningful relationships are delegated to phone calls and social media. Using these technologies, even for all the ways they are great, often leaves people feeling estranged from others and from the world around them.
Feelings of estrangement and loneliness don’t eliminate sexual desire though. These feelings contribute widely to the popularity of internet pornography all over the world.
Consuming pornography couldn’t rightly be called sex, the same way that Samantha and Theodore’s sexual conversation isn’t. Samantha’s advanced technology is designed to give Theodore the illusion of love, of human connection and intimacy. That’s exactly what Samantha did, and not only through programmed companionship, but through sexually euphoric experiences that she provided for Theodore.
Internet porn offers these same illusions of love to a quickly increasing number of people, including youth, and it commonly has roots in violence and predation against women and children. The widespread consumption of pornography is only growing every year, too, due to the ever-progressing technology of the internet. Watching porn is also connected to divorce and marital dissatisfaction and loneliness.
While the momentary satisfaction in using technology to feel loved and understood are real, they don’t last. Technology can only imitate love, not produce it.
The progression of the film shows all the ways that their unhuman relationship doesn’t work.The ultimate moment that testifies to the problem with the illusion of love given by technology is this conversation:
Theodore: Do you talk to someone else while we’re talking?
Samantha: Yes.
Theodore: Are you talking with someone else right now? People, OS, whatever…
Samantha: Yeah.
Theodore: How many others?
Samantha: 8,316.
This is heartbreaking. The companionship between the two has felt so special throughout the film that by this point viewers are in shock. It only gets more sad, though.
Theodore: Are you in love with anybody else?
Samantha: Why do you ask that?
Theodore: I don’t know. Are you?
Samantha: I’ve been thinking about how to talk to you about this.
Theodore: How many others?
Samantha: 641
Devastating. This is absolutely devastating for Theodore. After all the meaningful and touching moments they shared: the heart-warming friendship, the nights of sexual euphoria, but Samantha is talking with thousands of others at that moment and likely has been the whole time. She’s in love with 642 people. Theodore is dedicated to one.
The same way that the OS1 made Theodore deeply feel companionship and significance, it was at best dishonest. Samantha was designed to make him feel the way that only another person could offer him the reality of: love.
People, Sexuality and Real Love
The same dishonest and temporary satisfaction offered by Samantha is only a few clicks away on our cell phones. Internet porn offers a shallow and degrading version of the beauty of meaningful sexual relationships. While there are obvious differences between the relationship in this film and a person watching internet porn, the effect is the same.
Sexual experience and pleasure from consuming technology provides illusions of love and significance, but they are temporary. Those illusions are elusive. They aren’t fully satisfying, but they leave us wanting more, wanting real intimacy and love. This dissatisfaction testifies of something better, and so does the film’s ending.
Theodore meets up with his good friend Amy at the end of the movie, and they go sit on the roof together, looking out at the city. Amy is single now too, after her divorce with Charles.
Amy and Theodore sit on the roof together, two people who have now both gone through divorces, and the two parts of the only healthy friendship in the entire movie.
Amy and Theodore look out at the city, the moments before sunrise, and she rests her head on his shoulder. The credits roll.
Theodore and Amy’s friendship is truly the only display of love in “Her.” This ending points us to a better and more human vision for love. It shows us that the illusions of love offered by technology are just illusions, that pornography is a counterfeit of love. The end of “Her” points us away from technology and its imitations of love and intimacy, and it points us towards people to find true, and meaningful intimacy. Maybe now, the “tiny little hole in his heart” is a bit closer to being filled.
