her (Film)

​her is a 2013 American science-fiction romantic drama film by Spike Jonze, who was inspired by a website that allowed for instant messaging with an artificial intelligence program.  In a near future Los Angeles, Theodore, who is frustrated by his impending divorce, purchases an operating system which names itself Samantha, run by artificial intelligence. Theodore is impressed by her ability to learn and interact with people.  Samantha even suggests using a sex surrogate who would simulate Samantha so that they can be physically intimate. Theodore is later very upset as the AI is simultaneously talking to anyone else on the internet as she admits that she has fallen in love with hundreds of people.

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Unlike other cyborgs, the A.I. Samantha reveals the radical disembodiment in cyberspace - with only consciousness without a physical body – actualizing the “cyberpunk’s idealization of pure consciousness”. Raulerson exemplifies the construction of body politics in the way “how the gender-defining metaphor of cyberspace seemed to map sex and gender categories, privileging disembodied subjectivity over fleshy and implicitly female embodiment” (68).  But the software-based characters in cyberspace which have thoughts, feelings and motives because of the subjective disembodiment raises political and moral questions including identity, privacy, intellectual property rights, consumerism, gender-, race-inequality…etc.  

Works cited:

Raulerson, Joshua. Singularities: Technoculture, Transhumanism, and Science Fiction in the Twenty-first Century. Vol. 45. Oxford University Press, 2013.

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"Her Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson Movie HD.” YouTube, uploaded by Movieclips Trailers, 8 Aug 2013,www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJTU48_yghs.

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Images:

Admin. Found, in "Review: “Her”. Berlin Film Journal, berlinfilmjournal.com/2014/03/her/.