But Her came out in 2013.
I still need to see Her.
ahh yeahh.
Why?
Good question! It didn't really vibe with me. I felt like it was a manic-pixie-dream-girl movie dolled up as a thinking man's love story. It placed the burden of unhappiness on the "other," whether that be woman or machine (or both!) I absolutely ascribe to existentialism and postmodernity, but the movie seemed trite to me. Ultimately a not very well thought out "technology is bad, technology is also a female" story. Sort of Incel-ish at its core, imo.
I don’t know, man. I don’t think it’s a “it’s still the woman’s fault” story. They could have told the exact same story if the genders were reversed.
We would have to completely discount the endings of both movies for either to work as endorsements of those things, though. How does placing the burden of unhappiness on women/machines ultimately work out for the characters who do that? I think you're totally right that the movies depict these things, but how do the movies value them? These movies are critiques of the stuff you listed, aren't they?
Last edited by A Robot Bit Me; 21 Jul 2018 at 05:28 PM.
But they didn't! So it ends up fulfilling the genre. I read one article where they basically compared Lost in Translation (which is a better movie altogether) to Her, and they are basically the same movie but Translation dealt with the same issue head-on, rather than hiding behind a weak allegory of tech. Manic Pixie I can deal with on some level, but that Banksy-esque "PPL ARE ZOMBIES WHO JUST ENGAGE WITH THEIR PHONES ALL DAY DURR!" is a really, really, really lazy critique imo. Paired with the manic pixie girl=machine thing, I was just like, are you freakin kidding me
ARBM - Endings of what other movie?
I think despite it not working out for the male characters, I question the legitimacy of why we equate women with machines, and thus with disappointment and sadness. It kinda goes back to Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, and some of the things she talks about in the essay - like the dichotomous relationship with technology and dominance, if we are to equate omnipresence with femininity. However, these are really fascinating topics and I felt like Her watered them down to what I mentioned above, a weak manic pixie movie. Woman=machine=bad, and on top of that tech=bad, and that's the end. There are so many directions it could have gone in, and it just took the most boring path possible.
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