Her

I'll admit I had a bias walking into the theater. Having only seen one trailer of it, and listened to a few raving reviews, I was surprisingly negatively biased. Knowing the basic premise beforehand, it tapped on a personal opinion that is of hot debate in 2014: this is the debate behind antisocial behavior and its link to modern technology, ranging from social media to video games. 

First, I liked this film: for its aesthetic beauty, for Joaquin Phoenix's adorable character. But I mostly liked it for the imaginative premise that truly questions the paradigms that define modern-day relationships. Joaquin's character struggles with the perceived stigma of maintaining a connection with an operating system. The viewer can see his internal judgement as he sorts through the unspoken voices that might say: "that's not a real relationship, you're insane." 

Today's comparable stigma might be the advent of online dating. Most people who have met someone online, myself included, have felt a little judged for doing so; if not from those around us, at least internally. I suppose my insecurity for online dating surrounds my age and my principles: I'm young, aren't I? I should have no problem meeting new people! or: Modern society is too disconnected! Between the never-ending stream of unread emails being alerted on smart phones, to the antisocial media consumption spread across an ever-growing number of personal devices, can't we just meet each other organically anymore?

I think I've arrived at a middle-grounded opinion on this. I'm continuing to believe that, yes, it is totally acceptable to meet people online, because we are living in a world where we may not always have the time or resources to meet someone in the "organic" fashion, so why not use these lovable/annoying electronic devices to our romantic advantage? On the other hand, I think there is a deeper, more destructive nature to our ongoing secluded usage of online services, video games, and other antisocial behavior.

In this fictitious city of Los Angeles, amongst the millions of people walking amongst each other, everyone's alone, talking to an inhuman device tucked away in an earpiece. This is a somewhat familiar sight to urban dwellers of the new millennium: stand at any busy intersection and count how many individuals are consumed in a text, talking on the phone, multitasking as they walk, busy with something else that's clearly more important than the physical world around them. What's disturbing about this phenomena, especially as it is presented in Her, is that it goes contrary to the fundamental mechanisms of urban society as we know it. The delicate interwoven connections that form the fabric of a community are based on the daily human interaction, even if its nonverbal. Jane Jacob's "eyes on the street" are one example of how a healthy community has the ability to self-enforce street-level crime simply through the ongoing movement and lingering of people on the street, a sort of "ballet of the sidewalk" as she calls it. What is to happen if we have no need to simply walk and look around, focused and undistracted? To ask the larger question (and this might succinctly sum-up my babbling here): What is the point of living in a city, if not for the people in it? If we continue to become atomized individuals, ignoring our physical context in the space around us, what's the need for such space at all?

While this might seem like overcautious speculation, consider this: on a  recent evening on Muni, a man pulled out a handheld gun on a half-full train, and no one else noticed. Police footage revealed that the man in fact whipped out his gun in full sight, holding it for less than a minute, and then concealed it again. Meanwhile, a train full of distracted people, absorbed in texting, reading, and music, sat blissfully unaware of the danger just feet away from them. 

Now that I've successfully gone off on a relevant tangent, I'll bring this home. What I'm getting at is that we must try to understand that good old fashioned human interaction is necessary and required for human beings, and that nothing can replace that. We may satisfy some social needs through semi-intelligent operating software, but what we biologically need is to look into one another's eyes and feel empathy for each other. I walked into Her expecting to see a plead against the organic chemistry of human connection, but what I got was something quite different. 

I still continue to online date, but my ultimate fantasy is meeting someone on a crowded Muni train: we bump into each other, say the obligatory "excuse me," and then embark on some witty conversation about transit service, and the organic chemistry plays on...