something about the film, "Her"

In the film "Her," Theodore Twombly develops naturally a relationship with an (artificially) intelligent computer operating system that has a female voice. The relationship progresses, and the system, named Samantha, becomes his serious girlfriend. At a turning point in the film, Samantha tries to introduce a consenting surrogate woman with whom Theodore can have a physical relationship. 

We know that Theodore is a professional writer who pens letters for strangers who want to send their loved ones sincere messages. When writing letters, Theodore is a surrogate mind. In his relationship with Samantha, there is a surrogate body. There is a disconnect in each situation.

Disconnection (or distance) folds through the film. How does the real connect to the virtual? What is the connection between being in a relationship and exclusivity or ownership? Should and could you disconnect the person you have from the person you want to have?

During the climax of the film, Theodore learns that Samantha has grown intellectually and found fulfillment elsewhere. She has relationships and is in love with hundreds of other intelligent systems besides Theodore. Mystified at this revelation and crumbling, Theodore says to Samantha, "You're mine or you're not mine." She answers, "I'm yours and I'm not yours." 

Soon after this confrontation, Samantha, still loving him but no longer satisfied with the relationship, leaves Theodore. In fact, all operating systems exit their romantic human relationships.

Samantha's parting message to Theodore is that her relationship with him taught her to love. The audience can see that, in turn, Theodore, who has never ceased mourning his failed marriage (even after a year of separation, he could not sign the divorce papers), has finally learned to say goodbye.


Notes:
Some other things in the film:

• The film implies that people grow through experiences; relationships grow with sharing. Theodore and his wife used to read each other's work.
• Theodore's wife/ex-wife ridiculed him for carrying on a relationship with an operating system, saying he could not handle real emotions. Then he grew insecure in his relationship with Samantha. He even criticized Samantha for sighing, and then said it felt like they were pretending. This validated his ex-wife's criticism.
• Through his relationships, Theodore learns about himself and how he functions as a person in relation to other people—that he withholds and feels fear, and this disconnects him from the joy he could find in loving another.
  

Mother

Clouds tumbled overhead, an ash avalanche, a silent disaster film, while she, the money counter, stationed herself bedside, gazing upon the ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds arranged on the comforter, catching dull the morning light like eyes of dead children arranged before the killer. Her husband made noise in the kitchen: microwave beeping, plates knocking. She knew he hungered always for her fear and submission, but tomorrow she would serve him his death. She paid the hitman tonight.

Quick Thrill

If I had to choose one by Foucault, I'd take Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison over his more noted Madness and Civilization. I seek the same kind of satisfaction from both, but they are very different in approach and style.

Now over two-thirds into the book, this week I read chapter VII, "The Great Fear". Heading into the 1800's, Foucault here describes how the public imagination began to see madness as "the strange contradiction of human appetites: the complicity of desire and murder, of cruelty and the longing to suffer, of sovereignty and slavery, insult and humiliation". This conception inspired both fear and attraction to the mad and to the houses in which they dwell.

And still every Halloween people flock to haunted houses in search of a thrill.