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Chicken Soup for the Postmodern Soul: Philosophizing Spike Jonze’s Her Through the Lens of Evolving Modernity
- Source: Film Matters, Volume 13, Issue 1, Mar 2022, p. 20 - 28
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- 01 Mar 2022
Abstract
Spike Jonze’s Her is a dystopian fiction that envisages a world wherein machine sentience has achieved the capacity to replace human experiences thereby leading to an ontological crisis of emotions and the inability to ground one’s thoughts in objective reality. While on the surface, the cinema displays the characteristic traits of a melancholic romantic drama with subtle futuristic elements, this article, however, explores the darker side of Jonze’s screenplay and the dominant political and philosophical ideas that come with it, thereby deciphering the nuances of what Jonze strives to put forward: a forewarning of the times that are approaching. This article also attempts at characterizing the world of Her by identifying the trajectory of late capitalism, alienation, and the realm of the simulation, all of which are critical themes that must be taken into account so as to make sense of the ethical dilemmas that technologically developed societies will have to face in the future. This research has been carried out through the analysis of articles, journals, interviews, reviews, and other secondary data sources available.