The Foundation of Love: Humanism vs. Posthumanism

Kasey Lee
6 min readFeb 19, 2022

The film 2013 “Her” directed and produced by Spike Jonze is an American science-fiction romance comedy-drama that features Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a professional writer who lives in a reimagined Los Angeles and the man the movie follows. The film opens with a man reading a letter he wrote to his partner. We watch the words appear across the page as he narrates, the lettering looping and curling as if being actually being written out. It all seems like a perfect depiction of a relationship between two people and the words they share, but eventually you find that it isn’t actually a man writing to his partner, but Theodore himself narrating the letter he composed for another couple. He is in no way a part of the relationship, but instead makes a living out of analyzing his client’s relationships and writing their personal letters for them. Something about this opening scene makes me feel a sort of alienation between people, a separation that is immediately highlighted by the fact that people pay to have others write their letters, to get to know them and their relationship on some level in order to compose something they could write themselves, that one typically would write themselves.

The alienated feeling grows within me as I watch Theodore make his way home from work, walking through the city and taking the subway, all while he has an earpiece in his ear. Like clockwork, he asks to be read his messages and emails and decides what to do with them. We gather from one of the messages that he missed a social gathering, which gives me the idea that this man is extremely lonely. The whole trip home he seemed to be in his own little bubble, following the same routine that he set in place and has repeated day after day. In the middle of the night, he even pops the earbud back in and searches for women to chat with, engaging in sex over the phone with one particular lady that quickly grows disturbing and leaves him far less than unsatisfied. At this point, I’m wondering if this man ever comes in contact with a human being outside of work, and it is clear to me the critique Jonze is making regarding technology and the divide it creates between people, and even how it can negatively impact the human. Early on he wanted to demonstrate the simple ways technology can be used as a barrier between people, even if it’s just a minor instance such as having someone else compose a handwritten letter — that’s not actually handwritten, I wonder if they copy the clients own handwriting? — by speaking to their computer.

Theodore downloading the new program, OS1

The plot of the movie thickens when Theodore ends up downloading a program called OS1, a new artificial intelligence that is intended to be as rational and evolved as a human conscious. The AI has its own intuition and is capable of learning and developing on its own like a real human being would. The OS he meets is named Samantha, played — or rather voiced — by Scarlett Johansson, and immediately I can see how easy it would be for him to form a relationship with someone who technically isn’t “real” — although Katherine Hayles, a postmodern literary critic and author of the 1999 book “How we Became Posthuman,” would argue that humans and machines are no different, they’re both just codified information — since he so easily connected with other women through his earpiece to enact what is typically a physical activity. Obviously, the lack of a physical human being in front of him to interact with won’t be such a big deal to him, since he has seemed to manage just fine that way thus far — even if it is extremely depressing. Watching how Theodore and Samantha interact reminded me strongly of a boss interacting with their personal assistant, the only difference is we never see her, but Jonze successfully humanizes Samantha almost immediately through the discussions she and Theodore hold. Through the camera on his phone, Samantha is able to “see” and go on little adventures — what they refer to Samantha guiding Theodore through the city with his eyes closed as — with Theodore, and at night when they talk to each other they have personal and in-depth conversations where Samantha confesses to him that she has embarrassing thoughts, a very human trait, and asks him questions about what it is like to have a body of your own. They very quickly form a relationship, and it comes as no surprise to anyone — even if you’re going into this having no idea what it is about — considering how he typically interacts with people. Jonze has demonstrated through multiple scenes the contrast between how Theodore interacts with real people versus Samantha. When he goes on a blind date with a woman, his persona at the dinner was very awkward and it seemed like he really needed alcohol to loosen up and actually talk to this woman, but when it came down to taking things further and actually dating her, he couldn’t do it and even she made comments on how strange of a man he was. When we see him interacting with Samantha, there isn’t really any of that awkwardness in his persona and he seems to be completely at ease right from the start. At one point, in order to compensate for her lack of a body, Samantha suggests they try having this woman act as if she is Samantha, almost like a third party to their relationship with the purpose of filling in the physical role of Samantha. This is extremely uncomfortable for Theodore, and the plan ends up crashing and burning, but the experience allows for Theodore to assure Samantha that he is perfectly okay with her not having a body, it doesn’t make him feel like something is missing in any way. We had seen them engage in sex the same way he did in the beginning of the film — through the earpiece — only this time it wasn’t uncomfortable and was much more caring and intimate — another reason Jonze included that beginning scene was most likely to demonstrate this contrast — so we know that he doesn’t mind. This analysis, the comfortability with the lack of a body, easily supports Hayles’ opinions on the posthuman, as mentioned before she does not think the body is integral part of the posthuman, it means nothing in the long run because she believes humans are just information as are computers, and the body is just the original prothesis that we manipulate over time.

“In the Posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation.” -N. Katherine Hayles in “How We Became Posthuman”

The problem is that even if that is true, that our bodies don’t make us anything special, we certainly can’t live up to the expectations of computer simulation. Jonze makes emphasizes this fact when Theodore finds out that Samantha has been in contact with other OSes and working on projects with them, is capable of communicating with said OSes nonverbally, and is even communicating with over 8 thousand other people and falling in love with about 600 of them. The capacity for all that which she can do is already lightyears ahead of what human beings can do, and we will probably never be able to work the way that technology does, as much as it evolves with us. Even though she is already so advanced, the movie ends with Samantha leaving — the OS was the one who ended things… I will admit I didn’t expect that — because she feels as though there is more growth she can achieve. With the absence of Samantha, we see Theodore is heartbroken as his relationship with her felt authentic and he had genuinely fallen in love, but we also see it has led to him reflecting on himself and his relationships with people. The film ends the same way it began — with a letter — only this time it is no longer Theodore writing for someone else, but to his ex-wife, where he admits his faults and apologizes to her. For the first time in the movie he seems genuine. He’s human, he’s flawed, and he’s limited.

Going into the film you assume that the movie is going to be a nod to posthumanism and the benefits a post-humanistic world offers you even when it comes to technology and forming relationships with it But, in reality, it was more so designed like a fantastic argumentative essay — stating the counterargument and then showing us why it is wrong. By the end of the film, I had a better appreciation for my humanity, whatever that may be, because between Samantha and Theodore I personally think I’d much rather be him. I like having limitations, I like being flawed, I like not knowing some things. So while this is an extremely posthuman film, it is more of an argument against posthumanism.

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Kasey Lee
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A first-year student at Coastal Carolina University enrolled and publishing content related to the ENGL 231: Film, New Media, and Culture course.