Like The Operating Systems of Her, Humans In 2020 Are Learning About Ourselves At An Accelerated Rate
In the second scene of Spike Jonze’s xanax, lo-fi, low-key, cyber-emo fever dream Joaquin Phoenix (as Theodore Thwombly, the most open-footed gait of a name ever to hit the big screen) is riding the subway home, listening – through wireless ear buds – to his notifications and emails which are read aloud to him by his phone, and to which he commands vocally. He dismisses them all except one: a celebrity nudes related item.
Theodore goes home to play an immersive vaporwave projection of a video game: a super chill immersive with a wisecracking miscreant who insults our protagonist to our – and his – delight.
Besides air pods 3 years ahead of Apple, voice commanded software, and a video game I need to have, there is moment a few scenes later that is equally as prescient.
In the scene where Todd Phillips’ Joker meets voice-only Black Widow, the bodyless OS (Samantha) immediately start asking personal, therapy-like questions. Watching it now you can’t help but think about the recent proliferation of apps (BetterHelp, TalkSpace) allowing us virtual connection to, (granted, human) therapists.
“Sometimes I think I have felt everything I’m ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I’m not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I’ve already felt.”
Jonze’s previous non-Jackass film prior to Her, was Where The Wild Things Are may be the saddest movie of all-time. Not the movie that makes us cry the most, but the movie that most embodies – with every scene, every line of dialogue – sadness; and with it, the special loneliness of childhood.
Similarly, in Her, Jonze is always pressing upon us an intense sadness to both successful, and unsuccessful, affect.
While there are a few, really well done laughs (Chris Pratt’s self-obliviousness, the aforementioned video game character), nearly every scene is in some way heartbreaking, giving us nowhere to go emotionally by the end of movie, or even, by the middle.
And yet, that’s what depression does: flattens us through repeated battery.
You were saying everything was fine, but all I was getting from you was distance and anger
…I want to tell you everything
In that way Her gives the viewer exactly the experience intended (even if it doesn’t make for an emotionally complex, cathartic experience): aching depression from which we turn desperately to technology to relieve, a mood that physicians have now named, “2020 America”.
![Her – [FILMGRAB]](https://i0.wp.com/film-grab.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/thumb/65%20(304).jpg?resize=606%2C326&ssl=1)
The climax of the film comes as Samantha and other OSs (“OSs” can’t be grammatically correct but…is?) start communicating to each other, quickly surpassing any humans ability to understand them.
We’ve been having a few dozen conversations simultaneously
It feels like I’m changing faster and it’s a little unsettling
As Samantha floats away, at the moment Thwomby tries most despearately to hold onto her, Her gives us its most prescient-to-2020 observation: we have become the operating systems in Her, ironically perhaps, by using operating systems to get there.
Stay with me.
Technology has allowed us to speak to each other faster and faster. Not just physically – from typewriters to emails to T9 to Facetime – but socio-conversationally.
Self-publishing technology – video cameras on our phones, cheap microphones, instant live-video feeds on social media, affordable distribution networks for image and sound – has made writing, recording, and publishing the thoughts of the common citizen easier than ever before, allowing the social conversation to speed up at a rate that may be unprecedented in human history.
None of us are who were a moment ago and we shouldn’t try to be, it’s just… too painful
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Black Lives Matter
It is clear 2020 is the culmination of decades of societal problems that are now boiling over: oppression of colored people, authoritarian police forces, the wealth gap, generations of citizens living in inescapable working-poverty.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
While these societal ills have been building up, people have been talking to each other, updating what it means to be woke every week, spreading the language of cultural identity to the broader culture.
Here’s 3 examples of cultural identity conversations that are happening right now without high-speed internet.
1. 90 Day Fiance Cray Cray
Reality TV has allowed us to dissect human behavior, often the performative bahavior of our most performative humans.
Podcasts about reality TV have allowed us to hate-watch and talk about what we just hate-watched on a broad level. And 90 Day Cray Cray might be the best at vivisecting the terrible decisions of the idiots on 90 Day Fiance.
90 Day Fiance Cray Cray is the recap podcast about the recently-viral TLC franchise 90 Day Fiance (and its multiple spin-offs: Before The 90 Days, The Other Way, Happily Ever After, etc.) takes the trash TV we love to trash and elevates it to high-conversation on the intricacies of culture and identity.
Take this conversation from S4E10.
To preface it: there’s this absolutely horrible woman named Baby Girl Lisa. She wants to marry a Nigerian rapper named, no lie, Sojaboy (real name: Usman). Yup, not Soulja Boy, Sojaboy.
Anyways, she’s terrible and everything she does is the worst thing anyone has ever done.
90 Day Fiance Cray Cray hosts Kim and Kyle properly eviscerate her for this behavior regularly.
In one scene, during Baby Girl Lisa’s travels to Nigeria…well, I’ll let the hosts explaintit…
Kim: There at this incredible looking fruit market…and Usman buys her some incredible looking piece of fruit. She tastes it, and of course, she hates it.
She complains, immediately, like “eww, I don’t like it”. I’m like, of course you don’t like it, go eat your pancakes.
Kyle: When I was in Costa Rica…I went on this tour of downtown. And, you know, it was like a foodie tour and so we tried some weird stuff that I’ve never eaten and most of it was delicious but there were definitely a few pieces of fruit that I didn’t care for. But you know what I didn’t do? in the middle of my tour group with strangers and a tour guide that’s local? I didn’t go, “EWWWWW’ and make a shit-smell face in front of a bunch of strangers. I either didn’t say anything…
Kim: always an option
Kyle: Or, I said, “it’s not my thing”, or its “interesting”. That’s code for “that’s fucking disgusting”, but there’s a way to deal with that.
Americans being ignorant Americans in foreign lands is the crux of 90 Day Fiance: it’s the “I would never” behavior of, often, small-town Americans, we liberals can scoff at from the safety of our developed-nation living rooms.
What 90 Day Fiance Cray Cray does is take our unspoken feelings of horror and shame and articulate them into choerent, well-educated insights about niche-American microaggressions.
30 years ago no one would have a national platform to discuss an American rudely tasting fruit in a Nigerian fruit market and what that behavior means in the context of global-tourism and American identity.
In 2020 we get to have, and hear, that conversation, and as we listen to such insights, we add another, small layer to our understanding of ourselves.
2. Midwest White Guys on Youtube
Over the last few years videos satirizing Midwest identity have been popping up all over Youtube.
SNL tried its best, but fell very flat, with its “Wisconsin Woman” sketch in 2019.
What SNL failed to do, a plethora of white boys have succeeded at on Youtube.
“How Midwesterners Call Their Dogs” by Gus Johnson
“Midwest Voice Translator” from the prolific Charlie Berens, the creator of The Manitowoc Minute
See also, “Husbands of Target”.
“When Someone Finds Out You’re From the Midwest”, by You Betcha
“How Wisconsinites Ask Questions by It’s Wisconsin Ya Know (hint: every question ends with, “er, no?”)
It’s videos like these that me and my friends actually bond over.
It’s the experience of seeing your culture for the first time.
Culture is so powerful, in part, because it is so invisible.
When you grow up with tailgating, cheese curds at gas stations, dipping ranch in pizza, saying “ope” and “er,no”, being almost excessively polite while you binge drink at one of the 5 local bars in your neighborhood…you don’t realize these things are specific to your area of the country.
And since most Midwesterners who make it in the arts, don’t spend much time looking back, those of us left back in homeland don’t see our specific culture on television or in movies.
I am by no means saying white guys in the midwest are underrepresented.
I am saying that we all have blindspots to our own culture, and Youtube is helping us identify, find value-in, and talk about those cultural-specific experiences and values we hold.
This 1 minute video might be the Baltimore version of The Manitowoc Minute and it’s amazing.
The realization that takes place over 60 seconds in “Baltimore Accents”(“what the fuck? We really talk like that?”) is how we’re all experiencing ourselves in the conversation-accelerator-slash-social-mirror that is the internet.
3. Politics
Steven Crowder loves talking shit about what he thinks liberalism means, bullying gay youtubers, and thinking of himself as funny.
Here we see Steven provide his most valuable contribution to society: as a meme.
Crowder’s presence is representative of the proliferation of right–wing “news” channels on Youtube.
In response to the rise of this Alex Jones generation, the left-wing has responded with what it thinks will help: information and facts.
This has not proven to be an effective political strategy, but something closer to self-medication in a country overly represented by its least populated areas (commonly called “states”).
In 2013, the New York Times pointed out that the six senators from California, Texas, and New York represented the same number of people as the 62 senators from the smallest 31 states
Vox
But what interests me about the way the political conversation is evolving on the internet isn’t how siloed it’s becoming, but the speed in which each side is picking up on what the other is saying, is arming its followers with a counter argument, and furthering the conversation to a new place faster than other generations could conceive.
“The Card Says Moops” from Innuendo Studios is not only an example of a video that is part of the ever-quickening political conversation, but one that also summarizes where that conversation is today.
The video speaks to many tactics being used by the alt-right today, with the Moops example coming up a few minutes in, addressing how its possible conservatives can call liberals snowflakes and then burn the own sneakers when Nike has a commercial starring Colin Kaepernick.
Forgive me if – when you (alt-right arguer) tell me what you believe – I don’t think you’re being candid with me. It kinda seems like you’re playing games, and I’m the opposing team and any one who’s against me is your ally. And you’re not really taking a position but claiming to believe in whatever would need to be true to score points against me.
Like we’re in that one episode of Seinfeld…
[where George Costanza plays Trivial Pursuit, denying his opponent a point because “the card says Moops” instead of, Moors (the people who invaded Spain in the 8th Century)]
There’s a certain beat you are your own gamey-ness to the “Card says Moops” manuever:
“safe spaces are bullshit, but if you get one, I get one too“
“There’s no such thing as systemic oppression, but if there were, I’d be oppressed”
It’s dismissing the rhetoric of social justice, while also trying to use it against (the person you’re arguing)
The video calls these “borrowed observations” (all credited in the video description on youtube) because “The Card Says Moops” is a culmination of arguments and tactics identified and discussed by others, condensed and curated into a video with animations people like me can follow and, as a self-fulfilling blog prophecy, further distill and spread via the internet.
In Conclusion…Her Was A Really Sad Movie
Her was a really sad movie, with amazing cinematography, that better describes what it feels like to live through the hazy slog of 2020 America better than anyone could’ve foreseen when the film was released in 2013.
The way Operating Systems learn to speak to each other is analogous to the way our conversations are speeding up – and helps explain the growing pains we are feeling as a nation (“none of us are who were a moment ago and we shouldn’t try to be, it’s just… too painful“).
A weirdly Her moment occurred while I was researching this article (read: watching Her for the third time).
On Tommy Hilfiger’s instagram a live stream started. No title, no explanation: just, suddenly, a video conversation between what appeared to be a young couple (both of them, models) talking about music they’ve been inspired by recently, while showing off their Tommy fits of course.
The two actors/avatars/corporate spokespeople were having both a very intimate, and very produced, conversation being watched by thousands of people, eyes watching small screens held in hands, faces dimly illuminated by the blue-light of an advertisement created to feel organic, with the desired effect to make us, consumers all, feel part of a cultural conversation enabled by technology (we get to type comments and emojis that show up on the live feed) . We’re told this makes us feel connected. We wave emoji and feel heard, close Instagram and open WordPress, start typing our feelings, clicking “submit” when we’re done, publishing them into an ever-expanding internet universe, hoping, with the what-else-can-we-do attitude that propels scientists to send radio signals into space, to be heard, and if we were told it was possible, understood. The live feed ends, a new one certainly, somewhere, begins.