Moving “Past Matter”: Challenges of Intimacy and Freedom in Spike Jonze’s her

Authors

  • Hilary Bergen Concordia University, English M.A.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25770/artc.11637

Keywords:

Spike Jonze, Her, film, cinema.

Abstract

Spike Jonze’s her (2014) is a film that perfectly illustrates the crumblingborders between personhood and technology and echoes speculative realism’s callto “unshackle” objects from the “gaze of humans” (Bryant 19). My paper exploresthe ways in which the film’s central relationship, between a man and his O.S.,questions our nostalgic privileging of corporeality and offers an alternativefreedom — and perhaps even spirituality — in the boundlessness of technology.With help from the work of object-oriented ontologists Jane Bennett, TimothyMorton and Levi Bryant, I argue that herreveals that an awareness of the limits of consciousness, rather than ourcynical nostalgia for intimacy, is the inevitably human disease that plaguesus.

Author Biography

Hilary Bergen, Concordia University, English M.A.

Hilary Bergen is an English Master's student at Concordia University. She is also a professional modern dancer and holds two B.A. Honours degrees, one in Dance and one in English, from the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. Her interests are in contemporary literature and culture, women's studies, performance studies, and collections or the collector in popular culture.

Downloads

Published

2015-01-12

How to Cite

Bergen, H. (2015). Moving “Past Matter”: Challenges of Intimacy and Freedom in Spike Jonze’s her. artciencia.Com, Revista De Arte, Ciência E Comunicação, (17). https://doi.org/10.25770/artc.11637