I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with you if you said that the movie “Her” is not to be taken seriously. Despite the fact that its futurism is more realistic that that of a typical sci-fi movie, we are still quite far away from communicating with a machine on the level depicted in that movie. However, due to my incurable tendency to read between the lines, analyze and try to extract some lesson from just about anything, I see at least one critical point that the movie makes, which should make us think about our dating life and communication with potential or existing dating partners specifically.
“Her” suggests that a man can fall in love with a woman based on what she says and how she says it over the phone without ever seeing her or meeting her (not to mention knowing that she doesn’t even exist, like it is in the movie). Emotional connection and even some degree of sexual attraction can in fact be created and enhanced through sensuality brought about by hearing a voice. This makes me wonder how badly we are hurting our quality of life and quality of love by downgrading our interactions more and more from hearing each other’s voices to communicating strictly by e-mail and texting. More and more people and more and more couples completely seize talking on the phone. Guys no longer flirt or ask girls out in person. They just text/sext. Girls no longer expect guys to call and they settle for being “pursued” by text message and on Facebook.
At least our generation and older remembers better days, complaining about this. Today’s teenagers will not even know how much they they are missing out. Hearing a voice without seeing the person can actually make the experience of talking to them more intense as it forces you to focus more on the voice you hear. Like a blind person whose other senses, including hearing, become heightened due to inability to use site, your sense of hearing becomes much sharper because you don’t get to see the other person while talking to them on the phone. This is an extremely valuable experience, and the connection it creates cannot be substituted with any other kind of communication.
These days, people love to say that they hate talking on the phone or they are not good at talking on the phone. They seem to be as proud of it as they are when they say they don’t watch TV, because they think that talking on the phone is just as much of a waste of time as watching mainstream show and reality TV. However, like TV – a phone is what you make of it. Just like with shows an movies, you have a choice of hanging on the phone for hours and talking about nothing v having short, but meaningful, entertaining or romantic conversations that will add a lot to what you have otherwise going on with the other person.
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