Retro SciFi Film of the Week…
Her (2013)
This one's about an ambiguously gay man who interacts with an AI through his mobile device. This is a really boring movie – practically the whole thing is just this guy talking to the AI in his mobile device. It's supposed to be set in the future but there aren't many sci-fi techie devices and the cars look like they were made 10 years before this movie was made.
This film has essentially an all white cast. There's only one very minor bit part at the very beginning of the film played by a black actor, Lisa Renee Pitts. This technique of literally marginalizing black actors in movies, placing them at the very beginning or very end of the film has been used by pro-racist Hollywood for a very long time, at least since the 1980s.
There’s one Chinese character who is the girlfriend of the character played by Chris Pratt. That character, a minor supporting role, is played by Laura Kai Chen.
Because of the racial bias in the composition of the cast, I'm not recommending this film at all. Also it's just a boring movie. I’m including it here in the Film of the Week series because AI is a popular topic right now.
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Hollywood is pro-racist in their films generally.
See this thread for a discussion about it.
Also, regarding Spike Jones specifically, how many of his feature-length films have black people on screen as main characters? How long are they on screen for? Just count how many white actors on screen vs black characters on screen in his feature-length films.
I'm sure you'll see a bias.
@Pat Frankly, I don't know who Spike Jones is, I guess the director of the movie. I'm not sure I saw any other of his movies.
I'm not going to count how many white and black people are there in the movie.
Surely there can be a bias, which I guess would mean that black people are underrepresented when compared to their share in the population in the country where the movie was directed or when compared to other movies produced in the same country.
Does the bias by itself direct a racist message? I do not think so: the absence of black people in a movie does not convey a racist message on its own.
Is that bias present because the director is racist? Perhaps, or maybe not; plenty explanations could be valid for that.
I'm not saying this wasn't the case, but I don't think it's fair to tell people not to watch the movies because it is racist and saying it is racist because there are few minority characters.
If a company refused to hire black people, I think you'd say that was racist and that it conveyed a racist message.
Hollywood will not change unless we refuse to support that racism by not watching the films that are racially biased.
@Pat I disagree with this completely. I thought the movie was fantastic. Joaquin Phoenix's performance is relatable, and really human, Scarlet Johansson's vocal performance is able to convey a TON of emotion and feelings.
@Pat I think the idea is a really interesting meditation on the nature of relationships, and what it means to be in one, and emotions and how to express them. It also handles ideas of isolation and the ways that modern technology has increased our social isolation as a collective society. I totally recommend the movie. I think it's one of Spike Jonze's best films.
If you're looking for a touchy-feely relationship film, ok, but it's a lousy sci-fi. I think the film's commentary on how tech causes more isolation is just a competitive tactic by Hollywood, and old-media generally. New media competes with Hollywood and they don't like that, so you will see more negative criticism about tech from Hollywood and TV -- apocalyptic plots, etc.
@Pat I feel like technology allows people to have more access to Hollywoods products than ever before. What new technological advancements compete with Hollywood? I feel like it's a general societal concern that we are spending too much time on our devices and the idea that a device could replace the most intimate human connection someone will have is interesting. I do agree it's not sci-fi in the way most people think of it.
>"I feel like technology allows people to have more access to Hollywoods products than ever before."
A decade ago, when this film was released, streaming services for film were not really a thing. I think only Netflix was out there and maybe Amazon. At that time Hollywood viewed them as competition. Now there's a lot of streaming services out there, which is a new distribution channel, but they view Netfix as competition for production. And anything that takes eyeballs away from watching TV and movies is considered competition for old media.
Old media was anti-internet for years, ever since they realized that it could deliver content. Nearly every newscast that talked about the internet was a negative story. They still do it today, talking about how social media is bad, porn, fake news, Russian disinformation, you name it, they constantly bad-talk the internet.
@Pat 2013 was the year the first Netflix original was released. Until then it was solely a delivery system for Hollywood content. Hulu existed and streamed cable shows. They couldn't have been perceived as threats, they were licensing Hollywood content and still primarily do that today. I can't buy into the idea that Spike Jonze made an anti-internet propaganda film. News sensationalizes everything, the claim they are anti-internet doesn't make much sense either since they take advantage of it
I was around before the internet existed. I saw it happen. I have a background in the computer industry and the media. I know what I'm talking about. They were going out of their way to find things to complain about.
@Pat I'm sure you do but it still doesn't make sense. Why aren't they against books, or libraries, or sports? They to take away eyes from their content. And it still doesn't make sense that Spike Jonze wrote and directed Her specifically to support this pro old Hollywood agenda.
>"And it still doesn't make sense that Spike Jonze wrote and directed Her specifically to support this pro old Hollywood agenda."
I didn't say that.
@Pat >"I think the film's commentary on how tech causes more isolation is just a competitive tactic by Hollywood, and old-media generally."
That made me think that's what you meant. So what I mean is I don't think that commentary was a tactic. I think it was genuine. The main character was lonely after his break up and probably had little social interaction anyway and his OS encouraged his isolation by replacing his human relationships. I believe there are people who have similar experiences.
Obviously, I can't get inside Jones' head to know what he was thinking when he made this film. I said generally because producers are going to fund projects that promote a message that supports their business model.
Regarding the internet causing more isolation, I remember having this conversation back in the early 1990s when the web was just getting going and email was the main thing. Newscasts saw the threat and the narrative that the internet was isolating was just another one of their attacks. My response was that email allowed people to better coordinate meetings and helped facilitate social interaction, not take away from it. But the narrative from TV newscasts was almost all negative. Ironically, TV had a huge negative impact on society, but you never heard about that on the nightly news.
Anything that old media thinks will threaten their power they will fight against, and they use their reach to deliver those narratives.
@Pat I appreciated the movie, did not find it racist myself. I have other critiques to the movie, such as not being able to create a realistic place where people live: the society they depict clearly would not work that way.
I don't believe the main point of the movie is really AI but more a reflection on relationships: the AI part isn't really explored all that much after all. Guy falls in love with AI, alright cool; other people get to know about it: mildly shocked but it's alright.
I frankly don't understand the racial bias you go on about. The cast is composed of mostly white people, that's alright by me as long as the movie is nice. I do not think that implies the director is racist nor that the movie transmits racist messages.