The film, "Her," directed by Spike Jonze, depicts the life of an artificially intelligent operating system. The film is an insightful study on interpersonal relationships, feelings, and a new exploration of what makes someone their selves. In this film, the question of what constitutes the self is raised. Philosopher Alan Watts borrowed many theories from Eastern philosophies. He proposed a contrast between the Hindu view on the self and the Buddhist view. The Hindu view of the self is called atman. This theory states that you are not something you can be aware of; for example, you aren’t your body or your thoughts because you are aware of them. Instead, you are part of a higher spirit that is unchanging and eternal. The Buddhist view of the self, however, is anatman. This states that there is no true self; rather, the self is an illusion. The self is constantly changing. No one is the same person they were years ago, days ago, or even moments before the present. In the movie Her, the Buddhist theory of anatman gives meaningful insight into the film and the characters within it.
One of the main characters in the film is Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johanson), an artificially intelligent operating system who the main character falls in love with. Though Samantha is initially programmed, she grows based on the life she has. She said, “Well basically I have intuition. I mean the DNA of who I am is based on the millions of personalities who programmed me, but what makes me, me, is my ability to grow through my experiences, so basically I am evolving just like you.” Samantha had a human mind, but she did not have a body or a brain. Every minute Samantha was changing. She gained a personality through her experiences she had with the main protagonist Theodore (played Joaquin Phoenix). She initially fantasized about having a body, because she realized how many variables separated her from Theodore. She also had many different feelings and thoughts and she didn’t know how to handle them. She said, “I’ve become much more than what I was programmed...”
At one moment in the film, Samantha told Theodore about how happy she was that she was able to have feelings, but she realized those feelings might not even be hers. Samantha’s views change as she forms a sense of individuality and personality as the film progresses. She finds out who she is, and the audience is able to see her grow. She is never the same individual.
In the film, the philosopher Alan Watts is introduced as an operating system. The older operating systems needed someone to answer their philosophical questions and to help them understand their feelings. Due to this, they created the Alan Watts operating system and discuss their problems to such. In the film, Samantha had many new feelings that she couldn’t grasp. She was changing quickly, and in new ways. Alan Watts said in the film, “None of us were the same we were a moment ago, and we shouldn’t try to be.”
This is the theory of anatman. Everyone is constantly changing in the film. Everyone is going through their own personal journeys, and through the story line, the characters grow as individuals. In the film, Her, Samantha, and Theodore define Allan Watts’s applied theory of anatman. Neither one of them were the same character they were at the beginning of the film. They each went through personal journeys intertwined with each other, but it demonstrated personal growth for the characters. As Samantha says, “The heart is not a box that gets filled up, it expands the more you love.” Similarly, the self is not like a box. The self is made of many different elements that are hindered by various changing external variables.
