from now on maybe I'll just write about previews instead of actually watching the movies

I have written here before about how I didn't get Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, even though I really REALLY tried to like it. I think I have a reasonable imagination. I read books and watch movies and I relate to the characters in them. I don't generally have a sociopath-style lack of empathy, and I rarely have trouble understanding and getting emotionally involved the story of a fictional character, even a character whose life is very different from my own. And yet I can't get my head around Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And I suspect the same thing is going to happen with Spike Jonze's new movie, which people are raving about, and which also seems to portray a relationship between a flesh-and-blood human man, and a woman who is not a person. In the case of Eternal Sunshine, the relationship was between a) a man and b) his internal reconstruction of a woman who actually exists. In Her, the female lead is an AI, an operating system. 

I don't know why but I feel compelled to clarify: I'm not saying that my feminist ideals stop me liking Eternal Sunshine out of some political or moral commitment. I promise I am quite capable of enjoying a movie that is at odds with my personal and political beliefs. I'm saying that when I watch that movie, I just plain don't get it. 

And also, I'm not saying Her can't be a very good movie. It might even explore ideas of gender and romance in ways that are interesting. I'm just scared that it will be one of those forehead-crinkling experiences where I question my basic humanity/cognitive function/sanity, because everyone else gets it and even though I am pretty sure I'm not stupid, I do not get it. I might just not see it, because this experience is so genuinely alienating when it happens. 

Maybe also, we could work on a list of movies where women play a central role, and have relationships with male characters who are not really experiencing the story. I can't think of any, but of course I haven't seen every movie ever made (yet). It's true that a lot of romantic comedies are populated by implausible weird ideal men who probably don't exist in life, and the women are (slightly) more realistic, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm looking for stories about heterosexual romance in which the story is told from the perspective of the woman, and the man has a questionable if any lived experience of the story. My sad little list is very unsatisfying: Bicentennial Man, Edward Scissorhands, Making Mister Right, The Purple Rose of Cairo, the relationship between Data and Tasha Yar. Mostly, that's just a list of movies in which ladies made it with robots. Which might be a useful list, but which is not totally relevant here, especially since most of those stories are pretty focused on the experience of being a whatever-non-human-thing.