Skip to main content

New top story from Time: A New Season of The Girlfriend Experience Gives Us Yet Another Exploration of Tech and Male Desire

https://ift.tt/333359w

The third season of The Girlfriend Experience begins with a job interview in virtual space. In a bare, glowing white room, Iris (a supple yet self-possessed Julia Goldani Telles of The Affair) explains to a glamorous older woman that she’s abandoning an elite undergraduate education in the States for a new life in London. Beyond a few unnerving details—sometimes the women speak without moving their lips—the meeting only seems remarkable, after a year when more people than ever were communicating mostly via technology, in the context of a show about high-end sex workers. What the protagonists of this Steven Soderbergh movie turned Starz anthology, whose alternately enthralling, stimulating and sluggish first new episodes since 2017 premiere on May 2, have in common is that each exchanges intimate physical contact for money.

Just before she clinches the gig with an exclusive escort service, Iris explains what she has to offer along with her milky skin and wide sapphire eyes: “I’m good at reading people.” This is like Joan Didion claiming to be merely “good” at reading the mood of the culture. In her new day job at an artificial intelligence company, Iris is using her precocious aptitude for neuroscience and behavioral psychology to research sexual attraction. By night, she gathers information from the field, making covert audio recordings of sessions with world leaders and pro athletes whose most deep-seated desires she is eerily skilled at detecting. At some point in every encounter, an epiphany flickers across her face and Iris—the name of a flower but also a crucial part of eyes both animal and mechanical—suddenly knows how to alter her behavior to suit her date.

The convergence of tech and desire seems like an inevitable direction for The Girlfriend Experience, whose past incarnations have juxtaposed upscale sex work with the similarly lucrative labor performed in high-level political and legal professions. Filmmaker Anja Marquardt, who joined the series after two seasons written and directed by creators Amy Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan, clearly has a fascination with this sort of labor; her 2014 feature She’s Lost Control follows a female psychology grad student who works as sexual surrogate. And in many ways, the character-driven story Marquardt tells is a return to form for a show that excelled most in a debut season focused on a law-student escort played by Riley Keough.

The Girlfriend Experience Season 3 2021
Aimee Spinks/Starz‘The Girlfriend Experience’

Like that character, Iris is brilliant, beautiful and appears to have her life under meticulously compartmentalized control… until her situation devolves enough to reveal how fragile it was all along. Marquardt spends much of the first half-season setting a mood of eerie, clinical calm. (I was provided with five episodes, out of 10 total.) In apartments and offices whose aesthetics seem to be converging along with their functions, the atmosphere is both luxe and minimalistic: brushed metal surfaces, mammoth glass windows, monastic concrete walls, furniture and clothing in all the bloodless colors of the iPad rainbow. Iris explains mirror neurons—“our ability to perceive what someone’s thinking or feeling”—to a coworker and mirrors become a visual motif. When Iris mirrors the desires of her clients, she becomes a sentient version of the A.I. she’s studying by day. Mechanical eyes as well as human ones use an iris to let in light.

It’s refreshing to see TV take on big ideas from science and philosophy without dumbing them down out of deference to network executives’ knee-jerk underestimation of their audience. And this immersion in an existence that blurs the line between humanity and technology can be intriguing. But the show moves so slowly as it deepens these thematic connections (thematic neural networks?), drawing artificial limbs and deepfakes and fatalism into its web of metaphors, that the plot barely starts moving until episode 5. It’s hard to say, midway through the season, whether the next five episodes will justify the patience it takes to get to that far.

In the meantime, perhaps the scene-setting feels as redundant as it does because anxiety around the intersection of love, sex and technology has—for obvious reasons—become a pop-culture obsession. Specifically, we keep getting dark visions of heterosexual male desire filtered through computers and robotics. This month’s HBO Max adaptation of Alissa Nutting’s novel Made for Love introduced an all-powerful tech mogul who wouldn’t rest until he’d invaded every corner of his wife’s consciousness. Before that, Humans saw a family thrown into crisis following the father’s indiscretion with their robot assistant. In Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac memorably played a reclusive search-engine CEO whose only companions are model-gorgeous android babes. It all harkens back to that pessimistic, Stepford Wives notion that what men want most from women is not connection but submission (even if what the woman is submitting to turns out to be a male fantasy of female domination). The girlfriend experience without the girlfriend obligation.

It makes sense for art to interrogate patriarchal desire. So much of the world we live in has been, and continues to be, shaped by it; that goes double for the male-dominated tech realm. Still: as we look to a future mediated by A.I., why do we still spend so little time imagining how technological advances might intersect with the physical and emotional needs of people who are not straight men? This season of The Girlfriend Experience contains some promising ideas, even though it retreads some familiar ground and the gendered implications of Iris’ double life go largely unacknowledged. Next time, how about The Boyfriend Experience?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

US Capitol violence: PM Modi appalled, says 'unlawful protests cannot subvert democratic process' https://ift.tt/35fy9nO

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday condemned the storming of the US Capitol by the supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump. PM in a tweet expressed his distress at the rioting and violence, asserting that democratic process cannot be allowed to be subverted through unlawful protests.

Breaking News LIVE: Top Headlines This Hour https://ift.tt/30mZeTB

The total number of global coronavirus cases has surpassed 35 million, including more than 1,066,000 fatalities. More than 27,629,990 patients are reported to have recovered. Follow this breaking news blog for live updates on the coronavirus pandemic as it continues to pose a challenge for health workers and scientists who are in a race against time to produce a vaccine/medicine. 

Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett as next justice of Supreme Court https://ift.tt/36gC99f

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.

New top story from Time: Elaine Thompson-Herah Breaks 100-m Olympic Record, Further Cementing Jamaica’s Sprint Legend

https://ift.tt/3igRaxq Elaine Thompson-Herah knew she had it won, the 100-m race on Saturday night at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. So the defending 100-m Olympic champion pointed at the scoreboard before the finish, just like fellow Jamaican, Usain Bolt, did at the 2008 Beijing Games. Her final time in the race was 10.61 seconds, a new Olympic record, breaking Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 10.62 mark from the 1988 Olympics. It was the second-fastest 100-m time in history. If she hadn’t pointed, could Thompson-Herah have broken Flo-Jo’s world record mark, 10.49 seconds, that was also set in 1988? [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Most definitely, if I wasn’t celebrating,” Thompson-Herah said after the race. Did she regret it at all? “No. No. No. No.,” said Thompson-Hearh, the Jamaican flag still draped over her shoulder from her victory lap. A gold medal and Olympic record was good enough; and it was a celebration to remember. Jamaica swept the 100-m race on Saturda...

FOX NEWS: Miniskirt named 'most iconic fashion statement of all time' in British survey

Miniskirt named 'most iconic fashion statement of all time' in British survey It’s official: Nobody remembers your sweet Members Only jacket from 1983. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2yTg1Dn

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J ज़ी5 की आगामी मिस्ट्री ड्रामा थ्रिलर 'माफ़िया’ इस दिन होगी रिलीज़!

ज़ी5 ने कुछ बेहतरीन थ्रिलर प्रस्तुत करने की प्रतिष्ठा हासिल कर ली है। हाल ही में काली 2, लालबाजार और नक्सल के साथ मनोरंजन करते हुए, ज़ी5 अब विशेष रूप से आपके लिए 10 जुलाई को एक मिस्ट्री ड्रामा थ्रिलर 'माफ़िया' from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/mafia-will-be-released-on-10-july-zee5-090316.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.213.205.54&utm_campaign=client-rss

4th Street Transit Lane Offers Muni a Path Forward

4th Street Transit Lane Offers Muni a Path Forward By Bonnie Jean von Krogh A new transit lane was installed last week   on 4th Street in SoMA as part of the previously approved 4th Street Transit Improvement Project . As the first transit lane put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, this change will help protect Muni passengers as congestion returns to city streets. Transit lanes allow buses to complete trips in less time and turn around back into service more quickly. That means with our limited resources, we can provide more Muni service with the same number of buses, reducing crowding and maintaining better physical distancing onboard. The benefits that transit lanes provide – saving time and avoiding congestion – have become critically important during COVID-19 to protect the health of Muni passengers. Physical distancing requirements mean that Muni’s passenger capacity is cut in a third from pre-COVID levels. When buses ...

FOX NEWS: Woman who had to cancel birthday trip because of coronavirus recreates entire vacation at home in viral video

Woman who had to cancel birthday trip because of coronavirus recreates entire vacation at home in viral video There will be no crying for this birthday. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2Xwfa4W

Sushant Singh Rajput Death Case LIVE Updates: Actor's sister Shweta Singh Kirti hits back at Rhea Chakraborty https://ift.tt/3hEjyXe

Rhea Chakraborty's deleted WhatsApp chat has put the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in action. The team began their investigation on Thursday and reached Goa in search of Gaurav Arya, who was in contact with Sushant Singh Rajput's girlfriend Rhea in connection to buying and selling drugs. The move came after NCB filed an FIR against the actress and two others. On the other hand, Rhea Chakraborty's claims that Sushant's family didn't love him and he hadn't met his father in five years received a sharp reply from Sushant's sister Shweta Singh Kirti.

New top story from Time: What to Watch For In Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s First Presidential Debate

https://ift.tt/3kSr0zp Four years ago, Donald Trump prepared to debate his general-election opponent for the first time. Down in the polls to an experienced, traditional pol, he had been reduced to spreading weird rumors and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the vote, even as questions swirled about his personal finances. Now Trump is the incumbent president, and the conditions could not be more different as he prepares for his first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday: a nation wracked by disease, disorder and disasters; an election neither candidate is treating like a foregone conclusion. And yet the similarities to 2016 are striking, from new questions about Trump’s taxes to another open Supreme Court seat . The main similarity, of course, is Trump—a singular political figure who has intensely polarized the nation. The debate, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, is especially momentous because voters ha...