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A review by colin_cox
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison
5.0
Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime is a quick but utterly engaging play that uses many noticeable and familiar science fiction motifs to stage an elongated conversation about grief, resentment, and relationships. "Primes" are digitally projected A.I. constructs that allow users to converse with deceased friends, family members, and lovers. Throughout the play, characters interact with Primes as a way of exercising past traumas and unresolved conflicts. What a Prime knows is to some degree contingent on its user. Throughout the play, there are suggestions that Primes arrive prefabricated. A Prime is not necessarily a tabula rasa.
Harrison's greatest accomplishment is the way in which he conceptualizes characters and character development throughout the play. Main characters die but return as Primes, which allows Harrison to have a broader conversation about identity and selfhood in digitally constructed environments. The play concludes with three Primes sitting together, musing aimlessly about their existence. In this scene, the Primes interact with varying degrees of playful affection for one another, something their human counterparts did not do. The play's final line is a clear reference to Damian, Marjorie and Walter's son who died as a child before the play begins, and Toni Two, the family dog who died with Damien:
Marjorie: How I miss them.
Walter: I didn't mean to make you sad.
Marjorie: You didn't. All I can think is how nice.
How nice that we could love somebody.
When Marjorie references love, what are the ramifications of this declaration? Primes are learning machines, but is Harrison suggesting that A.I. can love? Furthermore, to what degree do Primes feel what their human counterparts felt? Are they approximating such feelings by using language, or are they parroting those feelings through linguistic utterances?
But the most upsetting and thrilling aspect of Marjorie Prime is the suggestion that Primes are happier and more content than their human counterparts. I hesitate to use language like "happy" and "content" because Harrison doesn't explicitly explain whether or not Primes are capable of such feelings, which leaves me to ask a simple question the play refusing to resolve: would a digital rendering of myself be better at being me?
Harrison's greatest accomplishment is the way in which he conceptualizes characters and character development throughout the play. Main characters die but return as Primes, which allows Harrison to have a broader conversation about identity and selfhood in digitally constructed environments. The play concludes with three Primes sitting together, musing aimlessly about their existence. In this scene, the Primes interact with varying degrees of playful affection for one another, something their human counterparts did not do. The play's final line is a clear reference to Damian, Marjorie and Walter's son who died as a child before the play begins, and Toni Two, the family dog who died with Damien:
Marjorie: How I miss them.
Walter: I didn't mean to make you sad.
Marjorie: You didn't. All I can think is how nice.
How nice that we could love somebody.
When Marjorie references love, what are the ramifications of this declaration? Primes are learning machines, but is Harrison suggesting that A.I. can love? Furthermore, to what degree do Primes feel what their human counterparts felt? Are they approximating such feelings by using language, or are they parroting those feelings through linguistic utterances?
But the most upsetting and thrilling aspect of Marjorie Prime is the suggestion that Primes are happier and more content than their human counterparts. I hesitate to use language like "happy" and "content" because Harrison doesn't explicitly explain whether or not Primes are capable of such feelings, which leaves me to ask a simple question the play refusing to resolve: would a digital rendering of myself be better at being me?