Topic Seven

Lecture- We watched eXistenZ, made in 1999, for our lecture. It is about Allegra Geller, the best videogame designer in the world, who has created a new game called eXistenZ. However, as they are about to play, she is nearly assassinated by a man who holds an organic gun, a gun made of bone which shoots human teeth. The game is interrupted and taken with her and Ted Pikul, who is dragged into protected her even though he isn’t qualified as a bodyguard. Once they escape safely, Allegra wants to test the game in case there is something wrong with it due to the quick escape from assignation. She needs Ted to go with her, who cannot play until he has a bio-port installed. A bio-port is like an electric power point, except that it connected to the lower back of the human body. Once they get into the game, which is a very graphical virtual world that looks exactly like the real one, they experience terrible and interesting things. Questions are raised through this movie. Is it right to install something so permanent on your body so that you can play a game? And is something that reflects real life so much really a game? Is it a reality in itself? And once we try and leave the game, how do we know that we have truly entered real life again? Couldn’t we still be in a game? Also, is it ethical to play videogames that require you to kill a human being?
Tutorial- There is no tutorial this week, so I am using the extra time to explore my essay assignment, which will be about Runescape, a virtual game world, and how it affects its audience.
Readings- The reading is called “The Military-Entertainment complex: a new facet of Information Warfare.” It is written by my Lecturer, Professor Stephen Stockwell and one of the tutor’s, Adam Muir.
Especially on the war of Iraq, the military have used entertainment and media to help fight their war. They blocked Journalists from going to the front lines of the war, so that the American Military could explain to the world their own version of what was happening. When the Military realised that what they were saying wasn’t interesting enough or entertaining, Journalists were allowed to go to the front lines, as long as they were dependant on the military, so that what they said had to go through the military. Also, in America, when the war on Terror began, certain movies were edited or delayed if they seemed unpatriotic. For example, Spiderman was edited. This shows the control and uses that Military or government can put on Entertainment. It controls peoples/soldiers views on what they are doing or on what is happening. If the entire media spoke on how good the war was and stopped showing protests on the News, then it would seem that everybody else supports the war.