Class Discussion: "What is hype? What is ‘real’? How can you tell?"

Hype vs. Reality in Films

• Hype in films:
  • The Lawnmower Man
  • Sleeper
  • Brainstorm
  • Strange Days
  • Synthetic Pleasures
  • Barbarella*
  • Virtuosity
    
    
• "Reality" in films:
  • You’ve Got Mail
    • You've Got Mail--the Web site
      
  • American Pie *
  • South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
    
    

Cybersex takes many forms in its portrayal in the media. But it is often difficult to distinguish the hype from the reality. It is important to study the images of future cybersex, fantastical as they may seem, as those visions may soon become reality.

Popular Films
We have seen much hype, and a small dose of reality in popular films.

The Lawnmower Man
The Lawnmower Man (*year) begins with the following quote, "By the turn of the millennium a technology known as VIRTUAL REALITY will be in widespread use. It will allow you to enter computer generated artificial worlds as unlimited as the imagination itself. Its creators foresee millions of positive uses - while others fear it as a new form of mind control..." However, as we who have experienced the turn of the millennium may know, full-on virtual reality does not yet exist.

In the clip shown in class, the "Lawnmower Man" (formerly learning disabled but now psychically enhanced through a virtual reality education) takes his girlfriend, Marty, on the "best ride of [her] life." The pair sport bodysuits, gloves, head-mounted dislplays (HMDs), and are strapped into huge gyroscopes (?). All this is connected to a sophisticated computer system, which monitors their physiological patterns. They start the program, and they are transported into a reality of their own creation (to some degree). They can see their own bodies represented in this space, as though they were really there. They come together and kiss, then their bodies swirl into one. The two take the form of a dragonfly and fly as one being. The Lawnmower Man takes over the dual fantasy, claiming to know what's in Marty's primal mind. He knows what she really wants, he claims, and she becomes trapped in a scary world she doesn't like. She is told nothing can hurt her, but her brain patterns become irregular, and she seems to have become a vegetable.


You've Got Mail
In the first scene of You've Got Mail (*year) displayed in class, the Meg Ryan character is unsatisfied with her relationship with her Luddite boyfriend, the Greg Kinnear character. Meg sneaks to her computer and escapes into AOL, where she becomes Shopgirl. She receives the gift of E-mail from NY152, the Tom Hanks character, who is also somehow unsatisfied with his relationship. The two send flirtatious E-mail to each other, and are somehow excited by the fact that they haven't met, other than in a chat room. They are rather like modern day pen pals, but their letters are easier to hide from their mates.

In the second scene displayed in class, we find out that much of this relationship is imagined. Without actually dealing with the partner in reality, the imagination can take over. An elation takes place upon the receipt of each communication.

"Is it infidelity if you're involved with someone on E-mail?" the Meg Ryan character asks in the third scene shown in class. The two have not had cybersex, and she is warned against it. Cybersex is portrayed as regular sex - the minute you do it, a man loses all respect for you.

The pair started off sharing similar interests, but do not discuss personal things, to protect their identities. The person with whom she is having this correspondence romance could be anyone. It could be the next person to walk into her shop. There is an element of mystery. Others seem to feel that, as in the real world, "the Internet is just another way of getting rejected by a woman." Or that cybersex is simply a bother, "I tried to have cybersex once, but I kept getting a busy signal."

The cyber-romance portrayed in You've Got Mail more closely resembles the real world. The technologies involved, America Online chat rooms and E-mail, certainly do exist. The motivations for the characters participation in this cyber-relationship are not uncommon ones. The excitement of receiving E-mail from a love interest is very real. And many a romance has been known to start from encounters in chat rooms and continued correspondence.


Synthetic Pleasures
Synthetic Pleasures (*year) is an MTV-style documentary, which offers many ideas about the future of sex:

The Information Superhighway has been a virtual Wild West, a "broad and lawless terrain", which cannot yet be controlled. The Internet was created by the military to distribute information across a computer network so that that information could not be destroyed. They did not imagine that people would be using the Internet to talk about sex. Now they can't stop us.

More and more of our social interaction takes place in a mediated space. The brain is the primary erotic organ. According to RU Sirius, the way to eroticize the brain is to explore sexuality through media.

Now we have different forms of mediated sexual intercourse: online, virtual reality...
Lisa Palac's hottest VR fantasy is to experience sexuality from the point of view of the opposite sex.

The computer could induce a state of ecstasy, without the mess of drug dealers or bodily fluids. In VR sex there is no rejection, no wooing... We can protect our feelings, and our sexual health, and have sex whenever we want.

Another cybersex possibility is the experience machine. With this machine, you implant electrodes in your brain and can input whatever sensation you want. When a relationship grows stale, you can relive past experiences... Would you want to be hooked up to this machine for the rest of your life? Or would too much pleasure be boring?

Will technology change your dull, boring sex life into a fabulous one? Technology is not a replacement for sex as we know it.

How could we simulate something as complex as a kiss, and why would we want to?


Brainstorm
In the first scene of Brainstorm (*year) shown in class, we see a head-mounted device that has pre-recorded the brain signals of someone who has had various experiences: flying in a helicopter over the Golden Gate bridge, surfing, gliding over a landscape, and being served an orgy of food by scantily-clad, sexy waitresses. The signals are transmitted to the wearer, who can experience these images, sensations, etc. as though they were really having them, all from the comfort of their chairs.

The second scene shows a scientist pushing a sex tape like a dealer would drugs. The user enjoys the tape so much, he makes it into a loop, and sets himself up in his basement to experience the tape over and over again. There he is twitching and smiling. When the tape is stopped, the user is desperate for more. The user found the experience to be a transformative one. He leaves his job (gets disability leave), has more energy, and even enjoys the occasional flashback. The experience was more than just a sexual fantasy. The user feels that he has become more than he was.

This technology does not presently exist.
**mention something about BEM - NO sensible HMD YET


Strange Days
Scene 1:
Wireless SQUID technology is placed on the head, and sends signals to a nearby receptor. The experience is recorded and placed on a diskette. The diskettes are traded on the black market, and directed to a degree.

Scene 2:
The SQUID recordings are used to relive past experiences with a lover who is gone. The user/dealer, Lenny, is left alone with a box of memories on diskette, with no one to share them with, neglecting his "real" social life.

Scene 3:
Lenny pushes the sexual experiences like a drug dealer. This is not like TV only better. You experience the recording as though it were real life. People want to experience things they would not try in real life. They want forbidden fruit. The dealer feels as though he is a God, because he can provide any experience. The potential buyer, a male, wants to experience what it would be like to be a girl.
**mention something about BEM - NO HMD YET


Sleeper
Scene 1:
The Orgasmatron is a booth that two people (or one, or more) step into and immediately experience orgasm.

Scene 2:
In the future, sex is different. They don't have any problems: everyone's frigid. The machine is the only way they can reach orgasm.


Virtuosity
Sheila 3.2 is a sexy, interactive virtual reality girlfriend (software). The user can enter a virtual world with her, by wearing gear (HMD, etc.) which can detect 136 aspects of the user's physiology, including tumescence.

One scientist tricks the other, who is incubating a nanotech android, to share his secrets with the software creator, in order to make Sheila 3.2 a real-world, life-like woman/android for his sexual pleasure. Instead, he uses the software to embody an evil being he has developed in a virtual reality.


South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
Young children surfing the Internet unattended look for educational information about the clitoris. They receive 8 million responses to their search query, click past an "adults only" warning, and find their friend Cartman's mother starring in a German Scheiße video. Although the kids cannot find simple sex information, they can easily override encryption to break into the Canadian government's computer system.


Barbarella*

• Pornographic Films
  Cybersex hype is not only depicted in popular films, but also in pornographic ones.
  
  Pornographic Films Depicting Cybersex:
  • Les Femmes Erotiques
  • Night Trips
  • Night Trips II