7th Week - Cronenberg: Cinema & Technology

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend this lecture, but after reading through lecture notes and watching in my own time the movie eXistenZ I have a few notes myself…

David Cronenberg was the director of many films that melded horror and ski-fiction with a deep inquiry into the human body’s interaction with technology and how that affects our description of reality.

eXistenZ is a film that explores the difference between reality and games. The film suggests that because of the addiction to a game that creates another world sometimes reality can be blurred and eventually the knowledge of what is real and what isn’t becomes lost.

The film begins with the invention of a new game, in this world when you enter a game you are no longer awake in reality. There is a group in the film that are against the game makers and there is an attempt for assassination towards one. This then forces the game maker to hide out, while doing this she enters the game world with her protector. Eventually both worlds become out of control and it is almost impossible to distinguish what is reality.
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READING; The Military - Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare.

Notes:
The words of one senior White House official sums up the approach: 'Boom, boom, we're going in hard and fast,' the official said. 'By this time next week, sit by your TV and get ready to watch the fireworks' (Coorey and Schlink, 2003).

The military have always found a use for entertainment. Recruiting songs and marching songs prepared the soldier's mind to over-ride the self-preservation mechanism in the heat of battle. Propaganda has always been best served as entertainment.

The military also used the entertainment industry's radio broadcast and marketing expertise in psychological operations (PSYOPS) to build support for the Allied war effort behind enemy lines.
Satellites gave the military the opportunity to gather signals intelligence (SIGINT) including radio and television signals from anywhere in the world.

By the first Gulf War, the military had re-exerted control so effectively that journalists were physically constrained from approaching the front lines and had no option but to cover the prepared story.

The military are very familiar with the reality of simulation, particularly as games – they have been part of their training about strategy as long as commanders have coordinated groups of people for large-scale combat.

During the twentieth century, air crew training came to depend on the use of simulators that allowed pilots to practice flying without putting their lives, or more importantly, their expensive aircraft in danger.

The historic relationship between the military and the entertainment industry has firm foundations in an economic-ideological trade that both sides find mutually beneficial.

The second Gulf War saw the military-entertainment complex move to an even more heightened level of information war that seeks to use mass media channels systematically to massage reality not only for home consumption but also, and most significantly, as part of an integrated weapons system aimed at the enemy.

One of the most significant developments in the mediasphere between the first and second Gulf Wars was the emergence of reality television.
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Tute for this week was cancelled due to public holiday on Friday.