It’s pretentious hippies all the way down

The most bored or perhaps most pretentious of a post-scarcity society will want their art to reach new heights. Their art will involve multi-sensory engagement to excite the senses. Why listen to music when you can listen to music that simultaneously washes a warm breeze through you or stabs you with icy daggers?

The trend will be to dare to experience art in more and more raw ways. Be immersed for longer or with more pain. Eventually they will remove some safety measures – the capacity to tap out of the virtual environments where art is being experienced. People will have no choice but to dive in and live through the entire experience, no matter how intense or painful.

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Holding

I woke slowly, in familiar yet unclear surroundings. Smells from my childhood brought structure to the edges of my consciousness – evoking warmth and sunlight and snow and adventure and safety. I could see fleeting glimpses of friends and family at the corner of my vision, as if standing just outside the room I was in; present yet elsewhere.

I gradually became aware of a large creature next to me. In fact, it was not just next to me, it was cradling me in its strong, soft, furry arms.

The huge and gentle figure held me like an immensely delicate ornament.

It made me feel precious, but respected – not at all like the often crushing, cloying grasp of a parent or lover. Yet I knew this creature loved me deeply. More deeply than I had ever experienced in life.

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Oblivion is a hetero-male fantasy wrapped up in mommy issues

Warning: contains spoilers for Oblivion throughout

When Tom Cruise’s agent approached him in 2011 about starring in a new science-fiction epic, you can assume the pitch was something along the lines of “You get to fly your own spaceship, endure two different women vying for your affection, and live in a version of Earth mostly populated by your clones.”

The idea of a planet-sized ego also went over well with most audiences, and the film made a $120 million profit while receiving mostly positive reviews.

On the surface, Oblivion appears as an innocent sci-fi adventure: unwitting (but steadfast) hero discovers that world is not what it seems and subsequently frees humanity from oppression.

But it must also be included in the lofty and ancient archives of “hetero-male-sexual-fantasy posing as imaginative storytelling.”

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