Uncanny Valley touches on the future of Virtual Reality, the dehumanization of the battlefield, the current treatment of veterans, the hyper-violent adrenaline action of today's media, and the bread and circuses future that may become reality.
More after the break
Firstly the style is reminiscent of Neill Blomkamp's recent work. A small subset of the populace, who are outcasts due to either their lack of medical care or lack of access to the proper help, are depicted as addicted to virtual reality. Styled after a documentary, I wouldn't be surprised if this was in the same cinematic universe of Blomkamp's where every other nation has devolved into a moral-less war zone, dependent on the technologies that South Africa is surprisingly able to churn out and provide to the rest of the world.
In Uncanny Valley, we see these junkies who are addicted to a virtual reality first person shooter. They say things like how they have the pain sensitivity turned up, about how the "offline" world is too slow for them, about how they wanted their life to seem as "real" as possible. Entire neighborhood fall prey to the attractions of VR and the government has to have care workers who go out to these ghettos to check on them. In typical documentary fashion, there's a scene where in an interview with a care worker who has decided that there is no hope for them to reintegrate into normal society.
There's a junkie that the film follows, while he's playing the VR "game" he notices a glitch. The reality of his game is torn apart, when he realizes that he is actually controlling a generic robot, and that he's been murdering real people in a remote area of the world. He ends his "simulation", and crawls away, sickened by what he's done. The big brother type surveillance kicks in, the junkie is marked for termination, and within a short amount of time, we see another one of these robots, presumably controlled by another person who's thinking that it's all a game, come to kill the person who has found out the truth.
Uncanny Valley presented a solution to the issue of treating veterans who suffer from PTSD. By never letting them leave the battlefield, and dehumanizing the enemy combatants, these soldiers never have to leave the war zone. A soldier that's never able to die, never able to leave the confines of the battlefield, never able to truly see what he's done, that's the solution to a problem that has plagued many countries.
Uncanny Valley also points out the emphasis on the need for ultra violent action for people to stay entertained. Where every popular movie has some type of action sequence, eventually what is extreme to us now will become the norm. Even now, the media promotes an unhealthy view on how life and events happen. This film shows what might seem to be a game for us to reprieve ourselves of the boredom of our every day lives, some people experience that every day, and for them it isn't excitement, it's fear.
In class we discussed the repercussions of the growing gap between the rich and the poor that is exacerbated by the increasing reliance and dependence on technology. If this can happen to us, on our own soil, to our own people, is what's shown in Uncanny Valley the eventual outcome when the same thing happens to other countries?
There's a junkie that the film follows, while he's playing the VR "game" he notices a glitch. The reality of his game is torn apart, when he realizes that he is actually controlling a generic robot, and that he's been murdering real people in a remote area of the world. He ends his "simulation", and crawls away, sickened by what he's done. The big brother type surveillance kicks in, the junkie is marked for termination, and within a short amount of time, we see another one of these robots, presumably controlled by another person who's thinking that it's all a game, come to kill the person who has found out the truth.
Uncanny Valley presented a solution to the issue of treating veterans who suffer from PTSD. By never letting them leave the battlefield, and dehumanizing the enemy combatants, these soldiers never have to leave the war zone. A soldier that's never able to die, never able to leave the confines of the battlefield, never able to truly see what he's done, that's the solution to a problem that has plagued many countries.
Uncanny Valley also points out the emphasis on the need for ultra violent action for people to stay entertained. Where every popular movie has some type of action sequence, eventually what is extreme to us now will become the norm. Even now, the media promotes an unhealthy view on how life and events happen. This film shows what might seem to be a game for us to reprieve ourselves of the boredom of our every day lives, some people experience that every day, and for them it isn't excitement, it's fear.
In class we discussed the repercussions of the growing gap between the rich and the poor that is exacerbated by the increasing reliance and dependence on technology. If this can happen to us, on our own soil, to our own people, is what's shown in Uncanny Valley the eventual outcome when the same thing happens to other countries?
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