Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Critical Commons

Sections
Document Actions

Gamer talk show interruption

by ccManager
Commentary summary:
A mean-spirited look at TV and multiplayer gaming

Text Commentary:

This expository sequence from the movie Gamer is equally mean-spirited toward tabloid television and the gaming industry. Michael C. Hall plays Ken Castle, the creator of "Society'" a Second Life-ish virtual world in which users control human avatars instead of computer-generated ones. Interviewed by Kyra Sedgewick on a live TV infotainment interview show, Castle describes his new project, "Slayers," which places "volunteer" death-row inmates in combat situations where they are controlled by middle class teenagers, facing real world life and death battles. This scene is remarkable for its technical explication of the Slayers system as well as its preemptive trivialization of a broad range of ethical concerns. The broadcast is interrupted by a radical group of hackers known as Humanz, embodied as an African-American male (Ludacris) who speaks directly to the TV audience, opposing the technology of Slayers and advocating a return to organic human existence.


Keywords

Related Clips

Related Clips
Copyright 2010, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. ccManager. (2010, September 20). Gamer talk show interruption. Retrieved May 17, 2012, from Critical Commons Web site: http://criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/commentaries/gamer-talk-show-interruption. This work is licensed under a No Copyright; No Rights Reserved.