a lot of the narratives i examine through this project are intended to construct realities that sit adjacent or on top of our pre-existing (also constructed) realities. another way i might frame this, is that they’re play. the realities constructed are ones that are intended to be able to be stepped in and out of. the user/player/performer has a choice.
there’s something special about becoming (consensually) lost in a piece of media. many of us likely know the odd sense of loss when you finish a book, or a video game, or a tv series, and suddenly the characters aren’t a presence in your daily life. the slippage——moments when suddenly a fictional reality cannot be navigated out of——are where i’m most curious. the mother of an actor in The Blair Witch Project receiving condolence flowers for her “missing, presumed dead” daughter who’s actually fine. pre-teen girls assaulting a friend in the woods to appease a figure of internet folklore.
importantly, some of the narratives i examine are intended to construct realities that act like play, but are doing something more insidious. they aren’t layering a new reality on top of or beside existing realities, but forcibly grafting it over. (i’m thinking here of QAnon). the inability to step back out is purposeful.
then there’s the narrative/reality of capitalism. just as constructed. similarly forcefully grafted over land/bodies/culture.
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in undergrad i got into a heated argument with That One Student Who Takes Up a Lot of Space and All the Air in one of my art history classes. i don’t remember the context, but i was pushing against the framing of western science as “fact” and anything that cannot be proven by western science (regardless of whether it “works” or not) as not “real”, and even unintelligent to believe. i didn’t really have the language yet to talk about the roles of white supremacy and imperialism in our cultural constructions of “truth” (/fact /science /history /etc) in the US, or why this argument was making me so furious.
afterwards my professor privately recommended that i read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
the book shares the story of Hmong refugee family’s struggle navigating the American healthcare system and trying to get doctors to treat their young epileptic daughter, Lia Lee, in a culturally competent way (with alternating chapters focusing on Hmong culture and the history of Laos).
the failure of doctors to find space where two realities (that of western medical science, and that of Hmong spiritual beliefs) could exist together, and built a treatment plan tailored toward the coexistence of those two realities, ended up being detrimental to Lee’s health.
this is one way to look at what i mean by reality vs. the real. the “real” of what was impacting Lee almost doesn’t matter when the way it is seen and interacted with is through multiple lenses, which each construct their own realities.