Are Wii all becoming Marie Antoinette?

[imomus]

In my new Wired News piece, Reality's for losers: Give me Wii, after feeding an air guitar t-shirt and two new gaming systems through a moral grid featuring "the 4 Es" (ethics, etiquette, environment, embodiment), I conclude that you can't really accuse these technologies -- which all use motion detection to make our gestures productive in a virtual world -- of leading people away from "reality", since so much of what we do now happens in virtual, electronic space anyway.



But I do end on a slightly sinister note, addressing a somewhat qualified banzai to the electronic shepherdesses we see in these Wii promo clips, then comparing them to Marie Antoinette (and no, I do not plan to see Sofia Coppola's film) and reminding the world of her fate.

In this metaphor, the virtual world maps to the Ancien Regime of pre-revolutionary French aristocrats, with their ultra-privileged pastimes and their high-Gini decadence. Could there be some Information Age version of the French Revolution coming, some kind of uprising on the other side of the "digital divide"? We're so deep in our "second lives" that it would undoubtedly impinge on our consciousness suddenly, catching us by surprise then leading us to a guillotine which isn't virtual in the least.



Revolutionary scenarios like these may just be projections of liberal guilt, though. Virtual worlds are much more liable, as things stand now, to be attacked by their own users. Virtual world Second Life was hit, this weekend, by a malicious attack "which caused self-replicating golden rings to appear in the virtual world, and significantly slowed down the servers". It wasn't the first time. In 2004, one user created self-replicating zombie objects which swarmed avatars. Another punished an ex by creating robo-zombie touts who handed out virtual photos of him masturbating. "This is for revenge," read the accompanying note. "Please pass it on. Shouldn't piss off someone who has nude pics of you."

Another parallel with Marie Antoinette; the "shepherdess queen" was also humiliated by being forced to show herself naked to the crowd before being led up the steps to the guillotine.

Comments

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

But all these things come from Japan.

[whirlings.livejournal.com]

occultly stimulating reading through your recent entries' comments and seeing you holding a little nintendo contoller in one (the one with the waggly silver wig), wondering what your reaction to wii would be, then refreshing the friends' page seeing this right at the top. you can stay in my head, go ahead.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Japan is the ultimate Marie Antoinette (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Lolita) zone.

I have very mixed feelings about the deliberate preservation of innocence. On the one hand I love it and I wish people could stay children all their lives, protect themselves from all harshness. On the other hand, I once said in an interview that "people who deliberately preserve their innocence should be killed". (Those were my early, harsh and intemperate years. I'd now probably add "for their own good".)

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

On the one hand I love it and I wish people could stay children all their lives, protect themselves from all harshness.

Ah, but this is a misconception of the idea of childhood! Remaining "child-like" has nothing to do, in the end, with innocence: it has more to do with a certain gentleness and intellectual inquisitiveness than guarding oneself from the harsh realities.

Children are tough little birds, believe it or not. They have grim imaginations, dark fantasies, and a constant fear of death. Childhood isn't "innocent," per se: its just harsh in more imaginative ways!

What always strikes me about children is their mental fluidity: they spontaneously create games (with full - and often complex - rule sets), and are easy to adapt to any new game put before them.

The "Gothic Lolitas" and any other trend that seeks to preserve the infantile - I think here of ravers and their suckers - are a rank mystification of childhood, a desire to return (in a nostalgic sense) "to a more innocent age." Being child-like, however, has little to do with that.

They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

So the Marie Antoinettes among us should be brought low to appease the world's moronic cynics? (http://imomus.livejournal.com/121980.html) Say it ain't so!

Better to be the frivolous, frothy but maligned (http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Queen-Origins-Myth-Marie-Antoinette/dp/0942299396) Antoinette than the pious Robespierre--a bitter, strident little nerd wielding a cutlery set of big, murderous ideas.

[(Anonymous)]

<< ethics, etiquette, environment, embodiment >>

eh I find ethics and etiquette to be duplicative. Should just be three e's, ethics (includes etiquette), environment, embodiment. Not quite sure what embodiment means, but will think about it.

[(Anonymous)]

This all seems uncharacteristically foreboding. I almost think you put an apocalyptic twist on this post. It even ended with the "guillotine." Period. Although I can understand that you are a kind of moralist, I did not figure you for the punishing voice.
Not that it`s bad or anything. Just a little surprising.

Also, why would people on the other side of a "digital divide" rise up when they could just cross it? Virtual worlds are not constituted by rolling tracts of land and palaces full of precious metals - only filaments, tiny super-detailed knick knacks.

-guy named Jacob in Tokyo

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

We're so deep in our "second lives" that it would undoubtedly impinge on our consciousness suddenly, catching us by surprise then leading us to a guillotine which isn't virtual in the least.

Amusingly enough, this exact same concern has been raised over every single little piece of technology since the radio started becoming popular, frequently by the wistful Old Merrie England types.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

I wonder if many of the people who "deliberately preserve innocence" have had to deal with some of the harshest realities? Thinking about people who have gone through trauma or disordered childhoods, who end up with personalities [&posture, vocal qualities, etc] that are sort of stuck in the amber. I don't know if this is the case with Gothic Lolitas and the like, but from what I've studied & experienced it seems that wide-eyed or twee adults are often people that have been through a barrage of external and internal attacks already, and respond, rather than by growing hard or cynical, but by sort of building a personality/persona embracing the state of learned helplessness...? nn. i don't know. I like what pixelmist says about children. It's hard to live in reality with an overactive imagination/inner-life [maybe internet life too], as a child on adult.

as a side note, i was obsessed with young women who were beheaded as a little girl.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

child or adult.

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Better, I think, merely to survive, while causing a minimum of damage to one's neighbors and surroundings. Unfortunately many innocents do not attain to that standard.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Etiquette is the application to actual behaviour of ethical concerns. We all have different ethical beliefs (though they mostly overlap), so etiquette is a series of local agreements guaranteeing the smooth functioning of society. Its separation from ethics is crucial; it allows us to avoid abstract debates with Christians, Nihilists or whoever and simply say "This is how we do things here, and when in Rome..."

Cultural arguments ("this is just how things are done here") override universalist ones ("how then should we live?"), and in this way the world functions without pointless daily negotiation.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This all seems uncharacteristically foreboding. I almost think you put an apocalyptic twist on this post.

I don't think so. It's a very ambivalent and measured post. It says you can discount charges that virtual worlds are "unreal" because so much real stuff happens in them these days. It offers a banzai to virtual shepherdesses, but a qualified one. It then outlines an uprising on the other side of the digital divide (a new French Revolution) but also dismisses that, saying that disruption is more likely to come from inside the Second Life community, for instance, than outside it.

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Better to be the frivolous, frothy but maligned Antoinette than the pious Robespierre--a bitter, strident little nerd wielding a cutlery set of big, murderous ideas.

Well, you are an extraordinary intellectual renegade if you really believe this, since almost everyone alive now is politically closer to the 5th Republic France that is Robespierre's legacy than the flanerie of the Ancien Regime.

I'd have thought Robespierre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre) might appeal to you. He was a follower of a man who loved nature, and was something of a dandy:

"Politically, Robespierre was a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among other Enlightenment philosophes, and a capable articulator of the beliefs of the left-wing bourgeoisie. He was described as physically unimposing and immaculate in dress and personal manners... Robespierre's private life was always respectable: he was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a little bit of a dandy, scrupulously honest, truthful and charitable."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the directors of films like "Metropolis", the authors of books like "Brave New World" and "1984" and "Minima Moralia", etc etc. It's totally consistent with Gramsci's "optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect".

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[(Anonymous)]

It's a mighty stretch to call the 5th Republic Robespierre's legacy! You mmight as well say that capitalist China is the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. Administratively and politically, Napoleon's legacy is way more important. Even if you want to say that the 5th Republic is founded on the principles of the French Revolution, then Robespierre is its Stalin, not its Lenin.

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But seriously, we are all closer, ideologically, to any figure in France (or America's) bourgeois revolutions than the Ancien Regime aristocrats who preceded them, surely?

I mean, I know Sofia Coppola feels pretty close to Marie Antoinette, but that's only because she's from an incredibly privileged background, a dynasty of blue bloods, a kind of atavistic Ancien Regime trying to emerge from a basically democratic system.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

In terms of the Wii's own impressiveness, I think this film of someone playing tennis with it (http://fr.wii.com/movies/17/) is much better illustration than the one I linked in the entry of just how closely the motion-sensing controller maps the metaphor of real physical movement to the virtual world of the game.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Also, think of the "grid" we call university: Ethics would be dealt with by Philosophy and Theology departments, Etiquette by Anthropology and Sociology departments.

(You'd probably argue that they're wrong to do this, but that's just because you've been socialized in a post-protestant individualistic culture where you've been taught to question everything. It's part of the culture of you Anonymouses, the software you run on!)

[(Anonymous)]

<< Etiquette is the application to actual behaviour of ethical concerns. We all have different ethical beliefs (though they mostly overlap), so etiquette is a series of local agreem >>

Yes, etiquette is like saying hi I read Miss Manners and I can behave myself if needed. Like
Quentin Crisp on Broadway. He shows up and says hello. That's ettiquet.

Am more troubled by environement. Don't give a shit aboot environment. I do not recycle. Too busy for that.

[(Anonymous)]

<< how then should we live? >>
Did you read Sartre in colllege? Think it is important. I love Sartre. He's like the Master of Improv. Just make it up as you go along, harriet. gangbang hahahahha

[(Anonymous)]

<< Amusingly enough, this exact same concern has been raised over every single litt >>

Put the rfid on me now. Don't give a shit. Track me track me trak me right now. I am in West Oakland, will be somewhere else tomorrow. I've got a proximity badge I can go up on the roof and shit with that badge. I'm like just need to check on something, goin up on the roof. South Korea.

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[(Anonymous)]

<< I mean, I know Sofia Coppola feels pretty close to Marie Antoinette, but that's only because she's from an incredibly privileged background, a dynasty of blue bloods, a kind of atavistic Ancien Regime trying to >>

Aww you sneer at Sofia like being privileged is a bad think. You're just jealous, momus, because you did not have a trust fund. Trust funds are nice but they really don't make things easier. I was homeless once.

[auto-nalle.livejournal.com]

"Thinking about people who have gone through trauma or disordered childhoods, who end up with personalities [&posture, vocal qualities, etc] that are sort of stuck in the amber."

i just saw this documentary on the film director / performance artist jack smith http://www.jacksmithandthedestructionofatlantis.com/ and had pretty much the same thoughts after it.
i think jack smith was a child-like character, if anyone. antics and all, histrionics, and the hard as stone idealism, down to his very way of speaking like some retard baby.
what his sister stated on the film about their childhood years was:
"he was a very unhappy boy. a very unhappy boy."
neglective mum, he never forgave, the usual story, i guess.

i wonder sometimes if it's that people who have to grow up on their own more easily tend to grow sort of awry or, in a way, not grow up at all.

lovely, anyway.
children are the kings of grace.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

OH THANK GOD this wasn't about the Coppola film.

So tonight I stole some stuff

[(Anonymous)]

Am thinking, will the level two check they're doin on me turn up the way I walked out of Walgreends today? I had plenty of money just didn't have time to stand in line. I left two bucks at the place where I lifted the piece. They pick me up I say there
s the money right over there. Promise didn't mean to cause trouble just get the money ahd we'll all be good. One time lifting from Louisville,s hit is it indiscreet that I'm wrirting about shoplifiing in Northamptom Smith Colllege wow Betta

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

the embodiment factor is tantalizing, but one of the things i really like about the wii (and one of the reasons it might end up as the first system i buy since the super nintendo) is that nintendo appears to be breaking from tradition once again in the realm of graphics and environment immersion. ps3 and xbox are touting realer-than-real (for another couple of years, at least) graphics and gameplay, whereas with Wii you can see in titles like Sports and Wario Ware a tendency to celebrate the unreal and cartoonish nature of the game world.

i see alot of characters with floating limbs, some retro-polygonal avatars, evidence of vector graphics and unrealistic hand-drawn animations influencing the look of these things. if this trend continues, if they come out with more brilliantly odd variations on Paper Mario, i may just cave in. the new Mario Bros. game will feature planet-hopping and galactic environments that only take place in the most fantastic of dreams.

if this embodiment technology is used to transport us into not a faux reality but some kind of hyper-unreality, then i may just climb aboard..

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

maybe it will all result in people being less self conscious about physical expression? at first i imagined a parent walking in on their kids while they pranced around like sword-swinging ninjas in front of the tv, and if this were to happen ten years ago it would have been embarassing for the kid. perhaps not for much longer...

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

Super Marie Antionette!

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

And I thought you would side with a spoiled yet embodied young woman who loved clothes, art, music and dancing over a ruthless do-gooder with a rigid, metaphysical ideology. The fact that he took the Enlightenment's values and perverted them for his own ends wins him sufficient contempt: those who thought differently than Robespierre would be labeled "incorrect" and brought to slaughter like livestock. So much for liberal-mindedness and Enlightenment values.

The fact that he wanted to establish a "Republic of Virtue" and start a state religion/cult of reason brings to mind some kind of proto-Maoism. No more Year Zeroes and Great Leaps Forward, thanks. I'd sooner be "part of the problem" than throw my lot in with a demagogue nursing a Prometheus complex, no matter how crisp his cravat.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

http://imomus.com/thought100301.html

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

But I don't see why I should inflict this suffering on anyone else. The more painful my life is, the more I want my art to be serene, amusing, light and sprightly, like an 18th Century minuet.

excellent digging, Whimsy. Thanks.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

It's an old favorite.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Of course, I really meant "like a post-revolutionary 18th century minuet". There were 11 big bold years in which the 18th century was republican in France, 24 bigger, bolder years in the US, your own republic, Whimsy and Mischa. Vive le minuet... et la republique!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Exactement! Good enough for les incroyables, (http://finalfashion.blogspot.com/2005/11/incroyables.html) good enough for me.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

I thought Quentin Crisp saw etiquette as something which excludes and keeps people in their places, whereas manners are there to make everyone comfortable, to give a common social contract for behavior.

Re: They'll have to pry the cake from my cold, dead fingers

[(Anonymous)]

Maligned Antoinette.

Obviously everything for you is a series of stylised masks. If you had any greater experience of the world apart from America, you would understand the French revolution is the reason they separated state from religion and created a progressive and rationalised society.

Antoinette was a symbol of a decadence that depends on a parasitical relationship with everyday people - even if she was or wasn't (I find it unimportant to evalute her actual history). To be a modern human we must take a modest share that is in proportion to others.

Grow up!

[(Anonymous)]

I just wanted to make the point.
Power consumption in the Wii is far less than the Xbox 360 and Playstation. It is much more ecologically sound (its Japanese, so naturally!!)

A games companies have had their electricity fused by the high level of HD appliances such as the Xbox and HD TV. The power consumption is about that of a washing machine.

The Wii is not about bigger better etc. its about quick hit social gaming.

I think the Wii is not an ivory tower, it fits into the world around it. Wii's games tend not to be about conquering like the Xbox but relating with the world.

As you can probably tell I love Nintendo. Just think about the character of Mario. An Italian working man!

Nintendo represent Liberty, Egality, Fraternity!