Virtual Reality

Virtual reality? Actual reality? I find that science fiction films have grown into something more than just about robots, space creatures and space ships. The Matrix, a more recent science fiction film, revealed a system of racist White supremacy alongside the idea of virtual reality, living a dream world kind of reality much like Alice in Wonderland. It took the idea of technology to a whole other level by taking away a human beings true sense of reality.  Star Wars was an other movie and had a much more powerful message than viewers would notice.  The Jedi was monastic, with practices rooted in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.  The Jedi stressed patience, humility, respect and believing in the power of the spiritual world over the physical.  At the same time, you see in Star Wars the heros' are White, hetero-normative men out to, yes to save the people from evil, but also to save the white hetero-normative woman, with the bad guy dressed in all black (an "evil", dark color).  In Star Wars, technology was observed as merely a tool that human beings could use or misuse.  Their idea of technology was much different than the 21st century Matrix.  Star Wars' technology had their artificial intelligence robots as being just as aware and valid as natural, human being intelligence. Star Trek was a movie that created an alternative reality through time travel.  While their movie has moments of equality between species and other feeling creatures, it is still about the White, hetero-normative man saving all existence between the galaxies.  Star Trek has the character Spock, half human and half Vulcan heritage who has been suppressed by the Evil so and so who has been planning to destroy the Vulcan culture completely.

Yes, it is wrong to continue these cycles of discrimination particularly through science fiction where "the other" is viewed as its americanized stereotype.   Some of these movies from this genre create other human beings from a culture other than ours as "alien", which it is really when you define what alien means.  Something different from what we know to be normal and real to us - such as different cultural ways of cooking, dining, etc.  Still, I think science fiction films do show us the viewer that we are all victims of and providers to machines, technology, their systems, and the industries that provide them to us.  It just goes to show that it is no longer a fantasy. We ARE in a virtual reality. We live through cyberspace daily.  We, as an american culture, and now across our vast world, use and manipulate our lives through technology, through the internet.  We've created identities for ourselves and essentially for others through our use of facebook, twitter, blogging, youtube, online avatars, chat rooms, and so on and so forth.  There's no escaping it.  It has been done, it exists and we are present in it.  The only thing we can do is act like the Jedi.  We should accept the destructive nature of anger and hate and the extreme lust for power as it will all only lead to suffering.  It will lead to suffering of you the individual but to everyone you know and love around you, your community, your world, your mother earth, your planet.  

We cannot break the recurring racialized representations of people of color in all genres of film until awareness can be brought to the majority about what these representations have done to our ecological system as a whole.