guity by association

i started reading an excerpt of a book called remediation about virtual reality that was assigned for a class that i'm taking called digital journalism. twice in the first paragraph i had to stop reading and look up a word on dictionary.com: remediation and hypermediacy. and despite the ostentatious wordplay used by the author, i had to admit that the metaphor he drew between virtual reality and other art forms such as painting, photography and film to be compelling and completely unexpected. his point is that the goal of all is to eliminate the interface between the human and the medium so that when viewing it one is given the impression of a real reproduction of the human world.

still, one thing in particular kept bothering me about what i was reading: he kept referring to the movie 'strange days' when talking about the idea of virtual reality. now a long time ago, i did set aside two hours of my life to watch that film. i'm not saying it was terrible, but it was unremarkable. and when you're writing a scholarly piece about the evolution of technology as it relates to classical art, a few style points are immediately deducted for referring to a movie starring angela bassett.

it would be like writing a story about the heroism displayed by this country's revolutionary forefather in breaking away from the british empire, then referencing mel gibson's 'the patriot' to emphasize your point.