I’m a little sick of people complaining how much breaking your immersion actually matters in art. We’re well past the point where “eck, PLOTHOLE, ding!” was a major part of popular media discussion. But immersion is still such a pervasive topic, and breaking your immersion is so reviled.
I really don’t think it matters so, so much. I get that immersive entertainment can be wonderful, getting swept into another world or a cast of characters and escaping from your own life for a while. I cried a good six times the last time I saw E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, after all. And you can bet I’ll be first in line to reserve an opening night IMAX 3D ticket to Avatar: Fire and Ash so I can another spend 2.5 fleeting hours in the wonderful world of Pandora. And, importantly, both of those movies have some of the coolest theme park rides in the world.
People love being swept up in a symphony, riding the wave of a fantastic light show, staring for minutes at a master painting, spending twelve hours in an open-world game. I love these things too.
But immersion isn’t the end-all, be-all, and I hate when people equate breaking your immersion to a sin against God. Many people get genuinely angry at others for “ruining the magic.”
Like, that Star Wars hotel flop seems pretty darn cool, but it was a financial disaster in large part because they focused so heavily on in-character immersion, like a multi-day live theater experience that was impossible to scale well in such a high-pressure theme park environment. They were so worried about breaking your immersion that they accidentally made a hotel way, way, way too restrictive for most people to enjoy for its absurd pricetag.
Oftentimes, the argument for immersion seems to be something like, “I don’t want anything in the real-world seeping in. I want to completely unplug from reality.” Which, maybe my brain is a bit too quirky to be able to experience art without my mind wandering, but it seems overboard and unrealistic to expect for total immersion at any point. It’s the road towards people who want to “keep politics out” of art, which tends to mean “only right-wing politics are allowed.” Art doesn’t become an experience, it becomes just a distraction. Just content.
That’s probably what the tech giants want. They want “immersion” with an endless feed of AI generated nothingness, like that Meta AI App that already exists. They want to keep you scrolling, shopping, and consuming. It’s not breaking your immersion, just keeping you contented while not letting you feel stirred. Fascism wins when art becomes about taking you out of your world, rather than adding something new to it.
Should I equate someone who loves watching behind the scenes VFX documentaries to anti-fascism? No, but I did anyway, because my blog posts like these always end up rambling into some larger point that’s only tangentially connected. Oops, I’m breaking your immersion by revealing my blog structure like that.
Wishlist WINTER HEAT on Steam! There’s a crowdfunding campaign soon, so please prepare your hearts for it:
