Far from paradise: The body, the apparatus and the image of contemporary virtual reality

Abstract

The contemporary popularity of virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift has links not just with earlier eras of virtual reality technology, but with recurrent discourse surrounding the moving image and spectatorship. The articulation of the Oculus Rift in public through YouTube ‘reaction’ videos and media moments such as the Oculus Rift Time magazine cover of 2015 links contemporary virtual reality to early cinema discourses of credulous spectatorship, strenuous spectatorship and the cinema of attractions. Through these comparisons, this article argues that the ‘image’ of contemporary virtual reality technology is not that of a simulated exotic paradise enabled by the apparatus, but the apparatus itself, the body of its user and that body’s gender.