Sixth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Today, immersive technologies—like online reality—are celebrated as empathy machines, capable of fostering meaningful cross-cultural understanding. My MA thesis project interrogates this assumption. I analyze two historical case studies of immersive rides: “A Trip to the Moon,” from the 1901 World’s Fair, and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” from Coney Island, 1903. The rides complemented the ethnographic villages surrounding them. Taking on the role of anthropologists, the villages enabled white visitors to experience a speculative past and present and, from them, plot a global racial hierarchy. The rides, however, offered visitors a glimpse of the electrified future promised by American imperialism. Through the rides, visitors embodied the role of colonizer, “discovering” new frontiers. Though perhaps experienced simply as entertainment, the rides were consciously designed as a powerful pedagogical tool for cultural knowledge sharing that transmitted the imperial imaginary through a collective, multi-mediated performance. Their impact was profound, garnering mass American support for segregation and imperialism. Drawing lessons from my case studies, I argue that the rides were precursors to 21st-century immersive environments, thus it is imperative to critique the medium or risk reinscribing the imperial gaze into contemporary experiences. To move toward this goal, I offer the beginnings of a shared language to highlight the medium’s fraught legacies and carve out a path toward a more equitable cultural production process. At the heart of my project is a simple yet profound question borrowed from scholar Sasha Costanza-Chock. They ask: who is really benefiting from this?