Imagining Feminist Futures on the Small Screen: Inclusion and Care in VR Fictions

Virtual reality signifies not only an immersive media technology, but also a cultural desire to allow bodies to inhabit other worlds as easily as pushing a button or putting on goggles. As the VR industry has grown, so too have popular imaginings of its potential. We draw on feminist technoscience studies to analyze and evaluate recent VR science fiction media narratives. How do they articulate VR’s role in the future, and for whom? Who are the heroes of these worlds and what makes them heroic? Steven Spielberg’s would-be blockbuster Ready Player One (2018) (RPO) offers a techno-masculine narrative in which a hero saves the world. In contrast to RPO, television and streaming small screen science fiction narratives have focused on the extent to which VR can save not worlds but individuals. A surprisingly consistent trope has emerged in these shows: one of VR as a therapeutic tool for a woman coping with trauma. While certainly a departure from RPO’s Hollywood vision of VR, this analysis examines how episodes of Reverie, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, Kiss Me First, and Black Mirror offer visions of VR that reflect the feminist ambitions of the contemporary VR industry.