Movie Gadget Friday: eXistenZ Metaflesh Game Pod
Phillip's a busy man these days (he's hard at work in the lab trying to top his Search Engine Belt Buckle), so Josie Fraser is taking over Movie Gadget Friday for us:
I'm kicking off with eXistenZ, possibly the best film ever made about the cutthroat world of computer game manufacturing. Canadian David Cronenburg is a man of many the appealing obsessions, notably a compulsion to include new and varied types of penetration in his movies and to mash up the technological and organic. Preferably through penetration of some kind. Just count the ways in which the Demon Computer Programmer Allegra Geller (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) makes use of Jude Laws port in the movie.
In the future, game programmers have terrible hairstyles, spend most of their time in their rooms alone, and have to create whole new worlds in order to be pleasured by anyone except themselves. So far so same ol'.
On the progress side, Louise Bourgeois has somehow become the Jonathan Ives of console design. The Metaflesh Game Pod is a handheld "grown from modified amphibian embryos," pink-flesh-toned and distinctly maternal looking, that throbs and trills like a baby when you stroke its smooth, nipple-shaped control buttons. The pod connects via the literally named Umbycord to the system's output device – the central nervous system. On the down side, you have to have a port plug inserted into your spine in order to play. There's no firewall, so any viruses you pick up during play have to be treated at your local clinic. And backing up your files may require a surgeon. Maintenance seems fairly minimal though: excited ports can be lubricated with either spit or WD-40.
