Our Dystopian World. Catastrophic Storytelling in Virtual Reality

The research aims to investigate strategies for representing dystopian worlds in Virtual Reality Cinema (Cine-VR) through the lens of textual analysis, with a focus on allegorical dystopias that project some issues of our times into alternative worlds. The two case studies to be presented relate to the tradition of dystopias about migration (Anam 2018) and environmental crisis due to the pandemic (Clayes 2017, Al-Aghberi 2021). The key (by Céline Tricart, 2019), which is often characterized as an almost-documentary immersive experience, actually reinterprets the traumas of immigration in a dreamlike and catastrophic alternative world. In contrast, the pandemic universe described by the stop motion animation The Sick Rose (by Tang Zhi-zhong and Huang Yun-hsien, 2021) imagines a present inhabited by demonic creatures to allegorically represent the world of COVID-19. Both case studies illustrate the catastrophic environment as a representation of two modern problems, taking advantage of the unique features of virtual reality. As a perceptual medium, VR uses the mechanisms of embodiment and presence to generate empathy (Milk 2015). Therefore, Cine-VR adds new elements to dystopian stories, combining empathic strategies of storytelling with its main tropes.