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1.
INVASION OF THE BEDROOM
The
digital age is able to grant us more time for the things we wish
to do along with the things we wish not to do. The extension of
leisure is reiterated in the adage of technological innovation
as a benefit to leaving behind old methods and embracing a digitization
of everything. Implied in this, is that we will spend the free
time apparently granted to us in a bubble of nostalgia. If we
make concessions to the ones and zeroes of the workplace or the
public, our home or our backyard or our bedroom can remain a haven
of the organic; separate and better than the exterior of our private
space. But this image is illusion. Pastimes have become the things
of plug and play. The magic of marketing has convinced us that
the things we enjoyed pre-Apple have gotten better, easier to
partake in, and even less time-consuming. Leisure has been necessarily
sped up and doubled or tripled upon itself. In writing about the
notion of hyperleisure, John
Tiffin points to the micro-level activity within activity that
encompasses leisure time:
The
leisure industry recognizes that leisure activities are nested
in other leisure activities. A film theatre will sell drinks,
sweets and snacks. A resort hotel will provide swimming pools,
aerobics classes, tennis courts, disco dancing and cultural
events, and in the hotel rooms there will be television, radio
and a minibar1.
This wealth of relaxing
moments brought about by said leisure industry is emulated by
consumers in their personal time and space. Private bedrooms regularly
contain televisions, radios, and maybe even minibars. Increasingly,
the gaming console or PC can be added to that list of mediating
extravagances. (Games themselves continue the nesting of activity
by often featuring mini-games that the avatars are required to
play in the game's world). The bedroom has become overrun with
forces that deny it a place in the private sphere. As a frequent
site for the enacting of sexual fantasy and thus closing off external
forces, the bedroom's allowance of video games and the digital
(including the opportunities for virtual sex) reverses the power
agreement of the private space. Inviting the exterior into the
bedroom closes of the ability of personal connectivity, offering
instead the opportunity for strictly mediated interaction. Gaming
is an impediment to the sexual act in its coming between partners
and in its further isolation of the single bedroom dweller from
the opportunity of socialization.
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