Phil Gyford recently asked me a very good question:
It’d be great if papers/sites had a regular reviewer for “events” that aren’t theatre/museums/cinema/sport/food. One-offs, annual events, theme parks, LARPs, interactive transmedia experience whatevers, etc, etc. So many things not covered that could be given context by a consistent reviewer 👀
Makers of immersive theatre, escape rooms, projection art galleries, etc., have long argued for dedicated reviewers in outlets like The Guardian and Time Out. Last year’s Immersive Experience Network report argues:
a theatre critic who comes to review an immersive experience – unless they are an immersive fan – won’t necessarily be able to put into context what the show is creatively trying to achieve. They won’t recognise the lineage of some of the creative devices or interactive mechanics being explored or necessarily understand the nuances between scripted performance and performer improvisation in the same way that they would be able to about a piece of traditional theatre.
This is essentially the “don’t send a person who hates horror movies to review one” argument, and it makes a lot of sense. But there are a lot of barriers, the main one being that newspapers (and let’s be honest, in the UK we’re talking about The Guardian) doesn’t have the money or doesn’t want to spend it on a dedicated “immersive” critic – back in 2017 they laid off their top theatre critic, Lyn Gardner, for heaven’s sake.
Outlets can and do rely on freelancers and contractors to review immersive art. However, the instability of income makes it hard to find someone who can dedicate their time to have the breadth of knowledge and experience to properly contextualise what they’re seeing. The same problem exists for film and books and TV and games, but at least it’s easier for people to sample the canon from voluminous online libraries – less so for immersive art.
Why? Because it’s more ephemeral and less accessible than other media. This has long plagued environmental art and it’s why so little is known about hyper-popular Japanese “haunted teahouses” of the early 19th century, or English community pageants in the Middle Ages. Their physical fabric is not designed to last and is difficult to store. Escape rooms, larp, and immersive theatre all have much lower capacity than traditional theatre and tend to have shorter runs in fewer locations. Punchdrunk’s immersive theatre is a notable exception, and is responsible for its outsize influence on the entire field, for better and for worse.
That means critics have to write about immersive art in a way that captures people’s interest even if the vast majority of readers will never go – much as restaurant critics like Jay Rayner do in national papers, for example. This is a sensitive point, but I think a lot of people who write and talk about immersive art do so in a way that leans more towards being fans or enthusiasts or industry boosters than being actual critics. Some artists have gotten so used to glowing reviews from overly-sympathetic writers that when they receive criticism, they dismiss it as being from someone who doesn’t understand immersive experiences (this happened to me, lol!).
The same applies to games too, of course. Games, like immersive experiences, suffer from a revolving door issue where critics often end up being hired into the industry. Some of the best game developers are former academics and journalists! It’s hard to blame critics for taking a steady job and a pay increase, but it does mean that the most experienced writers are also conflicted. Whenever I write about Disney’s theme parks, I always have to point out that I once did consultancy work for Disney Imagineering.
There are some outlets that could easily afford dedicated “immersive” critics: The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Financial Times, etc. They’ve all upped their coverage of video games and do, on occasion, write good stories about immersive art. But I think it’s only the Los Angeles Times that has a dedicated person – Todd Martens – and even then, one could argue that’s because their audience unusually includes a lot of people who work in the entertainment industry.
Sadly, I think too many editors believe immersive art is inherently trivial and there wouldn’t be enough variety or good stuff to sustain a regular series. They’re wrong, especially if you widen your gaze to include theme parks, larps, immersive theatre, escape rooms, and so on. And from a purely writing perspective, I think the embodied and often social nature of immersive art makes it much easier and more fun to write (and read!) about than video games, which frequently become mired in theory or solipsistic musings.
There are good publications dedicated to immersive art: No Proscenium, Voidspace, and ARGN, to name just three. But the economics and dynamics of the internet mean they have to cater to more tightly focused audiences. That’s not a bad thing – creators and enthusiasts deserve their own publications – but it inevitably ends up excluding general audiences to a degree. And perhaps that’s just the story of the internet, with writers and commentators needing to build up their own subscription-funded newsletters and podcasts and YouTubes. The precarity of employment in all but the most successful outlets means this is likely the wiser path, too.
I’m not holding my breath for a change. Outlets should hire dedicated games critics before they get to immersive art, and that’s not on the horizon. It’s a shame, because even though traditional media’s reach is declining, it still holds sway over the decision makers who control public and private money. All we can do as writers is keep writing, and keep sharing and linking to the writing we enjoy.
Main photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.
The reason Phil Gyford asked me about dedicated critics was in response to my thread on plans for the far-right family behind the revisionist French historical theme park, Puy du Fou, to build a £600 million park in the UK.
I noted that “immersion” has always been used for propaganda, of course. Living history museums and re-enactors say their immediacy and multisensory immersiveness allows them to better connect with bored or skeptical audiences and create longer-lasting memories – a way to short circuit critical distance. So what happens when that’s used to mislead?
Perhaps audiences will just get used to it and begin treating immersive experiences with the same skepticism they have of other media. There is a difference, however. Participatory experiences – and Puy du Fou is not that participatory – engage people’s bodies and actions more directly. And they can be much longer than movies or TV shows. So I don’t think we can be complacent about a £600m UK theme park that is likely to promote a nationalist, conservative, exclusionary view of British history.
This wouldn’t be Puy du Fou’s first project in the UK, either – they helped create Kynren: An Epic Tale of England. It’s technically a pageant but better understood as a blockbuster outdoor immersive performance about the last 2000 years of English history.
There aren’t many serious reviews of Kynren – these sorts of things don’t tend to be noticed by critics and historians. This 2016 piece, however, says Kynren’s history is problematic and one-sided:
As spectacle, Kynren was impressive and captivating. But as history, it was as problematic as it was one-sided. While it could not tell the history of England without featuring Romans, Normans, Anglo-Saxons, French and Germans, they all figured merely as fought-back invaders, who had left no mark on the English nation. Scotland, only a two hours’ drive away, was cast much in the same role — no mention of the Union or Britain. No mention, too, that England had once ruled over a quarter of the world’s population and landmass. Only the scene about the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria referred to the Empire — by showing Indian dancers (played by white English women in yellow face) whirling their skirts in celebration of the Queen. There was not a single non-white face in the audience and there would be none on the stage. But then again, this was the story of “us”, people, who had come here so long ago, they had forgotten they were sons and daughters of immigrants too, not of the “others”, the enslaved and exploited.
At any other time, Kynren could have been shrugged off as harmless entertainment, as an innocent eccentricity — but not this year. It was impossible to watch Kynren without thinking of Brexit … Some commentators saw Brexit as connected to nostalgia. Kynren could be seen as evidence for that but it was mainly bad history, history made to serve an agenda.
In happier news, here’s a thread on Barnton Bunker, a former nuclear bunker in Edinburgh I surveyed yesterday for use in a larp or immersive experience:
I also reviewed Christine Rosen’s new book, The Extinction of Experience:
Occasionally I read a book so bad it makes me feel so much better about my own writing.
… her argument, supported by laughably broad statements and anecdotes, is basically “we need to go back”. Hyperlocal weather apps? No thank you – Rosen wants “a local forecaster who understands a region’s weather peculiarities” because Dark Sky “often” gets things wrong. Firstly, how dare you impugn Dark Sky. Secondly, hyperlocal apps are doing something completely different to human forecasters.
… Rosen seems to think that all media invented after 1900 are bad, comparing them to paintings and architecture, which are good and real and true. This is so fucking dumb and ahistorical I’m amazed it made it to print.
It barely needs saying that there is basically NO discussion of other things that might have caused a drop in face-to-face encounters like:
– Neoliberalism
– Hypercapitalism
– Stranger danger
– Suburbanism
– Defunding of public transit and public spaces, etc etc.No, it’s just the screens!!
mssv 