This week Julia Hanna and I talked about virtual reality in the context of the Korean series, Memories of Alhambra (알함브라 궁전의 추억) . Memories of Alhambra stars Hyun Bin, best known for his role in Crash Landing on You, and Park Shin-hye, the female lead in Start-Up.
The series is set in Granada, Spain, and it features the historical backdrop of the medieval castle of Alhambra. The main characters in the series are all Koreans, but much of the action takes place in Granada.
Non-player characters in the game may speak Spanish, but the dialogue between main characters takes place in Korean.
In today’s market, virtual reality is making a comeback, with the introduction of Oculus Quest 2. Facebook Meta is encouraging users to buy the bulky goggles and to engage in physical exercise while playing video games. To avoid hitting walls or falling off balconies, the VR system offers virtual boundaries that users should not cross for their own protection.
In Memories of Alhambra, the dangers of virtual reality take on a more supernatural aspect. Instead of bulky goggles, players wear light weight contact lenses to see things that are not actually there. Virtual swords somehow can kill real life players, which in turn become non-player characters in the game. The non-player ghosts of real players who have died then come back again and again to pursue their killers. This happens even when the players do not have their virtual reality contact lenses on.
One of the odd notions in the series, which is set in Granada, Spain, but populated almost exclusively with Koreans, is that it is not a problem that players in the VR game are killed by one another in real life using virtual swords, but it is a serious defect in the program that they later reappear as zombie-like non-player characters that have to be killed over and over again.
For a more detailed discussion, tune in to our talk on Rumble at 8:45 pm CT on January 6, 2022, embedded below.
Toward the end of our discussion, Julia and I noted that some real life stories from history are just as dramatic as fantasy television, though based entirely on fact. We spoke a little about the history of Juliusz Katz-Suchy, my communist great uncle. In the short embedded below you can see him speaking before the United Nations in 1948 about the siege of Jerusalem, when at the time his own brother was living within the walls of the besieged city.
RELATED LINKS
https://hubpages.com/politics/Chocolate-Under-Communism
Ambassador Juliusz Katz-Suchy addresses the UN in 1948 concerning the siege of Jerusalem
