“America, a country obsessed with realism, where, if a reconstruction is to be credible, it must be absolutely iconic, a perfect likeness, a ‘real’ copy of the reality being represented.” That characterization comes from Umberto Eco, the eminent Italian linguist and novelist who recently passed away. He wrote it in 1975, in his essay “Travels in Hyperreality.” Most of the essay describes America’s art museums and estates, which mimic the great buildings of Europe and try to achieve a strange authenticity in their perfect fakeness. But the essay begins with a description of a hologram, a photograph projected in three dimensions.
Creative Control is a modern-day expression of the same American obsession. It’s set in near-future New York City, at the advent of a new technology: Augmenta, eyeglasses which overlay a virtual reality interface upon the wearer’s field of view. They’re like a more-advanced version of Google Glass. Creative Control follows David, a Madison Avenue ad executive charged with figuring out how to sell Augmenta. (No small feat, considering what happened to Google Glass.) He decides to take the high road, presenting Augmenta to the world as a new artistic medium with unprecedented creative possibilities.
At the same time, David himself takes the very old, low road of sex. (Here is where I warn you that Creative Control includes a great deal of nudity and sexual content.) After an argument with his girlfriend, he turns to Augmenta off-hours looking for satisfaction. David is in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, Sophie, who also works in the ad agency, so he creates a virtual version of her. That version will show him whatever he wants, do whatever he wants. David spirals down this easy road, eventually confusing his relationship with virtual Sophie for that with the real woman. The film shows him to be addicted to many things, and this virtual woman becomes another addiction that messes up his real life.
Many have remarked that, at every new stage of visual technology, porn is always on the cutting edge; the hologram Eco described in “Travels in Hyperreality” depicted two nude women. Creative Control presents a convincing next stage of this trend. David begins with such high, artistic ideals for Augmenta, but the technology’s promise to fulfill more basic desires is too strong a draw. Creative Control displays well the sad consequences of trading real relationship for fake sex, and presents an important question for our age: as the porn becomes more realistic, do the consequences become more severe? In this case, David has to suffer as if he had actually had an affair with Sophie, even though it was all fake.
Not too many people have heard about Creative Control, and when I have described it to people many have said, “Oh, it’s like Her.” Her was the Spike Jonze film of a couple years ago, in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with the artificially-intelligent, female-voiced operating system of his computer. The two films are related in some respects, but they actually present opposite scenarios of virtual love. The AI in Her is in fact a sentient being, more advanced than humanity by the end, and the film explores how her lack of a physical body for Phoenix’s character to touch limits his love for her. Her is the opposite of porn. It overturns stereotypical male sexuality because the woman has no image to lust after. Creative Control, on the other hand, presents a woman who is all image and no soul.
Surprisingly, the film makes that presentation with black and white cinematography. When modern directors shoot in black and white, they play up the visual contrast with reality. They make the film an object to look at rather than a world to live in. This is, obviously, the opposite of what virtual reality tries to do. Benjamin Dickinson, who directed the film and played the lead role, effectively uses this classic look to play up his critique of the cutting edge.
But, unfortunately, Dickinson does not present a convincing high-road, artistic alternative. We see some art created with Augmenta, and characters react to it with gusto, but the pieces are just paintings and films. They are not futuristic, and they don’t seem to take advantage of Augmenta in any way, even though within the story that is their function. I would expect some kind of immersive, realer-than-real art experience, but what we see does not strike me as exciting. David would not convince me to buy Augmenta. But, maybe that’s Dickinson’s point all along.