I'm sure that you all have seen and appreciate that fine Disney production TRON, that basically introduced American moviegoers to fullscale computer animation. Unfortunately, the movie didn't do so well at the box office; it wasn't so much "ahead of its time" as disastrously premature. Still, it is one of the few science fiction films I know that tries to weave together computer networks and classic myths, and it's far lighter than Gibson's work.
Still...As much as I like Tron, I'm not sure what to make of this guy. I came across this website on a list of "cool websites" my friends are keeping at AA, and must admit this guy blew my mind. At first I was thinking that this fellow must not have many obligations if he has time to put together something like this, but then I started to appreciate the artistry of it. What does it mean, though, that people identify so strongly with a bizarre movie like Tron that they are willing to try their best to re-create the wardrobe? I know that people have been doing the same thing with Trek for decades, but this is the first time I've heard of a "Tronnie." What's really bizarre about Tronnies is the premise of the movie consists of a human being being (not bling bling, thank you very much) transmuted into binary code and shoved inside a computer network. Here is a human being who has transmuted himself into something very similar to a literary representation of a "program," then transmuted his image into binary code and shipped it out across a computer network (the Internet).
Am I alone in seeing the irony of this???
Anyway, back to beer.
Human?
Insightful post, though it assumes (of course) that he actually *is* human. We only have a bit-streamed representation of him after all.
And, for the record, big Tron fan here. I teach it in my cyberlit course, paired with The Matrix, to discuss cyberspace before and after the GUI (Graphical User Interface). Matches nicely with a discussion of cyberspace in Neurmancer and Snow Crash for the same reasons...
Tron
Thanks for responding, Barclay!
I really love Tron, too. Of course, as a would-be videogame scholar from an Engl dept., I'm intensely interested in those nice intersections between books/videogames and films/videogames. I read Neuromancer, but it didn't do much for me, I'm afraid. A little too posty for my tastes; there are lots of short stories on similar subjects published in Asimov's, Analog, or F&SF that hit the same themes with more precision, methinks.
I bought the special edition Tron DVD and showed it to my class this semester for the "writing about lit" project. Big mistake. They HATED the movie and kept making fun of it. I finally told them flat-out that this was one of my fave movies and their comments were severely pissing me off. That did the trick! :-)