Realism and Reality

Intermediated realism is just a set of tropes.

Explosions don't go bang in space, don't expand in a vacuum with billowing clouds. Yet, an audience considers these visual tropes to be more realistic than reality would be.

We build our expectations of reality on our experiences. We've seen explosions in the atmosphere, so that is the way explosions should look, even in computer graphic renderings of outer space beyond our atmosphere.

This natural tendency to confuse realism with reality gets dicey as our experience becomes increasingly intermediated. Just as it is hard to find a feature film these days that isn't more influenced by a century of cinematic practice than it is by the drama it portrays, it is also difficult to find expectations about realism that are not based on what we've seen in movies and TV.

Therefore, realism that is reality based is very likely to be rejected by audiences. People want realism that looks like what they have already seen and heard in movies.

This is why I say the Matrix is already here. Western consumer culture has moved into an intermediated bubble, especially for children.

You still have the option to "keep your boots muddy," as Bo Landin says. Kids should be playing in the mud long before they get to play with an iPad.