Entertainment
The Peripheral Show, It’s a Futuristic Show Inspired By Ancient Fears
(CTN News) – New sci-fi thriller The Peripheral Show has sound-wave guns that can crack your ribs, androids that will kill you, and even tea that attracts killer bees. It’s still rooted in ancient anxiety, no matter how futuristic it gets.
It’s no secret that we’ve mistrusted actors from the moment they stepped on stage, a term called antitheatricality. According to Plato, since everything on Earth is a copy of God’s ideal form, acting is doubly debased since it’s a copy of a copy.
Eventually, On The Peripheral Show, early Christian leaders argued we invite sin into our souls just by mimicking sinful actions. Hundreds of years passed like that. No matter what the reason, the goal was always to stop people from performing.
It worked for a while. Theatre was outlawed on every continent and in every era. There was fundamental disapproval of actors.
As late as 1939, Yale University banned musical comedy even when Hollywood was making stars out of performers. A lot of productions were shut down for being obscene around the country.
That kind of prejudice can’t be simply swept away – not when it’s been around since the beginning of time. Take a look at all the famous actors who say their profession is stupid or how performance artists rile the whole country up.
We worry about acting’s power to harm even in our essential debates about representation in casting – about who should portray whom and why. It doesn’t matter how much we love performing or watching performances, this fear will always follow.
That’s great news for storytellers. It’s basically about being tricked by someone who looks like a regular person in a body-snatcher movie.
It’s also unnerving to see a young person performing as an adult in comedies like Freaky Friday and Big, which feature shapeshifters and twins who switch identities.
The Peripheral Show modernizes that tradition. A fantasy series that is based on a novel by William Gibson, Flynne Fisher (Chloe Grace Moretz) earns extra money by playing virtual reality video games that transport her to realistic worlds.
The Peripheral Show’s episodeÂ
In the first episode of The Peripheral Show, she takes on the role of a WWII-era soldier, and her strategic thinking helps her teammates.
Flynne has been taking on her avatar’s identity for fun and profit, and it hasn’t hurt anyone. The twist is that she plays these games on The Peripheral Show as her brother Burton (Jack Reynor), but she doesn’t tell the other players she’s impersonating him.
I think that’s a second layer of acting in The Peripheral Show. But again, it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Everyone’s happy as long as they keep winning.
That’s when things get complicated. Burton gets the chance to play something new when a mysterious group notices his skill. He’ll make a fortune if he wins.
Burton’s sister pretends to be him since he’s not the gifted player. Her consciousness gets sucked decades into the future when she wears a special headset sent by the shadowy employer, where she inhabits an android that looks just like her brother.
It takes her a while to adjust her voice and mannerisms to make her performance believable, but before she can congratulate herself, she realizes she’s not playing a game. She’s supposed to do terrible things inside the cyborg Burton.
You can almost hear Plato telling her that. There’s no way Flynne would have ended up in such a terrifying place if she hadn’t been so far removed from her own identity.
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