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In the scenic, Walt Disney inspired "Homesteads", the family unit and children's innocence come under attack from advancements in new technology to create a disturbing look at exploitative daytime talk shows, online predators and clueless parents with their siblings, rebellious angst. As we listen to the contestants they confess their own harrowing experiences, each one more traumatic than the last; crying, audience anguish and theme music, punctuate the carefully crafted narratives delivering unto us an entertaining film script filled with monsters, sunflowers, manicured gardens, horror stories, cockroaches, people on fire, garbage and people pissing on themselves. The anti-verse that unfolds before our eyes asks us to reflect on how we function as a society in response to these new real and virtual spaces of interaction, how we might respond to the political dimensions of these expanded sites of inhabitation, and how they might also represent a more troubling scenario for the possibility of dissent or opposition in our media saturated culture.

Tags: child abuse chris howlett computers conservatism Dr. Phil family grooming ideology internet rape machinima new media oprah postmodernism trauma