What Can Virtual Reality Do That Books Can't?

Upon watching “Crossing the Line: Untold Stories of Refugees”, I was particularly drawn to the story of two women who had come to America to seek asylum from the rampant gang violence in Mexico; but when night fell at the border, they told by a border agent to go to Mexican immigration that night and come back the next day. After fruitless pleading, they returned to Mexican immigration. The people there called the two women a taxi which, they discovered upon boarding, was affiliated with The Gulf Cartel. That same night the two women were kidnapped. One recalls being held hostage for 18 days. She has been held in an immigration detention for over a year and her case is still pending.

Something I have heard this year more than ever is students claiming they don’t enjoy reading because they can’t form pictures in their heads. That the words aren’t enough. I think virtual reality is a sufficient response to this growing mentality. Especially in “Crossing the Line”, hearing a story directly from the source’s mouth and seeing it illustrated all around you eliminates the need for excess imagination or brain power. It is a somewhat sad ideation, but if someone truly can’t enjoy literature due to the inability to imagine, then virtual reality might be a feasible solution.

Response to VR

The biggest “wow” moment for me was in the video “Syrians Trapped by War” when Mashallah was telling her story of her experiences with the war and her emotions at the time. Her story alone would have been compelling and probably still would have been my “wow” moment but seeing it in VR only amplified my experience and made it all the more moving. Being able to get a good sense of the world that she lives in and imagining how different her setting and home would have been if not for the war was really moving. I think that VR is the best way to see these stories about refugees because no one can know how it feels to be in their shoes unless they are in the same situation. No one that’s not a refugee could ever comprehend having to pick up everything and leave their home but VR allows you to come as close as possible to putting you in their shoes. By being able to turn around and visualize more of the world refugees live in, the viewer can get a full sense of the weight of their stories because they can see the sadness, and the struggle, and the perseverance of everyone in the area and not just the speaker.

VR Experience

After watching the first VR video, I truly realized how much many of us do not know what is going on in the rest of the world. I especially felt the realness of it all because it was a VR experience. Becoming immersed in their world opened my eyes to many problems that make ours look more bleak. I could not help but empathize with the children who lost almost everything they had from their families to their homes and view how they keep carrying on with their lives. The video also makes me appreciate my life and all that I have in it because it could always be worse.

My experiences with the VR

While watching the Virtual Reality videos of the refugees, I was really impacted. Unlike watching a movie, having the video be in virtual reality, I was able to get the feeling of being there with them. Having that experience, although I still am not able to feel empathy towards them because I have never experienced the things they have, I was able to feel a sense of compassion that allowed me to connect to their stories. Although I have never had to deal with adversity like the kids in the video, the video had me connecting to there stories on a level more than I would have thought. Having family members around the world, and knowing that they are going through things, that aren't as drastic, it allows me to connect more on an emotional level because of my relationship with my family. Also having seen what my family lives in compared to what I saw in the video, it made me appreciate the things I have and the people in my life because the video brought to light how things can be taken from you out of nowhere and you can't do anything to change that.

The Experience of VR

The VR experience emphasized a new way a viewing world issues, in this case, immigrants. The headset allowed us to experience the conditions of the immigrants as accurately as possible, besides from actually being in the current situation. The first video I saw showed a house, destroyed, brought to rubble. I couldn’t even bring myself grasp how difficult this situation would be for who’s ever home this belonged to, because I’ve never dealt with an event like this. I could of course understand  how it would be hard for anyone in that situation. Nothing was recognizable of the house. All personal belongings in the house were gone or destroyed. Seeing this up close just highlights how terrible the lives of these people are.

The second video I saw was a group of migrants all on ship in the mediterranean. They were all tightly packed into one small area on the ship, while the workers controlled the rest of the boat, with plenty of room, much more than they needed. The migrants had no room to move around, which was definitely terrifying to those afraid of closed spaces. As I’m just spinning around, getting the whole view of the area, I always take great notice to the large group of migrants, as their position never changes, while the workers are constantly moving. The fact that the migrants were all kept on the lower levels is just that much more degrading. The VR experience is 100% the real experience, but it certainly provides needed realization of what’s really going on in the more troublesome areas in the world.

Refugees in Lebanon

After watching a 360 Virtual Reality video, "The Displaced," I made a connection to a recent trip I took to Lebanon.

My father met and became best friends with a man he was working with on a lawsuit. His name is Bassam Shaheen, and he grew up in Lebanon, up until the terrorizing environments of their civil war, beginning in the 1970s, and now lives in the United States. He was taken by militants and was on the bring on being killed before he was able to convince them that he was indeed on their side. He was forced into being a refugee who had to travel to America in hopes of a better life.

During the summer going into my junior year, my family took a three week trip to Lebanon. We stayed with my dad's friends who had grown up in the country, who now owns a lot of real estate, and has built his dream house. Lebanon is still a third world country facing problems of infrastructure and refugees. Although many parts of the country are very poor, we stayed in an upper class neighborhood full of mansions.

In the video that I watched, Hana is a little girl from Syria who is seeking refuge in Lebanon. She speaks on how the country treats refugees poorly, and they have little care for them.

Upon arriving in Lebanon, our driver, who my dads knows from previous trips, started to speak to us on the topic of Donald Trump, and the travel ban of muslim countries. He told us that he and other citizens of Lebanon agree with Trump's tough stance on immigration, as they see first hand of the problems that they face with an abundance of refugees across their nation.

I was able to experience both sides of the story by watching the VR video, and by going to Lebanon and seeing how the Syrian refugees are treated. I understand the side of the refugees just wanting a better life, but I also get how the citizens feel as though they are being invaded, as refugees flood the streets around the country.

The story of my dad's friends being a former refugee and being able to come back to his country to relive a better life with more opportunities, is very similar to the future aspirations of many refugees that are fighting to live another day. He understands what it felt like to be a refugee and experience the hardships of being unwanted in a different country.

Bassam has also hired Syrians to work on his property, as he is understanding of their experiences. He came up from nothing, having to immigrate to the United States in hopes of a better life, and has risen above expectations by living the American Dream.

A Narrow Reality

In the book Exit West, Mohsin Hamid writes about the refugee crisis. Having never been to the Middle East, or even out of the country for that matter, I was instantly curious about the environment depicted in the book. When Mr. Heidkamp told the class we would be using virtual reality machines, I was immediately intrigued. VR seemed like a perfect opportunity to try out a new piece of technology and get a better picture of the setting of Exit West. However, when it came time to actually watch the videos in the Makerspace, there was a lens that could not be ignored. 

Primarily, something felt inherently wrong about sitting in that space, surrounded by copious amounts of expensive technology, watching videos about refugees. As I heard students in the background giggling and playing with the chairs, I struggled to focus on what I was really watching. I felt guilty watching videos on a topic of such intensity without giving it my full attention. As much as I was supposed to be suspended in VR, I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to close out the noise around me. 

If the problems of noise and technological struggles are eliminated, I am still not sure if virtual reality would successfully fill in the holes of an education in global setting. Because the virtual reality videos are constructed by a creator, whether that be a doctor, from Doctors Without Borders, or a journalist from The New York Times, the videos contain a specific bias. The individuals behind the videos make a conscious choice of what to include and not include, and while that is true in all forms of media, it is important to recognize this is also true in something trademarked by the word "reality". 

Therefore, I think that VR can be useful to get a general look at what is going on in different places, but should not be depended on as the name "virtual reality" seems to suggest.

Listen and You'll Understand

Literature magically allows us to experience a new world and evinces an array of emotions, however, only when we are able to truly visualize one’s circumstances and reality can we truly empathize with others. When reading novels, poems, essays, songs, etc, about heavy topics such as sexual assault, war, poverty, or murder, there are times when I struggle to fully piece together the entire picture. Every adjective, pronoun, and verb used to convey the heaviness of each story is sometimes enough to experience the truly heavy punch to the face when read repeatedly. However, for the majority of the time, it isn’t enough. For me, literature is limited in its ability to convey a story and transport one to another world when it comes to our reality. What’s truly powerful and transporting is our auditory perception. Being able to hear every word spoken by the narrator with their unique accent, frequency, emotion, and volume. Listening to the noises of the environment that gives hints to one’s location, situation, and actions.

Through auditory perception, it allows for a deeper connection with another person on the opposite side of the globe through the emotion the listener experiences, sometimes simultaneously, with the storyteller. The ability to have a VR experience, to listen and see what the narrator saw, truly enhances one’s understanding of the story and our world’s reality. In the video “Clouds Over Sidra”, we meet a young girl named Sidra who is twelve years old and native to the country Syria. Within 8 minutes and 35 seconds, I was able to experience, learn, and relate much more to Sidra than I could’ve reading a paragraph on a white page. The babies crying, the father’s voice, the young students’ cacophony, the gravel scraping across the ground, the screams, the breeze. All of it transported me to her world and made her life more tangible to me, the person all the way on the other side of the world watching, listening, and experience her story and reality.

VR Isn't Empathy

Virtual reality is exciting. It entices us to new experiences, and it symbolizes the revolution of technology in our modern world. For some, though, it can be literally and figuratively dizzying. Especially when paired with a topic as heavy as the migrant plight, I am hesitant to suggest VR to someone who is looking to better his/her understanding of the topic.

It was not my first time using virtual reality headsets when I strapped one onto my head in my English class a few days ago. It most likely would not be the last time, either. As my eyes adjusted to the somewhat blurry picture, I saw the title of the video: The Displaced. As I had been given background on what I was going to watch, I thought the title was clever and poignant. It had captured my attention, and the allure of VR had worked its magic and made me excited to continue watching. Here, I caution the audience to recognize that "excitement" is not the emotion they may expect someone to feel before watching a video about the not-so-pretty tales of migrant children. But nonetheless, there I was.

As I continued watching, I could not find myself to focus so much on the children's stories as I could the heavy box weighing on my cheeks and the captions that required me to physically turn my body to read. Sure, I absorbed the story, and I understand that this blog should be centered around that. However, I find myself challenged to do so when the VR experience was so much on its own that I could not fully articulate a deeper understanding of the refugees' situations. And however I may wish to sympathize -- for I do not feel capable of empathizing, as I do not know their experiences for myself -- I think that in what was supposed to be the most real and raw way to see their lives, I found myself distracted and annoyed with the device I was using.

So what I must say of my takeaways, from the parts I was able to focus on, is that the children in the video are our near-polar opposites. We attempt to feel what they feel through a video on our phones, and a piece of technology only available to the most advanced. They, on the other hand, are perhaps some of the most non-materialistic humans I have ever seen. Among the rubble of what was once their homes and neighborhoods, the video ended on clips of the kids explaining how they find fulfillment and happiness in each other's presence, without a piece of tech in site. I think we have a lot to learn from them.