John Brownlee

J.G. Ballard's A Guide to Virtual Death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRKqKRSkXFs Via Ballardian, Xander Walker’s adapataion of J.G. Ballard’s short story “A Guide to Virtual Death.” This thing has absolutely zero budget, the narrator stutters and breathes loudly into the mike, but with the text of J.G. Ballard backing it up, its hard to be anything less than worth watching… For reasons amply documented elsewhere, […]

Via Ballardian, Xander Walker's adapataion of J.G. Ballard's short story "A Guide to Virtual Death." This thing has absolutely zero budget, the narrator stutters and breathes loudly into the mike, but with the text of J.G. Ballard backing it up, its hard to be anything less than worth watching...

For reasons amply documented elsewhere, intelligent life on Earth became extinct in the closing hours of the 20th Century. Among the clues left to us, the following schedule of a day’s television programmes transmitted to an unnamed city in the northern hemisphere on December 23, 1999, offers its own intriguing insight into the origins of the disaster

There's genius in the clips that were taken to illustrate some of Ballard's more strange and depressing television programs: "2:30pm: Your Favorite Commercials. Popular-demand re-runs of the golden oldies of television ads. 3:00pm: Housewives' Choice. Rape and how to psychologically prepare yourself."