“The Girl Who Was Plugged In” By James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) is set in a distant future where advertising has become outlawed by the state. However, some very powerful people were able to find a loophole in this ban and continue to influence society through a kind of surrogate underground project of well . . influencers so to speak. The main antagonist(s) are P. Burke, who is an ugly and disfigured 17-year old female who has just attempted to commit suicide, also against the law, and Delphi the beautiful young influencer roaming the open and beautiful world and is controlled by a physically augmented Burke from a closet 500 feet below the surface of a Pennsylvania town.
The man who proposes the opportunity to the dying Burke is Mr. Cantle. He explains the program, its purpose, and her role in the game as his offer for a life unimaginable and full of admiration sells the young girl into a complex dual reality. His role is to maintain the overall influence over the people in order to remain in capital power over the regular folk. In plain terms, he and the program run by the upper echelon of the society clearly represent capitalism and its influence on modern daily life.
Another key player in the story is Joe. A seemingly more down to earth character who is more representative of the working class, possessing the technical knowledge to run and operate the complex system that makes the program work. Joe is the one who works with Burke throughout her new life underground and aids her in working all of the new connections to the Delphi doll in the “real world”
Finally, there is Mr. Paul Isham who is introduced later in the story, falling in love with and becoming infatuated with Delphi who is seemingly much older at this point. They begin to fall further for one another, and Delphi remains secretive about her situation. Paul eventually discovers the truth behind Delphi and brings her underground to set everything right as rain where he also discovers Burke. He is so disgusted by her physical appearance that he pushes her over and out of the way which in turn kills both his beautiful Delphi and the monstrous Philadelphia Burke.
The world that they live in, although pretty dystopic does not echo too far from contemporary society. The entirety of their culture is spoon fed to the people from a massive corporate group like GTX in the form of these “gods”. This story was written in 1974, set an unknown distance into the future and starts to hit a little too close to home when you think about how the influencer “gods” are just regular people for the most part but have become ads themselves. The connection with the word influencer in tandem with the way she describes the admiration and sway that the celebrities have on the public tied this whole association together for me. Another sentiment from the story is that of discontent with our own self-worth and self-image when we are forced compare ourselves to the barrage of content that floods any and all of our media.
I definitely related to Joe the most in this story. I remember when I was working as a Corporate Video Editor there were definitely jobs that I felt ethically icky about. Have you ran into any of those situations in your line of work? Who do you relate to most?
Oh, absolutely Joe for me as well would be the most relatable. I don’t believe I would fit too well in any of the other hats in the story. We can all at times relate to Burke to some extent as none of us are perfectly satisfied with our world completely. You do not have to be a hideous mecha-mess to feel insecure sometimes! And absolutely have I felt a certain way about my part in a role, I was a meteorologist in the Navy for 9 years. There are still moments where I reflect on that chunk of my life and can’t help but wonder, to what bigger picture did my little morning power point brief contribute to?
I really liked the way you describe the character of Joe. You really showed just how normal he is in comparison to the other characters around him.