A second-person narrative is a storytelling style that directly addresses the reader using the pronoun 'you,' casting them as a character within the story and fostering a sense of immediacy, intimacy, and immersion. Although often dismissed as unnatural by both professional and non-professional readers, some cultural producers have consistently embraced the second-person narrative as a tool for artistic experimentation and political expression. For instance, novelists like Italo Calvino have written works that challenge authoritative narrative structures and highlight the reader’s agency through the use of a second-person narrative. Recently, second-person narratives have gradually gained prominence, particularly with the advent of digital art forms such as virtual reality (VR). This narrative style has been used to foster deeper empathy and understanding among viewers by immersing them in the experiences of victim-survivors of various injustices. For example, American journalist Nonny de la Peña’s Project Syria (2016), a short VR documentary that recreates the experiences of Syrian refugee children during the civil war, transforms the viewer into both a character and a second-person observer, allowing them to vicariously experience the children’s pain and sorrow.

Building on the political potential of second-person narratives, some cultural works have taken bold steps to address highly sensitive and controversial topics, such as sexual violence. Two such works stand out for their innovative approach—depicting rape through immersive second-person narratives—encouraging critical reflection on the complex relationship between victim-survivors of sexual violence and consumers of related artistic works. One example is director Gina Kim’s Comfortless Trilogy, which addresses the issue of U.S. military-centered prostitution in South Korea (commonly referred to as camp town prostitution). In Kim’s trilogy, a viewer also becomes an observer-character and repeatedly experiences moments of oneness with the character of a camp town sex worker, vicariously feeling her suffering from sexual violence as if it were their own. For instance, in the second film, Soyosan, the viewer wanders through a detention center for camp town sex workers with sexually transmitted infections. Wandering through the remnants of bloody medical equipment, which resemble torture devices, they soon encounter a sex worker and hear unsettling noises—most notably, the sound of her footsteps growing faster and louder, culminating in a sudden thud, as if she has abruptly embraced them. At the moment of this embrace, the viewer hears the final sound of the sex worker leaping from a high floor to commit suicide in the heavy rain, feeling as though they, too, are being compelled to take the plunge with her. This plunge evokes the real suicides of camp town sex workers who could no longer endure the pain of repeated penicillin overdoses to treat STDs, compelling the viewer to acknowledge how unbearable their suffering must have been.

Debunking the general assumption that second-person narratives are rare in conventional literature, Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl (2002) features several scenes in which the reader is temporarily positioned as an observer-character. Although the entire narrative is told by the camp town sex worker-protagonist herself, when she recounts her rape by American G.I.s, she does so as though it happened to someone else, adopting the perspective of a nearby observer. This narrative shift is not uncommon among feminist writers and is more than a stylistic choice, as it reflects the protagonist’s psychological dissociation and externalizes the trauma. By adopting this perspective, the protagonist’s experience becomes simultaneously distanced and shared: distanced from herself as she assumes the role of a detached observer, and shared with the reader, who is drawn into the scene by standing alongside this new observer and ultimately adopting the same observer role. This blurring of narrative boundaries reduces the usual distance between narrator and reader, compelling the latter to confront the broader implications of violence and complicity. The reader, now positioned as a silent participant, becomes enmeshed in the story’s moral and emotional landscape, unable to detach from the narrative’s weight.

Given the widespread amnesia surrounding U.S. military-centered prostitution in both South Korea and the United States, the second-person narratives of The Comfortless Trilogy and Fox Girl can be seen as a reasonable attempt to evoke compassion, empathy, and solidarity among viewers and readers. However, these narrative strategies also carry ethical risks that warrant critical examination, as they reinforce the positionality of the viewer and reader as subjects while perpetuating the very structures of othering and objectification of camp town sex workers that they ostensibly seek to challenge.

First, immersion in VR operates through what Samuel Coleridge describes as the “willing suspension of disbelief.” This process begins when the viewer perceives a graphically constructed virtual reality as genuinely existent by engaging with it through their bodily senses. The more vividly these sensory experiences are felt, the deeper the immersion becomes, and the subjectivity of the viewer is further reinforced.

Accordingly, the more the viewer momentarily forgets themselves and attempts to empathize with the suffering of camp town women as if it were their own, the more their subjectivity is paradoxically amplified. This paradox is also evident in Fox Girl. The novel’s use of a second-person portrayal of the sexual violence and suffering of camp town sex workers can inadvertently transform the audience into voyeurs. This reinforces a dynamic of spectatorship, reduces the women’s experiences to consumable sensations, and ultimately objectifies their trauma for artistic or political purposes. Similarly, The Comfortless Trilogy compels the viewer to “feel” the pain of these women as if it were their own, further reducing their suffering to a consumable experience.

Both works, through their immersive second-person narratives, risk amplifying the “us vs. them” dynamic. By immersing a presumably non-Korean audience in the lives of Korean camp town sex workers, the works might unintentionally frame these women as symbols of suffering rather than as complex individuals. This framing risks reinforcing their otherness rather than dismantling it, particularly for audiences unfamiliar with the historical and cultural context of U.S. military-centered prostitution in Korea. Last but not least, while the immersive techniques of these works aim to foster empathy, they may fall short of challenging the audience’s implicit positionality of power. This raises important ethical questions about whether such portrayals truly empower the women they depict or serve primarily to provoke a moral awakening in the audience.

Ultimately, second-person narratives, as suggested by the intervening slash in the title, “Subject/ification in Representing Rape through Second-Person Narrative,” do not necessarily foster profound mutual understanding between subject and object. Instead, by immersing the audience in the experiences of others, these narratives paradoxically amplify the subjectivity of the viewer or reader, making the object—the camp town sex workers—subject to the subject’s framework of power and interpretation. As such, despite their initial aim to challenge the boundaries between subject and object, second-person narratives become complicit in perpetuating the very structures of othering and objectification they claim to critique.

This paper examines Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads TV monologue series in its first (1988), second (1998), stage adaptation (1991) and remake (2020) manifestations, showing how it reflects the changing cultural psyche of (mostly) female North England Britons during the period from Thatcherism to Brexit and Covid Lockdown in the UK. Addressing the plight of individuals suffering loss, isolation, marital trauma, or mental health problems in a society that is gradually abandoning its responsibility to take care of them, the monologues are notable for the way they show how their subjects are affected by the gradually deteriorating social environment. In 1988 the mood is reflective, nuanced, and understated; the speakers uncomprehendingly innocent and naive in their self-made prisons. By 1998 however, the tone has darkened; personal entrapment has a darker and often criminal aspect, articulated through bitingly witty and sarcastic repudiation. Finally, when the series was remade by the BBC in 2020, at the time of the Covid lockdown, new actors rework the monologues from their millennial perspective, reflective of the anger and frustration of an increasingly disaffected and alienated community. This gradual evolution of social malaise, apparent not only in Bennett’s thirty-year-old monologues, but in their performance, raises the question of whether drama’s role in society is representative or proactive. Bennett’s Talking Heads constitutes a valuable addition to this debate, showing the effect of social and political degeneration on a previously unvoiced section of the geopolitical community.

This essay examines the interplay between artificial intelligence (A.I) and human identity in Thomas Gibbons’ Uncanny Valley and Martin Crimp’s Not One of These People. Both plays delve into the complexities of human relationships in a technologically advanced world, highlighting the ethical dilemmas and existential questions raised by AI. Gibbons introduces Julian, an A.I character whose struggle for acceptance challenges traditional notions of humanity and empathy, while Crimp explores the emotional void created by digital communication in Celia's fragmented reality. Through their narratives, both playwrights critique the impact of technology on personal connections, revealing how it often exacerbates feelings of isolation rather than fostering genuine relationships. The essay argues that the essence of humanity lies not merely in biological attributes but in emotional depth and the desire for connection, urging audiences to reconsider what it means to be human in an increasingly mediated world. Ultimately, Uncanny Valley and Not One of These People serve as cultural reflections on the challenges and implications of navigating identity and connection in the face of rapid technological advancement.