S/R 3: EXistenZ

S/R 3: EXistenZ

EXistenZ (1999) is a sci-fi film written and directed by David Cronenberg that explores the limits of how we view reality. Based in a future where ordinary people divide their time between ‘reality’ and astonishingly realistic VR game worlds, it opens with the unveiling of eXistenZ — the latest creation by brilliant game designer Allegra Geller — before a specially selected focus group gathered in a country church. EXistenZ, like other VR games, is accessible via organic “game pods” constructed from bits and pieces of farm-raised amphibious mutants, or “trout.” To experience the game, the gamer must ‘plug’ the pod into his or her “bioport,” a surgical hole at the base of the spinal cord. Once the pod is inserted, the game will begin, constructing a fully immersive virtual world complete with sensations, characters, morals, motives, and choices from the collective thoughts, emotions, fears, and aspirations of the participants. As the group prepares to ‘enter’ eXistenZ, an attempt on Geller’s life by a fanatical assassin acting in the name of “the one true reality” thrusts the designer into the ‘protective’ custody of nervous PR intern Ted Pikul. With Pikul, Geller spends the remainder of the movie on the run, trying to learn the identities of those responsible for the conspiracy against her life. Their search for answers leads them in and out of eXistenZ, where they quickly become embroiled in a ‘virtual’ version of the very conspiracy they have been trying to uncover, eventually losing all sense of where the ‘virtual’ world of eXistenZ ends and the ‘real’ world of existence begins. In the final scene, they appear back at the church, and it is ‘revealed’ that they have been in another game the entire time — this once called tranCendenZ — that neither one of them is actually a famous designer — and finally, that they themselves are the very assassins they’d been trying to catch.

One of the more interesting themes in EXistenZ is that of violence. I never was particularly convinced by arguments suggesting a link between video games and violent behavior; it always seemed to me that the gulf between the world of the game and reality was too great to result in any confusion over the distinction between gunning down cops in Grand Theft Auto and firing an actual weapon at an actual flesh-and-blood person. But Cronenberg’s film presents a very different picture of the distinction — or lack thereof — beween virtual and ‘actual’ violence. Throughout, violent actions are portrayed in an exaggerated, cartoonish fashion, presumably in an attempt to emulate the over-the-top, cartoon violence of video games and low-budget sci-fi movies. While initially comical, these cartoon portrayals become gradually more disturbing as the movie progresses and the characters become increasingly unsure of what’s ‘real’ and what’s not. Pikul makes the first kill, dispatching Gas at the filling station as he is about to kill Geller. We assume, at this point, that he is not in the game — that he is, in fact, in ‘reality’ and that he just did, in fact, kill a ‘real’ person. But ironically, even though Pikul’s next kill — the Chinese waiter — is a character in the game, his death is easily the goriest and most disturbing in the film. We feel more for him than we do for Gas, as his death makes considerably less sense. By leaving us with no perceptible distinction between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ and forcing us to witness acts of violence that could belong to either category, Cronenberg effectively turns our fascination with ‘virtual’ violence around on us with an emphatic twist, reminding us that what’s ‘virtual’ and what’s ‘real’ might not be so different after all.