The Matrix; eXistenZ

written in 2000

PLUGGING IN: The Matrix and eXistenZ

Two films that came out in 1999, The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers) and eXistenZ (David Cronenberg), both deal with the fine line between reality and perception, real life and virtual life, by showing characters that plug in and find a whole new world out there. On a superficial level, both movies seem to have a similar understanding of "plugging in," introducing clueless male characters who find themselves, suddenly and uncontrollably, swept away into a hostile world they do not understand, in which they are pursued by unknown enemies. On a deeper level, the films' treatment of reality and perception are at best divergent, if not completely oppositional.

Are We Here, Are We There, Are We Elsewhere?

The action in The Matrix begins when Paul Anderson, aka Neo (Keanu Reeves), is contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), a messenger for Morpheus (Laurence Fishborne), who is offering to show him just what the Matrix is. Neo is puzzled, to say the least, when he shows up at work the next day and is sought and captured by agents. Agents are similarly-dressed (dark suit & tie, complete with black sunglasses indoors) authority figures that protect the Matrix, a program written by evil robots to keep mankind down by providing the illusion of a pleasant life.

What starts the action in eXistenZ is the death threat to Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a famous game-designer, who has to flee with Ted Pikul (Jude Law), clueless marketing employee, in tow. Ted does not have the requisite bioport (an opening into the base of the spine) to play the game, nor has any idea who wants Allegra killed, and lacks the skills to protect Allegra or himself.

When the films start distinguishing between real life and the virtual, their differences start becoming apparent. In The Matrix, it is revealed that Neo has been living in a "constructed world" which is not real. He can take the red pill and find himself on the other side, the "real world," on a quest for The Truth that shall set him free. The boundaries between the two worlds are distinct; while passing from one to another is possible, the transition is always marked with a unmistakable shift in the environment. After taking the pill, Paul Anderson switches from being an employee of Metacortex Industries, living in a small studio, into Neo, the techie equivalent of the Second Coming of Christ, who wears tattered clothes and lives in a hovercraft with fellow subverters. Any time Neo or the others on the ship go back into the Matrix, they are shown plugging in, traveling through the datascape, represented by green neon numbers, and ending up in the Matrix. There is always a linear transition, going into and coming out of the "simulated world."

While boundaries are present in The Matrix, that is not the case for eXistenZ. By the end of the film, we realize that the story we have been following as "real" until the last few minutes was only a game, and is thus yet another level in levels of perception and existence. In eXistenZ, there is no clear delineation between layers of reality; the transitions are vaguely marked and disorienting, the game characters indistinguishable from "real" ones, and everyone is a potential traitor.

Us vs. Them, or They're All After Me

The matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. You look around and what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters... the very people whose minds we are trying to save. But until we do, these minds are a part of the system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand many of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inert and so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it. If you're not one of us, you're one of them.
-Morpheus to Neo, in the simulation program

Distinguishing between the good and the bad is never a difficulty in The Matrix, even as the film tries to instill a false sense of paranoia in order to create and maintain suspense. Because of their susceptibility to agent takeovers, all humans raised in the pods that are still plugged in are to be avoided (not that there is much temptation coming from them anyway), and everyone on the ship is a friend. Even when betrayal occurs, it is always in terms of black and white, whereas in eXistenZ, there is no "us vs. them."

By the end of eXistenZ, we find out that the game being tested is transCendenZ by PilgrImage, designed by Yevgeny Nourish, and not eXistenZ by Antenna Research, designed by Allegra Geller. Up until that point, the viewer is led to believe that the players are in a game called eXistenZ. It turns out that the twelve people playing transCendenz --who are not "plugged in" physically but through brain waves-- have been imagining a game by introducing different themes, ideas, and plot points. A game in which a game designer, Allegra Geller, is on the run because people want to destroy her latest creation, eXistenZ. Moreover, there is no way of telling whether one's in the game or not, who is a friend or enemy. On the other hand, because the viewer is led to believe that the people playing eXistenZ are real (and not characters the people playing transCendenz have assumed), I believe it is still valid to discuss the imaginary game, eXistenZ, which takes up a large chunk of screen time.

Clean, Pure and White; Squishy, Squirmy and Bloody

I have a phobia of my body being penetrated... surgically. You know what I mean!
-Ted Pikul to Allegra Geller, upon her suggestion that he get a bioport

The mode of "plugging in" in both The Matrix and eXistenZ is through the physical insertion of a foreign object into the body. In NeoÍs case, it is a sharp needle that goes into the back of his neck, tapping into his spinal cord, connecting him to a mainframe that inserts him into the "simulation program." In Ted's case, it is an "umbicord" that plugs into the base of his spine through his "bioport," connecting him to an organic "game pod" to which other players are also attached. Admittedly, the insertion of a physical biomorphic/electronic device into a hole in one's body, bringing them a step closer to being a human-machine hybrid, i.e. a cyborg, is highly sexual. This sexuality is addressed --some would say exploited to the fullest power-- in eXistenZ, while The Matrix remains prudishly quiet upon this issue. The only suggestion of sexuality in The Matrix is the woman in a red dress which Mouse has designed for the simulation program. A femme fatale, she distracts Neo with her flirtatious gaze, leaving him unprepared by the agent that emerges right behind him. Aside from this "castrating" pinup, there are no other references to sexuality, if one does not consider the testosterone-fueled shootout scenes where Trinity and Neo blow everything to pieces.

eXistenZ, on the contrary, contains many sexual themes: the male fear of penetration; a writhing biomorphic port that comes in a fleshy pink color, complete with nipple that "turns it on," and dies as an infected, gangrenous creature shot to pieces by a mad soldier; a bioport at the base of the spine into which one can insert various objects, least of which is a lubricated umbicord. Additionally, everything that is presented to the viewer in eXistenZ is unclean, non-sterile and impure, quite the opposite from what one would expect from a digital game. In eXistenZ sex occurs in the backroom of a game shop, two-headed mutant creatures come as the daily special in a Chinese restaurant, a slimy gun is constructed of animal bone once the meat and skin is removed, shooting human teeth as ammunition, spores infect the game factory in which workers perform surgery on mutant amphibians to construct game pods. In every scene, Cronenberg makes sure the viewer is confronted with something dripping, slurping, sucking, or penetrating, and not by accident. Mark Dery, when writing about the Terminator films in Escape Velocity, mentions "the foul female affluvia," equating liquidity and flexibility with femininity. eXistenZ is dripping with it.

The Cave vs. the Hall of Mirrors

At the end of the twentieth century, the site of social and political contestation is increasingly the symbolic order. Far from being a limited technology, virtual reality, we have discovered, is a trope for our current cultural condition. In the multiple worlds of postmodernity, there is nothing that is not virtual because everything is always already mediaized. When webs expand to become worldwide, both their strengths and weaknesses grow exponentially. Paradoxically, the networks that sustain us are also the structures that threaten us. As we struggle to negotiate the tensions within which we are suspended, it is necessary to resist every temptation to view these networks in either utopian or dystopian terms. Between the real and the ideal lies the strange spacing of the virtual. Neither real nor nonreal, the virtual is something else, something other, something that remains fraught with opportunity as well as danger.
-Mark C. Taylor, Hiding

The shifts in The Matrix are clear, and it is very easy to know which world that the characters are in. In the "real world" they are in the hovercraft, avoiding destructive robots and trying to save humanity. In the "simulated world" they are dressed stylishly in black garb, move sleekly and swiftly through the landscape of a metropolitan city. In fact, the world view represented in The Matrix is that of Plato and the Allegory of the Cave.

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato discusses the people chained within a cave, with their backs turned to the entrance, watching a shadow play and believing what they see is reality. Plato believes that in order to attain The Truth, one must break free of his chains, whether by will or by force, and get out of the cave to see the light of the sun. The liberated person, he notes, will be temporarily blinded by the rays, but in the end, he will know Reality. The argument in The Matrix is almost identical to the Allegory of the Cave: the Matrix is the cave, the chains are the pods that bind the people, the shadows are the illusion draped over their eyes, the "real world" is the outside of the cave, the fact that robots have been controlling humans-the blinding light. That is why Neo reacts so strongly when confronted with the news about the robot-human war, and its consequences. Consider this exchange between Morpheus and Neo, for example:

-Do you want to know what [the Matrix] is? The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. (...) It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from The Truth.
-What truth?
-That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no-one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Another explanation that Morpheus offers Neo, which I have quoted earlier ("You have to understand many of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inert and so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.") echoes Plato's Allegory as well, noting that people might not always be willing to be brought into the sunshine.

Of course, it is equally easy to detect traces of Christian theology in Morpheus's argument. Like the missionaries who thought it their duty to civilize the "savages," ensuring their salvation by converting them to Christianity (sometimes against their own will), Neo and Morpheus undertake a mission to save their fellow humans.

The shifts in eXistenZ are subtler, and less easy to figure out, so much so that in the end, the characters, and possibly the viewer, is left wondering which one is the real world, if there is one at all. This is the point made by Baudrillard in his book, Simulation and Simulacra.

The world of eXistenZ is tainted with what Allegra calls "The Reality Bleedthrough Effect," when there are no clear boundaries between the real and the levels of simulation. The viewer, as well as the characters in eXistenZ, the game, can no longer accurately know where they are, whether they are in the game or not. Their condition is what Baudrillard describes as the simulacra as the real, not imitating, but replacing reality altogether:

To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending: "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littré). Therefore pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary."

In eXistenZ, people start off from what is assumed to be "real life" and willingly move onto the virtual life. The levels of reality are quite undistinguishable in the film, with the implicit assumption that one can no longer know what is "real." In The Matrix, what people think is their "real" life is actually their "virtual" life. In their "real" lives, they are slaves. Even though the people who live in the Matrix do not know their "real" lives, they are not confused about the real and the virtual. If one of them is to become confused, as Neo does, there is a solution that will clarify the confusion, to separate the two: the red pill. There is no such easy cure in eXistenZ, nothing that will tell the players what is real, and what is the game.

The game created by the twelve people playing transCendenZ, that is, eXistenZ, allows users to connect to an organic pod which contains the game, and networks the players. Plugging directly into the spinal cord via "bioport," eXistenZ provides direct sensory stimulation, and ends when you plug out of the game. In The Matrix, the rebels plug in through the base of the neck (again, the spinal cord) and disconnect when their virtual selves are transported back through the phone line.

In The Matrix, there is still substance to the individual that has to be transported through a medium, namely, phone lines. In eXistenZ there is no substance to the individual in the game, so you can kill someone but they'll still be alive in real life, unless you mixed the levels and got confused as to whether you're in real life, virtual life, or somewhere in between. If you die or are attacked while you're hacked into the Matrix, your real life body suffers the consequences, not just psychologically but also physically.

We're Both Technophobes, But We're Scared of Different Things

Cronenberg is critical of the blurring of the boundaries between real life and game life, or virtual life. He seems not to be a fan of video games, which suck their users into a world of blood and pulp, and eventually confuse them to the extent that they can no longer identify whether they are in a game or not. The threat as eXistenZ sees it, is that we are becoming schizophrenic characters with no central identity, no bearings, no connection to reality. If Cronenberg were to be labeled as a technophobe, it might be too strong; as I think he is critical rather than fearful, he could probably be considered techno-averse.

The Matrix is technophobic on an altogether different plane. If the viewers are to believe that the only way robots in the twenty-second century can generate energy is by farming humans so they can absorb their pithy 120V, they are in for quite a suspension of disbelief. Then again, in a film that is built on the premise that Keanu Reeves would make a believable (intelligent) computer programmer, that might not be asking for too much.

© 2001 Melis Alemdar. Comments? Email me.

/End Matrix eXistenZ