A Series on Cronenberg's Filmography: eXistenZ and Reality as Technology

I have been working on several essays about Cronenberg's filmography for some time now. One of my favorite films will always be Naked Lunch (his adaptation of Burroughs's harrowing novel of the same name), as it remains to date one of the most interesting complex films I have seen. Many of his other films feel similar, and develop on similar themes. I hope my next couple posts will unpack some of these themes and explore some of Cronenberg's films. Here we will begin with eXistenZ, one of his more challenging and (in my opinion) underrated endeavors into the world of technology and reality.

eXistenZ might become most interesting when viewed as radically metaphorical: it pulls us to question the fundamental possibility of assessing any aspect of the film as reality or game at all, lending itself to a full metaphorical reading of our current relationships to the 'real' and the 'virtual'. With this radical view in mind, metaphor and symbolism become the motivating forces behind the meaning derived, rather than attempting to surmise meaning from a face-value reading of the plot -- a plot which, most will agree, is confusingly convoluted. If anything, the unique convulsions that this film sends it's plot through might derive itself precisely from the strong sense of metaphorical -- rather than strictly realistic or intentional -- purpose. When metaphor and symbolism takes the helm of the plot (twisting and turning), we are called to look for repeated ideas, images, and their contextual re-appearance within the fabric of (what feels like) the reality of the film.

What do we find in eXistenZ, what fabric unfolds around the images in this appearance of the game world? We find a world, first, that resists spacial and temporal contingency, a world that melts and blends across experiences and plots, a world which mutilates any sense of a contingent real time. Through this (second) we find a world in which symbolic items seem to jump between plots, a world in which key pieces of dialogue -- "death to the... !" -- flows from mouth to mouth around the dialogical landscape and a world in which character's quickly becomes confused as to their own relationship to reality. Ultimately, within these unclear traces of thematic content -- we find a breakdown of sorts, a dissemination of reality across the profoundly non-real, the real and the virtual in union. We find, I think, some sort of metaphorical technology, some sort of half told truth (can it ever be fully told?) about humanities relationship between technological mediation of reality and our perceived access to the truth that lies in the eternal Real outside of the virtual space. 

Is the fleshy devise -- one that must be connect directly to the nervous system (the electrical agency of the human corpse) -- not the perfect metaphor for technological space? To play the game (to attend to universal rules, to follow predetermined plot points, to enact certain certainties), one gives the divide one's own power, one's own energy. In doing so, one's neurology, one's physical and cognitive form maps into a matrix external of oneself. Is this not the metaphor for the technological space (social media algorithms, the video game techno-vitutal-landscape, the verisimilitudinous world of film, the linguistic mirage of the book, the controlled measure of the algorithmic speech) which one must plug -- give -- themselves to, grafting themselves to something perceived of external, yet, intimately and immediately, becoming internal, spacing the space and world around virtual until the fleshy devise is all that mediates any relationship to anything? In other words, is not the fleshy devise not simply a bio-technological representation of our own in ability to escape direct connection to the virtual, our inability to escape to the Real?

In this reading, the Real is lost fully into the architecture of the game, into the neural system of the bio-technological devise. There never is or was a place when one was not technologically mediated (at least, not any more). If Naked Lunch (Cronenberg's opus on addiction and writing) is a specific exemplification how writing structures the individual's experience, eXistenZ might best be seen as a more general exploration of how technological structuring commands our interrelation with what we perceive as real. It is the general attempt to categorize technology (in metaphor), allowing us to see how technology (in it's most general form: the technology of language, writing, ideology, religion, tools) allows for the extensions of our perceived human reality. Ultimately, we might see the game as the only reality by which people can engage with the world -- "hey, tell me the truth... are we still in the game?" -- one that we never know if we have escaped (this is the profound radical movement we might see in opposition to the more traditional (binary) technological understanding, forwarded by The Matrix among other films; asleep/awake, real/fake are both profoundly uninteresting and seemingly reductive in the face of technological complexity). The limits, the bounds of the game world are, for all intents and purposes of game players, profoundly unknown. Once one is in the realm of the game -- and importantly: when do Geller and Pikul enter the game?; aren't we always already within the game world; can we ever identify the "start" of our experience (much like we can't identify the start of a dream)? -- one cannot find the bounds; they cannot simply escape, their neurological reality has merged fully with technological expression of the game-world and has always already been merged with this reality.

Even this reading -- the idea that one cannot "disconnect" from the virtuality of our technologically mediated world -- is not nearly simple enough within the film: evolution, technological expansion and development, must be accounted for. Early on, Geller comments that all game designers and biopod makers came from the county, in a rather confusing off hand remark. We might take this as an implication that technology (the hammer, the word) started simply "in the country"; mediation of the world started with simple origins. Yet now, the technologically mediated reality grows and shifts far past these humble origins: for Cronenberg, the mutation is a metaphor for this, as the two headed reptile becomes a "sign of the times" and mutated trout eggs begin to offer new ways to make new game pods. Coorperation take over old ways, and new ideas becomes muddled and confused. Infections spread, mutations allow for new modes of competition between two tech companies and humans are placed at the whim and will of the technological machine, the ever-changing systems, which become more intimate, to the point that the come within you. Different understandings of the use of technology infect other technologies, which intern infect people. Those people, in turn, rationalize -- create (binary) structures -- around the expansive incomprehensible world: victory for realism is meaningless in the end, because the film never establishes realism  as a possibility (again remember the end of the film); the only meaning that can mean anything is the constant engagement and recreation of technological worlds. We see this most explicitly towards the end of the film, when they are revealed to be playing tranCendenZ: existence itself has morphed into this sort of technologically transcendent experience, something beyond direct experience of the world. The evolving infective evolution of technology structures human relationships: espionage, polarization, corporate confusion, betrayal... all become common place within the world in which nothing can stop the strange external internality of technology, the strange way in which the devise, which feels so external to our experience, is actually the only thing that makes up our insides, changing us with each evolution. 

The metaphor that the film inscribes feels expansive in this way: it deals with technology generally in a way few movies manage to. Cronenberg repeatedly shows that he a master of tonal -- also thanks to Howard Shore's excellent scores -- and metaphorical film making (rather than film-making focused on plot exclusively). Those that critique Cronenberg's films -- especially films like eXistenZ -- for having weak storytelling, might be missing the point: creating a sense of metaphorical mystery in the seemingly benign and everyday is exactly (and maybe the only way) by which we can step back and attempt to assess the world as it is. Yet, even this might fail. If we are never able to escape the game (as I interpret from the end of the film) can we ever fully step back and out to "see the world as it really is"? Cronenberg's twisting gooey metaphors even manage this I think, by undermining premises, creating holes and loosing ideas. Because, there is no seeing the film as it really is -- the film is profoundly imperfect which makes it all the better -- just as there is no seeing the world as it really is. Finally, however, we might try, even if it might be impossible. I think this might be Cronenberg's feat as a director and writer: he establishes the impossible task of assessing the whole objective world and then attempts it anyway.