Behind the intriguing down-the-rabbit-hole story of Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), one is confronted with some disturbing imagery that can be erotic or terrifying, or both. The strength of these images is linked to a special bond that humans (tool-using apes) have with the technologies that come to define them. Cronenberg makes one question our conceptions of the human conscience when game architect Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) creates a virtual reality game that taps into the player's mind and is so real that they cannot distinguish it from reality.
Just as the sociological imagination places an individual within the context of his/her position within the structures of society (ie. job, age, wealth) giving him/her options and limitations to possible actions, the “self” created within/by the video game creates the concept of society in a very tangible way. Ted Pikul (Jude Law) is reluctant to be taken into the "game" by Geller and is forced to act in ways the game tells him to. For instance, he is forced into an erotic situation with Geller in order to progress the game. Of course, we find ourselves in situations where we have to progress by doing one thing or the other, but we always have the illusion of self-determination. The binary between the real and the fake becomes blurred when we see that what we would call “reality” is subject to some of the same rules as video games.
Clearly not "just a game," EXistenZ offers an alternative reading of biology. While biotechnology is an empirical new frontier of science, growing out of this field is “biology as technology,” a new frontier of social science.
Out of the many powerful images Cronenberg presents is that of the “gun organism” – a gun made out of a creature’s organs rearranged. There were also mutated organisms that underwent surgery to become “game devices” like nintendo controllers but with protruding appendages and a beating heart.
It’s this radical new reading of technology that blurs the line between humanism and post-humanism because rather than the human or the machine being the focus, it is some hybrid of the two. What is human and what is machine is now questioned.
Cronenberg draws upon the concept of Cartesian Dualism – That the mental and the material comprise two different classes of substance and; each can have causal effects on the other. Characters had to deal with differing engagement with the game. The game player would remain immobile and appear lethargic while emerged in an active game much in the way a movie audience is even though they may be thinking actively. The creation of a second self is an extension of the theory that technology extends our abilities – when we conceive our bodies as technology that can be altered and/or replaced with other technology, the human becomes less defined.
As the movie progresses to its climatic conclusion, the identity of Pikul and Geller, and even the world in which they live is constantly in flux. eXistenZ examines the human connection with technology, how we create lives in the technology we use, and how these technologies come to control and define us.
