S/R 3

"Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!" Realism combats reality distortion in David Cronenburg's eXistenZ – a film chronicling events that surround hunted "game pod goddess" Allegra Geller and timid marketing intern-turned-bodyguard Ted Pikul, in a dizzying run through simulated worlds of an organic video game experience. Whisked away from the church in the opening scene after an attack by an agent of the Realist Revolution, Allegra and Ted engage in a back and forth struggle with the Realist resistance, who are trying to destroy Allegra and her game pod. Pikul, who has a penetration phobia, receives a faulty bio port from an undercover Realist agent that nearly destroys the game pod; eventually, though, Allegra and Ted are able to move past the issue of porting into the game, and onto the exploration of the storyline of their simulated reality. They continue “stumbling around together in this unformed world, whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable or even possibly nonexistent,” as reality gets further distorted by the entrance into a second, smaller game pod. Within this deepened simulation, Ted and Allegra become involved with the Realist faction, receive faulty information from a double agent they believe to be their contact, kill their actual contact, and plot to destroy all game pods at a factory they work at in their simulation by porting into a diseased one, resulting in a spore explosion of the diseased pod that infects everything in the factory – all occurring in dazzling, rapid succession, blurring what is and is not reality or simulation. Even after their presumed game exit and loss, game characters appear as the Realist resistance is claiming its victory – until the situation folds in on itself, the resistance leader is killed in trying to assassinate Allegra, and Ted is ultimately annihilated by Allegra herself as he turns out to be a Realist agent as well. Allegra assumes this is the game’s true ending, asking “Have I won? Have I won the game? Have I won?” The movie does not end without a final twist: Allegra, Ted, and all other characters from eXistenZ awaken from tranCendenZ, discuss their experience, and everything comes full circle with Allegra and Ted coming forward to kill the designer of tranCendenZ – “Death to the demon Yevgeny Nourish!”

Uncertainty and novelty dominate the film, but it is Allegra and Ted’s responses to these uncertain situations that invoke the greatest need for examination. Allegra notably points out that “You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game.” The entirety of the movie sits on the thinly veiled premise of these systems of simulation as our individual realities. As a result, Cronenberg seems to be suggesting that our purpose, the driving force behind our existence, can only be revealed once we have had significant revelatory experiences. What is left open to interpretation is whether our experiences shape the reason why we play the game, or whether our experiences are predetermined by the game itself – the question of free will. Important to eXistenZ is the fact that while the framework of the game is programmed by the designer, the game is populated by characters, missions, motivations, and villains that are born out of a player’s neurological impulses. Similarly, it can be inferred that, while there is a system that has been set up for our experience in life – a system socially, physically, economically, geographically, ethnically, sexually, and pscychologically constructed – it is our personal choices and actions that populate this framework and bring us to our current state of being. Game urges still exist in eXistenZ as impulses that cannot be defied, but the truth is that these impulses are generated by the user him or herself. Likewise, when we endure something in our lives that feels out of our control, it is our travails, both before and after birth, that have shaped the scenario within which the uncontrollable events occur. Our life experiences are shaped by our natural purpose, but our purpose behind can only be expressed through the experiences we have had.