How does Existenz, the film, fit into Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality? How does the game, Trancendenz fit?
To be 100% honest, I have never been more confused by a film in my whole life. Existenz has many connecting parts and small details that if not watched carefully, can slip your mind and leave you confused. That being said, Existenz is an excellent example of Plato’s idea of reality. Firstly, the movie plays with the viewers sense of reality by basing almost the entirety of the movie inside one game, without revealing that the game is actually inside another game. This ties directly into Plato’s skeptiscism of reality. As viewers, we never really know if the “reality” we are watching is physical or artifical. Existenz presents reality in layers. There is a “physical” world and then a game world embedded within. The characters are completely different versions of themselves in the game world but they still have some reminants of their previous selves in the game world. They are introduced to a strange new reality in the game and it takes time for the characters to adjust. This is similar to Plato’s cave, in the sense that the a persons ideas of reality are bent when introduced to new ideas and a new world.
As we learn later in the movie, Existenz is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to worlds within worlds. At the end of the movie, another layer is revealed and we find out that what we thought was reality initially, was actually a part of another game called Trancendenz. It is speculated that there may be even more layers to this game but the movie only shows the two “realities”. Trancendenz is supposedly the “physical” world, or the world that we would know as our own. However, according to Plato, there really is no way to prove this statement. One scene I found very intruiging was the scene where Gas, the gas station attendant, refers to God as “the artist” and ” the mechanic”. This is similar to how Plato views God as the creator of the physical world, not necessarily as a religious figure, but truly as the maker of what we deem as reality.
If I were to sum up this movie in a few words, I would just call it a trip.
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