SR/3 - eXistenZ

eXistenZ is a movie that challenges the distinction between actual and virtual existence.  It begins by introducing a new game, eXistenZ, and the woman who designed it, Allegra, who someone (later revealed to be a realist) tries to assassinate just as they are starting to play the game.  Allegra and her appointed body guard Ted go on the run and eventually play eXistenZ to make sure it didn’t get damaged in the shooting.  The whole movie can be organized by levels of reality.  It begins in what the audience first believes to be reality, but we find out later that it was the first level of the game transCendenZ (the "real" game they were playing that is revealed at the end of the movie).  Then there is the sort of in between level Ted and Allegra go through before they actually start “the game,” when they are in the gaming store receiving their new identities.  The second level occurs when Allegra and Ted port in to play eXistenZ (the game in the first level of “game reality,” set at a trout farm that harvests mutated amphibians for components in the game pods).  They have a series of adventures within the game, all surrounding the theme of game designing and the realist underground movement.  eXistenZ is full of betrayal and double agents, and Allegra and Ted are stumbling around blindly the entire time because there are not really rules or even free will to a certain extent.  Ted has an outburst at one point when they are on the trout farm about how little free will there is in the game, and Allegra responds by saying “like real life, there's just enough to keep things interesting.”  The final level of the game transCendenZ is a sort of combination of the other levels: it has the setting and antagonism towards Allegra of the first level mixed with the characters and vocabulary of the second level (the realist underground movement).  Finally, the characters all “wake up” from playing the game transCendenZ and are discussing it when the final scene culminates with Ted and Allegra shooting Nourish, who is the “real” game designer.  The movie ends with Ted and Allegra pointing their guns at the man who played their waiter while he asks them if they’re still in the game.

eXistenZ plays with gender roles quite a bit.  Throughout most of the movie, Ted is presented as hesitant and weak.  He doesn’t want to get a port, play the game, or even kill anyone (which is his job as her bodyguard).  Allegra is always the one to coax him to do something.  Their reversal can be seen throughout the movie, but is especially prevalent when they are discussing and acting with the bioports.  Allegra is the one directing Ted during his “first time” porting in to a game pod, with the movie makers even going as far as having her prime his bioport and insert the game cord into it herself.  Allegra is also the one who pushes them to get together when they realize their game characters “are supposed to have the hots for each other.”  Ted is hesitant and Allegra has to talk to him and calm him down even though she clearly just wants to have sex.  This is a joke poking fun at how girls behave before they will have sex with someone and how the guy always has to reassure them and sort of coax them into it.  Allegra is also the one that kills most of the people in the game (Ted only kills the waiter at the Chinese restaurant).  However, when they exist the game transCendenZ, Ted's character is clearly in control , as he is directing his and Allegra's actions to kill Nourish.  eXistenZ also plays with the line between the virtual and reality. It is impossible to tell after finishing the movie exactly where the game ends and reality resumes, the last line cementing how unsure the audience is whether the characters were back in reality or whether they were ever there in the first place.  The whole point of the movie is that you never know what’s real.  It plays on the human desire to separate what’s real and what’s not by asking you to contemplate whether there is a difference between reality and the virtual if they are indistinguishable.  eXistenZ asks the viewer to examine their own lives to realize that we could all be part of a game and just haven't "unported" yet.