Blog Prompt 6

The film Existenz played on Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality in many different ways. In the film their were different games that meant different realities for the characters. The realities were a product of their own minds and although it wasn’t necessarily real it played on real aspects of life. In Plato’s allegory of the cave we see the same sort of set up where Plato suggests that the shadows in the cave are just our interpretations of reality. In the allegory of the cave Plato uses a scenario where a prisoner in the cave escapes and sees the true reality and his eyes couldn’t handle the grave difference so he had to allow his eyes to get used to what he was seeing. This same analogy Plato uses can be connected to his interpretation of the bed. He explains that there is the maker of the bed who is divine, then after the maker there is the copy which can symbolize the physical world. Lastly, there is art which would be the artist who paints a picture of a bed. All these different realities have some sort of real component to them but according to Plato the only one that matters is the divine or the original reality. Plato further criticizes art, believing that it brings us further from the truth and causes us to live a life filled with illusion. With the different games in the movie you can see how the allegory of the cave and Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality is being associated with one another. Throughout the movie you can see how the different games caused the actors to have minor changes to their appearance and their world. These minor changes could show how the people are a little further from reality and although they are still themselves it’s not quite the original. The game Transcendenz was pivotal in making the connections between Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality because it showed how even though it was a game there was still a confusing part in what was real and what wasn’t. I concluded that the game could be art in the real world according to Plato. Just like art, the game is making the real world seem further away. The pods in the movie were flesh like nasty looking objects, I had a hard time trying to figure out why the director would want the pods to look like that. My first thought would be because the pod is something that is essentially hurting them but they’re drawn to play it. The characters would confuse their reality with the game to the point where game characters could travel into different alternate realities. In the movie Ted says, “I find this disgusting, but I can’t help myself”. To me this pretty much summed up the whole idea of the movie and how it relates to Plato. Everyone in the movie knew that the virtual realities had something off about it but they all still took part in playing the game, they lived for it. At the end of the movie Ted and Allegra face off in somewhat of an unplanned ending. Allegra kills Ted as she reveals that she knew he was never real in the first place. As soon as this scene was over it made me think when Ted told Allegra he wanted to be in her game but sticking stuff in his flesh bothered  him. Also the part where the man tells Allegra beware of people in the game with accents. Another example of foreshadowing could be when the two headed insect and two headed salamander appeared in the movie. This foreshadowing could be a way the director was trying to tell the viewer that something shady is going on. Overall the movie helped me make connections with Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality and it was interesting to see how this could play out in fictional way.