Movie eXistenZ

The film Existenz has many references to Plato’s way of explaining his beliefs of reality. Existenz fits into Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality by showing how video games can affect the minds of others just like Plato’s example of his time with painters and poets. Just as Plato’s says painters can deceive the average mind of individuals by imitating appearances and not showing the actual image. This corresponds to the film because the many levels of virtual reality can be so realistic, and that the players in the game have a hard time deciphering true reality from the game they are playing. Just like how Plato describes painter and poets art they are so skilled people can’t tell the difference between reality. Then this leads to a connection to Book 10 and the examples of beds, “the real world is a copy of a copy” from this example is the craftsmen and makes a bed from what he thinks a bed looks like. Then this starts a perception of what a bed looks like and a artist will recreate a painting of the bed in the craftsman image and leads away from reality. The movie has so many gruesome aspects and intriguing moments which lead the people watching and waiting for more interesting moments. The viewers are so fixated on wanting more which ties into Plato’s reality. Plato says people can be deceived into thinking what is true reality and can be lost in the layers of reality which none can escape. Plato explains this is exactly what he is concerned about, how artists are showing people the wrong way of reality and more are pulled into this wrong belief of the real world.

Trancendenz fits into Plato’s way of thinking because just like Existenz it is another level of reality. In the beginning of the movie the viewers are put in the place where Existenz meets reality. But in the actual real life Existens is a game inside Trancendenz, which leads to the fact no one knows the true reality and tricking people into thinking what is real and what isn’t real. At the end of the movie even the players out of the game don’t actually know if they are in the game or not. With each character and their forced identities they have no idea of the true reality.

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