ExistenZ is a 1999 action adventure science fiction thriller by director David Cronenberg whose films include The Naked Lunch, The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers, Crash (the ’96 version), Videodrome, The Fly (1986), A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises.
In eXistenZ, a game designer named Allegra Geller has created the ultimate gaming system made not of plastic but of live flesh complete with umbilical cords that plug directly into the player’s central nervous system. The game’s test launch takes place in a church on a remote countryside where Allegra, though shy and insecure around real people, prepares to upload herself into eXistenZ with a test group. In her game, players can transcend their limitations in real life and this becomes an existential threat to a radical group called the Anti-eXistenZialists. A 5 million dollar fatwa is placed on Allegra’s life and a rebel infiltrates the test group and shoots her but she survives and escapes with a security guard named Ted Pikul who becomes her protector.
Ted Pikul is in a management training program with Antenna Research, the company Allegra works for. Pikul’s dream is to one day end up in marketing and public relations with the company. But Allegra threatens to sabotage his dream unless he plays her game, to know how it feels for himself. Pikul reluctantly agrees to play Allegra’s game. His initiation begins with him having a bioport socket installed into his spinal cord. Once inside the game, Pikul kills a waiter at a Chinese restaurant; Pikul finds killing difficult at the outset, but, through repetitive conditioning, leaving his emotions out of killing becomes easier. The deeper Allegra takes Pikul into the world of eXistenZ, the more real the game becomes, and the closer they become until, inevitably, they give in to their game-urges and the game’s plotline for them to make love. Pikul comes out of the game raised to a higher level of awareness; where, initially, he could tell the game from real life now he can’t. This awareness has also given Pikul a new game-urge...to kill Allegra Geller!
The film’s cinematography is by Peter Suschitzky and its music is by Howard Shore. The film stars Jude Law as Ted Pikul, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allegra Geller, Willem Dafoe as Gas, and Ian Holm as Kiri Vinokur. In this presentation, I will cover some of the film’s themes from various perspectives and I will offer my personal feelings about the film at the end.
Themes
Our environment affects our behavior. Sigmund Freud believed that our natural impulses and instincts are in conflict with societal restraints. In eXistenZ, a fanatical group believes that eXistenZ will destroy reality and sends 2 agents--Ted Pikul and Allegra Geller--into the game to kill the game’s creator. Once they are in the game, Allegra and Pikul lose all memory of who they are in the real world including the fact that they are married. Allegra believes that she is the game’s designer but in fact, the game’s real designer is Yevgeny Nourish. Like Nourish, Allegra is aware of the game’s psychotic effect on the brain; Pikul, on the other hand, is a game-virgin and has a hard time coping with game-urges that he can’t control. For instance, when he kills the waiter at the Chinese restaurant, Allegra helps him, rationalize the killing by depersonalizing the waiter as simply a game-character; there is also a scene in which Pikul is unable to resist a game-urge to make love to Allegra; there are also scenes throughout the film in which Pikul’s game-urge forces him to recite scripted lines to certain characters in order to advance the plot
In 1973, psychologist Phillip George Zimbardo conducted an experiment at Stanford University where he organized 2 groups of students in a mock prison setting. One group acted as guards and the other group acted as prisoners in what he described as a social structure or a society based on predictable relationships. Once the guards and prisoners accepted the “definition of their situation”--or the type of behavior expected out of their respective roles--the prisoners and guards acted accordingly, that is, their relationship became depersonalized--the guards became aggressive; the prisoners became passive, resentful and depressed. In the Chinese restaurant scene in the film Pikul redefines the situation by asking the waiter an unscripted question that does not correspond to his role--or character--in the game. As a result, the waiter locks up and goes into what Geller describes as a game-loop. But when Pikul asks the waiter the question the proper way corresponding to the role he is expected to play in the game, the waiter comes out of his game-loop, answers Pikul’s question, and goes back to behaving normally. This brings us to another element of eXistenZ: status.
Status
Remember, Geller explains to PIkul that the game architecture of eXistenZ is powered and populated by the player’s mind. In other words, what you are in the game corresponds with what you think of yourself in the real world. For instance, within the game, Allegra Geller’s character--or status--is the game’s creator; however, in reality she is just another member of the test group. Her status within the game corresponds with her ambition outside of the game to be like Yevgeny Nourish, the game’s actual creator. Proverbs 23:7,
“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
Unlike Allegra, the gas station operator named Gas has no ambition and his character--or status--in the game is unchanged from what he thinks of himself in reality. He complains about this at the end of the game, suggesting to the designers that they use a little more fantasy. Case in point is Pikul whose character--or status in the game--as Allegra’s protector and lover corresponds to the fact that he is her husband in reality.
Bleed through
"eXistenZ has direct access to our central nervous systems. Its game architecture will be based on our memories, our anxieties, our preoccupations...”--Allegra Geller
Everything that happens in the real world happens in the game-world and everything that happens in the game-world happens in the real world. For example, there is a game within the game called Viral Ecstasy in which a virus invades a person’s body which is actually Pikul and Allegra infiltrating eXistenZ to assassinate Yevgeny Nourish. And in keeping with the idea of infiltration, Geller’s biopod creates a game designed to let Allegra know that it has been infected.
“Game urge”
Matthew 26:41, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
We all fight with ourselves on a daily basis. We resist the urge to eat too much if we are trying to lose weight; we try to be faithful if we are in a monogamous relationship; we try not to oversleep if we have a job or go to school; we try not to retaliate when people are rude to us. Can you imagine what life would be like if we couldn’t control our urges? This is the case within eXistenZ. For instance, there is a scene in a Chinese restaurant in which Pikul’s game-urge forces him to eat a disgusting and slimy meal against his will. Subsequently, he instinctively assembles a gun out of animal bones after which he gets another game-urge that forces him to shoot and kill a waiter (or the messenger). A game-urge also forces Pikul to recite scripted lines to other characters; and he gets a game-urge to make love with Alllegra, an instinct that he is her husband in real life.
Nature
In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, a prince selects his princess on the basis of her sensitivity to a pea that he buries underneath 20 mattresses. Have you ever forgotten something that you couldn’t remember no matter how hard you tried? Then, the answer just--all of a sudden--pops up in your head?
Likewise, though PIkul loses his memory that he is Allegra’s husband; his memory that they are rebels; and his knowledge of how to use a gun, clues as to his true nature come out in the game. For instance, in the game Pikul becomes a security guard, Allegra’s protector, and eventually her lover; and the gun that Pikul smuggles into the test group is the gristle-gun that he assembles at the Chinese restaurant. In both of these examples, Pikul’s game-life gives him clues about his mission and who he is in real life. Geller explains the game to him as being organic to each player’s basic level of existence. This is why Allegra tells Pikul to follow his game-urges and to not think. The game can deceive the eyes but it can’t deceive the heart nor destroy the essence of the player.
Robots
To live by our urges and instincts; to lack the free will to make decisions; to be constrained to scripted behavior and speech patterns is to take away what makes us human. For instance, there is a scene in the Chinese restaurant where PIkul cannot fight his urge to eat or a subsequent urge to shoot the waiter. In addition to turning human beings into robots, eXistenZ also frees players from feeling any remorse for their actions: “You won’t be able to stop it so you might as well enjoy it.”--Allegra Geller
Free will
In the book of Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of good and evil. But if God wanted man to blindly obey him why did he put the tree in the garden; or, why couldn’t God simply program man not to eat off the tree? It seems obvious that God wants us to have free will. In eXistenZ, Nourish plays the role of God but unlike God, his company wants to turn human beings into robots by taking away the power of choice.
The true purpose of eXistenZ is to deceive humans into accepting a counterfeit version of reality. Existenz caters to players’ deep-seated fantasies, allowing players to be what they are not in the real world. For example, a player named Gas believes that reality--where he works pumping gas--is the most pathetic level of his existence (on a side note, notice that Gas is named after what he does for a living and not as a unique individual with a unique name). Allegra Geller is just another player at Antenna Research’s product seminar but in the game she is the game’s designer. Existenz also frees players from their emotional constraints by conditioning players to kill game characters that are indistinguishable from real people; and also by conditioning players to depersonalize each other such as how Allegra refers to other players as characters.
The forbidden fruit
In eXistenZ, PIkul becomes a game character, allows himself to have a bioport installed in his spinal cord, and makes love to Allegra Geller; he does all of this in order to relate to her before he kills her:
Hebrews 4:15, ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are.”
Disconnection
EXistenZ has a numbing effect on those who play it. For example, Allegra sees eXistenZ as a game and therefore, killing other characters in the game is easy; she is unconcerned about danger and threats on her life, and she prefers playing alone. But to Pikul, eXistenZ is real, so real that making love to Allegra feels real to him as does killing off other characters in the game.
Like someone who uses drugs heavily, Allegra’s tolerance to eXistenZ has desensitized her physically and emotionally. Allegra’s dysfunction is what sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton call the narcotizing effect of too much stimulation.
Overstimulation
EXistenZ is highly addictive and risky. For instance, after playing the game the real world seems so dull and predictable to Allegra and Pikul that they choose to go back into the game despite the risks and dangers they face in it. And like the infection risks associated with heroin addicts sharing needles, Pikul transmits an infection in his bioport to Geller’s biopod.
Conclusion
Virtual reality; augmented reality; 3D holographic images; realer than real TV sets; followers on Facebook; virtual dating; online shopping; online friends; online doctors; online ministries; online sex, virtual gaming; Siri, Alexa, artificial intelligence, drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, idolatry, love--like Allegra Geller’s diseased biopod in the film, could all of these avenues of escaping reality be like Pikul’s game-urges in the movie trying to tell us that we need to fix the real world?
Wrap
EXistenZ is not for everybody and it will probably turn off those whose tastes lean towards normal science fiction; eXistenZ is anything but normal, sometimes hardcore science fiction, at other times jerking, spastic and giddy, and at other times just downright gross--but somehow it all works! For example, there’s a scene where Pikul receives his 1st bioport, a scene that Allegra Geller places in a lewd context by wetting her fingertip to give the sphincter-like socket in Pikul’s lower back “some action.” There’s another scene where Allegra is shot with a tooth that has a cavity. Then there’s the biopods which look like bruised tits covered with buttons that look like nipples.
But with this said, eXistenZ is relevant considering that it came out in ’99. The film accurately foretold the existential relationship we have with our smartphones and other devices through Pikul who calls his pink-fone his “lifeline to civilization.” It also accurately foretold the impersonal relationships that have evolved out of social networks like Facebook through Allegra Geller who avoids intimacy and who prefers interacting with others in the game rather than face-to-face. The film also accurately describes the narcissism of online social media culture and its obsession with approval-seeking.
EXistenZ reminds me of The Matrix, Birdman, Battle Angel Alita, and The Bourne Identity. But the film that eXistenZ reminds me of the most is Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 film Total Recall. In that film, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker named Douglas Quaid who goes on a virtual vacation to Mars only to find out that everything in his life--including himself and his marriage--has been implanted into his brain. Like, Pikul in eXistenZ, Quaid receives subconscious impulses from his true identity.
EXistenZ was nominated for the Saturn Award in 1999 but lost out to The Matrix which came out the same year. The Matrix went on to become a cult classic and did very well at the box office; eXistenZ flew under the radar and made only 2.9 million at the box office. But don’t let this fool you as to the film’s overall quality and effectiveness.
Cronenberg got the inspiration for eXistenZ from an interview he did with Salmon Rushdie whose anti-Islamic novel, The Satanic Verses, caused Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to put a fatwa on the author’s life hence the fatwa on Allegra’s life in the film.
At 97 minutes, eXistenZ is extremely dense and gets better on subsequent viewings. If you like Paul Verhoeven’s style in films like Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers you’ll love eXistenZ. Great film by David Cronenberg.
ExistenZ is a 1999 action adventure science fiction thriller by director David Cronenberg whose films include The Naked Lunch, The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers, Crash (the ’96 version), Videodrome, The Fly (1986), A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises.
In eXistenZ, a game designer named Allegra Geller has created the ultimate gaming system made not of plastic but of live flesh complete with umbilical cords that plug directly into the player’s central nervous system. The game’s test launch takes place in a church on a remote countryside where Allegra, though shy and insecure around real people, prepares to upload herself into eXistenZ with a test group. In her game, players can transcend their limitations in real life and this becomes an existential threat to a radical group called the Anti-eXistenZialists. A 5 million dollar fatwa is placed on Allegra’s life and a rebel infiltrates the test group and shoots her but she survives and escapes with a security guard named Ted Pikul who becomes her protector.
The film’s cinematography is by Peter Suschitzky and its music is by Howard Shore. The film stars Jude Law as Ted Pikul, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allegra Geller, Willem Dafoe as Gas, and Ian Holm as Kiri Vinokur. In this presentation, I will cover some of the film’s themes from various perspectives and I will offer my personal feelings about the film at the end.
Themes
Our environment affects our behavior. Sigmund Freud believed that our natural impulses and instincts are in conflict with societal restraints. In eXistenZ, a fanatical group believes that eXistenZ will destroy reality and sends 2 agents--Ted Pikul and Allegra Geller--into the game to kill the game’s creator. Once they are in the game, Allegra and Pikul lose all memory of who they are in the real world including the fact that they are married. Allegra believes that she is the game’s designer but in fact, the game’s real designer is Yevgeny Nourish. Like Nourish, Allegra is aware of the game’s psychotic effect on the brain; Pikul, on the other hand, is a game-virgin and has a hard time coping with game-urges that he can’t control. For instance, when he kills the waiter at the Chinese restaurant, Allegra helps him, rationalize the killing by depersonalizing the waiter as simply a game-character; there is also a scene in which Pikul is unable to resist a game-urge to make love to Allegra; there are also scenes throughout the film in which Pikul’s game-urge forces him to recite scripted lines to certain characters in order to advance the plot
In 1973, psychologist Phillip George Zimbardo conducted an experiment at Stanford University where he organized 2 groups of students in a mock prison setting. One group acted as guards and the other group acted as prisoners in what he described as a social structure or a society based on predictable relationships. Once the guards and prisoners accepted the “definition of their situation”--or the type of behavior expected out of their respective roles--the prisoners and guards acted accordingly, that is, their relationship became depersonalized--the guards became aggressive; the prisoners became passive, resentful and depressed. In the Chinese restaurant scene in the film Pikul redefines the situation by asking the waiter an unscripted question that does not correspond to his role--or character--in the game. As a result, the waiter locks up and goes into what Geller describes as a game-loop. But when Pikul asks the waiter the question the proper way corresponding to the role he is expected to play in the game, the waiter comes out of his game-loop, answers Pikul’s question, and goes back to behaving normally. This brings us to another element of eXistenZ: status.
Status
Remember, Geller explains to PIkul that the game architecture of eXistenZ is powered and populated by the player’s mind. In other words, what you are in the game corresponds with what you think of yourself in the real world. For instance, within the game, Allegra Geller’s character--or status--is the game’s creator; however, in reality she is just another member of the test group. Her status within the game corresponds with her ambition outside of the game to be like Yevgeny Nourish, the game’s actual creator. Proverbs 23:7,
“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
Unlike Allegra, the gas station operator named Gas has no ambition and his character--or status--in the game is unchanged from what he thinks of himself in reality. He complains about this at the end of the game, suggesting to the designers that they use a little more fantasy. Case in point is Pikul whose character--or status in the game--as Allegra’s protector and lover corresponds to the fact that he is her husband in reality.
Bleed through
"eXistenZ has direct access to our central nervous systems. Its game architecture will be based on our memories, our anxieties, our preoccupations...”--Allegra Geller
Everything that happens in the real world happens in the game-world and everything that happens in the game-world happens in the real world. For example, there is a game within the game called Viral Ecstasy in which a virus invades a person’s body which is actually Pikul and Allegra infiltrating eXistenZ to assassinate Yevgeny Nourish. And in keeping with the idea of infiltration, Geller’s biopod creates a game designed to let Allegra know that it has been infected.
“Game urge”
Matthew 26:41, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
We all fight with ourselves on a daily basis. We resist the urge to eat too much if we are trying to lose weight; we try to be faithful if we are in a monogamous relationship; we try not to oversleep if we have a job or go to school; we try not to retaliate when people are rude to us. Can you imagine what life would be like if we couldn’t control our urges? This is the case within eXistenZ. For instance, there is a scene in a Chinese restaurant in which Pikul’s game-urge forces him to eat a disgusting and slimy meal against his will. Subsequently, he instinctively assembles a gun out of animal bones after which he gets another game-urge that forces him to shoot and kill a waiter (or the messenger). A game-urge also forces Pikul to recite scripted lines to other characters; and he gets a game-urge to make love with Alllegra, an instinct that he is her husband in real life.
Nature
In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, a prince selects his princess on the basis of her sensitivity to a pea that he buries underneath 20 mattresses. Have you ever forgotten something that you couldn’t remember no matter how hard you tried? Then, the answer just--all of a sudden--pops up in your head?
Likewise, though PIkul loses his memory that he is Allegra’s husband; his memory that they are rebels; and his knowledge of how to use a gun, clues as to his true nature come out in the game. For instance, in the game Pikul becomes a security guard, Allegra’s protector, and eventually her lover; and the gun that Pikul smuggles into the test group is the gristle-gun that he assembles at the Chinese restaurant. In both of these examples, Pikul’s game-life gives him clues about his mission and who he is in real life. Geller explains the game to him as being organic to each player’s basic level of existence. This is why Allegra tells Pikul to follow his game-urges and to not think. The game can deceive the eyes but it can’t deceive the heart nor destroy the essence of the player.
Robots
To live by our urges and instincts; to lack the free will to make decisions; to be constrained to scripted behavior and speech patterns is to take away what makes us human. For instance, there is a scene in the Chinese restaurant where PIkul cannot fight his urge to eat or a subsequent urge to shoot the waiter. In addition to turning human beings into robots, eXistenZ also frees players from feeling any remorse for their actions: “You won’t be able to stop it so you might as well enjoy it.”--Allegra Geller
Free will
In the book of Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of good and evil. But if God wanted man to blindly obey him why did he put the tree in the garden; or, why couldn’t God simply program man not to eat off the tree? It seems obvious that God wants us to have free will. In eXistenZ, Nourish plays the role of God but unlike God, his company wants to turn human beings into robots by taking away the power of choice.
The true purpose of eXistenZ is to deceive humans into accepting a counterfeit version of reality. Existenz caters to players’ deep-seated fantasies, allowing players to be what they are not in the real world. For example, a player named Gas believes that reality--where he works pumping gas--is the most pathetic level of his existence (on a side note, notice that Gas is named after what he does for a living and not as a unique individual with a unique name). Allegra Geller is just another player at Antenna Research’s product seminar but in the game she is the game’s designer. Existenz also frees players from their emotional constraints by conditioning players to kill game characters that are indistinguishable from real people; and also by conditioning players to depersonalize each other such as how Allegra refers to other players as characters.
The forbidden fruit
In eXistenZ, PIkul becomes a game character, allows himself to have a bioport installed in his spinal cord, and makes love to Allegra Geller; he does all of this in order to relate to her before he kills her:
Hebrews 4:15, ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are.”
Disconnection
EXistenZ has a numbing effect on those who play it. For example, Allegra sees eXistenZ as a game and therefore, killing other characters in the game is easy; she is unconcerned about danger and threats on her life, and she prefers playing alone. But to Pikul, eXistenZ is real, so real that making love to Allegra feels real to him as does killing off other characters in the game.
Like someone who uses drugs heavily, Allegra’s tolerance to eXistenZ has desensitized her physically and emotionally. Allegra’s dysfunction is what sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton call the narcotizing effect of too much stimulation.
Overstimulation
EXistenZ is highly addictive and risky. For instance, after playing the game the real world seems so dull and predictable to Allegra and Pikul that they choose to go back into the game despite the risks and dangers they face in it. And like the infection risks associated with heroin addicts sharing needles, Pikul transmits an infection in his bioport to Geller’s biopod.
Conclusion
Virtual reality; augmented reality; 3D holographic images; realer than real TV sets; followers on Facebook; virtual dating; online shopping; online friends; online doctors; online ministries; online sex, virtual gaming; Siri, Alexa, artificial intelligence, drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, idolatry, love--like Allegra Geller’s diseased biopod in the film, could all of these avenues of escaping reality be like Pikul’s game-urges in the movie trying to tell us that we need to fix the real world?
Wrap
EXistenZ is not for everybody and it will probably turn off those whose tastes lean towards normal science fiction; eXistenZ is anything but normal, sometimes hardcore science fiction, at other times jerking, spastic and giddy, and at other times just downright gross--but somehow it all works! For example, there’s a scene where Pikul receives his 1st bioport, a scene that Allegra Geller places in a lewd context by wetting her fingertip to give the sphincter-like socket in Pikul’s lower back “some action.” There’s another scene where Allegra is shot with a tooth that has a cavity. Then there’s the biopods which look like bruised tits covered with buttons that look like nipples.
But with this said, eXistenZ is relevant considering that it came out in ’99. The film accurately foretold the existential relationship we have with our smartphones and other devices through Pikul who calls his pink-fone his “lifeline to civilization.” It also accurately foretold the impersonal relationships that have evolved out of social networks like Facebook through Allegra Geller who avoids intimacy and who prefers interacting with others in the game rather than face-to-face. The film also accurately describes the narcissism of online social media culture and its obsession with approval-seeking.
EXistenZ reminds me of The Matrix, Birdman, Battle Angel Alita, and The Bourne Identity. But the film that eXistenZ reminds me of the most is Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 film Total Recall. In that film, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker named Douglas Quaid who goes on a virtual vacation to Mars only to find out that everything in his life--including himself and his marriage--has been implanted into his brain. Like, Pikul in eXistenZ, Quaid receives subconscious impulses from his true identity.
EXistenZ was nominated for the Saturn Award in 1999 but lost out to The Matrix which came out the same year. The Matrix went on to become a cult classic and did very well at the box office; eXistenZ flew under the radar and made only 2.9 million at the box office. But don’t let this fool you as to the film’s overall quality and effectiveness.
Cronenberg got the inspiration for eXistenZ from an interview he did with Salmon Rushdie whose anti-Islamic novel, The Satanic Verses, caused Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to put a fatwa on the author’s life hence the fatwa on Allegra’s life in the film.
At 97 minutes, eXistenZ is extremely dense and gets better on subsequent viewings. If you like Paul Verhoeven’s style in films like Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers you’ll love eXistenZ. Great film by David Cronenberg.
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