How does Existenz, the film, fit into Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality? How does the game, Trancendenz fit?

When the film eXistenZ began, the audience is made to believe that the characters are in the film’s physical world. By the end of the film, it is revealed that it was not the physical world but the game’s simulation of the physical world. There are a lot of similarities between the film and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” The volunteers in the beginning are hooked up to these slave pods which I believe are a metaphor for the prisoners of the cave. Their bodies are taken over through the game. The volunteers are similar to the prisoners also because they are made to believe this is their version of reality or the physical world but it isn’t. In Plato’s hierarchal scheme of reality, the game designer Mr. Nourish’s idea of the game tranCendeZ is supposedly the real or physical world. The game itself is the copy of reality and the game simulation eXistenZ is a copy of the copy of reality.

The scene that stood out the most to me in regard to Plato’s idea of our senses taking over our bodies is when Ted orders the special at the Chinese restaurant and his character takes over his body and he starts building the tooth gun out of the amphibian bones then he says he feels an impulse to kill the waiter. In Allegory of a Cave, Plato says “And if it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?” In the movie, Allegra and Ted are prisoners to their own senses. That is why he feels the urge to shoot the man that they believed was there to help them. There are many layers to this film, so many so that it is questionable if they were ever in the physical world or if they were in the simulation throughout the film. Towards the end when Allegra and Ted go back to the ski chalet and the guy from the game shop is in army gear and he shoots the game pod. They start to realize that they are still in the game simulation and then before you know it, you realize that the whole thing was a simulation. Then you see someone, a character from the game just when you think they are in the physical world it all becomes a question. By the end of the movie, I was sitting there wondering if we are even in the physical world or a simulation. How can anyone really tell?

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