Virtually Real?

Among the electives that I was required to take in order to get my Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design were several Philosophy courses. I'm not sure WHY these were considered requirements; perhaps whomever designed the curriculum felt it would come in handy when we inevitably were dealing with French fries. The courses dealt with a number of philosophies and like many things in life, such as presidential elections, oversimplified and focused on pairs of extremes, such as Materialism versus immaterialism in trying to define reality. Was reality something wholly outside ourselves, something that existed whether or not we saw, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt it? Or since reality depended upon our senses to be perceived, perhaps it was our senses that created it, and there was no physical reality outside our collective mental perceptions. My professor used to conduct experiments to prove or disprove one or the other extreme, such as having a root canal without Novocaine and seeing if she could suppress pain entirely with her mind, or telling her 5-year-old grandson, “Timmy, you AREN'T!” to see if existence was instinctive or taught. She found his indignant reply of “Yes, I AM!” to be conclusive; many of us were questioning her own reality.

Such classes were not about the answers so much as the questions, and getting us to think about things. My own logical conclusion was that reality was in fact a combination of both Materialism AND Immaterialism. There is a physical reality outside ourselves; a tree falling in the forest makes a sound regardless of whether anyone is there to witness it. But we can modify our perceptions and change our own personal reality as well, as my professor did after her root canal ignoring pain until it became unbearable. A return to the dentist revealed a broken jaw, and she concluded what most of us already assumed: we feel things for a reason. Stress and anxiety can play tricks with our perceptions sometimes however, even manifesting a physical reaction like a quickened heartbeat or swollen glands. Movies, books, television shows and other forms of entertainment provide an escape from everyday stress and, in moderation, are quite healthy. They offer a virtual reality separate from our real reality, and a welcome respite.

Sometimes movies turn the camera inward, and deal with the notion of going from the real world to a virtual one. 1982's Tron was the earliest example that I remember. The graphics are cheesy by today's standards but I was blown away when Jeff Bridges found himself inside a video game. I have many happy memories of reenacting the movie playing Tron® Deadly Discs or Tron® Maze-a-tron on my Intellivision. It was more than playing a game; I was pretending I was really controlling characters from the movie and they were in fact inside the machine. This was well before The Matrix spawned an entire trilogy revolving around the physical world and the virtual one. A few weeks ago I watched David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. While the Matrix was action with some philosophy(much of which was embellished by fan speculation, myself among the speculators), eXistenZ was philosophy with some action, and constantly posed the question, “Is this real?”

Escapism can be as addictive as any drug, and some films have examined the harmful nature of it. In 1983's Videodrome, also by Cronenberg, James Woods plays a TV executive in a society addicted to television, who in searching for a new show gets more than he bargains for when he discovers one that first induces hallucinations, then makes them flesh. In Strange Days, which I saw earlier today, elements Ralph Fiennes’ character echo Woods'. Fiennes peddles first-person perspective recordings of other peoples’ experiences. People seeking the ultimate thrill and escapism experience crime and sex broadcast directly to the cerebral cortex via a special helmet. When a recording of a murder from the killer’s point of view surfaces, Fiennes must face the amoral aspects of his profession.

Not all false reality in movies is achieved by choice or technology, as A Beautiful Mind, the other movie I saw tonight, demonstrated. Movies themselves are our virtual reality and can fool us, and can do so quite well as Identity or Fight Club did. Other executions of these concepts, such as Secret Window or the abysmal Johnny Mnemonic are a little rougher. It's easy to become jaded after a while and start to predict things in movies and in our lives. I believe relying on our senses is only part of the certainty we cling to in defining our reality. Security is the other reason we're so adamant because without the certainty that we ARE real and do exist, the world actually becomes more scary and unpredictable. Even if we reached a level of delusion that everything were somehow a dream, there are still things outside our perception and control that are very real and can cause us harm.

Everything I watch and everything I read makes me think about and question everything else. Time will tell whether or not that's a good thing....