Existenz

In the film Existenz we get to see many things that you wouldn’t expect to watch, or how the film would relate to Plato before watching this film. At the beginning of the film i was very confused, yet once the second part of the film began I started noticing how the game Existenz was gettin intense and how it was looking for the reality in fact it was all reality. The game was so realistic that the players didn’t realize it was real. At some points, they were freaking out because they couldn’t figure out how to stop the game. At first, the film starts by introducing the main character and the creator of the game Existenz. But once they ask for volunteers to play the game together i realize how the scenery and art behind them is related to the last supper .This brought an idea of religion . As well, further we get into the film I realized how the main character known as Allegra Geller and the partner Ted Pikul get friendly with one another. Yet the film is continuing and I noticed how the deeper we get into the film the more disgusting and disturbing it gets. Plato in the reading Allegory of he Cave “Observe then, said I , that this part of such a soul ,if it had been hammered from childhood, and had thus been struck, free of the leaden weights, so to speak, of our birth and becoming, which attaching themselves to it by food and similar pleasures and gluttons turn downward and the vision of the soul”.(pg 751, reading sec 519). Plato discusses how the body is gross here and it fits into film. For instance, one scene is when they arrive at the gas station and the gas owner helps Pikul to get a port but the scenery is gross, the chair, the bulling looks old and not organized but yet both main characters still get the port for Pikul just because Allegra wanted to see if her pod was infective. And by watching the film and how the game trancendenz begins we notice how both characters start to lose trust with one another, art makes somebody look like the bad guy or either good guy. For example, in the film once Pikul points the gun to Allegra, he tried to get rid of her, but at that point in the film both were very confused either if they won the game, or either if they were in the real world. In addition since Pikul was playing more of similar character in Platos writing known as a socrates, he was more of the outside thinker. He didn’t know how to react too many things in the game.

However , Plato as said before ideas are real , in the allegory of the cave he uses the cave to show us how the prisoners were away from the truth and everybody had different opinions, and viewpoints about living in the cave. Art is further away from reality. Which brings us back to the film Existenz and Plato have a circle where both events occur and show us how there are different viewpoints. First we have Platos cave where the prisoners can’t get out and they are stuck there which they’ve never seen the sun before, that’s because they are scared to leave the cave. They don’t know reality. The second phase in that circle between the film and Plato is we have a crowd a classroom where we think we know what is real and what is art. Yet not everybody does. Then we have the film Existenz where we think that characters are not real they don’t know what is real or wrong. But as said before once they start to play to game they move in toward trancendenz and that’s where as an audience we get to see how behavior can change. Therefore the further we get into the circle Plato would say the deeper we get into the cave. Overall, the realists and game players were trying to show us how it’s compared to the Allegory of the cave because it was a metaphor by showing us how realists were trying to show us to see the truth and stop playing the game.