a contradiction; (un)reality is the perfect way to define the creation of
spaces, elements and identities that share characteristics of both. Indeed,
the use of brackets in this thesis is fundamental to express terms that are
synthesized, reconciling the opposition of the previous concepts. Thus, the
ambiguity of language is being used to express the openness of the concepts
treated in this research. In this sense, mass media, the Internet, virtual
games and cinema will not simply be considered as ‘not real’, but as
elements that contain a different grade of (un)reality and that, further, have
the capacity to be subsequently segmented within the (un)realities of a
particular web site, Virtual Reality environment, videogame or film.
The primary use of cinema in this research is not arbitrary. The role of
cinema in this investigation is indeed essential to examine the ‘intangible’
aspects of the confusion of reality and unreality, everything that the abstract
abilities of the image can explain without ‘confessing it’, such as the hopes
and fears held by society. In fact, cinema captures and reproduces our
society, culture, ideology, fears and hopes and simultaneously it produces
knowledge with the transmission of certain ideas. The relationship between
cinema and technology is double and paradoxical: cinema necessarily employs
technology and at the same time it denounces, with its plots, our current
situation in relation to technology. Thus, the subjectivity of cinema, its
active implication in the topic researched here, renders it particularly
relevant for the investigation as it offers a diegetic perspective of this
problematic. In this way, films such as The Matrix, eXistenZ, Total Recall,
Abre los Ojos, The Lawnmower Man and Dark City are most useful examples
as they are witnesses, symptoms, causes and consequences of the confusion
of reality and unreality produced by technology.
The Matrix, a film whose recurrence throughout this thesis denotes its
usefulness in these discussions, is a most pertinent illustration of the human
reaction to the simulation of the world, where the reproduction of the world
has the potential to be more satisfactory than the real world. The character
of Cypher, then, is the best illustration of this. However, what we see in The
Matrix is that the majority of the characters ‘choose to know’, following, in
this way, the Platonic allegory of the cave that indicates that happiness and
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