development has created in the notions of reality, unreality and the
relationship between both:
The brand-new problem of the simulation is mistaken with
the very classic problem of the illusion, already mentioned
by Plato. Here lies the mistake. The world as a complete
illusion is the problem that faced all great cultures and they
solved it thanks to art and symbolization. What we did invent
in order to put up with this pain is a simulated real, a virtual
universe cleansed of everything dangerous or negative and
which now overrides ...., Now the Matrix is totally that! (Le
Nouvel Observateur, Interview with Baudrillard, 2003).9
Today in western societies we cannot be ‘neutral’ to technology and
its effects. Particularly, technology determines the way we perceive,
represent and reproduce (un)reality. In this sense, cinema is a ‘double mirror’
to technology: it manifests, and is influenced by, its effects, becoming a
perfect medium to analyze the present and future of technology and our
society. According to Norman K. Denzin (1991) cinema is responsible for
creating a parallel reality, an ‘unofficial’ version of civil society. The
director, through the film, will reproduce dominant social values, hopes and
fears. In this way, cinema organizes and gives sense to the world, the same
world that ‘feeds’ cinema, completing the circle. The appearance of new
technologies which drive the plot and are the subject matter of many recent
films such as The Matrix, The Lawnmower Man, Total Recall, eXistenZ, Dark
City, Abre los Ojos and The Thirteenth Floor suggests that these films are
trying to tell us something about our technological society. In these
contemporary films there is a patent inability to deal with present reality, its
reproduction and the development of technology. These films share common
characteristics concerning the computer and electronic reproduction of
reality and the theory of Simulacrum or Hyperreality. In all these
productions, we find an argument for multiple alternative realities, and the
anxiety of the protagonist to discern which is the real one. This is presented
to the audience in the form of a problem that requires a solution. The
question of ‘what is reality in the time of the Simulacra, Cyberspace and
9
The interview is available on-line at: http://www.empyree.org/divers/Matrix-Baudrillard_english.html
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