Baudrillard and mentioned earlier in this research, and this has the potential
to produce confusion. The confusion implied in the reproduction of reality
raises an important question: why do human beings have the need to
reproduce reality? We can find a possible (dual) answer in the risk of being
confused, together with the satisfaction of seeing the world mirrored; in
expressing and identifying our problems, fears and hopes through its
reproduction. In this sense, technological reproductions of reality through
Virtual Reality, cinema and videogames are successfully accepted by society
as a means of creating faithful, immersive and interactive (un)reality; as a
means of becoming the ‘perfect reproduction’. Nowadays, these
technological developments pose new questions that supplement the
traditional inquiries. Thus technological reinvention of the real in the
application of virtuality and simulation brings up the question of whether we
need a reality anymore when a multiplicity of realities are being created
artificially. It is fitting that we find a dual answer in The Matrix: on the one
hand the natural human search for truth represented in Neo seems to
demonstrate that simulation will never be enough in comparison with reality.
However, the hedonism of Cypher, who prefers satisfaction over truth, raises
new sub-questions to the original dilemma which can only be answered with
each individual human condition.
3.1. Ideology, (Collective) Imagination and Utopias
For Lacan, the social experience through the use of languages
irrevocably alienates us from our real beings; thus language is a deceit or a
trap regarding reality. Our configuration of reality is critically determined by
our social relationships and how we observe the world through the perception
of other beings (Branston, 2000: 140). In this sense, cinema plays a very
important role in the creation and manipulation of our vision of the world, in
other words, in our ideology. Every single film has an influence on how
someone perceives the self and the world around, and, for writers like Louis
Althusser, this is what creates ideology: ‘Ideology is a representation of the
imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence’
- 73 -
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