(Althusser, 1977: 152). It reflects the way in which individuals interpret and
answer to the social ambit, contributing to the organization of our
experience. Today, according to postmodern authors such as Zizek, the
function of ideology is not only to offer an escape from our reality, but also
to provide an evasion of our current traumas (Zizek, 1989: 45).
Cinema clearly also works in this way: it transmits habits, norms of
conduct, mentalities, ways of life, myths and therefore images that
constitute ideology itself. At the same time, cinema collects the wishes,
eagerness and imaginaries of the people from the point of view of the
director, someone not isolated in society and who gives a personal vision of
what he or she sees (Camarero 2002: 18). For this reason, the relationship
between emissary and receptor, filmmaker and spectator, is doubled and
constitutes a feedback process. Consequently, cinema is a perfect tool for
analyzing the hidden, invisible and unconfessed parts of our societies. Indeed,
throughout their careers, key filmmakers such as Godard, Woody Allen, David
Lynch and Cronenberg have consciously exercised the possibilities of
‘cinematographic (un)reality’, exploring the power of the gaze, the
sensitivity of the camera, as an effective instrument for transmitting
information. Assuming that nowadays knowledge and information are the
main sources of power, precisely such control of the image, its symbolical
‘property’ and intention, what is shown and what is suppressed, becomes an
important element in the configuration of today’s society at large.
Cinema may be the perfect testimony of current ideology, not only
informing the historical moment but also spreading and socializing these ideas
to the population whilst offering a (necessarily selective) world onto which
we can project our desires and where our deficiencies are compensated.
Therefore, films such as The Matrix, eXistenZ and Total Recall, in which we
find the fear of being confused and/or controlled by the fast technological
development that fascinates western societies, also entail a consumerist or
capitalist ideological message that is not necessarily opposed to the intention
of the film. Indeed, these films suggest how the impact of technology in
society drastically influences the relationship of ideology and individuals; its
relevance has tinged both elements, creating a technological ideology in a
- 74 -