technological population - or vice versa. In general, of course, we assume
that the anxieties and fantasies of each spectator are different, although in
specific times there exists a common concern, a shared fear that affects large
social groups or even society as a whole. According to Zizek, the fictional
films of today are the best means we have of looking at the world in which
we live: looking at it directly, in a ‘real’ way would be inconceivable for us
(Zizek, 1989: 45). Thus, the visual technological developments that we are
experiencing today through films with their unique ability for fascination and
spectacle may be the perfect way to transmit ideas.
David Hume explains that when people see a certain part of the
reality/world in the same way, the picture gets sharper. This is the place
where stories arise and simultaneously explains why people are filling this
area, on the edge of reality, with myths or fictions (Hume, 1978: 8-90).
Nowadays, films are situated firmly in this region and, together with
videogames and other technological visual media, are absorbing, reflecting
and sharing the collective imagination of western societies. The collective
imagination is an essential dimension in every culture; it contains the roots
and imperatives of any civilization. We can find in the collective imagination
the anthropological background, desires and adversities of society. It can be
understood as a social adaptation to the environment, a necessity to subsist
and develop culturally. In films such as The Matrix and eXistenZ the
collective imagination is identified in the social fear of the future of society
in times in which technology escapes our control and society is paradoxically
controlled by technology. Collective imagination is the consequence of the
projection of illusion but, once it is consolidated, it manifests new ways of
reinterpreting reality.
The collective imagination implies an alternative to the multiple
dualities compounded by the rational and irrational, logical and illogical,
between reality and dreams. Its restriction in a binary dimension is
paradoxically broken with its fusion. Imagination is the key element that links
both worlds: the dreaming and the real one. It allows us, collectively, to go
beyond the boundaries of established reality, have wider limits and
consequently unlock the coercion that reality imposes on humanity. In this
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