Blog post 6: Existenz Vs. Plato

The similarity between the status of the prisoners in Plato‘s cave and spectators in a cinema are very alike. Plato believes that once you open your eyes to the truth, it’s very hard to look back into what you were believing in before you learn the truth. Movies and media on TV and social media always depict completely different standards compared to how we are accustomed to living. Sometimes we do mistake fiction for reality because of this. Some people place high standards and beliefs on reality based on fiction or these works in movies and media. It is highly possible that the physical world we believe in isn’t even real. It may just be something that we are accustomed to and cannot look behind us into the light as one of the prisoners did in Plato‘s allegory of the cave. In the movie, there are times where Ted has moments of realization in which some of the aspects of the game are not real. In one scene he creates a gun out of bones of fish or what I assumed to be a fish like creature. once he creates the gun he uses it to shoot the waiter. This scene can represent the outer layer of reality in which the action that Ted committed might have seemed real but in actuality was just an aspect of the game. There is another scene in which both Ted and Allegra are attempting to connect to a game device but it is actually a horrible looking creature. The emotion shown by Allegra when she discovers her pod may have been infected leads her to believe that she is going to die. At this point in the movie however she is unable to figure out how to continue to join in the game.  She then enters a state of depression and at this point makes Ted realize something is off. This is also equivalent to Plato‘s inner level of reality which is nothingness. This level of reality is very hard to understand as most people are usually content with the things they know about their reality and aren’t so fast to question if things are real or not.