If a time traveler with highly questionable priorities decided to use their temporal power to show the rather mediocre sci-fi film eXistenZ to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, he would likely be too flabbergasted by the very existence of video playback technology to offer any particularly coherent commentary on how the movie fit into his hierarchical model of reality. However, once he recovered from this shock, Plato would probably express even harsher contempt for eXistenZ and the games it depicts than he voiced about the paintings and poems of his native era.
To consider the film first, Plato would see works of art like eXistenZ as further removed from the truth and more damaging to to society than the media with which he was familiar. While they may not exactly reflect the nuances of politics or warfare, Homer’s epics at least make some effort to depict events that the audience can believe might really have happened. By contrast, eXistenZ has no apparent compunctions about portraying fantastical scenarios and technologies with no regard to if or how they might be remotely possible. In Plato’s eyes, this is even worse than shoddy imitation, it is intentional distortion. This deception is exacerbated by the fact that a movie with special effects is much more beguiling and seemingly real than a mere recited poem or engraved drawing, increasing the risk that people will have strong emotional reactions to it and confuse it with reality. In Plato’s ideal society, movies would be completely banned.
VR games like transCendenZ would fare no better under Plato’s system. He would view them as the ultimate incarnation of artistic trickery, deceiving their audience so effectively that they are virtually indistinguishable from the physical world. Depicting such a game within another work of art, and including several more meta-layers of virtual reality within the game, would seem to Plato merely to be adding more and more steps between the reality of the forms and the artistic experience. Such a work is so far removed from the truth that no useful insight can possibly be conveyed through it, and so in Plato’s eyes it is worse than useless.
(After further consideration, I must revise my earlier, disparaging opinion of the hypothetical time traveler’s priorities and conclude that the consternation evoked by showing Plato science fiction movies would be highly entertaining, and this activity will henceforth hold a cherished place on my time travel bucket list.)
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I agree that the meta layers that this movie offers would certainly baffle, and anger, Plato to no end. However, would he find some positives in the movie? For example, the extreme critique of Christianity, and the vehement condemnation of altering one’s reality by the two main characters at the end of the movie. However, these factors may be outweighed by the fact that we still don’t know if the characters are still in a game at the end of the movie, causing more confusion, and the fact that this is a form of art meant to portray a message that isn’t straightforward.
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I doubt Plato would recognize any critique of Christianity, and it’s hard to know what he would think of it if he did. His ideas have certainly been quite important to Christian philosophy. Also, the movie’s Realists seem to believe in the ultimate reality of the physical world, which he would certainly oppose.
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