Isabelle DuVall

… Are we still in the game?:

The Collapse of Meaning in David Cronenberg’s Existenz

The world of David Cronenberg’s 1999 sci­fi film eXistenZ centers around virtual reality

games played on biological game pods, the people that play them, and the games creators.

Throughout the course of the film, the characters in eXistenZ, as well as the audience, are faced

with various forms of abjection and the abject, forcing a collapse of meaning. Existenz creates

an effective collapse of meaning through the use of penetration anxiety, the convergence of the

organic and the machine, the manipulation of the characters’ identities, and the employment of

multiple layers of reality. Cronenberg creates instability at every turn, simultaneously enacting

the death of subjecthood, representation, and physicality. In analyzing key scenes from the film,

the breakdown of distinctions and meanings become evident and effectively serve to highlight

the transformative possibilities of technology.

Some brief facts and plot points: The film begins in an unspecified church, where a

focus group has formed to try out the new virtual reality game, eXistenZ. The game is played

collectively by connecting via bioports, holes located at the base of the spine which attach the

game pod to the gamer via an umbilical cord­like plug. Referred to as “meta­flesh”, the pod

itself is composed of a flesh­like material, composed of genetically mutated amphibian organs.

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The game designer, beloved by die hard gamers, Allegra Gellar is there to commence the

experiment. The group plugs into the game, while on the stage their unnecessary bodies are left

vulnerable. Only moments into the game, a member of the audience takes out an unidentifiable

weapon, shouting “Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!” He shoots Allegra in the shoulder

and within seconds he is brutally shot to death by undercover security. It is later made clear that

the assailant was member of the fundamentalist group known as “the Realist Underground”.

The realists oppose the gaming world for it’s corrosive effects on perceptions of reality, and

they view Allegra as the figurehead of the evil industry. His weapon turns out to be an entirely

organic gun loaded with human teeth, we discover by witness Pikul dig out the presumed bullet

from Allegra’s shoulder on the side of the road.

1 http://cronenbergmuseum.tiff.net/collaborateurs_13­collaborators_13­eng.html

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Allegra flees the scene with Ted Pikul, a marketing trainee for Antenna Research (the gaming

corporation), who has never played a game himself. The attack rendered her game vulnerable,

and in order to ensure it’s integrity, she has to test it with another friendly player. Ted, being the

only candidate, does not possess and bioport and must be fitted with one. As they enter the

game, begin playing, and exit and re­enter to pause it, the distinctions between reality and

virtuality becomes more and more obscured. The final scenes reveal that the entire film thus far

has taken place in a second game, trandscenDenZ, in which Ted and Allegra are both players

(different identities, same names) in another focus group. It is revealed that the two are

themselves realist assassins who proceed to shoot up Yevgeny Nourish, the (supposedly) real

star designer. The final scene ends with one scared participant posing the question “tell me the

truth, are we still in the game?”, suggesting the impossibility of ever knowing which of the

films layers is “real”.

The first way in which this film exposes the viewer to the abject is manifest in Ted

Pikul’s penetration phobia. Upon escaping from the church, Allegra Geller is shocked to find

out that her fleeing partner, Ted Pikul, has not been fitted for a bioport. While he seems to be

interested in Allegra’s games, he has not undergone the installation of the bioport because of

“this phobia about having my body penetrated.” While she claims it’s a simple, noninvasive

procedure akin to getting ones ears pierced, Pikul maintains that it is “just too freaky, makes 2

my skin crawl.” Pikul’s other concern is of the potential for infection, “How come bioports

don’t get infected? I mean...they open right into your body.” Allegra demonstrates

2 While I refer to Allegra Geller by her first name, I refer to Ted Pikul by his last name because this is how he is addressed by Allegra Geller, to his dismay. As the two are about the port into the game for the first time, Pikul says “Don’t you think you could call me Ted?”, Allegra replies, “Maybe afterwards”. (Cronenberg, eXistenZ, 00:28:10)

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ridiculousness of his worry by opening her mouth: an example of a bodily opening that seldom

causes infections (and is also an erogenous zone).

Through Pikul’s character, Cronenberg evokes

the abject by reminding us of our own bodily

vulnerability. There is also a rupture produced between

us, the audience, and the character Pikul, as he shares

our ignorance, naivety, and horror of the virtual reality

game and all its fixing. Visually, the bioport itself is uncanny; it recalls an anus, or maybe a

vaginal opening. Either way, abjection is present through associations with bodily waste and

birth. It is an orifice that Pikul is extremely reluctant to have penetrated. “In eXistenZ the

bioport is at once receptacle and porthole, socket and port, a two­way, interactive, living

channel and the body’s most blatantly erogenous zone.” The dual purposes of the bioport as a 3

vagina and an anus, and the penetration anxiety they evoke, are made explicit in the three

following scenes.

The two stop at a country gas station, whose literal signage reads “Country Gas Station”,

to have Pikul’s bioport fitted. His obvious apprehension over the procedure is heightened by the

fact that he is in having it done by a mechanic, in a car shop, as opposed a sterile operating

room.

3 Teresa de Lauretis, “Becoming Inorganic,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2003): 559, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/377720>. .

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His male fear of penetration is also intensified in the large size of the phallic tool used, and in

the stance of the operation, with the operator domineeringly standing over the subject, who is

forced into a submissive position. Following the fitting, Pikul has a minor freakout when he

cannot feel his legs, and we learn that the procedure comes with a ‘built in” epidural. This adds

yet another emasculating element to Pikul’s traumatic experience whilst reinforcing abject

themes of pregnancy and birth.

After Pikul has his (second) bioport installed, Allegra urges him to play the game with

her. Pikul grasps a support beam as Allegra fingers his new orifice. “It hurts. I think its

infected” Pikul asserts. “Its not infected. It’s just

excited. It wants some action” Allegra says as she

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licks her finger and inserts it into the virginal bioport, probing the wound of Pikul’s trauma.

Pikul reactions, “But I really don't think I want action! Me, I mean. The bearer of the excited

bio­port.” Aside from the overt eroticism of this gesture, the breaching of Pikul’s bodily

boundaries alone evokes the abject. Again, he is feminised both by being physically penetrated

but also sexually dominated by a female. Allegra’s aggression and sexuality bring to mind the

robotic Maria of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Both character’s overt, female sexualtiy

threaten the patriarchal order.

Upon entering eXistenZ, or so we are led to believe, Pikul and Allegra find themselves in a

video store. There, they receive micropods small enough to be inserted directly into their

bioports. After inserting the micropod into Allegra’s bioport, Pikul erotically tongues the hole.

This scene reinforces the bioport as an erogenous zone that signals at the abject in that it is

genital­like but also because it is alien. Located at the fairly unsexy small of the back, the

bioport lacks gender, orientation, it cannot reproduce, and despite the fact that the pod is organic

material, the orifice seems inorganic in it’s function (especially when Allegra lubricates Pikuls’

with a can of wd­40). This uncanny nature of the bioport creates ruptures in the meaning and

order of gender roles, sexuality, and identity.

While the penetration phobia

experienced by Pikul highlights the

anxiety of our vulnerable, material

bodies, the bioport also touches on the

penetration of the mind. The players

both plug into a shared pod via

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Umbycords. When plugged in, the gamers collectively create and fuel the virtual reality. As the

state of their mind affects the architecture of the game, their bodies supply power and energy.

Allegra first reminds the focus group and later Pikul not to panic, as panicking whilst plugged in

causes a “neural surge”. Therefore, eXistenZ fragments both the order of the physical and

mental self.

Throughout the film, the effect of collapsed meaning is heightened in the clouding of

distinctions between the artificial and the organic. Lacan asserted that “animals are caught in the

gaze of the world...humans are not so reduced to this “imaginary capture”, for we have access to

the symbolic.” 4

4 Hal Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” October 78, Autumn (1996): 109, <http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/stable/778908.>

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As the distinctions fade between human, animal, and machine, the abject effect is heightened.

One way this effect is produced is by the concurrent mutation of both animals and humans. The

game pods are composed of the harvested organs of genetically mutated amphibians, making

them literal software. The appearance of the pod itself bring to mind a uterus and, in one

particular scene, a stillbirth. It has a few buttons

that are reminiscent of nipples or clitorises,

especially when they are flicked on. The aptly

named “Umbycord” that connects to both the pod

and the bioports is undeniably umbilical. While the

amphibians are mutated for the purpose of the

game, likewise humans are fitted with bioports in order to play. The combination of the bioport

and the pod carry connotations to the abject as both “...a representation of the body turned

inside out, of the subject literally abjected, thrown

out....also the condition of the outside turned in, of

the invasion of the subject­as­picture by the

object­gaze.” In arguably the most gag inducing 5

scene of the entire film, Pikul consumes a large

platter of the mutated amphibians with his hands.

According to Kristeva, “food loathing is perhaps

the most elementary and most archaic form of

abjection” . The same amphibians that comprise 6

5 Ibid, 112. 6 Julia Kristeva, Power of Horrors: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 2.

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the mechanic game pods are somehow also a delicacy. In this scene, there is an apparent loss of

distinction between human, animal, and machine as he appears to let go of primal repression

and devours the platter in a matter of minutes, slurping up fluids from the bones. “The abject

confronts us, on the one hand, with those fragile states where man strays on the territories of

animal.” 7

Even more abject is the fact that Pikul himself is repulsed, but he cannot stop. Part of playing

eXistenZ is playing the role of your character, and the character’s predetermined actions cannot

be fought. This loss of agency (discussed in depth later on) can be likened to the Lacanian gaze,

7 Kristeva, Power of Horrors, 12.

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and raises the question of whether you are playing the game, or the game is playing you. As

Pikul continues to eat, he instinctually begins assembling a weapon out of the amphibian bones.

It appears to be the same organic pistol that was used by Allegra’s assassin at the start of the

film. The obfuscation of the boundaries between man and machine creates a powerful uncanny

effect in which “there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily

existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot

teleology and human goals.” 8

Another way in which Cronenberg collapses meaning is in the manipulation of the game

character’s identities. In their initial entry into eXistenZ, as mentioned before, Pikul and Allegra

are in a video game shop where the owner greets them and asks to assist them. After some

dialogue, the character falls silent as his face blurs over. Allegra explains that he is caught in a

“game loop”, and they must utter the right phrase to trigger his next line of dialogue. These

characters in the game seem and look human, but exist and act only as tools to advance the

game and the gamer forward. “Many of the human characters in this film exist simply as sites of

information exchange ­­ material entities produced by and teeming with swarms of others. In

short, eXistenZ does not render the human as an object that connects to other objects, but as an

effort of moment of multiple “inhuman” connections­­connections that are always on their way

elsewhere.” Pikul himself experiences a collapse in subjecthood when he shouts “It’s none of 9

your business who sent us! We’re here and that is all that matters…” followed by shock, “God,

what happened? I didn’t mean to say that.” Allegra explains, “it’s your character who said

8 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 2–3. 9 John Muckelbauer and Debra Hawhee, "Posthuman Rhetorics: "It's the Future, Pikul"," JAC 20.4 (2000): 768, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20866364.>

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it...it’s kind of a schizophrenic feeling, isn’t it?” The loss of agency witnessed in this scene,

heightened by Pikul’s visible horror of the experience, confronts the viewer with a regression of

subjecthood that “goes beyond the infantile to the inorganic.” The schizophrenic analogy, 10

Foster points out, has been utilized by the postmodern theorists such as Fredric Jameson and

Jean­Francois Lyotard. “The extreme space­time compressions produced by globalized

communication technologies give rise to a perception of the everyday as fundamentally

destabilizing and excessive.” This theory of the postmodern condition is taken a step further 11

by Jeremy Rifkin, who has argued that the commodification of personal experiences, where

every activity outside of the familial is a paid­for experience , will lead to multiple, fragmented 12

10 Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 120. 11 Simon Morley, The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art (London: Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press, 2010), 12. 12Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access: the New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where all of Life is a Paid­For Experience (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000), 9.

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consciousnesses that can be utilized in accordance with whatever virtual reality one would find

oneself in. This feeds into the the notion of the posthuman: a person that exists in a state beyond

the current notions of human subjectivity and selfhood. Within these theories, it would seem

that the increasing intergretation of the virtual in the real will, or already has, called for a totally

new definition of identity.

Perhaps the most haunting element of eXistenZ is the extreme confusion created by the

disorienting effect the game has on the characters perception of reality. Pikul is the central point

of this confusion in the film, due to his complete lack of experience with the gaming world.

Allegra, his guide into this new hobby of reality bending, assures him that what he is feeling is

just “a bad case of first time user anxiety”. This does absolutely nothing to quell Pikul’s

concerns, which remain with him throughout the entirety of the film.

Pikul’s main concern with the bending of reality is always tied to his concern with

bodies; particularly his own. He states that he is “worried about [his] body, is it hungry, is it in

danger.” However, when he finally decides to ‘pause’ the game in the Chinese Restaurant (the

location of the amphibious lunch), he becomes confronted with the fact that there is no way to

tell whether or not he is, in fact, in his ‘real’ body. Hal Foster sums up perfectly what Pikul’s

anxiety has to do with the abject.

“According to Kristeva, the abject is what I must get rid of in order to be an I at all. It is a phantasmatic substance not only alien to the subject but intimate with it­­too much so in fact, and this over proximity produces panic in the subject. In this way the abject touches on the fragility of our boundaries, of the spatial distinction between our insides and outsides as well as the temporal passage between the maternal body and the paternal law. Both spatially and temporally, then, abjection is a condition in which subjecthood is troubled, “where meaning collapses.” 13

13 Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic”, 114

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This spatial distinction between our insides and our outsides is what is at stake for Pikul here.

Inside of the game, he is no longer able to differentiate his interiority from his exteriority, and

thus is confronted with a sense of the abject.

This concern only grows deeper for him as the film

goes on. Near the end of the film, Pikul and Allegra

leave the game world of eXistenZ, only to discover

that they may not have left the game at all, due to

her game pod has carried over an illness into the

real world that had originated in the game. Allegra

calls this a “reality bleed through effect”. They

have very little time to meditate on this new development, as they are soon interrupted by a

pitched battle being fought between the realists and those allied to the gaming corporations. In

the events that follow, Allegra brutally and casually murders one of their former accomplices.

Pikul freaks out and demands to know why she did

this. She lightheartedly says that he was “messing

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with her head”, and urges Pikul to relax as he is only a game character anyway. Here, as earlier,

Pikul’s anxiety has to do with his difficulty in identifying ‘real’ bodies, thanks to the reality

bending properties of the game. In this penultimate scene, Pikul is unable to tell whether he is

inside or outside his own mind anymore, and is thus unable to tell whether Allegra just brutally

murdered a friend of theirs or simply another game character. He no longer has the tools to

make sense of his surrounding world and thus it can be said that his meaning has collapsed.

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14 All images, unless otherwise specified, taken as screenshots via Netflix.

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Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

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Hughes, Rowland. "The Ends of the Earth: Nature, Narrative, and Identity in Dystopian Film." Critical Survey, 2013, 22­39.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror; An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Muckelbauer, John, and Debra Hawhee. "Posthuman Rhetorics: "It's the Future, Pikul"." JAC 20.4 (2000): 767­774. Print.

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Pinedo, Isabel. "Recreational Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film." Journal of Film and Video No. 48. Spring­Summer (1996): 17­31. Print.

Sullivan, Gordon M., 2007. “Fascinated Victims:” Aspects of Abjection in the Films of David Cronenberg. Master of Arts thesis, North Carolina State University. <http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/resolver/1840.16/252>.

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