In a combination of theories and ideas that have been thrown around in a variety of classes, I have found myself writing a screenplay treatment that centers on the concept of virtual reality and the place of identity. An interesting theme that arises in Snow Crash, eXistenZ, and Neuromancer is the complications involved in creating a virtual version of oneself. In Snow Crash, there is the scene where Hiro engages in a sword fight with someone in the Black Sun. His avatar in the Metaverse was manipulating his own code in order to defeat his opponent, while his physical form in actual reality was carrying out the movements necessary for the battle, whence the unnerved audience he had when he had finished. One of the confusions of movement in the Metaverse is how the characters are controlled, as it seems they can walk around, ride motorcycles, and be moved by other avatars with only their mind control, but for the intricacies of sword play, the physical body must move. However, for the most part, Hiro creates a copy of himself to wander around the Metaverse, somewhat in the capacity of a vehicle through virtual reality.
eXistenZ takes a very different approach to VR. Considering the bioports and the game console situation within the game with the animal part pods, the whole situation revolves around an actual interface with the body involving connection through blood and tissue. You do not create a new character, but have your own body, just the way it appears in reality. The way this vision of VR functions it comes off as more of a controlled hallucination or specifically engineered dream experience than the slightly less “realistic” VR of Snow Crash. There is very little control on the part of the player and one feels entirely ruled by the story line of the game.
The way I see Neuromancer relating to this is in the concept of the Construct. Somehow, in Gibson’s view of the future of virtual realities and technology, a person’s personality, their identity (up to a certain point) can be saved onto what equates to a floppy disk and moved around, loaded onto computers and forced to exist in cyberspace without a body like some kind of technological limbo. While the Flatline had no concept of time, he was more than just a conglomeration of the former being’s memories and skills, he also had the sense of humor, a laugh (as disconcerting as it may have been to Case) and the desire to be erased, released from the cyberspace cage in which he was saved.
I find all three of these versions of VR to be fascinating, and elements of each are incorporated into my idea of VR in my screenplay. The character wrote her own VR world as an escape, a nostalgic playground to represent all that the current government structure had taken away. It plays with the conflict between controlling the image of oneself, as Hiro does, and also the surreal interplay between cyberspace and real life, where it becomes uncertain whether one’s involvement with a virtual world can be more real than the real world because of the importance placed in time spent there and one’s identity in that space. Dixie had no choice about his personality being saved, and when he was consulted, he chose to be released. However, in eXistenZ, the lines between reality and the virtual game reality were so badly blurred that it became almost impossible to distinguish them. When the American Jude Law character came out of the game within a game for the first time he found that it all felt unreal and he experienced extreme disorientation. Having had periods of my life where I could play six to eight straight hours of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), it seems that the level of technology in these books and movies is unnecessary for one to lose the connection between mind and body, neglecting the physical reality and placing the needs of the virtual character first.