Following the recent commercial success of films such as The Matrix and Minority

Report, to what extent would you agree that we are witnessing the emergence of a
new genre, that of the ‘virtual reality’ film? Examine the distinguishing
characteristics such films may possess and explore their appeal.

The obvious appeal viewers have for the ‘virtual reality’ film can stem from an multitude of
apparently justifiable positions, stretching anywhere to the intriguing possibility of revolutionary
technologies, the setting of a futuristic world, the explosive action scenes, the revolutionary
special effects, state of the art computer graphics, even due to the high profile of the celebrities
involved (in both categories of actors and directors). But it would seem the fascinating concept of
‘virtual reality’ and all it encompasses, is the real attraction.
According to the Chambers Dictionary, ‘Virtual reality’ can be understood as ‘a computer-
simulated environment (used, e.g. for training astronauts, and for computer games) which gives
the operator the impression of actually being in the environment, interacting with it and causing
things to happen, by means of goggles, a joystick, data gloves or other special equipment’
(Chambers 1998: 1859). Yet the concept of ‘virtual reality’ can also offer other forms of
interpretation.

‘…in its attempt to create a virtual environment which, ideally, would be indistinguishable from
’real-life’ itself, VR potentially represents the furthest movement yet made along the realist axis…
the debate surrounding the virtual reality…positions it within the realist aesthetic.’ (Cook &
Bernink 1999: 62)

This understanding hints at the ideological connotations of ‘virtual reality’, but is still only
concerned with the technical and aesthetic quality of the concept, and though this in itself bears a
significant fascination on the viewer, one is still lead to believe that it is in fact the deeper,
philosophical ramifications of the concept that has left audiences in contemplative awe.
The modern philosophical interest in analysing what our sensory experiences tells us was
invented by René Descartes in 1637, in his book A Discourse on Method, which was centrally
concerned with doubt and certainty. In order to distinguish the two, he went through a
philosophical thought experiment that is now known as ‘Cartesian doubt’, where he supposed that
all of his sensory experiences were false and later, in his Meditations of the First Philosophy
(1641), Descartes introduced the notion of a demon concocting these sense-perceptions and
inserting them in his mind as continuous hallucinations. Descartes did not necessarily believe that
such a demon existed; what he really was interested in was how we could be logically certain that
it didn’t exist or whether we could be sure. Descartes had thus set the agenda for the mind-body
problem. This lead to George Berkley’s famous theory of ‘mental monism’, also known as
‘subjective idealism’, where only the mental world is ‘real’. This philosophical scepticism seems to
be the essence of ‘virtual reality’, the driving force behind the concept that has generated such
interest and has been the inspiration for films such as Tron, Lawnmower Man and Cube, to name
but a few.
Based on a story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, Minority Report is an action-detective
thriller set in Washington D.C. during the year 2054, where police utilize a psychic technology to
arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crime. The protagonist is the head of this
Precrime Unit and is himself accused of the future murder of a man he hasn’t even met.
In The Matrix, the world as we know it has been destroyed by a nuclear catastrophe, and
robots have taken over. Ironically, the robots now farm human beings. The humans are kept
imprisoned, naked and isolated from one another, plugged into some unseen computer system,
the Matrix, that creates a virtual reality so that people would be oblivious to their true plight, that
the world is anything other than the ultimate reality.
Both films question the essence of any conceivable meaning or truth attributed to the
ideas/concepts/beliefs that form our ‘reality’. In Minority Report, where the central argument on
whether it is a viable or just decision to predict crime in order to prevent it before it is actually
committed, seems to be a critique on the contemporary dilemma of whether we can act upon
assumptions that may or may not happen; whether these predictions are based on any ‘fact’ or
whether they are simply based on our paranoid fears associated with the absurdity of trying to
predict, control, maintain and contain specific elements of the future. Minority Report seems to
put into question the source of the ‘facts’ that crimes are judged upon, plus the very nature of the
law and morality that justifies those decisions. How far can the judicial system be allowed to go
with regards to the decisions made on the fight against crime, whilst protecting our livelihood?
The Matrix incorporates such religious overtones as the rising of our savior ‘the One’, which
can be understood as an analogy for Jesus Christ, but also questions the very essence of what
we believe to be ‘real’ and the struggle to realize this. This alludes to the ancient Indian
philosophical concept of penetrating ‘the veil of Maya’, the deceptive world of human perception,
whose relationship to any underlying reality is uncertain. The film seems to comment on our
contemporary world, where there is the suspicion that our ‘reality’, our thoughts, ideas and beliefs
of the world are not our own, and may even be administrated by some unknown constitution. The
pseudo world that The Matrix creates can also be seen as the reification of a Nietzschean or
postmodernist concept: that the world we live in is structured on ideology and that it is some kind
of amalgamation of historic phenomena, rendering the meaning based upon such ‘facts’ as
questionable.
The postmodernist position is now raised here, in which the ideology, culture and history that
forms the foundation and structures we live by are all put into question.

‘It is safest to grasp the concept of postmodernism as an attempt to think the present historically
in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place…it either “expresses”
some deeper irrepressible historical impulse…or effectively “represses” and diverts it,
depending on the side of the ambiguity you happen to favour. Postmodernism, postmodern
consciousness, may then amount to not much more than theorizing its own condition of
possibility, which consists primarily in the sheer enumeration of changes and
modifications...the postmodern looks for breaks that, or events rather than new worlds, for
the telltale instant after which it is no longer the same…it only clocks the variations
themselves, and knows only too well that the contents are just more images.’ (Jameson
1991: ix)

This inevitably leads us to the question of whether these depictions have any defining
substance in them, whether they possess any insight into the complexities of ‘our world’. Perhaps
this is a question that is unanswerable, as it is unlikely that we shall find a workable system to
give us absolute value to our existence, from which to build a lasting and irrefutable foundation
out of. In the meantime, we will have to be content with the tedious game of aesthetic delusion,
the creation of alternative ‘realities’, meaningful ‘realities’ and virtual ‘realities’ to amuse ourselves
with. It can be said that the cultural/social structures that we live in is a ‘virtual reality’, that the
construction of what we perceive as currently fashionable, valuable, believable, meaningful, etc.,
is in constant flux and is subject to a psycho-sociological paradox; the illusion that we can actually
stamp ‘meaning’ into our lives (or that ‘meaning’ is actually meaningful). The question is now
raised as to the origin of ‘fact’ or ‘truth’ or whether there is such a thing. Perhaps it is just our ‘fate’
to forever chase the elusive and unknowable.
This leads us back to the content of the films Minority Report and The Matrix. The prediction of
a ‘truth’ in Minority Report turns into the creation of a truth, and in The Matrix, the inhabitants are
kept contented with an illusion of a world they live in within their own minds, something they
believe to be true. These depictions draw our attention to the artificiality of the cultural/social
structures that we live by, questioning their very value and function within society.
Thus, what seemingly distinguishes the virtual reality film from other science fiction films is this
philosophical train of thought, but is this reason enough to create a separate genre for the ‘virtual
reality’ film? Would we really be anticipating and making way for the emergence of a new genre?
Most probably, though the reasons may be rather dubious. Tom Ryall suggests a model in which
we may define a genre.

‘Genres may be defined as patterns/forms/styles/structures which transcend individual films, and

which supervise both their construction by the film-maker, and their reading by an audience.’
(Ryall 1975: 280)
The problem I find with this is that films have and always will employ various aesthetic or
narrative patterns/forms/styles/structures from different genres and intertwine them accordingly,
resulting in a mutation that is neither belonging to one genre or the next. This in itself is enough to
cast a large question mark on the function of genre as an accurate definition of a certain type of
film. The assumption that if one has enjoyed a particular genre of film, would be equally satisfied
by watching a film within that same genre also seems rather naïve. For example, the spectator
who enjoyed E.T., The Matrix and A.I. wouldn’t necessarily enjoy The Terminator, Alien or The
Thing, even though these films would all be grouped within the genre of science fiction. Genre,
then, can only be concerned with the identification of the basic aesthetic narrative ingredients that
are attributed to that particular genre. Thus, the science fiction genre can only be described as a
film incorporating a radical use of science, or the film noir genre can be understood as adopting a
dark and brooding mood to its films, reflecting this in the lighting and the use of claustrophobic
camera angles.
Now, of course, this does not go about in explaining or differentiating the innumerable hybrids
that have sprung from these basic definitions. For example, the very differentiation of the science
fiction and horror genres (which are generally lumped together) is particularly tricky and
ambiguous, requiring a number of genre critics and a considerable amount of time to flesh out
some form of definable distinction. Hence, the apparent banality of trying to register and
categorize the continuous evolution of particular genres. It would seem, therefore, that audiences
are more interested in specific narrative content in relation to the desired effect i.e. how they
would like to feel at the end of a movie. This is opposed to the actual specificity of the genre, as
this may employ ingredients from three different genre types, which may only be used as
generalized features to attract the audience initially (though indirectly confusing many), where the
main focus is on the narrative content, to maintain the audience’s interest.
The Matrix and Minority Report only use science fiction as a setting and the ‘virtual reality’
concept as a functioning technical mechanism within that setting, whereas the main focus of both
films seem more akin to the postmodernist/poststructralist debate: the uncertainty and
deconstruction of all the structures we believe as being ‘real’, ‘certain’ or ‘true’. With regards to
Minority Report, this line of thought seems to filter through to the judicial system, in which it
questions the law affirming moral structure that is relied upon to pass ‘just’ judgement onto its
citizens. This philosophical scepticism that questions the very fabric of our reality, consciousness
and morality seems to me the only significant feature that the two films can be seen to be
compared with; that the use of the ‘virtual reality’ concept can therefore only be seen as merely
peripheral, to give some sort of technical explanation to the narrative. Therefore, we mustn’t
confuse the categorizing process of a film that genre entails with the actual content of the
narrative. For example, one would not compare the meaning behind the narrative of films such as
Lawnmower Man with the positions highlighted by The Matrix even though they both incorporate
the ‘virtual reality’ concept.
But it can be argued that this is the essence of the ‘virtual reality’ genre, that it is this
postmodernist element that differentiates itself from the technicalities of the science fiction genre.
But if that were the case, then what genre does Zelig or Maurizio Nichetti’s The Icicle Thief
belong to, both of which can lay claim to maintaining a postmodernist approach. Perhaps, then, it
is not simply the postmodern element that gives ‘virtual reality’ its genre status, but when actually
coupled with science fiction creates a new breed of genre. But then that would simply be the
merging of one concept with another (postmodernism + science fiction), so what of all the other
films that amalgamate different ideas such as Blade Runner (sci-fi/detective/fNoir), Ghostbusters
(sci-fi/horror/comedy) or even My Stepmothers an Alien (sci-fi/romance/comedy)? Would that
mean we would have to herald the emergence of new genres for each of these films? That seems
unlikely.
This puts us in the difficult position of discerning the actual function and the distinctions made
by genre. There is the argument that there is a use for categorizing films that adheres to the
corresponding patterns/forms/styles/structures that constitutes a certain genre. But as we have
just explored the futility of trying to define particular film categories accurately, it would seem the
most logical approach would be to use these patterns/forms/styles/structures in as broad a sense
as possible, positioning itself as a general playing field for film-maker and spectator to navigate
within. Viewed in this way, genre then can be seen as a commercial tool to attract audiences from
as wide a background as possible, packaging them in such a way that offers a distinctive range to
chose from and regularly incorporating various genre types to give better value to their
customers.

‘At every turn, we find that Hollywood labors [sic] to identify its pictures with multiple genres, in
order to benefit from the increased interest that this strategy inspires in diverse demographic
groups. When specific genre terms are used, they are invariably offered in adjective-noun pairs,
one term intended to guarantee appeal to each sex: western romance, romantic adventure, epic
drama, and so on.’ (Altman 1998: 57)

One can’t help but ask the rather impudent question: does it really matter whether we
distinguish the ‘virtual reality’ film from the science fiction film? This question ultimately depends
on whom it is directed to. To the genre critic: probably, the film producer: absolutely, the average
movie-goer: unlikely.
So, the question of whether we should herald the emergence of a new genre in film, that of the
‘virtual reality’ film, is an irrelevant one, which is perhaps a matter of opinion open to debate,
though seemingly it does not have any solid foundation from which to argue from. The aesthetic
construction of a perceived ‘reality’ is the primary function of film. The ‘virtual reality’ film,
therefore, is a distinction from a distinction, the reification of a perceived ‘reality’ separated from a
perceived ‘non-reality’. In that case, Bad Education, where the illusion of a film within a film,
would be a perfect example of the ‘virtual reality’ film. Though I have the feeling that Pedro
Almodovar, the films writer/director, would be the first to dispute this.

References

Pam Cook & Mieke Bernink 1999, The Cinema Book, London: BFI Publishing
The Chambers Dictionary 1998, Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd.
Frederic Jameson 1991, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, US: Duke
University Press
Tom Ryall, ‘Teaching through Genre,’ Screen Education, Autumn 1975, no. 17
Rick Altman 1998, Film/Genre, London: BFI Publishing