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The Flight from the Flesh

Virtual reality in sciencefiction films

The term ‘virtual reality’ was coined in 1986 by computer scientist Jaron Lanier. It is a paradoxical term, because ‘virtual’ is almost the opposite of ‘reality’. ‘Virtual reality’ is in fact a contradictio in terminis. Computer technology made this paradox possible. In virtual reality the computer creates a reality which is and remains virtual, but which the user can enter and influence by the feedback mechanisms of the computer. This results in an ‘as if’ reality - different from the ‘as if’ realities of cinema and literature - more real than fiction, but more virtual than reality.

VR is an electronic environment of threedimensional graphic representations produced by the computer, which can be entered by the user through input-output technologies such as data gloves and a head-mounted display (HMD), or even a complete data suit through which the user is connected to the computer. It is a technology that in the words of Michael Heim "convinces the participant that he or she is actually in another place by substituting the primary sensory input with data received [and] produced by a computer" (Heim, 1998: 220-221). In everyday parlance virtual reality is often equated with ‘cyberspace’, the trendy word that sciencefiction novelist William Gibson introduced in his novel Neuromancer in 1984. Like VR, cyberspace refers to an electronic interactive environment, but the term refers more specifically to the cybernetic data space of the computer.

In this article I will not discuss VR as a technology, but representations of VR as they appear in recent sciencefiction films. As will be explained below, VR is often represented as a tunnel. This is effectuated in a computer simulation. What are the meanings and effects of this particular representation of virtual reality as a tunnel? In this article I will take a closer look at these tunnel-like computer simulations; representations which are highly influenced by the new information and communication technology (ICT). I will first examine in how far these computerised scenes are a continuation or discontinuation with cinematic traditions. Then I place the hallucinating VR scenes and the hype concerning the new digital media in the context of the Californian hippie culture and the drugs scene. I will finally focus on the desire in these sciencefiction films to transcend the body and become pure mind. This problematic will be discussed from a gender perspective. I will argue that a certain ambivalence towards the body results in flight away from the flesh in VR. This may be read as a flight away from the feminine, but it can also be seen as a flight back into the womb – into the matrix. In discussing the cinematic VR scenes I will focus exclusively on the vision of virtual reality which is being represented and not discuss the narratives of the films.

As a new technology, virtual reality inspires fantasmatic, mostly futuristic, representations in literature such as cyberpunk, films within the genre of sciencefiction and computer games on cd-rom and on the WWW. The virtual spaces that are evoked by computer technology, call for a fantasy to actually enter those spaces. This fantasy is expressed on the one hand by a utopia in which the subject is liberated from the restrictions of the body, and on the other hand by a dystopia in which the human body and/or mind splits open. Within the small corpus of sciencefiction films which have thematised developments in computer technology, there are some very remarkable similarities to be found in the way virtual reality is represented. From one of the first movies in which characters enter the mainframe of the computer, Tron, through the way in which characters find themselves in virtual realities in films such as Freejack, Lawnmower Man, Hacker or Johnny Mnemonic, to the most recent film on VR, The Matrix -- virtual reality and the trip into it are represented in conspicuously similar ways.

The similarities are the following: VR is imaged by computer animation; VR is represented as cyberspace, that is to say as the cybernetic space of the computer; VR is visualised as a claustrofobic tunnel in which the character is sucked at great speed; at the end of the tunnel the character enters an altogether different dimension in which cyberspace is represented as pure mind or as a cosmic power; after the exhilirating ride through the tunnel there is a much quieter and more open VR space in which the character can freely move, float or fly. However, this space of virtual reality threatens to trap the character; he or she can disappear into it, disintegrate, fall to pieces, become mad; death is often imminent. Finally, the character is either liberated and returns to the real world, or is lost in space and dies.

These similarities in the cinematic representation of virtual reality are quite striking. Especially the tunnel-like animation in which the character enters virtual reality is a recurring topos in sciencefiction films. One of the earliest examples is certainly the psychedelic ride through the universe at the end of 2001: Space Odyssey; a more recent one is Jodie Foster’s spectacular space travel through ‘wormholes’ in Contact (1997), or the much shorter tunnels which transport the characters in The Matrix to the virtual world.

In order to know whether the tunnel images in which virtual reality is represented continue or discontinue cinematic traditions I will first analyse some cinematic aspects of the films. The scenes which represent VR form a break in the narrative; they do not continue the narrative flow but interrupt the story in a spectacular display of special - digital - effects. This is in part effectuated by the camera, or rather the simulation of a camera. The virtual position of the camera in these scenes is rather striking. The computer images suggest that the camera moves autonomously through the tunnel, without the usual reverse shot to the character who is actually being transported through the tunnel. Thus, the simulated camera offers a completely disembodied point of view as the point of identification for the spectator. It is rare in classical cinema to see this kind of sustained point of view in which the gaze of the camera coincides with the eye of the character, without showing the character in the recurrent reverse shot. But where the cinematic body disappears, the spectator's body is called upon through the appeal of these scenes on sensory experience. In foregrounding the visual spectacle the tunnel scenes engage rather than address the spectator, producing a kinetic experience through an overwhelming flow of images.

This kind of virtual point of view shot is quite predominant in computer games, for example in adventure games like Doom and Quake, but also in mystery games like Myst and Riven. In these games there is no character to which the simulated point of view is connected, and with whom the player may identify. In Doom and Quake an icon in the frame represents the player's position. The icon, a hand holding a gun, takes the place of the simulated moving camera. In Myst and Riven there is no such icon, but there is still the same immediate point of view for the player in the game. Where digital media like computer games or the World Wide Web have adopted photographic realism and the convention of the screen from traditional visual media like cinema (Manovich 1996, 1998), it seems that the sciencefiction film has adopted this rather unusual, immediate yet disembodied, point of view from computer games.

In the VR-scenes in the sciencefiction films that I discuss here the most salient moment is the claustrophobic ride through a tunnel that draws the spectator into the image. In for example Tron, Freejack, and the first Lawnmower Man, and many other recent science fiction films, the characters are sucked up by the tunnel at great speed. The tunnel functions as a transmission between two different dimensions or worlds; a topos which is derived from fairy tales and myths. The journey through the tunnel in the sciencefiction films is in itself quite a speedy experience and more than just a passage. This kind of tunnel journeys resemble the chase that has become such a standard element in Hollywood film, almost from the beginning of silent cinema with its fascination for movement. However, the camera in the VR scenes is not moved by the cameraman nor is it placed on a moving dolly, but computer simulation suggests an anotnomously moving camera. In this effort to render motion at its most extreme we find a continuation if not culmination of cinematic tradition.

The computer animated images suggest that one moves through the tunnel rapidly, with many sharp corners demanding fast movements sideways or upwards and downwards, and graphic images flashing by at top speed. The effect for the spectator is rather like a kinetic delirium. The chaotic way in which the digitalised images flash by the retina produces a vertiginous experience that upsets normal ways of viewing. The scenes bring about a intensification of the viewing experience that is close to a kick or intoxication. The spectator is thrown into some kind of free fall; drowning in a surging vortex; immersed in a giddying whirlpool of kinetic images. The spectator has no illusion of control over the image, but is rather subjected to the exhilirating impression of being launched at great speed like a missile into a narrow tunnel.

The computer generated representation of virtual reality continues the old myth of total cinema. For some critics, like André Bazin (1967), it has been the dream of cinema to represent reality as closely as possible, although for Bazin the effect was not exactly the kick in itself but rather an insight into reality. Such reflection was wasted on the Hollywood film industry which was more geared towards total experience than total cinema. Or, rather, the aim of total cinema was not an increasing verisimilitude in itself, but rather an increase in visual pleasure. Thus, Hollywood cinema has always encouraged and embraced new technologies which could add to that effect, from sound and colour, to widescreen and recent digital technologies (Baker, 1993). At times this went as far as extending beyond the visual senses, in such hapless experiments with 3D, and even ‘smellovision’ or ‘odoramic film’. In view of this cinematic history computer animated virtual reality means to Hollywood no more than yet another special effect to achieve complete simulation of reality; representation will no longer do the trick. Simulated images can produce the immersion of the spectator in the immediacy of her visual pleasure. As Robin Baker (1993) argues, digital technology is mostly put to use for special effects in cinema, continuing a long standing cinematic tradition; VR is no exception to the rule.

As I have just argued, the special effects of the digital journey through the tunnel in these sciencefiction films can be compared to the stereotypical Hollywood scene of the ‘exhilirating ride’. Scott Bukatman relates this kind of spectacular scenes to the rides in Disney parks, in which movement suggests an ecstatic kinesis which has become an experiential end in itself (1993: 239-40). He argues that this kind of motion points to an experience of utopian freedom; there are no boundaries, there is just the sheer joy of speed and movement. In this paragraph I will explore some of the utopian elements in these scenes, before I will discuss the dystopian aspects in the last part of this article.

The tunnel ride into virtual reality is uncannily close to a hallucinating trip. In that sense the psychedelic ride in 2001 was exemplary in more than one way. This hallucinating aspect can be found in the visualisations of virtual reality in Hacker and Johnny Mnemonic. Internet is here visualised as a cybernetic space which can be entered by the Net surfers. The Net is graphically represented as a cybercity, microchips becoming roads and skyscrapers. The representations of Internet is futuristic, in that everything is smooth and fast; no time needed for downloading, no congestion, no 'World Wide Wait'. It's a real highway where everyone can surf at high speed. In this utopia the server is never down and technology never fails. In Hacker the utopian spirit is expressed by transglobal network and solidarity in a variation on the socialist ideal 'hackers of all countries get united’ [english translation of communist slogan?]. Both films play on some kind of transcendental presence: in the glitzy graphical visualisation of the Net in Hacker the letters g. o. d. flash by; in the case of Johnny Mnemonic a mysterious face of a woman looms up regularly in the virtual world of the Net.

The visual emphasis on the hallucinating effect of virtual reality in the VR scenes seems to me of great importance. One could say that virtual reality in sciencefiction films is visualised as a hallucination. The nestor of cyberpunk fiction, William Gibson, described cyberspace as ‘consensual hallucination’ in his novel Neuromancer. In cyberpunk literature and in sciencefiction films VR is often approached as some kind of consciousness expanding drug; in that sense we could speak of ‘cyberdelia’. The Belgian cultural critic Lieven de Cauter (1995) argues that our postmodern times show a cultural hunger for excess and ecstasy. In the desire for transgressive experience the cinematic visualisation of virtual reality stands by no means on its own. This desire can be found in very different parts of popular culture such as techno, acid, house, the raves and the increasing use of drugs like XTC. De Cauter sees this phenomenon as ‘recreational escapism’. This escapism is charactarised by a desire for the transformation of the experience of time and space.

Transforming time and space is one of the most important aspects of the VR film scenes. The scenes are pure fantasy in that the images are generated by the computer and represent an experience that is so far impossible in real life. Thus, the images have no referent in reality. It is characteristic of fantasy to be free of boundaries. As such, we see that the characters in virtual reality are temporarily liberated from the body and freely cross time and space. From the way the images are designed (for example in the disembodied point of view), there is a strong desire to transgress physical boundaries, or even to let the body behind altogether. It is the euphoria of becoming pure mind. In this respect, it is striking how clean these 'trips' are: free from the body, the character falls, flies or floats virtually through space. There is hardly any carnality, no 'wetware' of the body. This stands in stark contrast to the abjection of 'normal' use of drugs, which can be found in a film like Trainspotting, where the abject functions of the body are foregrounded in excessive peeing, pooping, sweating and vomiting.

Or course, the relation between VR and drugs has been noted before (Hayward 1993). Timothy Leary saw the personal computer as a safe alternative for LSD in the nineties; cyberdelia have replaced psychedelia. Sherry Turkle remarks that in everyday language somebody behind the PC is called a 'user', and not viewer or. However, she prefers to refer to the computer's holding power in terms of seduction rather than addiction (1995: 50). In sciencefiction films VR has been represented as an alternative to chemical drugs, like the ‘plug in drug’ in the television series Wild Palms or the socalled SQUID’s in the film Strange Days . This imbrication of the human body and electronic media was foreshadowed by the visceral VCR in Cronenberg's Videodrome .

Journals on digital media like Wired , Mute and Mondo 2000 created quite a hype in cyberspace and virtual reality, deliberating hazy utopias about a digitalised information society. This kind of literature shows how cyberculture is rooted in the subcultures of the west coast of the United States of America. Hayward (1993) has pointed out how Silicon Valley has continued the hippie subculture of California. Some of the originators of cyberculture, Brenda Laurel (1997), Howard Rheingold (1993), Jaron Lanier and John Barlow (see interviews in Zaleski 1997), are from California and reflect in their texts a sixties ideology. This ideology is less politicised but not any less utopian than the sixties, and often comes close to New Age philosophies, which in the context of technological developments in ICT is also called ‘New Edge’ (see e.g. Mondo, 1992). The contemporary hippie is now called a ‘zippie’; the ‘zen-inspired pagan professional’ (Zaleski 1997).

The combination of new age thought and developments in ICT produce some ideas that acquire an almost mythical status. One of the recurring ideas is that cyberspace is or will become a revolutionary consciousness. John Barlow for example thinks that electronic media will reveal a collective organism of the mind (in Zaleski 1997: 27-53). He sees it as a kind of hyperhuman organism that wants to live and grow. Barlow speaks in this respect of a world in which people communicate through a global brain. Electronic media produce an informed space between minds where pure energy is exchanged. It is a space 'without obstructions', where one is liberated from the physical impediments of the body (51). Barlow is by far not the only one who believes that the World Wide Web is like an organism, and the software its brains. This is not a mere metaphor, as some digerati do believe that people can plug in to their personal computer in the near future.

The central idea here is ‘emergent Artificial Intelligence’, by which scientists refer to the possible evolution of artificial intelligence into an autonomous and organic consciousness. The idea of this possibility is partly based on the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, meaning that Earth is a self regulating system (Dery 1996: 53). It is also partly based on the scientific notion that consciousness will emerge if an organism becomes complex. That is to say that one individual neuron in the human brain is not conscious, but that billions of neurons in a complex relation can elevate consciousness. Eventually, in this line of thought, computers will become so complex as to simulate inner life. This idea is sometimes related to Internet; uncontrolled growth could eventually lead to a global, artificial intelligence.

Some scientists, like Marvin Minsky (1988) at MIT, truly think that one day they will be able to upload their brains to the computer, from organic material to silicon, or the other way around, to download information from the computer directly into the brain. One of the founders of computer technology, Hans Moravec (1988), also believes that the transferral between wetware and hardware will be possible in the future. They do not no yet know what form this might take: whether it will be a robot or cyborg, or a computer generated artificial reality, or even ‘wet’ computers that can be plugged into the body. The point here is that the utopia of a posthuman universe is quite generally accepted in cyberculture, with its strong belief in future robotic life forms that will develop independent reflection and procreation and evolve into beings that are as complex as humans.

In itself I do not object to such futuristic ideas of a posthuman world. As Donna Haraway has put it in the 1980s, we all are already cyborgs. What I do object to is a mish mash of ideas and theories that glorify cyberculture without much thought to any potential drawbacks or dangers. And the nonsensical humdrum of some new age ideas in connection to ICT is quite staggering. The theology of Teilhard de Chardin is immensely popular in new age thought. In the first half of the twentieth century this Jesuit developed ideas about the evolution of the universe. He believed in some kind of evolutionary leap that would take humanity to a universal consciousness: the point Omega. The evolutionary development of consciousness is also central to eastern religions, especially Buddhism. These profound visions are readily, and all too often badly understood, adopted by new age followers. A rather curious example is Mark Pesce who developed the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, a protocol to add 3-D visuals to the Web (see interview in Zaleski 1997: 277-278). He also produced a relatively cheap HMD set for VR navigation on the Net. Next to his merits in ICT, he describes himself as a practising gay and pagan witch. In his 'magick' view the WWW can be compared to the chakra of the third eye. He believes that the last chakra, the crown of the head, will open up on a global scale in 2012, and cosmic energy will flow in. In a rather inimitable way this is connected to extraterrestrial life, the Pathfinder on Mars, and many other such things.

In this kind of new edge thinking, that Mark Dery (1996) has called ‘technopaganism’, anything is connected to anything, without any critical reflection or even consistence of thought. Alternative realities are tossed together: dreams, psychedelia, mediatation, virtuality, or whatever. It is all mixed (up) in a postmodern cauldron.

This kind of new age/new edge ‘philosophies’ in cyberculture, are to my mind at times complete nonsense, but also dangerously utopian. I agree wholeheartedly with Mark Dery (1996) who points to some of the problems that ICT poses to contemporary societies, and which are completely denied within some parts of cyberculture. The virtual world of light and disembodiment stands in stark contrast to the harsh reality of economic and social inequalities and ecological disaster. Problems like the growing gap between the information poor and the information rich (Castells, 1996-1998), are seldomly addressed by cyber gurus. Easy utopias tend to deny the materiality of life. Many cyberfantasies more often than not disavow suffering and death.

However, physical suffering and fear of death are prominently present in the sciencefiction films that I am discussing here. The utopias which are conceived and developed in sciencefiction, more often than not have a strong dystopian dimension. In my view the films show a certain disrepect for the body. The trip into virtual reality is a flight away from the flesh. Sometimes the body is ‘virtually’ moved to a new space, but more often the physical body is left behind while the virtual body moves around in cyberspace. In The Matrix and eXistenZ, for example, the characters leave their body behind in ‘reality’ in some kind of sleeping beauty position, while they perform actions elsewhere in a virtual space. The virtual and physical body are still related because when the virtual body dies, the physical, ‘real’, body also dies. According to Mark Dery (1996) human disembodiment is one of the most important characteristics of cyberculture. The human being in the electronic age is rapidly becoming immaterial. The sciencefiction films envisage virtual reality as one of the ways to actualise that desired state of immateriality and disembodiment.

The desire of transcending the body resounds time and again in the utopias on ICT, which give shape and content to concepts as cyberspace and virtual reality. Where does this desire to be liberated from the body come from? Why is disembodiment a desired state of being? And how is this problematic related to gender? To answer these questions, I want to return to the VR scenes and explore their dystopian elements.

Lawnmower Man I features a famous VR scene in which Jobe takes the blonde beauty of the village on a trip into virtual reality: ‘this will be the best ride of your life’, he assures her. In a laboratorium Jobe and his girlfriend are tied to a wheel and connected to a computer. In computer animation we see their virtual appearance float in cyberspace. The scene is represented in colourful images and often the tunnellike whirlpools appear. Their virtual bodies melt into a kind of dragonfly, but when they separate from one another the girl gets stuck. Getting scared she calls Jobe for help. He says that she is stuck in "the matter of the primal mind". While she gets more and more afraid, he changes into a monster with strange bulging forms that merge into sucking holes with which he attackes her. Her scream initiates a cut back to the lab where the girl hangs unconscious in the wheel. She has lost her mind in cyberspace and does not play any role in the rest of the narrative. Jobe becomes more evil in the film, convinced that VR turns him into god. A the end of the film he disappears into cyberspace through the telephone.

This scene shows the darker side of the desire to transcend the body. The fantasy of heterosexual union, the freudian flying and the dragonfly I leave to the filmmaker to account for (Springer 1996). But what about Jobe’s fantasy of almighty power to create himself and to destroy the other? The scene is uncannily close to a rape: the woman does not only get the ride of her life, but also the ‘fuck’ of her life, which literally puts her out of her mind. This example shows that new technology or new media do not necessarily lead to new stories. On the contrary: SF often reverts to conventional narrative structures, like here the stereotype of the woman as victim of male violence. Losing her mind in cyberspace, she is the one who has to pay the price for Jobe’s desire of transcending the body in virtual reality.

The fantasy of the ultimate trip in the VR-scenes seems to be caught in the western duality of body and mind. In western culture traditionally the mind is not only much higher valued than the body, but feminists have pointed out how the binary opposition of mind/body is inevitably related to the opposition of masculinity and femininity. The desire for the liberation from the body that is so prevalent in contemporary cyber culture, is predicated upon a christian tradition of disgust for the body, and hence for femininity. It is especially in the genre of the horror movie that the disgust for the abject body finds its apotheosis, more so than in sciencefiction which features more the desire to control and transcend the body through technology and become some kind of Übermensch. Barbara Creed (1993) has argued that the horror film is the genre that exploits the western fear and disgust of the female body. A recent example of this is the self-conscious SF horror filmAlien Resurrection, where the men sense and fear the erotic solidarity between the clone Ripley and the cyborg Call (played by Sigourney Weaver and Wynona Ryder) from which they are excluded, and in which the disgust is located in the abject and Alien, who represents the monstrous, reproductive, female powers.

In several texts on cyberspace I encountered quite negative references to the body. The body is seen as a living hell, from which one can be liberated through virtual reality. Gibson, for example, writes in his novel Neuromancer about the ‘lichaamloze uitgelatenheid van cyberspace’ from which the character Case falls back into ‘the prison of his own flesh’ (p. 6). Heim schrijft: "Suspended in computer space, the cybernaut leaves the prison of the body and emerges in a world of digital sensation" (1991: 64). And John Barlow believes that "the Net is somehow going to free us from the tyranny of the body (…); by going digital we can break free of the prison of the flesh (in Zaleski, 1997: 35). Although these authors may differ considerably in background, they share their gender. In this respect it is remarkable that one of the few women who has been actively producing in cyber culture, Brenda Laurel, emphasises that "When women talk about V.R. they speak of taking the body with them" (cited in Plant 1997: 188; my italics throughout this paragraph).

Except that I don’t quite share the disgust of the body– after all the body is also a source of pleasure and not only of pain and suffering – I find the negative view of the body problematic because of its feminine connotations. Many cultural critics have seen in the flight away from the body in SF and cyber culture, a flight away from femininity (Balsamo 1996, Dery 1996, Penley 1991, Plant 1997, Sobschack 1997, Springer 1996 en Stone 1996).

The VR-scenes in the sciencefiction films do, however, present something strange, in which we can perhaps see some kind ‘return of the repressed’. The body, the feminine, returns unexpectedly on a metaphorical level. As I mentioned earlier, the desire to transcend the body is represented in these films as a ride into a space. It is a ride into something. When the character enters virtual reality through the confined space of the tunnel it is literally an internal experience; the trip goes into the matrix of the computer, into the Net, into the psyche or into space. The association with a vagina or uterus comes to mind. The tunnels are not only narrow and claustrofobic, but in most of the films also formless and liquefied, with continual fluid ‘matter’ continually expanding and shrinking in every direction. The cyberspace in which the character ends up at the end of the tunnel is often equally fluid and formless. Although in some films a metallic blue colour is used to indicate technology, as in Johnny Mnemonic and Hackers, more often the colour red dominates, as in Virtuosity, The Lawnmower Man, Tekwar II , and Fortress, adding to the association with the feminine ‘flesh’. In spite of the colour red there is no abject imagery as is often the case in horrorlike cinematic representations of the womb (Creed, 1993). This probably has to do with the rather ‘clean’ digitalised imagery of the tunnel. Anyway, we can conclude that cyberspace as matrix, a much used metaphor in cyber culture, is visualised quite literally in these films.

Derived from the Latin ‘mater’ (mother), ‘matrix’ originally meant in late Middle English, "'breeding female', later 'womb'" (New OED 1998). Its current meaning is "an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure", and specifically in mathematics it signifies "a rectangular array of quantities or expressions in rows and columns that is treated as a single entity and manipulated according to particular rules" (idem). The often used metaphor of the matrix for cyberspace is probably mostly related to the mathematical meaning of the term. Yet, the VR-scenes of contemporary science fiction films seem to visually foreground the original meaning of the matrix as uterus, as womb, in the topos of the computerised tunnel as a vehicle for the trip into cyberspace. The ride through the tunnel, traditionally an image for the birth channel, also points to this reading. The fantasy of getting rid of the body, of sheer weightlessness, of dissolving in virtual reality, can then be understood as a desire to unite with the matrix. It is ultimately a desire to break down the separation between subject and object by returning to the womb. The euphoria of pure mind that I mentioned earlier, is in fact what the Cauter calls the ‘techno version of a pantheistic desire for loss of self and identity’ (1995, p. 86). Through the human fusion with electronics, consciousness melts into the matrix of cyberspace.

Delany argued that the power of a metaphor (his example is Haraway’s metaphor of the cyborg) is formed by a poetic and psychological surplus of meaning (cited in Roberts, 2000, p. 179). This also holds for the metaphor of cyberspace as matrix. It is especially Gibson who has written so poetically on cyberspace. The matrix is for Gibson a ‘nonspace’, ‘an infinite blue space’, presenting ‘limitless gulfs of nothingness’ (p. 81,) in which the charaters have sex and experience an orgasm ‘in timeless space, a vastness like the matrix’ (p. 45). This cosmic edge takes the metaphor of the matrix beyond the womb into the figure of a universal Ur-mother.

Sadie Plant (1995, 1997) has pointed to the feminist implications of cyberspace as matrix. Referring to Irigaray she scetches the age-old dream of transcendence as a male desire to be redeemed from (physical) matter; a desire that has been interpreted by Irigaray as a flight away from the mother. Yet, Plant argues that cyberspace is a possible place for the affirmation of women (1995, p. 60). To arrive at this rather optimistic idea, she not only uses hard figures about the increasing number of women on the digital labour market, but also takes up Freud’s observation that women have only contributed to culture by spinning and weaving. Reading the digital networks (Internet, the Web) as a woven fabric, Plant sees in the digital future the final end of patriarchy (1997). This seems to me a rather naïve dream of the future. However, I am more surprised that Plant does not explore any further the metaphor of the matrix as womb.

Is it not ironic that the desire to transcend the body leads the characters in sciencefiction films straight into the womb, into the matrix? In her exposition on the myth of Plato’s cave, Irigaray (1985) refers throughout to the womb as the matrix. She fiercely criticises the male tendency to forget and repress the origin, which she calls the maternal-feminine. It requires an enormous revolution to undo this forgetting. To actually remember, let alone value, the origin, is a sheer impossible feat. That origin (the cave, the womb) is for Irigaray always material. To step out of that cave is to forget and deny the body, the flesh. However, in order to step out of the cave into light and reason, the male prisoner pays a rather high price. He is not allowed to remember the cave, let alone nurture any desire to return to it. In Irigaray’s words, he therefore suffers of ‘dizziness, dazzlement’ and even ‘aphasia’ (p. 273).

When we look at the VR-scenes in the films, the tortuous tunnels are indeed both dizzying and dazzling. It may be no accident that the characters which are launched into the tunnels are mostly male. In the cyberspace tunnels those men do no longer speak, but they cry and shout out in pain or fear. Aphasia, indeed. Silverman (1988) has argued that cinema is predicated upon the non-signifying female cry, but in genres like sciencefiction and horror men are increasingly the ones who cry out in fear or pain. Unwittingly, those films give insight into the dangers of forgetting the body, of denying the flesh, of leaving behind the feminine. But the flesh fights back: sinuous, tortuous, vertiginous, it demands its debt; the tunnel threatens to swallow the character.

The desire for the loss of self by entering the matrix and leaving behind the body is a fundamentally ambivalent desire. The universal mother does not only give life, but also takes it. It is a fantasy which is both claustrofobic and ecstatic, pleasurable and painful. Next to the euphoria and utopia of the liberation from the body, we also see the fear and the threat of the final demise of the body. Several critics (Jeffords 1994, Springer 1996, Tasker 1993) have argued that the male body in action and sciencefiction films of the nineties was subjected to quite extreme injuries. In these VR-scenes this trend is continued. It is the male body that is about to collapse or succumb. Granted, it is a virtual body, but visually this makes very little difference for the spectator. It may look a little less bloody than the more traditional cyborg films such as The Terminator or Robocop. But this may precisely be the point, because virtuality controls materiality. We may even say that VR sublimates the body, the flesh, the blood. It is only at a metaphorical level that the body returns in the form of a vaginal tunnel and womb-like cyberspace.

But it is in that virtual space that danger lurks. In Freejack and in Virtuosity the VR-trip starts in a close up of respectively an eye and a mouth: the character goes literally into the body to be then sucked into the tunnel and end up in cyberspace. In the VR-scènes in Ghost in the Machine, Tekwar II, andVirtuosity the ‘ultimate trip’ involves a serious threat of injury, fragmentation or even death. Also in Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix and eXistenZ the characters almost or actually lose their life in cyberspace. This is often visually represented by ‘deleting’ the character in computer animation. Sometimes the visualisation of the tunnel reminds one of testimonies of near-death experiences: dying is represented as a dark tunnel at the end of which shines a light; this image is most literally shown in the older film Brainstorm when Michael Brace almost dies.

An image which supports the interpretation of cyberspace as a uterine space, is the appearance of a foetus. This occors at the end of the space travel in 2001. A Space Odyssey, but also in Fortress and The Matrix. In The Matrix foetuses are bred to be planted in virtual reality as future citizens. In Kubrick’s 2001 travelling through the cosmos is equal to travelling backwards in time; it is a simultaneous death and birth ending in the image of an almost translucent foetus. In the film Fortress the theme of time travel has a different function. The character John is tied to a similar turning wheel as in the Lawnmower Man and plugged into the computer. In these scene his memory will be deleted. Just as in Johnny Mnemonic the film produces a direct relation between the (superior) memory of the computer and the human mind. Where Johnny has to give up his early memories to make place for computer data, and thus forgets his mother (!), John’s forced trip through his memories is a gradual destruction of his subjectivity. Although a tech noir film with punk elements Johnny Mnemonic ends in a typical Hollywood last minute rescue. Thus, Johnny is saved and his memory restored. He can now remember his mother, who appears to be the mysterious presence in the Net. John in Fortress is not so lucky. He ends up as a homunculus, a foetus-like figure in a bottle. When he sees that image in VR, he cries out from pain and like a virtual Oedipus tears out his eyes.

In the VR scenes which I have been discussing here, the desire to transcend the body takes the form of a union with the matrix, which I have read as the archetypical maternal-feminine. Loss of the body, however, produces fear. The desire for the loss of self by dissolving into the womb is an ambivalent fantasy which is as attractive as it is repulsive. The principle of the universal mother embodies both intense pleasure and intense pain; Eros and Thanatos. The male characters cannot leave their body behind and re-enter the matrix without paying their price. In the fantasmatic VR scenes we can therefore see that the men desperately try to return from virtual reality and return to the physical body. Apparently, the earthly body is not so bad after all. The flesh fights back and revolts against the surreal desire for a bodyless cyber life. However fast the developments in hardware and software may be, we can never survive without the wetware.

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• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick 1968)

• Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet 1997)

• Brainstorm (Douglas Trumbell 1983)

• Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997)

• eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999)

• Fortress (Stuart Gordon 1993)

• Freejack (Geoff Murphy 1991)

• Ghost in the Machine (Rachel Talalay 1993)

• Hacker (Ian Softley 1995)

• Johnny Mnemonic (Robert Longo 1995)

• Lawnmower Man I (Brett Leonard 1992)

• Lawnmower man II (Farhad Mann 1996)

• Matrix, The (Larry & Andy Wachowski, 1999)

• Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow 1995)

• Tekwar II (George Bloomfield 1994)

• Trainspotting (Danny Boyle 1996)

• Tron (Steven Lisberger 1982)

• Videodrome (David Cronenberg 1982)

• Virtuosity (Brett Leonard 1995)

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