CONSPIRACY GOTHIC etween 1998 and 1999, four Hollywood science fiction films came out D a r k C i t y that were all telling B slight variations of the THE FILMS same story. This story is also told in at least two science T h e M a t r i x fiction novels, one from 1959 and one from 1964, as well as a three - hour German television miniseries directed by Rainer Werner Fass - binder in the early 1970s. The Thirteenth F l o o r Simulacron-3 The Truman S h o w THE NOVELS Time Out of J o i n t World on a Wire he essence of this story is that the hero - who is a lonesome man - dis - covers he is trapped in T an entirely artificial THE MY TH CURIOUS prison-world and must try to escape into reality. The war - COUSINS dens of these virtual prisons are aliens, robots, or bureaucrats. I think of these films and novels as forming a genre (or sub - genre, if you prefer), and what 1. The hero, who suffers from loneliness and malaise, makes them so is how they all Blade Runner uniquely express the same story, the notices an uncanny rip in the way the children of a family all fabric of his reality. uniquely express the same genes. The Bothersome Man This is how the critic Stanley Cavell analyzed several screwball 2. He investigates the comedies from the 1930s and 1940s T h e C e l l in his book Pursuits of Happiness . rip and suspects that his world He wrote, “Let us think of the is an artificial construction Conspiracy Theory common inheritance of the members and that he is trapped and/or of a genre as a story, call it a myth. The members of a genre will be in - a prisoner. He is pursued by T h e G a m e terpretations of it, or to use antagonistic agents. Thoreau’s word for it, revisions of e X i s t e n Z i t . ” Cavell called his genre the 3. A female love interest Comedy of Remarriage. I call this passes through the hero’s Groundhog Day genre Conspiracy Gothic because all prison-world. She is from the the works involve a sense of con - spiracy, in which the protagonist is a real world and wants to help I n c e p t i o n wanted man or feels like the whole free him, but she too is re - world is against him. sisted by the agents. Inland Empire Also, these stories seem to have a lot to do with 18th- and 19th- century Gothic horror, the tales of 4. The hero tries to L a J e t é e which often involved trapped protago- reach the woman and her real nists, madness, the uncanny, and ma- M a r w e n c o l levolent supernatural forces. Gothic world, but is repelled by the literature was one of the origins of agents and by the barriers of sci-fi, as well. his prison. He suffers a crisis. Open Your Eyes The Passenger So, the work of the critic is to: 5. The hero has to rouse extract, like a genetic code, the himself to try once again to common myth from the members of Pleasantville the genre; to explain how each e s c a p e . member makes variations on the The Purple Rose of Cairo myth; to identify other works re - 6. The hero breaks free lated to the genre; and to think about what the myth and all its from his prison, reaches the The Shawshank variations mean. woman he loves, and begins R e d e m p t i o n I don’t intend this infographic fighting against the forces that to be a definitive study, but just a had oppressed him. thorough introduction. Source Code Strange Days Stranger than Fiction The Matrix The Truman Dark City Show Sunset Boulevard The Matrix very quickly The Truman Show is much For as impressive and has its hero realize he’s in a more about its hero becoming beautiful as the imagery and simulated prison, escape from conscious of his status as a the worlds of The Matrix and The Truman Show are, Dark it with the help of a dark- prisoner and his world as COMMENTS false. City outdoes them. haired love interest, and then The look of Dark City is begin fighting against the Whereas Neo leaves The Synecdoche, New York like Nighthawks by Edward Matrix early on, Truman malevolent forces who Hopper mixed with Metropolis doesn’t step outside his constructed the prison, all mixed with The Third Man. prison until the very final more or less by the end of If there were ever a city Act 1. scene. in which to wander around The Truman Show has Neo, even though he’s feeling mournfully alienated nothing to do with what Total Recall unhappy with his urban and spiritually adrift, it happens to its hero once he’s existence, doesn’t have to go would be that of Dark City (as reached the real world and well as the Los Angeles of through much of a struggle in reached his love interest. Blade Runner). deciding to “follow the white Instead it’s only about It’s interesting that the rabbit” and accept that his Truman as he copes with love interest of the hero is reality was false. And upon Z e i t g e i s t being in a world of illusions played by Jennifer Connelly learning of the truth of the and conspiracy, and having a and that several scenes are “desert of the real,” he does day-to-day existence that is hopeful visions of her convulse briefly, but then too comfortable and too standing at the end of a pier, overlooking the ocean on a gathers himself and is more convenient. sunny day. or less OK. The film also makes a That image of Jennifer If only everyone could so real character out of the Connelly recurs in Requiem un-neurotically react to warden of the prison, and for a Dream, which is most having the veil pulled from thus complicates why Truman definitely also a film about their eyes and having to gaze is being confined to a being lost and trapped within upon the wasteland of reality simulated reality. an oppressive city. in its all sublimely desolate The simpler situation (The image of Jennifer horror! would be that a corporation Connelly on a pier is also in Neo does struggle to has enslaved Truman and House of Sand and Fog, but accept his responsibility as a turned his entire existence there she is the character who prophet/savior figure who is into an amusing commodity. is depressed and adrift.) going to have to redeem They are doing it just for Dark City is similar to The Matrix in relying on civilization, reality, human- money, and Truman is no fantastic, mostly martial arts ity, etc. more than a factor of input. violence - of a form that to I find that struggle much Christof, on the other me resembled something from hand, is an artist with a more implausible and fantas- Mortal Kombat (hurling balls WHAT IT tic, and much less relevant vision (just like the master of energy at one another) - as LITERARY computer programmer in than the more banal struggle the means with which the Simulacron-3) and Truman and to resist the inertia that characters resolve their the studio are the materials keeps one in an inauthentic problems and express their he works with to create his MAY MEAN but comfortable day-to-day feelings. LINKS masterpiece. rut - a rut so deep it feels like That’s all well and good However, using another in the way of entertainment, a prison and makes one’s person for the sake of a work but less so in the way of world feel artificial. of art is generally considered psychological complexity and I do appreciate that in immoral and unethical and emotional truth. The Matrix it’s robots and evil, however beautiful the Dark City is more like the computer technology that is results. The Truman Show in that it is enslaving humanity and This occurs in the Edgar not until the end of the story extracting our vitality for its Allen Poe story, “The Oval that the hero is able to grotesquely rational purposes. Portrait,” which has a breach the walls of his prison. Being addicted to email, Christof-type character who Most of the film is about new gadgets, social networks, kills his wife for the sake of Murdoch trying to figure out 24-hour news, video games, painting an excellent portrait what kind of world he’s in, pornography, and other of her. who he is, and where he digital entertainment is It’s funny that The comes from. certainly a means by which Truman Show is set in Califor- The wardens of the one flees from the harder nia, and that California is the prison in Dark City are space things of life - and flees in a “real world” that Truman aliens, and thus a racial way that becomes vicious, longs to escape into. element separates them from excessive, and that weakens Would reaching 1990s the humans they are subjugat- 19 8 4 here does the idea of “Life is precious every minute But if you’re working and It’s as if the hero has to Slavoj Zizek makes much one’s willpower.