IS REALITY OUT THERE?
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world ... without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
The words of Neo, the main character of the movie The Matrix, pose an important question: Is a thought of escaping from digital reality even possible in today’s world full of technology that is striving to invade almost every aspect of our everyday life?
It is attainable only if we are able to distinguish between the “real” reality and the virtual reality. It has to be admitted that both of them connect better and better with each other and tie us more and more in their knots. The easiest way to observe it is on examples of various computer games and simulations. And, it's not only about popular RPG games (role-playing games), in which a player can become any character allowed by the script. The real breakthrough are reality simulators such “Second Life,” where de facto we meet a virtual reality created based on the every day one, which we know well (Marta Więckiewicz writes about it in Drugie życie w Second Life, / Second Life in Second Life, “Portret” no 26/2008). In this 3-dimensional virtual reality, every participant is prepared for exactly that – participation and interaction with other players. The users execute tasks they know from the real world: they work, go shopping, meet with friends. Perhaps, this is an escape for people who, thanks to their fantasy, wish to compensate for their every day failures and forget about their problems, on the other hand, as underlined by Więckiewicz, this virtual reality has a fairly important financial aspect – because not only do companies earn money from placing their ads there, but ordinary users have opportunities for real cash, too. But how long one can live in an illusion? This experiment shows, that the Matrix in the future doesn't need to be a total abstraction, since a kind of “dummy” reality of the Second Life-type already has its faithful followers.
Anyway, what is the dummy adopted for the leading theme in the latest issue of “Portret”? The Polish Dictionary gives us two main definitions: first – it is an imitation of some object; second – something worthless, which pretends to be something that in reality it’s not. Concerning the cultural understanding, “a fake dummy” would be the phenomenon that indeed connects both definitions into one. An example of a fake reality is that proposed to us in most TV commercial, which show a family consisting of two attractive, young parents and usually two charming children; the family that reaches its full happiness when spreading the advertised margarine on their bread.
Also, going through illustrated magazines, one can see fake smiling girls, who become the example to follow for many frustrated women. Some women imitate this image and decide to public their own undressed pictures in magazines, place their phone numbers available to all men who hunger for a little love in such a totally material world (Anna Rau, Uczucie za 3,66 zł – na żywo i z VAT-em! / Love for 3.66PLN – Live, VAT Included! ). Of course, there is no connection between those pictures and the real appearance of these women, anyhow, even their very existence is somewhat doubtful. “The fakeness” in this case is relevant to the purpose this type of advertising – interpersonal communication in a general sense. The contact here is limited to the virtual space, usually without any continuation in the real world. The physical, intellectual and emotional masks that women put on, are seen in the way these ads are made. The stereotypes of their interests, as well as the sugary language full of diminutives and simple metaphors in the area of bodily pleasures have prosaic goals: to get the attention… and, of course, to get better earnings. It’s no longer a promise of flirt but only a pretense of flirt for sale.
The only area, in principle, in which fakeness can serve as a way to reach deeper, to the existential or metaphysical problems, is theater. “Co-operation” of the actor and the puppet on stage is shown in such plays: Kowal, pieniądze i gwiazdy (A Blacksmith, Money and the Stars), Złamane paznokcie (Broken Fingernails),Rzecz o Marlenie Dietrich (About Marlene Dietrich) or Historia pewnego samotnego człowieka (A History of a Certain Lonely Man) – Anna Nowak, Laleczką mnie zwą (They Call Me a Doll). Those theatrical solutions come from an ancient idea of the world – a theatre, in which a man is only a marionette in the hands of Destiny. In the World, in which we are confined to the roles forced on us by the society, opening up to another person seems almost impossible. That’s why, perhaps, we look for ideal roles that release our desire to be truly “ourselves.” But instead, it's just another trap of illusion that we fall into.
Because we live in the times, in which there appear newer and newer communication technologies, we are the observers and co-authors of various kinds of fakeness. We can't avoid them. But neither should we let ourselves be passively swayed by them. Finally, the awareness that imitations exists is a step to being able to distinguish it from the original. But, isn’t a contemporary subject, disintegrated and washed out, going to become an illusion itself in this fakeness-driven world?
Dagna Kruszewska
Translated by Karol Stefański
Discussed journals: Portret