Name: Angelica Ourri Word count :653 Dialectics of the fable "The Matrix", A philosophical Machine By Alain Badiou “Nevertheless we must recognise that the three films have a problem in common, which is simply the fundamental problem of cognition: what is it that, from within our own capacity to know testifies that is indeed the real that is at stake in our cognition?”​(Badiou, 2004) How do these 3 movies ("The Matrix", "Cube","eXistenZ") philosophically distinguish what is real and what's not? The following theoretical exegesis will discuss Alain Badiou’s paper Dialectics of the fable. The exegesis poses the question on how do the movies The Matrix by the Wachowski sisters(1999), "eXistenZ" by David Conenberg (1999)and "Cube" by Vincenzo Natali(1999) distinguish reality from the fable analysed through the philosophies of Plato, Immanuel Kant, Franz Kafka and Edmund Husserl. When it comes to the distinction between reality and the fable one of the most important philosophical concepts to consider is Plato’s allegory of the cave. In the allegory, a group of people are chained in a cave, looking only in front of them at the shadows of items being projected with the use of fire behind them. Similarly, in the movie, "The Matrix", the bodies of humans are enslaved and projected in an artificial virtual world created by machines. In the allegory of the cave, one of the prisoners manages to escape into the real world, and sees the actual items of what he had only seen shadows of so far. Likewise, in "The Matrix", Morpheus leads a group of people who have escaped the fable, and realised that in what they have experienced so far in life nothing is as it seems. Both the escaped prisoner in Plato’s allegory and Neo, the newly ​“awakened​” character in "The Matrix", have trouble adjusting to the new reality they are faced with and are met with denial in accepting what is real at first. The movie "Cube" takes a different approach in the distinction of the real and fable. Firstly, where as in "The Matrix" the audience gets a clear explanation of why and how this false reality has been created, the movie "Cube" takes a more Kafkian approach in its narrative where similarly to the character in Kafka’s metamorphosis, who inexplicably wakes up as a cockroach, The characters in the "Cube" find themselves in a new artificial reality completely separate from the real world, without a concept or explanation being given and is left up to interpretation. As Badiou explains it “​The possible rationality of the postulate remains upstream from the narration, and the meaning if there is one, is strictly coextensive with the character’s vicissitudes”​(Badiou, 2004)​. The film takes a Kantian approach with transcendental idealism in order to pose the question of what is reality. Like Kant argues space and time , and thus reality is entirely subjective, this question of subjective reality is presented in the movie as it poses the question of ​“what is a subject, if the totality of the natural world is taken away from it?​”. "Cube", in contrast to "The Matrix", does not distinguish reality from resemblance or the fable but rather poses questions of what is reality and consciousness. In contrast to the two aforementioned movies, the film "eXistenZ" presents a more clear distinction of the real and fable as reality is not destroyed by some power, or inexplicably disappeared but is simply paused as individuals enter a virtual reality game. The film poses a different question than "The Matrix" and one more Similar to the "Cube" and Kantian philosophy. Rather than asking what is real or fable, it asks a phenomenological question of what is a subject or person without the​ “judgement of existence​”(​ Badiou, 2004)​, what is a subject without the natural world. The film explores the “ego” of the person and the unconscious animalistic nature of humans when they are out of the bounds of the natural world and order that keeps the ego in check. In a transcendental idealistic philosophy the film explores the bounds of reality through the experience of the player. In Badiou’s text, "The Matrix" is the “greatest filmic force” and presents the clearest distinction between what is real and what is fable. A natural world which has been historically destroyed, an artificial world, and “The one” who as in Plato’s allegory of the cave realises that the shadows projected are nothing but shadows. References Badiou, A., 2004. Dialectics of the fable. ​Science Fiction Film & Television​, 1(1), pp.193-201.