Movies and Philosophy Now: Dark City and Living beyond the Cage of the Mind

by Christopher Barr

“I shall suppose that some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.”

- Rene Descartes

BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.

– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

SHELL BEACH – it brings back memories.

Dark City is a science fiction, film noir, crime thriller about a man that wakes up in a bathtub full of water and a little blood on his forehead, with no memory as to how or why he arrived in that room, there is just a light bulb swinging above him. He soon discovers that the hotel room he’s in has the murdered body of a woman by the bed. She has blood spirals carved into her chest as she lays lifeless on the floor.

John Murdock is the man’s name but he’s not sure if that’s true. He becomes convinced that it is he who murdered that woman but just can’t remember. Soon the investigation for the killer is underway and it becomes apparent that there have been six young prostitutes, viciously murdered.

Murdock has to evade police as he confronts his wife Emma, who he has no memory of. But her affection and love for him are very real emotions that exist. It’s likely, in spite of not remembering her; he can feel that she is telling him the truth. What do our memories have to do with present experience? Are we more than the memories that live in our minds?

Philosopher Rene Descartes entertained doubt when it came to his memories and dreams. He wanted to be sure what was real was real and what his mind was fabricating was made known to him as well. Dreams distort reality as well as the memories we believe are the road to our past. Descartes was skeptical of his own operating system and its ability to deceive him. He really brought the notion of trust, or lack thereof, within you, out in the open for all to see. He made people question not only their own reality but reality as a whole, if there really is such a thing.

“They had mastered the ultimate technology, the ability to alter physical reality by will alone.”

- Dr. Schreder

What is reality? This film asks this question throughout. Murdock discovers that there are these alien-like archons known as “Strangers” that alter reality on a nightly basis. They shape shift the buildings, collapsing some and erecting others within minutes, in the murky, nightmarish city and inject new memories into the minds of some of the unknowing inhabitants. The process of this ability is called “tuning” and Murdock soon learns that he has this ability as well; to alter reality with his mind.

Reality and our ability to examine it, exists with three hemispheres of thought within our psyche, mapped out by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

THE IMAGINARY ORDER is the fantasy images the human subject creates of both himself and his ideal object of desire. This is Lacan’s theorization of the mirror stage during the first few years of life, while one is just beginning to interact with the world during the premature stage of development. This early influence of the imaginary realm continues to exert itself throughout the adult life and is not merely superseded in the child’s movement into the Symbolic Order. The imaginary and the symbolic are inextricably intertwined and work in tension with the Order of the Real. Their ego begins to develop during this stage of early life.

THE SYMBOLIC ORDER is the social world of linguistic communication; it is the language order, intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions and the acceptance of laws (otherwise known as the “big Other”). Once a child enters into language and accepts the rules and dictates of society, they are able to communicate with others. The individual within the symbolic is bound for life with the laws and contracts founded within this world of the symbol. The symbolic order works in tension with the Imaginary Order and the Real.

THE ORDER OF THE REAL is the state of nature from which we have been forever severed by our entrance into language. It is the real world outside of linguistic rules and it lacks symbolization. Only when we were neo-natal children were we close to this state of nature. As far as human are concerned the Real is impossible in so far as we cannot express it in language because the very entrance into language marks our irrevocable separation from the Real. The Real continues to exert its influence throughout our adult lives since it is the rock against which all our fantasies and linguistic structures ultimately fail. The Real pops up during minute moments of trauma for example when we are unable to assign meaning to a given situation, when is lacks linguistic signifiers for us to symbolically cling to.

The people of this dystopic city are unaware of any changes. Their realities have been changed so much that it begs the question; is reality even possible for them anymore? It also asks the question, does it matter? Is actual reality possible for any of us? Are we not the subjective sum of all our neurological parts?

“No, no there is nothing in the world that can be imagined in advance, not the slightest thing. Everything is made up of so many unique particulars that are impossible to foresee. In imagination, we pass over them in our haste and don’t notice that they’re missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

One of the Strangers, Mr. Hand has Murdock’s memories injected into his brain through his forehead. The Strangers believe that if they have Murdock’s memories they’ll be able to interpret his next move. This will bring them closer to stopping him and then attempt to understand him. Mr. Hand takes on Murdock’s aggression and his anger over his wife’s infidelity, memories that Murdock himself can’t remember.

Murdock tries to get to Shell Beach but the complex subway system doesn’t quite seem to get there. An ex-cop, a man considers incompetent by his peers, tells Murdock that he can’t leave the city because he’s tried many times. He tells him that the Strangers steal people’s memories and then they swap them between them. Back and forth, back and forth so no one knows who they are anymore. He then tells Murdock that he’s finally found a way out of the city, he then stands and jumps in front of a subway, killing himself.

Emma is out looking for her husband, she walks to places she remembers they would go together, even the pier where they first met. While there she has an exchange with Mr. Hand, a man she does not know or suspect of anything. She then goes to the apartment where Mr. Hand murdered the prostitute, and while in shock, she runs into the Inspector who was following her.

“… imagine a life, alien to yours, in which your memories were not your own but those shared by every other of your kind? Imagine the torment of such an existence? No experiences to call your own.”

– Mr. Hand

“If it was all you knew, maybe it would be a comfort.”

– Emma

Murdock goes and visits his uncle only to realize that the man is not his uncle, he just has implanted memories instructing him that he is. He starts to figure out that everything is a lie. Reality is breaking down and becoming memory/dream fractals, where their reliability is all but lost. This I imagine must be like when one loses their mind to insanity, where everything that is real seems unreal and everything unreal seems real.

Emma is at the crime scene with the Inspector, who himself is sensing something is wrong but he can’t put his finger on it, sort of like Neo’s “splinter in his mind” from The Matrix. They begin to question their memories, why they remember certain times in their lives but can’t remember times that made those other times possible. Time has escaped them, hours are lost like minutes, they begin to see that their very thoughts are betraying their past and present.

The psychological connectedness and psychological continuity are what the Strangers are robbing from the people every time the clock hits midnight. The identity of a person is a result of their psychological being, where their memories do inform that person in spite of how their experiences define them. This thought dance is a waltz that both must participate in to make what we understand as the individual person. The person who is not a blank slate but rather a river of memories that pour into a lake of subjective presents. If one is robbed of that river than one becomes more mechanical in nature, one merely functions much in the same way as these people. Marcel Proust believed that all our present experiences were tethered to our past memories, even the ones not seemingly or obviously connected. Like when Proust dips his muffin into his steeped tea and then puts it in his mouth, somehow the sensation of the hot muffin on his tongue ignites an early memory of himself falling off his bicycle as a child and scraping his knee.

Is this not identity, is this not the person living a life in the present while connecting to an earlier experience in the past? This psychological connection that defines us is always there, one’s mental states exist alongside him, within him, while awake or while unconscious. These mental states operate within his memories of the past while simultaneously adopting upgrades with present experiences that are then filed with the rest, and thus create a ‘you’.

Midnight – Everything stops as reality begins to shift, buildings sink into the ground while others sprout up like dead daisies. Stairs elongate while poles and street lamps form into a grand symphony of a synchronizing metamorphosis, the city is alive and moving while all its inhabitants unknowingly sleep.

Mr. Hand and Murdock fight on the top of a building, then Murdock holds down Mr. Hand on the roof at knife point when the Stranger explains that they exchange the memories of the inhabitants and use those memories to rebuild the city every night, in order to understand them. They need to be like us. Mr. Hand reveals that he possesses the memories that Murdock has lost as the very building they are on begins to change, separating the two. The city is closing in on Murdock as the Strangers chase him along its morphing terrain. Emma and the Inspector intercept and pick up Murdock, before the Strangers can get him, and they drive away.

During an interrogation (the Inspector still thinks that Murdock is a murderer at this point), Murdock asks the Inspector, who still doesn’t know what to believe, how do you get to Shell Beach? The inspector can’t remember, he knows of the place but like everyone else, when asked, they can’t remember how to get there. Murdock then asks him about sun light and when was the last time he remembers being out in the sun. Murdock tells him that he doesn’t even think that there is a sun in this place. The inspector is overwhelmed by this brush with reality and goes onto the defensive, remaining in denial and demanding an explanation about the murders of six prostitutes.

Murdock is able to speak with Emma in an inmate visiting area at the police station about their false memories, the fact he is not really her husband and that their past together never happened. He tells her that before a day ago, they didn’t know each other and were living other lives.

None of it seems real, it’s like I’ve been dreaming this life and when I finally wake up I’ll be somebody else, somebody totally different.

The Strangers arrive at the police station to get Murdock but the Inspector gets him out before they can get to him. Murdock and the Inspector track Dr. Schreber to a bathhouse, where he goes to stay away from the Strangers on account that they dislike being around water, and get him to talk about what he knows and why is he working for them. Murdock demands that Dr. Schreber takes them to Shell Beach. The doctor resists but Murdock uses his mind, ‘tuning’ and hurts him, he then tells them about what the Strangers want and that there is no stopping them, they have machines in the underworld which they use to change the city at midnight.

Dr. Schreber tells Murdock that he is trapped in this sprawling metropolis along with everyone else. The misanthropic Strangers conduct their tests, searching for what it is to be human. They conduct their various scientific experiments with the hopes of understanding how humans act given their beliefs about their own pasts. They believe that memory is what is characteristically human so they transform human memory at will to study the results. They want to know what is unique about humans because their own species is dying and they believe if they discover what is unique, they might be able to ensure the continued existence of their own species.

They arrive and discover that there is no beach. The doctor tells them that the Strangers abducted them all and brought them to this place, and that at this point, we are no more than the mere some of our implanted memories. Our individuality, our soul is what they want to understand and they believe that the key is to unlock and deconstruct our memories.

The doctor tells Murdock that he is unique, that he has their gifts. They arrive at the end of the road where there is a massive poster on a wall of Shell Beach. The doctor tells them that there is no beach, there never was, it was just a manufactured pleasant memory for them all to have. It was hope, it was something to hope for but a shell is after all, its own little tomb.

Murdock rips a hole in the poster and he and the Inspector, using pipes, start to smash a hole in the brick wall behind the poster. The doctor pleads with them to stop but they keep going.

Murdock uses his ‘tuning’ gift to blow a big hole which sends the broken brick into outer space and into a massive protective force field. The Strangers arrive as the truth is revealed. They fight as the Inspector and one of the Strangers smash out through the hole and float out into space.

From out in space, as the dead inspector floats by, we see that the city is this huge space ship with an energy field surrounding it to contain its gravitational atmosphere. The ship is massive in size and scope with high walls surrounding the panoptic city from the reality of where they really are.

The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham. The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe all inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether they are being watched or not.

The Panopticon was a metaphor that allowed philosopher Michel Foucault to explore the relationship between systems of social control and people in a disciplinary situation. In his view, power and knowledge comes from observing others. It marked the transition to a disciplinary power, with every movement supervised and all events recorded. The result of this surveillance is acceptance of regulations and docility - a normalization of sorts, stemming from the threat of discipline. Suitable behaviour is achieved not through total surveillance, but by panoptic discipline and inducing a population to conform by the internalization of this reality. The actions of the observer are based upon this monitoring and the behaviours he sees exhibited; the more one observes, the more powerful one becomes. The power comes from the knowledge the observer has accumulated from his observations of actions in a circular fashion, with knowledge and power reinforcing each other. Foucault says that "by being combined and generalized, they attained a level at which the formation of knowledge and the increase in power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process.”

Mr. Hand holds a knife to Emma’s throat demanding that Murdock sleeps. The Strangers take him to the underworld of their panopticon. They believe Murdock is the key to their survival and decide to stop the experiments so they can all be one collective with John Murdock.

Instead of injecting Murdock with the collective minds of all the Strangers, Dr. Schreber injects him with a life time of memories about the Strangers. He learns everything about them, about their machines and about their powers. Murdock wakes up and is now all powerful, he starts to destroy them all.

“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave comes into play here; Murdock is the released prisoner while the inhabitants of the city remain chained. Unlike Neo in The Matrix, Murdock is never actually able to leave his cave; he must remain but has the power to alter it creating a world with a beach and the sun. This is where I think Dark City becomes more powerful and relevant than The Matrix because the reality here is, we can’t escape our illusions, we can only become aware of their falsifying existence. This film tells us that knowledge can bring us to the gate but can’t free us from the cage. The symbolic economy is still present within us all. The theme here is actual reality is unknowable, the Order of the Real is not accessible within the Symbolic Order, and all we can do is attempt to understand it, but understand it only from a distance.