I still think this is not a reference to "The Days of Perky Pat" short story, but rather to the "Three Stigmata" novel, as the theme of the novel is just identical to tis movie: here and there characters visit with their minds some virtual world (in the novel it's the dolls combined with a special drug) and once they enter that world even once, they find out they can never be sure if they're really back in reality.

Note that Kiri Vinokur uses the word "fatwa" in reference to the bounty on Allegra's head and the hunt for her. This is because the whole initial idea for the movie "eXistenZ" came to Cronenberg when he was doing an interview with the author Salman Rushdie who himself has a fatwa on himself for writing "The Satanic Verses". You can read the interview here: http://www.intralinea.org/monographs/zanettin/sr/cronemberg.htm

I think I read in an interview somewhere that Cronenberg never actually played any game in his life (at least priot to making "eXistenZ"). And yet he still managed to foresee David Cage and basically the modern over-cinematic video games that gave us photorealistic graphics in exchange for an illusion of choice. "eXistenZ" is hilariously far from how video games looked in 1999, but it's terrifyingly close to how they look now.

Many thanks for this Conrad, I wasn't planning on watching it first but boy I am so glad I did. Thanks.

"flesh attentiveness" is a beautiful phrase.

It's about things going in butts, basically. Also videogames, to a lesser degree.

The Spin-off Doctors: eXistenZ

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