history of a theme

[slinkatzer]

this is an elaboration of my query of this past
wednesday night, which was, if you didn't read it,

[**summary follows**]

 asking for help in tracing the genealogy of a
theme/meme that i've noticed popping up in movies
lately: that of protagonists discovering that the
worlds they inhabit are manufactured and false.  the
movies i had in mind were _the truman show_, _the
matrix_, _dark city_.  the earliest example i could
think of was the novel that kilgore trout hands to the
schizophrenic guy at that pivotal point in _breakfast
of champions_.

[**summary over**]


i thought of two more examples.  _the 13th floor_, a
recent film, which as example of this theme (i'm
having trouble using the word "meme" comfortably) is
rather on the level of duh, should've included that in
my original query -- perhaps the execrable dialogue
and distinctly creepy overtones of the plot's
resolution drove the thing out of my head.

b-ut, none of the other movies were that great either.


take off from this fake-world riff, however, which was
enough to make them all kind of interesting, at least
to me.  just like my second (other) example:



[**lengthy, rambling drug-related anecdote follows**]

years ago, when i was a stony college freshman, i
visited my best friend from high school at his,
utterly other, college.  uc berkeley, to give you a
sense of the atmosphere.  for further atmosphere: 
we're sitting, during this visit, in his tiny little
room in this, to a white suburban boy like me,
watts-ish looking monstrosity of a dormitory that was
and is known as "the projects".  we've got a towel
blocking the crack in the door, and the window open
onto nine or so stories of air to keep the pot we are
smoking from being detected by the r.a., who can, and
will, have you arrested if he finds you smoking pot,
is the impression I get.  and the pot we are smoking
out of a bong made out of a SPARKLETTS bottle, the
invention of my best friend's new, on-campus best
friend, DAN, who has named this monstrous creation
KING BONG.

so:  in this tiny room where you have to try hard not
to fall out the window, and there was a stuffed
dinosaur that was menacing in a way that i just
couldn't reconcile with the platonic idea of a stuffed
animal, and i was only eighteen and hadn't really
smoked pot very much before, and certainly not this
much pot, so high off the ground, with the window
open:  DAN starts telling us about his idea for a
novel.

the idea is that our world, our three-dimensional
universe, is a PRISON for fourth-dimensional entities.
from reading _flatland_ and extrapolating, DAN
concluded that being trapped in a lower dimension
would be the ultimate hell for any entity, no matter
what its home dimension. basically this prison
functioned on the virtual reality principle: none of
the inhabitants of the three-dimensional world would
be aware that they were, in fact, vessels of the
consciousnesses of four-dimensional beings who were,
in some faraway place, howling in agony and repenting
their wrongdoings.

so: the hero of the novel, who DAN implied was going
to be based pretty heavily upon himself characterwise,
was this plucky young three-dimensional man who was,
in four-dee fact, an outrageously heavy underworld
kingpin.  and during his incarceration, members of his
gang would make secret arrangements to somehow contact
his consciousness in its three-dee vessel and help it
GET OUT.  and the tool with which these associates of
his, after entering the three-dee world themselves,
would convince him of the truth of their claims, and
perhaps even rescue him, was the Dread Drug
ELL...ESS...DEE....

[**anecdote ends**]


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