history of a theme

[slinkatzer]

hello all.

saw _the truman show_ tonight and started wondering
about the same thing i was wondering about after i saw
_the matrix_, which was just like _dark city_, which
was just like that novel kilgore trout writes in
_breakfast of champions_.  the theme, or scheme or
whatever, is that the world is made for you -- made in
a very literal way.

i'm not just talking about a gnostic quest for the man
behind the curtain, but the invention of worlds that
do in fact have real men, or at least mortals of some
sort*, behind a real-type curtain.

obviously this is related to TRP's grand paranoia, but
i was wondering how recent an invention this
particular take on the paranoid mentality might be. 
i'd guess that it might very well be tied to all those
great twentieth-century technologies --

wait -- kilgore's world-for-you scenario involves not
computers and wetware but here-and-now ROBOTS that are
here to serve you -- animatronics obviously, and
didn't e.l. doctorow say something about capitalist
society's being a lot like disneyland in _book of
daniel_?  have to look.

anyway, i figured if anybody could trace the history
of this theme or scheme, y'all could.  

thanks in a-advance.

*actually, i seem to remember that the creator beings
in _dark city_ were not, in fact, mortal in every
sense. 





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