Popular Culture and Epistemological Doubt
13
flexibility in terms o f semiotic content, without, however, having to comply with the
exigencies o f real artistic writing. (For a discussion on the excesses o f postmodern
stylistic drifting, see Stephanie Meyer’s “Bad Writing” in Theory’Empire).
8 The main exception would be “The Menagerie,” the only story o f the original Star Trek
series to have been released in two episodes, and which deals openly with the possibility
o f substituting reality with illusion. The concept o f substitute reality was introduced in
order to recycle the previously unreleased pilot o f the series, and so the story naturally
plays out the notion o f constructed reality, albeit in a rather conservative manner: there is
a clear binary opposition between reality and illusion, and although the latter might be
preferable to the earlier, as in the case o f Captain Pike who is confined to a wheelchair in
the real world but recovers his physical integrity when living the illusion created by the
Talosians, there is no possible confusion between what is real and what is not.
9 In the highly structured Bond’s cinematographic syntagm, neither the death o f Ms.
Moneypenny, which we witness during Bond’s training session, nor her seduction are
admissible.
10 See Eco’s “Narrative Structures in Ian Fleming’s James Bond” in The Role o f the
Reader.
11 These notions are further developed in Angel Moreno’s Teoria de la literatura de
ciencia ficcion.
12 The last proposition o f Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus recommends
silence for we cannot attempt to say what cannot be said, while his Philosophical
Investigations challenges the accepted notion that every word corresponds to an element
o f the real; in the final analysis, it appears that most philosophical inquiries are at risk o f
constructing apparently rational syllogisms based upon mere “language games” without
real referent.
13 Regarding the diversity o f the religious reading applied to The Matrix, see Fontana
(“Finding God in The Matrix”) and Ford (“Buddhism, Mythology, and The Matrix”).
14 See the abundant bibliography dedicated to the different philosophical readings o f the
film.
Works Cited
A vatar. Dir: James Cameron. 20th Century Fox, 2009. Film.
Bioy Casares, A. (1940). La invencion de Morel [Morel’s Invention.], Madrid: Alianza,
1999. Print.
Blade runner. Dir: Ridley Scott. Warner Bros., 1982. Film
Dark City. Dir: Alex Proyas. N ew Line Cinema, 1998. Film.
Dick, P.K. The Man in the High Castle. N ew York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962. Print.
---------- . Time Out O f Joint. 1959. New York: Belmont, 1965. Print.
---------- . Do Androids Dream o f Electric Sheep? N ew York: Ballantine Books, 1968.
Print.
Eco, U. (1965). “Narrative Structures in Ian Fleming’s James Bond.” The role o f the
reader: Explorations in the semiotics o f texts. Bloomington, IN: University o f
Indiana Press, 1979. 125-172. Print.
eXistenZ. Dir: David Cronemberg. Alliance Atlantis / Serendipity Point Films / Natural
Nylon Entertainment, 1999. Film.
Fontana, P. “Finding God in The Matrix”. Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and
Religion in The Matrix. Glenn Yeffeth, Ed. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2003: 189-219.
Print.