Surrogates (Jonathan Mostow, 2009), a film set in the near future follows the human population as they live out their lives via surrogates, human-looking robotic bodies that are controlled from the isolation of their home. The reasoning behind having a surrogate is from the isolation of their homes people are safe from disease and crime. These surrogates are individuals’ ideal version of themselves, whether that makes them younger or a different gender or race; people can be whomever they want. Tom Greer, played by Bruce Willis, is a FBI agent who investigates the sudden death of two surrogates that results in the death of their human handlers. Greer has to depart from the life he has been living through his surrogate and venture back into the real world as himself to solve an even larger conspiracy hidden behind the murders and the surrogate world.
The film can be compared to ideas surrounding virtual reality as the world Surrogates represents is much like virtual reality. Individuals experience life through technology, everyone they encounter is not real and there is a chance that someone’s surrogate is nothing like them. Although, unlike a virtual reality application surrogates are placed in the real world and people live their real life through them. This relates to Anne Balsamo’s article, “The Seductions of Cyberspace” as she discusses the role of the body in the computer and information industry, specifically the body in relation to virtual reality applications (1996, p. 116). Surrogates displays how “the physical body and its social meanings can be technologically neutralized” (p. 128). This is because the physical body acts only as a gateway to a surrogate, it no longer carries meaning, as individuals in Surrogates no longer take care of their physical body. Also, just as in virtual reality individuals in Surrogates can become anyone they want to, a man can become a woman or a white woman can became a Chinese man, the possibilities are endless.
However, this is problematic because no one in the surrogate world knows who or what real person is watching beyond the eyes of each surrogate. A surrogate allows people to be freed from their body. The body has become disposable and unnecessary in the surrogate-dominated world as it has in virtual reality. For example, one of the surrogates murdered in the beginning of the film is a young blonde woman. When Greer reaches the handler of the blonde woman he finds a balding, overweight, middle-aged man. Here we see a man successfully escaping from reality, the limitations imposed on him in the real world such as, “social structures, and the physical body itself” are no longer problems (p. 122). He can now live free from ridicule by creating a personal identity that is not connected or influenced by his body.
As Surrogates raises many important issues surrounding the body and virtual reality it also leaves much to the imagination. Audiences are left unaware and unconvinced about this futuristic world and why everyone feels the need to live his or her life through a technological apparatus. Balsamo concludes that regardless of the possibilities of new identities, old identities will still be more frequent and comfortable for individuals (p. 131). I agree with her conclusion because as interesting as it is to create a new persona and live as another gender or race, I feel more people would model their avatar after themselves. A different persona does not mean a better one and because virtual reality is there does not mean everyone will take advantage of every aspect. The film Surrogates and virtual reality teaches audiences that it is necessary to keep in mind the possibilities of who is interacting with whom in virtual reality.
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