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Claire Ames

AP Lang period 8

McKay

Mar. 4. 2021

The Role of Identity in Ready Player One

What effect does being exactly who you want to be have on yourself, friends and the

community? Steven Spielberg explores the fluidity of identity in his movie Ready Player One

with specific character elements, certain dialogue, and establishing an ideal reality in order to

show how people often build a fake personna to hide unwanted parts of their lives.

Characters in the movie have insecurities that they attempt to escape through OASIS.

Specific examples of this can be seen in Samantha Cook and Helen Harris. Samantha Cook

suffers from a large scar running down the right side of her face. Whether it was the actor's

choice or under Spielberg’s direction, Samantha parts her hair in a way that always leaves her

scar covered. However, her virtual reality avatar Art3mis, has shaved the sides of her head

leaving her face uncovered and visible with no disfiguring scar. When given the opportunity to

hand craft her appearance, Samantha created a version of herself where she was able to leave an

undesirable reality behind. Helen Harris was able to become a different gender, and for personal

reasons such as sexuality, she appeared more comfortable in the OASIS than in real life. The

choice to have these character elements presented in the film portray a real life phenomenon in

which people often try to escape from reality into something that gives them the chance to

become someone else or to express who they truly are.

Next, by incorporating particular dialogue, Spielberg effectively displays how identity

outwardly affects individuals. In a movie, the audience has the unique experience of having an
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omniscient perspective. They know what happens when a character is alone, so dialogue is a

display of the feelings someone purposefully wishes others to hear. The dialogue Spielberg chose

to be spoken shows the correlation between thought and action that identity has. Near the

beginning Wade tells the audience, “My mom once told me that my dad had given me an

alliterative name, Wade Watts, because he thought it sounded like the secret identity of a

superhero. Like Peter Parker or Clark Kent”(Spielberg). This sentence establishes a sense that

Wade feels a connection to superheroes, maybe even an obligation to be one himself as Parzival.

A part of his identity, his name, has the ability to influence his future choices. Later on in the

film, Art3mis says “... you only know what I want you to know, you only see what I want you to

see"(Spielberg). This dialogue is a very specific example of how people will build walls around

their true selves, and put out a particular version of themselves. Being able to hand pick what

characteristics you put out, leads you to feel more in control of the situation, ultimately

outwardly exuding confidence.

Lastly, Spielberg uses various visual elements to craft an ideal, utopian world drastically

different from real life. In the opening scene, Spielberg takes the viewers through showers of

color and sound, bouncing from one world to the next each getting progressively more

wonderful. The seemingly perfectness of the situation Parzival is in quickly gets interrupted

when the scene switches to life in the stack with Wade Watts: dull, melancholy, and bland. This

video game has built an alternate identity for the world itself. It has left behind the unwanted and

chosen to overlook the problems. People live in RVs at extreme levels, can’t pay off homes, and

the police don't step into any of the situations littering the streets until the last 10 minutes of the

movie. Spielberg's attention to vibrancy and color allows the audience to visually understand

how incredibly contrasting society is through an online video game. This helps people reflect on
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how dull their own lives can seem when placed next to the exuberance of the internet. The

presentation of the perfect world online, with a clashing “identity” in real life, can be very

alluring but it is also damaging. Oftentimes the lackluster image of reality when compared to the

internet can lead to video game addictions. It can harm people as soon as they leave because

they cannot live up to the standards set online. People can become trapped in this fake world and

miss out on real life and lose real relationships and experiences.

Throughout the movie Steven Spielberg emphasizes certain visual aspects, character choices,

and specific dialogue in order to bring awareness to the issue of identity and how people shield

themselves by blocking out certain qualities of their life. In the real world, identity has become the

basis of the individual. Who or what you identify as dictates a large portion of your interactions and

experiences and many are persecuted for their identification. We see that being able to live in a world

like the one Spielberg creates where gender, race, and age are fluid gives people the chance to fully

express themselves and community can prosper.

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Works Cited

Spielberg, Steven, et al. Ready Player One.