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(Re)defining the Gendered Body in

Cyberspace: The Virtual Reality Film
a
Rocío Carrasco
a
Departamento de Filología Inglesa, University of Huelva, Huelva,
Spain
Published online: 25 Feb 2014.

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Virtual Reality Film, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 22:1, 33-47, DOI:
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 NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 2014
Vol. 22, No. 1, 33–47, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2013.866597

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
(Re)defining the Gendered Body in
Cyberspace: The Virtual Reality Film
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 02:55 02 February 2015

ROCÍO CARRASCO
Departamento de Filologı´a Inglesa, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain

ABSTRACT The contemporary interaction of the body with information, computing, and
communication technologies in Western societies has contributed to a change in our understanding
of the concept of the human being, while implying that old ideas surrounding corporeality need to
be rethought. It is contended here that the virtual reality film, with its focus on cyberspace, offers
opportunities for understanding the complex relationship between gender and information
technologies and creates spaces in which the gendered body can be reconsidered. Films like The
13th Floor, The Matrix, and Johnny Mnemonic display digital media and virtual subjects that
mirror our complex relationship with technology. The present paper proposes three different ways
of representing the interaction between humans and technology: “the penetrated body”, “the
cyber-body”, and “the simulated body”. This distinction responds to a hierarchy in which some
categorizations are more transcendent than others, and confer different degrees of flexibility
regarding the redefinition of the gendered body in the texts involved.

Introduction
The ubiquity of technology that characterizes contemporary Western culture and
society has contributed to a change in our understanding of the concept of the human
body, while opening up new areas for representation, such as the virtual world, or
cyberspace. Digital media simulate non-existent, realistic worlds by generating a
semblance of our reality. Examples of digital media include computer games, virtual
reality, television, and special effects used in Hollywood films, which display
simulated realms for audiences, users, and/or players. Simulation is a contested
condition, which has consequences for the depiction of the body in virtual domains,
implying that old ideas surrounding corporeality need to be rethought. Indeed,
cybernetics, as a set of media technologies, provides new ground for analysing
gender.1 The very concept of gender becomes notoriously contested in this context of

Correspondence Address: Rocı́o Carrasco, Departamento de Filologı́a Inglesa Avda. Tres de Marzo s/n
21071 Huelva, Spain. Email: rocio.carrasco@dfing.uhu.es
q 2014 The Nordic Association for Women’s Studies and Gender Research
 34 R. Carrasco

blurred frontiers between mind and machine, body and machine, and human and
non-human. Consequently, gender is no longer a fixed category from which to
articulate and/or understand human experiences but a variable and unstable concept,
influenced by several factors, including technological developments.
Taking this idea as a starting-point, this article centres on popular Sci-Fi films in
which the issue of gender identity is problematic due to the relationship between an
organic human body and its technologically mediated representation. Hence, visual
media serve here as a meaningful tool for the analysis of gender. Films like Longo’s
Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Rusnak’s The 13th Floor (1999), Cronenberg’s eXistenZ
(1999), and the Wachowsky brothers’ The Matrix (1999) show these digital media in
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the form of the Internet, virtual reality, or computer games. In these films, simulated
spaces become the home of characters who cross rational boundaries and mingle with
the latest technology. This typology of movies, which I will refer to as “the virtual
reality film”, offers opportunities for understanding the complex relationship between
humanity and information technologies, in so far as the idea of sexed identities based
on gender opposition is put to the test. It is contended here that the virtual reality film
offers a number of devices for suggesting body images that go beyond dualistic
assumptions of gender and sex, although radical redefinitions of the human body are
never present in this popular cultural product. Still, some strategies are employed in
order to suggest the plurality and/or instability of the human body in cyberspace, such
as gender neutrality or gender as a continuum. In order to defend my claims about the
redefinition of the gendered body in Sci-Fi, I will make use of these concepts to refer to
the films’ interest in resisting rigid binary constructions of gender, whereby reality is
structured into a series of either/or oppositions, by suggesting the multiple, complex,
and multilayered selves we humans have already become. Although I contend that it is
not possible simply to step away from cultural constructions of gender, the virtual
reality film urges audiences to find new modes of conceptualization.
I propose that there are different ways of transcending the body, which are defined
in this article as: “the penetrated body”, “the cyber-body”, and “the simulated body”.
This distinction responds to a hierarchy in which some categorizations are more
transcendent than others, and confer different degrees of flexibility regarding the
redefinition of the gendered body in the texts involved. In this sense, the films
discussed in this article serve as illustrations of the three key categorizations
suggested for the body in technologically driven contexts.
As its theoretical framework, this article will draw on feminist-materialist analyses
of cyberculture, in particular the idea of “embodied subjectivity” articulated by Rosi
Braidotti in Metamorphosis: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002) and
N. Katherine Hayles’s embodied notion of the posthuman subject, as presented in
How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics
(1999). Both Braidotti and Hayles argue for a material construction of reality in
which subjectivity and body are decentred as distinct units. In their examinations of
science, technology, and culture, they present a return to the body, yet a reconfigured
body that breaks away from gender and sex conventionalisms and is far from being
the organic repository of a single consciousness. My point is that this approach,
which rests on a non-dualistic understanding of human subjectivity, is crucial for the
analysis of popular films in which technology and biology interact. I will consider the
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 35

notion of the embodied subject as it is suggested in the films under analysis, and go on
to address issues of gender, sex, and identity in order to defend my claims about the
redefinition of the gendered body in virtual contexts.
Following Deleuzian postulates, Braidotti argues for a symbiotic link between the
flesh and the machine, which she describes as a bond of mutual dependence (2002:
223). Far from being an essence, Braidotti redefines the body as “a play of forces,
a surface of intensities, pure simulacra without originals” (2002: 21). Taking as a
premise the idea that new technologies affect our perceptions, social interactions,
and material practices, she proposes a techno-human subject that merges into its
environment. This reconfiguration of the notion of the self favours the development
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of new subjectivities and offers alternatives that go beyond the traditional humanist
limitations. Braidotti notes that there is a paradox in her model of the embodied
subject, as it rests simultaneously on the historical decline of the mind – body
dichotomy and the proliferation of discourses about the body, resulting in the need
to elaborate values that are capable of dealing with the complexities of the current
times (2002: 244). Her challenge is to propose an embodied subject that lays the
foundations for a radical critique of power.2
Similarly, in How We Became Posthuman (1999), Hayles sees the inconsistencies in
prevailing scientific and cultural discourses that render the body as merely a container
for information and code and consider consciousness to be separated from the body. As
she sets out to defend, there is an interactive dynamic between subjectivity and the body.
She argues for the importance of retrieving embodiment and proposes the figure of the
posthuman body as an alternative to disembodiment in cyberspace. In the posthuman,
Hayles argues, “there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between
bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological
organism, robot teleology and human goals” (1999: 3). Her description of the
posthuman subject as a collection of heterogeneous components offers a new perspective
on what it means to be human. Posthuman subjectivity thus becomes the ideological
reflex of information environments. While acknowledging that, at the end of the
twentieth century, “information lost its body”, Hayles argues that it is still necessary to
insist that we are embodied creatures, and “just because information has lost its body
does not mean that humans and the world have lost theirs” (1999: 244). With this
argument, Hayles aims to move towards an embodied posthumanism.
Offering detailed analyses of the impact of computation on embodiment,
subjectivity and contemporary society, both Braidotti’s and Hayles’s work
re-articulates feminism in their attempt to offer alternatives to dualistic thinking.
What matters for the argument of this paper is precisely the implications of the
notion of the embodied subject for the depiction of gender in the virtual reality film.
In “The Precession of Simulacra” (1994), Jean Baudrillard defends the idea that
our economies have become dependent on the production of images and
information, and that we live in a society of the simulacrum, where the copy has
replaced the original. Consequently, the real and the imaginary collapse into each
other. Mass media have neutralized reality, first by reflecting it, then by masking
and perverting it, later by masking the absence of basic reality, and finally
by producing simulacra of the real, destroying any relationship with reality
(Baudrillard 1994: 364 – 365). The result is hyperrealism, where the real and the
 36 R. Carrasco

imaginary merge. Although Baudrillard’s post-apocalyptic nihilism has been

criticized, his notion of the simulacrum has remained very influential for many film
analyses.
The ideas of these key theorists (Hayles, Braidotti, and Baudrillard) will be used
here to illustrate the re-articulation of the gendered body in cinematic cyberspace,
which further confirms the effectiveness of using feminist theories of materiality/
virtuality (embodiment/disembodiment) for film analyses. In this sense, I intend to
shed light on the idea of corporeality as an effective way in which to analyze gender
and body politics in contemporary Sci-Fi cinema. The article will adopt a
posthumanist/materialist approach towards the study of the gendered body, and
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intends to prove that this turn of feminism constitutes a valuable field for the study of
contemporary digitalized, mediated, or/and fluid identities.

Disembodiment and gender in cyberspace

The concept of “virtual reality” was coined by the computer scientist and visual artist
Jaron Lanier in the 1980s to refer to an environment in which reality is simulated and
where the body can experience artificially generated data. The idea of simulation
experienced a further development when William Gibson’s fiction proposed the
possibility of a direct connection between the human brain and the computer. Indeed,
the term “cyberspace” is deeply entrenched in the literary movement of the 1980s
known as cyberpunk, whose primary representative is Gibson. Cyberspace first
appeared in Neuromancer (1984) and referred to “a consensual hallucination
experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children
being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted
from every computer in the human system” (1984: 67).
The notion of disembodiment becomes a central issue in any understanding of how
gender interfaces with digital media. The specific interest in cybernetics and gender
has spawned a discipline known as cyberfeminism, a theory that sees gender as a fluid
and unstable concept and, in general terms, proposes the eradication of the
traditional model of the body in mediated societies as a way of liberating politics.
In Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture (1997), Sadie Plant
offers an optimistic view of the relationship between women and technology in the
virtual age, especially because, as she sees it, the inherently textual nature of the
Internet lends itself to the female (1997: 23). In a similar vein, but more concerned
with Sci-Fi, Claudia Springer argues that the relationship between the body and
virtual reality can provide “the pleasure of the interface, [which] in Lacanian terms,
results from the computer’s offer to lead us into a microelectronic Imaginary where
our bodies are obliterated and our consciousness integrated into the matrix”
(Springer 1998: 486). According to these theories, then, virtual reality provides a
temporary alternative reality (Springer 1996: 81). Nevertheless, the risk of falling into
essentialism and problems around defining the human body in these virtual contexts
remain in many of these writings. In their fantasy of replacing or eradicating the
body, these theories fail to propose visions of the postcorporeal subject, that is,
images that challenge essentialized ideas of sexed identities in the realm of the
“microelectronic Imaginary”.
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 37

In diverse ways, the aforementioned theories tend to deny the importance of

embodiment in digital contexts, abandoning the idea of the human body as a fixed
identity. In opposition, the present article is more in line with other theorists who
consider the materiality of the body as a valid instrument for criticizing gender
inequalities in media technology. Sceptical of claims that cyberspace can erase gender
markers, Balsamo contends that virtual reality encounters provide an illusion of
control over reality, nature, and especially over a gendered and race-marked body.
The user experiences virtual reality through a disembodied gaze, but, although the
body may disappear representationally in virtual worlds, it does not disappear
materially in the interface with the virtual reality apparatus (Balsamo 1996:
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125 –127).
Embodiment is hence a useful tool for analysing gender in virtual domains. The
body in cyberspace works not only as an analytical tool, but also as a reminder that
we need to find new forms of, in Braidotti’s words, “reembodiment” (2012: 61) in
cinematic spaces. In order to carry out an effective analysis of the different forms of
(dis)embodiment, posthumanist/materialist feminist research is of great value when
working in conjunction with film theories. The idea of the confusion suggested by the
impossibility of locating oneself in the virtual environment, together with anxiety
about losing the body, is a recurrent topic in cultural products involving cyberspace
and is significantly present in the films under analysis here.

Science fiction visions of the (Post-) gendered body

Sci-Fi offers new realities where the traditional concept of the body is meant to
disintegrate. In his influential analysis of virtual subjects in postmodern Sci-Fi, Scott
Bukatman argues in reference to cyberspace that “[i]t is a realm in which the mind is
freed from bodily limitations, a place for the return of the omnipotence of thoughts”
(1993: 159). Indeed, many Sci-Fi texts (notoriously cyberpunk literature) have
stressed the superiority of the mind over the body, suggesting fruitful instances of
disembodiment. For most cyberpunk fiction, the body is not a biological essence but,
since it has been dangerously invaded by information, is regarded as pure mind. It is
precisely this absence of the traditional body which has allowed for interaction
between the human and the machine, a central theme in cyberpunk, and particularly
relevant in Gibson’s works. However, and as happens with cyberculture in general,
this absence of the traditional body does not seem to undermine dominant
representations of gender and sexuality, as Dani Cavallaro suggests when he affirms
that cyberpunk’s approach to gender roles is highly ambiguous, “for it appears both
to perpetuate and to subvert stereotypical representations of masculinity and
femininity” (2000: 121).
Likewise, the virtual reality film, with its focus on how the corporeal conflates with
digital technologies at different levels, creates spaces in which the gendered body can
be redefined. This group of Sci-Fi films follows a specific typology for the
representation of the relationship between corporeality and technology, showing
how virtual reality, the Internet, computer games, or digital databases affect
subjectivities. Hayles’s notion of embodied virtuality may well be utilized here as a
means of understanding the complex ways in which the body is interpenetrated with
 38 R. Carrasco

information patterns. I will make use of this key term for referring to the way in
which the characters’ bodies become conflated with media technology. In this sense,
embodied virtuality can usefully be analysed through linking feminist theory on
materiality and film theories. While embodied virtualities evoke our ambiguous
relationship with computing technologies by proposing instances of fluidity, they also
demonstrate concern about how to present the materiality of our bodies in
cyberspace by challenging the tendency to erase every trace of sexual identity. In
other words, embodied virtualities simultaneously dislocate the bodily human subject
and retain the materiality of the body. Hence, and as will be debated here, Johnny
Mnemonic, The 13th Floor, eXistenZ, and The Matrix all hint at the complexities of
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corporeality in virtual reality contexts.

In virtual reality films, characters normally enter cyberspace in order to achieve
pleasure (as in The 13th Floor), to play (as in eXistenZ), or to accomplish heroic
missions (as in The Matrix). Yet, as suggested above, the dream of disembodiment
causes ambivalent desires. On the one hand, it can mean an opportunity to transcend
the body and develop new (gender/sex) identities beyond the limits of traditional
constraints, which, according to Springer (1998), may produce a pleasurable
experience. On the other hand, as well as providing pleasure, the experience of
transcending the body and entering cyberspace can be read as dangerous since it
implies the loss of the body’s own biology, including our sexual identity, a fact that
may create ethical dilemmas for users. This virtual experience may represent, in
Springer’s words, a “paradoxical desire to preserve human life by destroying it”
(1998: 498). Thus, the fantasy of disembodiment can be regarded as simultaneously
attractive and repulsive. However, the virtual reality film proposes embodied
subjects, implying that the human body cannot be totally reduced to informational
units. The dream of liberating the body from cultural impositions, advocated by
cyberfeminists, does not seem to work in this cultural product.
As I see it, by offering instances of embodied virtuality, these films reaffirm
Hayles’s position that cyberspace is a medium where materiality and information
intersect and where mutation, replication, and disruption have replaced the relations
between presence and absence. In an attempt to break away from the male/female
binary, the long-held association of certain external traits with masculinity or
femininity is partially reversed in these characters. In relation to this issue, Springer
claims that “rampaging muscle-bound cyborgs were replaced by slim young men and
women jacked into cyberspace, inspired by ‘console cowboys’ in cyberpunk fiction of
the 1980s” (Springer 1990: 204).3 Yet, we also need to take into account the fact that
cyberworlds suggest a realm where the union between body and mind is problematic,
as many feminist critiques of cyberpunk have rightly argued. Indeed, the genderless
utopia of cyberspace as a possible place for the affirmation of women is neutralized,
and the total rupture with patriarchal visual and gender behavioural codes does not
take place in US virtual reality films. In this sense, one would argue that embodied
virtualities remain ambiguous. My position here is that, while it is true that, in order
to look real, embodied virtuality needs to perform familiar instances of materiality
and gender assumptions—inevitably remaining typically masculine or feminine—the
virtual reality film also suggests the plurality, complexity, and multiplicity of our
subjectivities when conflated with media technologies.
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 39

As will be shown in the following sections, the virtual reality film offers different
forms of embodied virtuality, which condition the way in which gender is inscribed in
cyberspace. Depending on the degree of (dis)embodiment, the human body can be
penetrated by technology, be experienced as a digital construction, or, in a more
radical way, be considered as a mere illusion bound to dissolution. The
representation of these bodily configurations—which will be referred to here as
“the penetrated body”, “the cyber-body”, and “the simulated body”—has become
very popular within Sci-Fi over the last 10 or 15 years. These three models tend to
coexist in time, echoing current anxieties about the human body in cyberspace. In
order to illustrate this categorization, and establish my own position in relation to
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gender issues, popular US films of the late 1990s will be briefly called to mind.

The penetrated body

A tendency of movies that explore digital media is to portray “the penetrated body”.
As I see it, this is the first level of virtual embodiment, whereby digital technology
fuses with the human body in a moderate way, undoing the assumptions of the
natural body and affecting the characters’ sex/gender identities. The idea of “the
penetrated body” is suggested by movies that display the consequences of the fusion
with cyberspace by means of characters whose natural bodies incorporate technology
by means of implants, prostheses or other forms of technology that function as bodily
extensions. The category delineated here meshes with contemporary debates about
how biotechnological practices affect the understanding of our bodies. Joanna
Zylinska discusses the idea of the body as having an original prostheticity whereby
the body is conceived as a series of additions and replacements (2002: 123). Zylinska
analyses the practices of the digital artist Sterlac and the performance artist Orlan to
show how their bodies are invaded by technology. In a similar vein, Braidotti affirms
that the new technologies offer prosthetic extensions to our bodies in the form of
mobile phones, Internet networks, and the like, a fact that opens up new ways of
challenging the classical humanist mode of representation (2002: 18). In this sense,
bodies that interface with computer technologies define our social framework at
different levels.
This initial stage of virtual embodiment normally causes destabilization and
anxiety to characters, affecting the way in which they understand their sexuality and
gender roles, as happens in Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Strange Days (1995), The
Lawnmower Man (1992), and Hackers (1995). In my view, these films provide us with
examples of how technologies are significant for the human body, altering the way in
which gender has been traditionally understood. Here, virtual reality is seen as a
realm separate from real life, but one that, in one way or another, affects the
characters’ subjectivity, inviting spectators to rethink the hybridity of their own
bodies. In other words, notions of identity and selfhood have been challenged
through the characters’ interactions with technoscience. Hence, “penetrated bodies”
can be regarded as articulations of Braidotti’s embodied subjectivities in the sense
that they are constructs of our advanced psychopharmacology chemical industry,
bioscience, and the electronic media, and about which, as Braidotti warns, we must
be vigilant (2002: 18 –19).
 40 R. Carrasco

In order to establish my position here, and to illustrate my vision of the

“penetrated body”, I will briefly refer to the film Johnny Mnemonic as an example of
how the corporeal interacts with information technologies to affect the definition of
the main character in terms of gender identity.
The film shows the consequences that the invasion of the body has on male
identity, hinting at the idea that the human body is vulnerable and open to
reconfigurations when conflated with the latest technologies. It presents the male
body as non-authentic and vulnerable to change. Johnny (Reeves), the male leading
character, develops a deep identity crisis due to his close connection with technology.
He is paid large amounts for smuggling the most important data of the twenty-first
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century, information that he stores in his brain by means of implants. The problem is
that this time he is carrying a massive upload in his head and must find the secret
codes to download the information if he does not want to die. Helped by powerful
images of penetration, the close connection with media technologies is presented not
as a simple process but as a complex one that results in a negative and painful
experience for the film’s male protagonist. As we can see, being open to the intrusion
of technology is marked by controversy, something Zylinska had already noted when
discussing the experiments of Sterlac and Orlan.
Partly as a consequence of this painful relationship with media technologies,
Johnny never conveys an image of triumphant masculinity. He feels frightened, is
unable to think in a logical way, and is shown to be physically fragile and emotionally
unstable. These facts hint at a crisis of identity, implemented by his lack of traditional
male bodily attributes, especially if we compare him with earlier hypermasculine
combinations of flesh and steel—like the Terminator or Robocop—whose invincible
bodies were emblems of a powerful masculinity. Moreover, Johnny is constantly in
need of defending, and on many occasions women become his saviours. Johnny’s
physical and mental weakness opens up debates concerning his gender identity,
which, due to technology, is in deep crisis.
The destabilization of boundaries between human and technology are further
suggested by the protagonist’s hybrid condition, linked to fragmentation and
powerlessness. This hints at the impossibility of absorbing the massive loads of
information provided by our contemporary society, resulting in disorientation.
Johnny’s self, like the world in which he is placed, is considered unstable. Moreover,
as I interpret it, this plural panorama of border crossing and fragmentation
accurately reflects real men at the end of the twentieth century. Johnny is lost in a
depraved and sick world—perfectly suggested by a decadent mise-en-sce`ne—where
he feels betrayed and alone. This situation suggests the contemporary crisis of
masculinity at work in US society at the turn of the twenty-first century, precisely
when new definitions of masculinity began to appear in the public arena. A series of
economic and social changes caused a feeling of loss in men, not only of employment
but also of a lifestyle and a privileged position that had placed them over women.
Previous attempts to “masculinize” society, so obvious in earlier eras, decreased little
by little, giving way to what is commonly known as the “New Man”. George Mosse
recognizes that all the cultural changes at the end of what he calls “the new fin de
siècle” constitute “an unprecedented menace to the masculine stereotype and seemed
to threaten its erosion over a period of time” (1996: 189).
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 41

Ironically, only a computer can provide Johnny with relief and put an end to his
identity crisis. In line with theories of cyberfeminism, cyberspace could be regarded as
a utopian solution that helps to replace the decadent world Johnny inhabits, a fact
that is explicit when he shouts, “I want to get out of this rat hole! I want to get online!
I need a computer!” Statements like these may suggest that the fusion with
technology can mean a pleasurable experience. Yet, and as we get to see, the digital
world does not offer such a wonderful place. Nor does it erase or replace Johnny’s
weak body.
From this, it can de deduced that the material body becomes a passive location for
the development of information, inevitably affecting the characters’ own under-
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standings of masculinity and femininity. As Johnny Mnemonic shows, “the

penetrated body” posits, in general terms, a number of dilemmas related to the
way in which we perceive the materiality of our sexed bodies when conflated with
technology, which normally leads to crises of identity. Nevertheless, it proposes new
ways of rethinking the boundaries of the self within the limits of corporeality.

The cyber-body
The notion of “the cyber-body” corresponds to the second level of virtual
embodiment, according to my classification of (dis)embodiment in Sci-Fi. Echoing
the contemporary digitalization of reality, a more fluid relationship with cyberspace
is encouraged in films in which embodied virtuality eventually becomes real, opening
up opportunities for new figurations of the body. By body figuration I mean the act of
shaping something into a certain form, which, in cinematic terms, would be
equivalent to images of the body. Moreover, in line with Plant’s arguments,
cyberspace is presented as a site of innovative subjectivities where women can feel free
from cultural constraints. Characters jack into cyberspace and, as a consequence of
this interface, they are able to adopt different personalities and sexes, and/or perform
different gender identities. The novelty of these films resides precisely in the
relationship between a physical body and its virtual realization, a complex process
that disturbs the characters’ notions of reality. Hence, the issue of bodily materiality
in virtual contexts is complicated in The 13th Floor (1999), eXistenZ (1999), Nirvana
(1997), Virtuosity (1995), Avatar (2009), and Tron Legacy (2012), bringing to the fore
debates about how gender should be depicted in cyberspace. Aware of its fake
existence, the virtual subject constructs a liveable sense of self in the face of hybridity,
ambivalence, and contradiction. This idea coalesces with Braidotti’s notion of
subjectivity as postulated in Metamorphoses, whereby the body is considered as a
process. However, as I see it, the possibility of offering challenging body images in
virtual worlds is often paralysed precisely because of the fact that embodied virtuality
is felt as real. In order to illustrate this paradox, which resonates with contemporary
debates on cyberculture, I will briefly comment on The 13th Floor (1999) and eXistenZ
(1999). In these films, the material body acquires a new dimension, and the
characters, aware of their banal existence within cyberworlds, feel disoriented and
plural.
As in film noir, in The 13th Floor, the investigation of the murder of an important
businessman, Hannon Fuller (Mueller-Stahl), leads Douglas Hall (Bierto) to discover
 42 R. Carrasco

the horrible truth that has provoked his friend and boss’s assassination and that will
change his existence for ever. The film focuses on the collapse between the real and
the imaginary and the resulting dehumanization experimented with by the creators of
virtual spaces who also happen to enter them. The imaginary and the real merge, and
cyberspace becomes inhabitable and felt as real, a fact that produces disorientation
amongst the characters, who can sense their constructed selves. This is precisely the
reason why, in these virtual worlds, where users can adopt different personalities, the
stress on bodily sensations becomes very important. The physical sensations these
characters experience are explicitly shown in a sequence where Hall, transformed into
the banker Ferguson, goes to the toilet, looks at himself in the mirror and washes his
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hands purely in order to check his sense perceptions. This fact evidences Murphie and
Potts’s argument that virtual reality systems very often rely on the perceptual
mechanisms of the body in order to work (2003: 119). As a consequence, gender is not
imagined but needs to be simulated in a believable way, a fact that prevents the
development of challenging representations and undermines the possibilities offered
by the digital medium. As I interpret it, the film resolves the complexities posed by the
virtual subject by reproducing and maintaining conventional bodily and sexed
categories. In this sense, the “cyber-body” does not accomplish the process of
becoming, which, according to Braidotti’s nomadic philosophy, would require the
dissolution of all sexed identities. This fact demonstrates the contradictions of digital
images, on which Braidotti has rightly commented: “they titillate our imagination,
promising the marvels and wonders of a gender-free world while they simultaneously
reproduce some of the most banal, flat images of gender identity, and also class and
race relations” (2012: 73). Indeed, in The 13th Floor women are mainly constructed as
objects of desire and depicted as pleasurable objects of the male gaze, reinforcing
traditional film theories about the supremacy of the male gaze in Hollywood cinema.
Thus, most of the women in the virtual reality are seen singing, dancing, or
performing a spectacle. Fuller is the author of a fictional space which is a recreation
of his own past life and which he uses for maintaining sexual relationships with young
women. His fantasies are mixed with reality and, therefore, can be perceived by his
wife, who claims that she can smell these young women’s perfumes. Moreover, the
film reinforces old notions of a bodily focused sexuality. The sexual intercourse
between Douglas and Jane is depicted as real and filled with feelings, as there is an
emotional bond between them, which overcomes frontiers and is continued in the
next world.
On the other hand, the film also shows that women may enter cyberspace freely
and displace some codes of the body, suggesting that being dispossessed of a body
offers possibilities in the construction of new gender identities. Of the three worlds
represented in the film, the last—and supposedly real—one, 2024, seems to open up a
path for hope and change in terms of gender. In line with Plant and other
cyberfeminists, and in contrast to the other simulated worlds depicted in the film, a
woman—Jane—is capable of entering cyberspace and achieving her initial aims.
In this sense, technology is not seen as an extension of male power but can also
provide the opportunity for the free expression of women’s desires. This idea is better
illustrated in the more disturbing film eXistenZ. The protagonist, Ted (Law), is asked
in the real world to have his body penetrated in order to create a new bioport—a
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 43

small hole drilled into the spinal column that will allow him to play the popular video
game known as eXistenZ. This fact ultimately puzzles him while allowing spectators
to share his adventure inside cyberworlds. His constant worries over the ways in
which the virtual game affects the materiality of his body causes destabilization,
which he openly admits. He departs, in a way, from conventional representations of
male leading figures on screen. In contrast, the female protagonist, the popular game
designer Allegra Geller (Leigh), celebrates the options offered by cyberspace, feeling
comfortable and ignoring the possible tragic consequences that this interface may
have on the materiality of her body.
Yet, as with The 13th Floor, the film resolves the complexities of embodied
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virtuality by reproducing familiar sexed identities, in an attempt to articulate the

complicated relationship between video-game players and avatars. In this sense,
I agree with de Lauretis when she argues in reference to this movie that the old-
fashioned values of masculine and feminine gender roles are also present in a reality
in which new bio- and communication technologies accomplish mutation on both
animal and human organisms (de Lauretis 2003: 565). The film depends on
patriarchal imitations of the real world and, as the end of the film suggests, men turn
out to be the absolute controllers of computing technology.
As I have attempted to illustrate, the gendered body is still being performed in
virtual realms, in spite of some significant advances. What these texts ultimately
suggest is that there is no complete suspension of the body or role behaviour in
cyberspace. Embodied virtuality depends on a material body, leaving almost no
space for experimenting with self-identity. Echoing the cultural fear that we may lose
our bodies, “the cyber-body” expresses existing cultural values, negating the idea of a
postcorporeal male or female identity. As a consequence, social norms of beauty,
fitness, and health continue to inform these bodies.
This is not to say, however, that “cyber-bodies” are simply reduced to sexual
difference or that gendered categories always remain dualistic in cyberspace. Rather,
the different forms of bodily figurations proposed by these films involve changes in
relation to the characters’ original/real bodies, suggesting multiple selves. Moreover,
characters sense the process of becoming virtual, a fact that affects their
subjectivities, not necessarily in negative terms. Ultimately, these bodily figurations
may be used as a means by which to reflect upon the possibilities of overcoming rigid
dualisms in cyberspace.

The simulated body

Films that show “the simulated body” take up Gibson’s idea of cyberspace as a
consensual hallucination and suggest the highest level of screened virtual
embodiment. In this sense, the digital world offers opportunities for challenging
the materiality of the characters’ bodies. In line with Baudrillard’s concept of the
simulacrum, “the simulated body” implies that the embodied collapses into the
mediated to the point where the real turns out to be a simulation, a mere illusion.
Wrapped in this hypermedia society, subjectivities seem to become disturbed and
unable to distinguish reality from simulation, affecting the way in which the body is
culturally understood. The idea that the real self becomes a simulation opens up great
 44 R. Carrasco

possibilities for the depiction of challenging body figurations, as suggested by films

like Vanilla Sky (2001), Fight Club (1999), Dark City (1998), and, most famously,
The Matrix (1999). In these films, the fluid interaction of the body with cyberspace
complicates issues of gender depiction, partly because the spectators—like the
characters—are sometimes unable to distinguish reality from virtuality in the worlds
that are displayed.
The Matrix is a clear example of the portrayal of “the simulated body”. Its
protagonists—Neo (Reeves) and Trinity (Moss)—reside in a space between reality
and illusion, between freedom and slavery, between consciousness and dream.
Baudrillard’s work Simulacra and Simulation (1981) is widely acknowledged as a key
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reference for The Matrix. Indeed, the film depicts the difficulty of unravelling the real
world from the imaginary one, which hints at Baudrillard’s idea of simulation. The
world known as the Matrix is a virtual space created by the Machines that have come
to dominate the world, which paradoxically simulates life at the end of the
millennium. Wrapped in the latest special effects and aesthetics, the film opens up an
arena for the recreation of human anxieties and disorientation when confronted with
computing technologies.
(Dis)embodiment and the troubled self are the central motifs of the film.
Moreover, it deals with the epistemological issues raised by the interface between
humans and machines at the end of the twentieth century. Human beings are mere
bits of information, and their bodies are nothing but pieces of flesh connected to the
Machine for the latter’s benefit. Significantly, the mind is not completely independent
from the body, and, consequently, cyberspace is not regarded as a totally
disembodied medium. As in other films dealing with simulation, the human body
functions as a contested site that connects the virtual simulation and the real world.
For example, when Agent Smith (Weaving) is beating Neo in the fictional space of
the Matrix, the hero’s real body becomes a repository of violence and bleeds. In a
similar way, when Mouse (Doran) dies online, his real body also perishes. These
instances of bodily presence speak for the film’s inability to propose total
disembodiment in cyberspace. Indeed, the film insists on two types of bodies: the
residual self-image as a mental projection of the digital self, and the physical body,
which dies when the plug is pulled out. However, a problematic point here is that
embodied virtuality in the Matrix is understood as a copy of the enslaved body in the
real world. Hence, Springer’s idea of cyberpunk characters abandoning the physical
body to exist inside the computer matrix is not achieved in the movie. The fact that
the mind is not totally freed from each character’s body partly undermines defiant
definitions of gender, especially in sequences where the real body is depicted.
Nevertheless, and as I will attempt to defend in the next paragraphs, the film manages
to resolve this limitation by successfully proposing fresh instances of body
figurations.
Within this context, dominated by the latest technology, the film offers
opportunities for flexible gender role assignments, favoured by its insistence on
simulacra and border violation. In this sense, as the wealth of material published on
The Matrix reveals, the movie explores new ways of depicting gender in virtual
worlds. The film’s emphasis on the blurring of frontiers and the mixing of reality,
together with its contradictions and ironic reversals, are ideal for challenging
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 45

depictions of gender. In this light, I agree with Geller when she affirms that we find a
deconstruction of reality in the created world of the Matrix, which “undoes the
nation’s ideological network of borders” (Geller 2004: 26).
In this attempt to deconstruct reality, The Matrix proposes a new model of
masculinity: Neo’s malleable body and his troubled subjectivity do not match
conventional portrayals of the action hero. The virtual hero is called Neo, and this
encourages spectators to expect a rather innovative personality and/or behaviour, or
at least something new concerning his physical aspect. The innovation is easily
perceived in his looks, and Neo’s lack of features traditionally linked to the masculine
is shown by means of an extreme close-up of his well-shaved face and angelic look in
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his first appearance on screen. This is enhanced by Reeves’ physical traits.

In appearance, and manners, Reeves is intended, as Clover rightly points out, “not to
distract from the digital mise-en-sce`ne but to integrate with it seamlessly” (Clover
2004: 21). Moreover, he is sometimes positioned as the object of the gaze, subverting
the traditional Hollywood visual code. His appearance offers visual pleasure to
spectators, especially when seen in the Matrix in his long black coat. In this way, he is
framed by the same stereotype that has been conventionally associated with feminine
beauty. The qualities he displays are based on computer programs that can also be
inserted into any female character’s memory.
As a consequence of this, gender differences seem to become harmless in the virtual
experience, as can be observed in Trinity’s ability to fight, saving Neo’s life. The film
exalts the superiority of her material body, partly by means of slowing down her
movements. Moreover, costume also helps to give the idea of hybridity in the film,
reinforcing the idea of the crossing of gender boundaries. Indeed, Trinity’s
challenging femininity has led to queer readings of the film (Geller 2004). Rather, my
reading is that she simply subverts gender expectations in an attempt to articulate
more flexible bodily figurations.
In short, the “simulated body” reflects the idea of gender as a continuum, precisely
because sexual differences are somehow neutralized in the characters’ bodies. In so
doing, the notion of the body as a site of gender difference is contested. As I see it, by
stressing values such as indeterminacy and border transgression, films showing this
third level of (dis)embodiment manage to offer a flexibility of gender traits within the
limits of corporeality. Braidotti’s figuration of nomadic subjectivity, which she uses
to define our mobile and changeable bodies, may be employed here to refer to the
more fluid relationship between mind and body.

Conclusion
The pace of technological change is accelerating, affecting the human body and the
way in which gender is constructed in our mutable present. As I have attempted to
demonstrate, gender is a notoriously contested concept in the virtual reality film,
where the rigid categories of femininity and masculinity proposed by Western
patriarchal cultures find a space for reconfiguration and/or re-articulation. The
redefinition of the gendered body is mainly achieved by the films’ articulation of the
relationship between an organic human body and its technologically mediated virtual
version. In this sense, the emphasis that the virtual reality film places on bodily
 46 R. Carrasco

materialism by proposing technological bodies that are intended to be neutralized as

figures of hybridity means advancement, albeit with limitations, when representing
the interaction between body and mind in cyberspace. It is precisely through this
experimentation with the idea of virtual embodiment that the virtual reality film
opens up a valuable in-between space where feminist theories and media studies are
brought into a fruitful debate.
While the three levels of screened virtual embodiment proposed in this paper
suggest the importance of retaining the materiality of our bodies, they also
demonstrate that interaction between media technologies and ourselves is possible
and that new ways of understanding the reality of our sexed bodies need to be found.
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Indeed, as I have attempted to show, the virtual reality film proposes representational
shifts of perspective when depicting gender in cyberspace in a manner that is
compatible with our reality. Although a white, masculine, heterosexual, Western
subject is normally present in these movies, these cultural products also manage to re-
articulate human embodiment from different angles. By challenging the assumptions
that surround the organic human body, “the penetrated body”, “the cyber-body”,
and “the simulated body” invite us to rethink the boundaries of the self, echoing the
paradoxes of the virtual bodily experience. Hence, these figurations propose
instances of body/mind interaction that express the kind of contradictory subjects we
have become in our mediated world, while at the same time stressing the importance
of the material body in reflecting upon/contesting old gender concerns. Of the three
levels proposed, “the simulated body” offers the most neutral image of the sexed
body, undermining some of the tendencies that have traditionally associated
cyberspace with the disintegration of the human body.
While Hayles, Plant, and other theorists have proposed ways in which the virtual
subject can be redefined, popular culture—especially mainstream virtual reality
films—faces the reality that our bodies interfere with technology and, from there,
work on engaging modes of virtual embodiment. Paradoxically, the virtual reality
film accurately represents the plurality of the human body when conflated with the
latest media technologies. In my view, the virtual reality film stresses the idea of
embodied virtuality as the best analytical tool for the depiction of the body in
cyberspace, articulating the contemporary complexity of our technologically
mediated world.

Funding
The author wishes to acknowledge the funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness for the writing of this article (Research Project FEM2010-18142).

Notes
1
The word “cybernetics” was coined by scientist Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) to refer to the interface
between biological bodies and mechanical bodies.
2
In her latest book, The Posthuman (2013), Braidotti reaffirms her feminist materialist vision of the
posthuman, whereby the traditional distinction between the human and its other becomes blurred.
3
The popularized cyborg figure has stimulated many insights into gendered power relations with
technology. Donna Haraway’s material-semiotic approach has been key to investigating the possibilities
 (Re)defining the Gendered Body in Cyberspace 47

that technoscience offers women. In her “cyborg manifesto” (1985) Haraway uses the cyborg as a
metaphor to propose a post-gender subjectivity.

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Rocı́o Carrasco is Dr Philol at the Department of English, University of Huelva,

Spain. Her fields of research are gender in contemporary US science fiction cinema
and US cultural studies.