antagonist

In Franz Kafka’s novella The Castle the protagonist K. is desperately trying to find his way into the Castle. Zizek draws a structural analogy between Kafka’s Castle and an interactive CD-ROM game modeled after the book. The point Zizek wanted to make is that by solidifying K.’s desperation into a game, where the player must guide K. past the Castle’s gatekeeper, Kafka’s original nightmare is transposed from the realm of existential horror to merely something pleasurable. The gamer’s goal is not to enter the Castle at all but to gain pleasure and thus, according to Zizek, the function of the Master in the game is suspended.

In the scifi movie Gamer, Ken Castle has replaced his own brain cells with broadcast only nanotech. His brain is unilaterally wired into the brains of others. In this way Ken Castle is an embodiment of K.’s desperation to reach the Castle. In a very real sense, he is just as unreachable as the Law or the Castle.

A spyware program interrupts the network link between Kable’s brain and Castle’s control enabling Kable to escape from gamespace into meatspace. It’s ironic that Kable is only able to take Castle down after the link has been reestablished and Simon (Kable’s player) regains control over Kable.

The movie’s ending is ambiguous though. Is it really Simon’s help that allows Kable to finish Castle. What to make of Kable’s invitation to Castle to imagine his own death?

I’m comfortable with the idea that Castle’s death, his seppuku, is a kind of twisted tragic Cartesian death: “I think it, you do it”. Thus, when Kable forces Castle to think his own death, death so ensues.  Ironically then his death is envisioned and executed for him. No eagle is necessary anymore to debowel this Promethean who gave the gift of interpassivity to a future humanity in its most literal and thus ultimate form.

(A remarkable post on Gamer here)