Lecture Library

This article discusses spatial navigation in the context of film juxtaposed to video games.

By Evan Pondel

In Janet Murray’s chapter on “Agency” from Hamlet on the Holodeck, she notes that spatial navigation is a “form of agency not dependent on game structure yet characteristic of digital environments.”  I’d like to broaden the scope of this observation to suggest that spatial navigation is a form of agency not dependent on the plot structure of a film yet often intrinsic to the plot of many films, including “The Truman Show,” “Being John Malkovich,” and “The Matrix.”

In “The Truman Show,” Truman Burbank lives life totally unaware that he plays a prominent role in a televised soap opera. He eventually catches wind of his life’s false reality by circumnavigating his giant dome world.  Even though I’m using the term spatial navigation in a different context than Murray, the audience confronts spatial navigation as Burbank explores his world and encounters certain facts, such as an out-of-place spotlight in the night sky.  Eventually, Burbank reaches the edge of the dome (or his version of reality) and his boat pierces through the dome’s sky.  A nearby flight of stairs leads to an “Exit.”

Spatial navigation is important in “The Truman Show” because it enables Burbank and the audience to seek the truth.  It is almost as if Burbank is navigating what Murray describes as an “adventure maze that embodies a classic fairy-tale narrative of danger and salvation.”  Audiences can relate to Burbank’s plight in that there is a shared sense of agency.  Burbank and the audience are in search of an exit to the giant dome maze to uncover the truth about reality.

In “Being John Malkovich,” spatial navigation takes the form of entering a portal on floor 7.5, perceiving life from the vantage point of Malkovich, and then getting spat out on the New Jersey Turnpike.  Again, there is a sense of agency in the experiences of Craig Schwartz and his wife Lotte as they enter a maze, in this case the portal, and seek out the truth about love by spatially navigating the world via Malkovich.  In many ways, Malkovich becomes the vessel in which Schwartz, Lotte and the audience are able to navigate and explore consciousness and perceptions of reality.

“The Matrix” does the same in that Thomas Anderson must spatially navigate the Matrix to learn the truth about his simulated reality.  Of course, unlike a videogame, the labyrinthine journey that Anderson takes is determined by the screenwriter.  Perhaps this is where spatial navigation in the context of a film has its shortcomings.  Murray notes that “computer-based journey stories offer a new way of savoring exactly this pleasure, a pleasure that is intensified by uniting the problem solving with the active process of navigation.”  In “The Matrix,” the audience has no choice but to allow Anderson to solve the problems he encounters in the Matrix.  The sense of agency and spatial navigation could have been much more immersive if the audience was involved in the navigation.

In essence, spatial navigation in the context of film is limiting when compared with videogames. However, once the relationship between videogames and film becomes even more seamlessly bound, it will likely provide a greater sense of agency for players and audiences alike.  And at a certain point, instead of merely watching “Being John Malkovich,” audiences may actually get a chance “to be” John Malkovich.