[fierycatnet]

It is a work of fiction but it's fairly dense. One of my philosophy classes used the first Matrix to explore some philosophical themes. It's been a while for concrete examples, one of the users pointed out Plato already. And this particular quote "human beings define their reality through suffering and misery." made me think of Dostoevsky's literature for some reason.

[WilliamDhalgren]

.. and zizek has used anything from Alien to Hitchcock to illustrate his concepts often enough. Hardly makes either a work of any particular philosophical depth - merely something one may illustrate notions with on a pop-cultural or introductory-educational level.

[projektir]

And I don't disagree! There's nothing wrong with that device as far as fiction writing goes, it's an interesting one. I'm just pointing out that while certain events unfolded there, we should always remember that it's a work of fiction, which means it, in and of itself, is not evidence that those events would unfold that way.