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So, among the many things I ponder while watching Cars 3, any of the Cars films, is how a society can exist that is made of cars. This may seem like I’m not giving the film a chance, not in Coleridge’s words suspending my disbelief. But, I ask, how am I supposed to overlook such a difficult thing as a world which is made of cars and for all appearances contains no humans. I remember the second film, the main bad ‘guys’ were the less loved cars who faced a crisis when society has ceased to produce their parts. Ceased to produce their parts, electively killing off an entire race, no pun intended, of cars. Surely one can only assume from this that the Cars universe is the ultimate evolution of eugenics. These cars do not seem to question this system of evolution, or technological advancement as we may consider it. I don’t remember, well, I’m writing this without doing any research, that there was a public outcry about the nature of this world we are meant to enter into. Jackson Storm, the evolution of race cars puts Lightning McQueen into a spot of bother at the beginning of the film. Naturally, if we humans were to face a similar world, let us just imagine that for a moment. When our technological progress begins to improve not only our physical attributes but may one day augment our mental capacities. This leads us to a society similar to one found in Gattaca (Niccol, A. 1997). However, unlike Gattaca, the cars seem largely indifferent to one another’s capabilities outside of the race track yet still must face the concern that their parts may cease to be created. Maybe I’m asking too much of a children’s movie? Or reading too deeply. To combat my difficulties in accepting the premise of Cars’ world, I may adopt a narratological view called Parallel worlds theory. Now, in brief, ‘Parallel World’ theory (the link is to ML Ryan's work) postulates that there is an infinite amount of variations on reality. To the extent that any story, novel, film or whatever, may in fact be realised in an existence no different ontologically or existentially than our own. So, is Cars real somewhere in the multiverse? Well I have one view broken into two conceptions which then reconstitute into one whole again. That may seem a little odd, but I shall explain. If we are to accept an infinite number of worlds, then logically each and every permutation of existence must factor into that creation. However, looking a little further at this we notice a problem. We should be allowed to say two things; one, that there exists a world which in some fashion bears an essential or accidental property with all other worlds, even if this world is itself infinitely large to accomplish this task. On the other, we must also accept the appearance of a world that is thoroughly distinct from all others. In this arises a bit of a contradiction, if anyone has read my dissertation they will notice I don’t have much of a problem, with contradictions when we are discussing elements within the ‘magic circle’ of games. Out here though, is the same affordance offered to our understandings? Can both of these worlds even in contradiction be permissible. It was on this notion that I came to realise there is one avenue which supports both sides of this contradiction. That allows us to resolve, in one fashion, the acceptance of this contradiction. Let us consider a game of chess as a metaphor for reality, we may just as easily, and more aptly use Go but I have never played it so I shall stick to chess. Reality can follow many different moves, and in these realities any piece may move anywhere it likes. There is no postion of pieces on the board that cannot exist. There may be boards consisting entirely of pawns or ones where you absolutely cannot move a piece on to D4. The permutations of rules in accordance with the permutations of pieces is the parallel worlds which each share an essential quality in the way we may recognise them as being in some semblance chess. Leaving behind Leibniz’s law of indiscernibles as it becomes a little beyond the scope of a Cars review to discuss the existential similarities of pawns between parallel worlds; for it would require the same pawn to be simultaneous in multiple realities and we may consider this as one singular pawn among meny worlds or many pawns of the same properties differentiated by the distances we can imagine between these infinite worlds. Nevertheless, we can conceive that there exists infinite variations of chess. Now here is the interesting part, how can one world be unique and be related to all otherworld without bearing any similarity to them? Any guesses yet? Take a moment…..Well consider this only one of them is ‘real’ and all the others are simulated. It is the most obvious and simple resolution to this problem. One real, infinite simulated. It is unique in its realness and hence bears no similarities to all the others and the world which bears a resemblance to all others can mimic the appearance but is always irrevocably different from the ‘real’ world. No level of imitation of properties allows it to subsume the real into its simulation. Thank you Cars 3 for occupying a few moments of my time in a way I had not expected when I entered into the contract between viewer and media.
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