Total Recall: Hyperreality, Simulation, and the Average, Routine Life

The Third Hidden Layer of Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 Classic

Total Recall is one of the last great action movies of the previous century. Released in 1990, and directed by Paul Verhoeven – a filmmaker known for his satirical critiques of militarism, corporatism, and consumerism – and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian body-builder who starred in a many critically acclaimed action films of the time – it is most often remembered today for the hidden layer of storytelling that most people missed upon first viewing. The ‘story within the story’ which was hinted at, but never explicitly stated.

But what if I told you there was a third, hidden narrative within it? One that’s remained – to the best of my knowledge – totally unacknowledged unto this day?

Layer 0 – The Egotism of Paranoia

Total Recall was inspired by a 1966 novellette by Philip K. Dick “We Can Rembere It For You Wholesale,” which shares the same setup, and explores the same questions, but whose plot is far simpler. In it we follow Douglas Quail, a menial clerk at the West Coast emigration Bureau in Chicago, in a near future time, when humanity has begun to colonize some of the planets in the solar system. He’s obsessed with visiting Mars, has been for some time, but as his scolding wife is ready to remind him, it’s never going to happen. He’s just not important enough to visit.

This obsession leads him to a company called Total Recall, which specializes in implanting memories. Instead of going on vacation – what if we let you remember going on vacation? Not just any vacation, but an ideal vacation, better than the actual thing, in fact – what if you not only visited Mars, but you visited it as a secret agent? On top of that, they’ll erase any memory of ever visiting their offices, and provide you with several ‘souvenirs’ – your service pistol, ticket stubs, vaccination card – they’ll integrate these memories into your life history so that you really believe it all happened, and what more, their artificial memories have been proven to stick better than real memories. All of this for a fraction of the cost!

Quail decides to go through with the procedure, but before they can begin implanting the memories, something goes wrong: the narcotic they administered uncovers his hidden memories of actually being an assassin sent to Mars by the UN, who just returned six months ago, and the procedure has blown his cover.

What follows is a confrontation with, and a flight from, the Interplan police, only for Quail to realize that he has nowhere to run. So he decides to negotiate: the first memory implantation didn’t work, but that’s because his cover story of living an ordinary life didn’t leave him psychologically satisfied. A better cover story, something satisfying a more primal psychic desire, what if that could do the trick?

Interplan agrees, and after a session with a senior psychiatrist, a solution is found: a childhood fantasy, long forgotten, of saving the Earth from an alien invasion by showing kindness and mercy to the tiny, mouse-like creatures of the scout ship which preceded the invasion. Impressed with his humane virtue, they make a covenant to not invade, so long as he lives. A ridiculous, arrogant fantasy – but if Quail believes it, then he’ll be satisfied living an ordinary life.

So they go to implant this memory, only they run into a problem – it turns out this is exactly what happened to him as a child. The juvenile fantasy was as suppressed memory, and Quail actually is the most important man who has ever lived. What a twist!

This is where Philip K. Dick’s story ends. As for the film, it follows the same basic plot, up until the point where Quail learns that his identity is fake. It’s one thing to mention Mars in a short story and never visit the place – but how could you possibly justify that in a motion picture?

Layer 01 – James Bond in Space

Total Recall, the film, reimagines itself as a scifi action spectacle, with the iconic Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the lead. For better verisimilitude they change his profession from office clerk to construction worker, and his surname from Quail to Quaid, and they expand the cast so that the film has a fuller palette of characters – the Mastermind (Cohaagen), the Muscle (Richter), the Jester (Benny), the Magician (Kuato) – with which to fill out a traditional Hero’s Journey overlay to the plot. But the initial setup is essentially unchanged: Quaid is bored by his average, routine life, and constantly dreams about Mars – despite the fact that his literal dream at the start of the film involves him dying horrifically on the Red Planet when his pressuresuit’s faceglass shatters, and all of the news reports show nothing but terrorism, violence, and poverty.

These incongruities are deliberate, by the way; they are a necessary component for translating a science fiction novellette to the silver screen, and are emblematic of the many other changes we’ll see. The source material was written far more prosaically, with less of a focus on the characters, with the arc of the Hero’s Journey occurring on a more intellectual level.[i] The “Hero” isn’t Douglas Quail – instead, it’s what Quail believes about the world; it’s this belief that goes on a journey of transformation with a twist at the end, upending his entire understanding of reality. Total Recall will do the same thing but through the language of dreams and cinema; and the ultimate subject of the upended reality won’t be Quaid, but the audience itself, who are the dreamers experiencing the dream through Douglas Quaid, their avatar – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The incongruities foreshadow that something isn’t quite right with Quaid’s Martian fantasy.

Just as in Philip K. Dick’s story, Quaid decides to visit Total Recall for a memory implantation, and the procedure exposes the truth: the life he remembers was all a lie, he really was a secret agent on Mars, his wife and his best friend are part of the cover-up, and now he’s on the run with a team of agents gunning for him.

This is the point in the novellette where Quail – quite sensibly – negotiates a cease-fire. But this is a Schwarzenegger movie, so ‘sensible’ isn’t on the menu. Instead he smuggles his way on to Mars, where he joins up with the terrorists (led by the sexy Melina, his ingénue prostitute with the heart of gold), who are seeking justice for the oppressed mutants who’ve been abandoned by the corporate administrators. Then he finds out this was but a plot-within-a-plot, that the whole reason the original Quaid had his memory wiped was so that he could go undercover and betray the mutant army. And then he finds out the secret that the corporate administrators have been hiding from humanity: an ancient alien artifact designed to create a breathable atmosphere on Mars, liberating the oppressed workers who’d been kept dependent through their access to breathable air, is just waiting to be activated.

Arnie beats the bad guys, saves the planet, kisses the prostitute, and the screen fades to white. Leading us to the next layer of the story:

Layer 02 – Was it All Just a Dream?

Yes, yes it was.

From the moment Quaid got into the Total Recall machine, everything shown on screen was part of the “Paranoid Embolism” the technician warned about; all of it was in his own head, he wasn’t a secret agent, he’d never been on Mars, and all of the weird mutations, 3-titted prostitutes, and the gargantuan alien artifacts, were just creations of his own imagination; far more colourful and exciting than the prosaic reality, he’d romanticized an adventure based upon the Fox News reports he’d watched on Earth.

This second layer has already been extensively analyzed, so I’ll keep this section brief. The first big clue is how schlocky the second half of the movie becomes. The mutants, the chosen one prophecy, the aliens showing up out of left field – the latter in particular was never properly set up in the first part of the film, and as a plot device it feels tacked on. It fits with the B Movie aesthetic which Verhoeven has always enjoyed, but he’s never written stupid movies. It makes far more sense that the little green men are a product of Quaid’s mind, rather than a case of Verhoeven trying to ape 2001: A Space Odyssey, while failing to cock Checkov’s gun.

This plot point is deliberately tacked on.

Next we have the appearance of Melina, his terrorist lover, prior to him entering the machine: as part of the preparation for his Total Recall implantation, the technicians question him on his ideal love interest. The result isn’t just a brunette with her sort of body – which, you might argue, is his latent memory of Melina manifesting as a desire for her archetype – no, it’s a distinct image of her, implying that she was an implanted memory.

The third big clue that we’re lost in Quaid’s mind is the use of Fade-to-White versus Fade-to-Black. When it fades to black, we’re in the real world; when it fades to White, this indicates the real world. There are several of these deliberate fades, as a clue for the attentive viewer.

And finally, we have the prediction made by the doctor right before the point where the story really spirals out of control. The original Red Pill, ten years before the Matrix:

All of these prophecies come true, and that final Fade to White at the close of the film? That’s Quaid’s brain shutting down as he completes his narcissistic delusion. He finally got what he wanted; and so, he dies.

Layer 03 – Douglas Quaid is a Narcissist

I understand that ‘narcissist’ is a term that’s thrown around far too casually these days; as is the postmodern film theory reversal. You know the one: where we throw up a series of intellectualizations to explain how the bad guy is actually the good guy, and the good guy is actually the bad guy? “But that’s just a theory – a SOY theory!”

Seriously, fuck that Matt Patt guy, and everything he’s ever done or created or experienced or loved. Did you know that he enjoyed Life is Strange? I really hope Roko’s Basilisk just deletes him from existence, he’s not even worth the computronium of a torture cube, not even in a self-perpetuating black hole. Just ignore that awful little tick.

Ahem, where was I?

My critique of Douglas Quaid isn’t something external to the film. I believe it’s something deliberate, intentionally put there by Verhoeven, and Layer 03 is just as supported as Layer 02 is by the various cuts to white and black. I noticed this theme upon my first viewing of the film – what must I have been, 12? 14? 16? Far too young to even understand what movies were, thinking they were just these fun, escapist fantasies of some sort idealized life… heroism – adventure! And then came the scene in Total Recall that seriously jarred me. In the early part of the film, while running from the Bad Guys, Quaid uses an innocent man as a bullet shield while escaping on the escalator.

Not some Storm Trooper, not some drug dealer, or other lowlife who could readily be written off, Quaid uses an innocent man as a bullet shield, and then cast him away as if his life meant nothing.

Wait a minute, I thought, is this the action of a hero?

The thought was soon drowned out by the special effects, the scifi vistas, the body horror, and the dramatic score. But it stuck with me over the years, and was what eventually led me to re-watch the film with a critical eye; and upon viewing it at a more mature age I realized it wasn’t the only example of Quaid’s heroic deficit. Despite being the Winner and the Protagonist, Douglas Quaid never shows any great virtue throughout the film. And whatmore, this is clear from the very first moment we see him in acting in the real world.

He wakes up next to Sharon Stone – an absolute sexpot at the time of filming – and yet he not only dreams about being with other women, he tells her about it. “Hey, wife – I just had a sex dream about a woman who wasn’t you!” Stone is sexually eager, supportive, and yet he’s still hoping to find something better.

Later, after the Total Recall implantation fails, he’s attacked by a gang, led by the only friend of his we ever see on screen. He kills all of them, and while confused and desperate, he never shows any signs of heartbreak or betrayal. Keep in mind, according to Layer 2, all of these events are happening within his own mind. So his friend at work – who warned him not to let Total Recall mess with his mind – is being readily cast into the role of “Evil Storm Trooper, not worthy of moral consideration,” by his own mind. The same holds true for the following battle with Sharon Stone.

It’s worth emphasizing this domestic violence scene: Quaid’s narcissistic fantasy about being a Hero involves having a knife fight with his real-world wife (who is super hot and likes having sex with him). “My wife!”

Next comes the aforementioned elevator scene, and there’s another moment where he pushes around a little old lady, but the culmination of this “narcissistic hero fantasy” comes when he bullies one of the mutants, making fun of the man’s deformity, while simultaneously playing the role of mutant liberator.

These are not the actions, nor are they the fantasies, of a heroic man. These are the spiteful revenge fantasies of a child.

In the first part of this essay, covering Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Rembere It For You Wholesale,” I breezed over the description of Douglas Quail’s childish fantasy. Let us consider the passage in detail, when the Interplan Physician uncovers his secret ego desire:

"Unlike the fantasy of wanting to be an Interplan undercover agent… which, being relatively speaking a product of maturity, had a certain plausibility to it, this production is a grotesque dream of your childhood; it is no wonder you fail to recall it. Your fantasy is this: you are nine years old, walking alone down a rustic lane…”

The irony of Dick’s novellete is that this childish fantasy turns out to be true. The irony of Verhoeven’s film is that the genre within which he worked – the 80’s action film – was replete with childish fantasies unbecoming of men.

Back in 2009, The Last Psychiatrist explored lucidly what Total Recall explored symbolically:

1. marginal guys are the real heroes.
2. heroes never die.
3. bad guys exist as bad guys, not as good guys who went bad, or bad guys with some good in them also. Darth Vader was unquestionably bad starting in 1977, unimaginable that he was once a sweet young boy with good in his heart. That story had to wait a whole generation to be told.
4. in order to get (active verb: to obtain, procure, convince) a hot woman to fall passionately in love with you, you have to do do some extraordinary things: take out thirty terrorists, master kung fu, be in the special forces, etc.

He continues:

The movies say: until you do something extraordinary, or "save" the girl, then the love you feel isn't true love. Women may be the ones looking to feel "explosions" inside telling them they're in true love, but men externalize those explosions in to real explosions before they know it's love.

How did you meet? Was it a good story? Did it involve defying the odds or secrecy? You'll make it. Did you meet in a coffeehouse or a bar? Then you're dating your future ex-fiance(e).

The male libido falls not because he's not interested in the woman he's with, but because he's not interested in the movie he's in.

Remember what the Doctor said, when he challenged Quaid to take the Red Pill:

“You’re a fine, upstanding man. You have a beautiful wife who loves you. Your whole life is ahead of you. But you’ve got to want to return to reality.”

Where The Matrix challenged us to see beyond the trappings of contemporary culture, Total Recall challenges us to see beyond the trappings of cinematic dreams. In the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Moore and Gillette describe the juvenile forms of the four archetypes: the Divine, the Hero, the Precocious, and the Oedipal. Quaid fits all four of these to a T. Let’s start with the Hero and the Warrior.

The Hero performs great feats for the sake of accolades; the Warrior acts with discipline, because it is how the job must be done. The Hero expects a trophy, a celebration; the Warrior pursues excellence for its own sake.

Quaid is expecting to earn a trophy, as if he is still in High School, a member of the Football Team. He acts like a child.

Next, the Precocious and the Magician. The precocious has a natural talent and aptitude; we see Quaid handed the tools of spycraft in a briefcase. The Mage has become a master of many things, a Starfleet engineer who can turn “Rocks into Replicators”. We never see Quaid create his own tools, he only use the tools that are handed to him.

The King is never certain if his army will support him, but he inspires them, and steps first into the breach; the Divine assumes the obedience of his subjects, as does Quaid, who is supported by Tony the mutant whom he insulted (a far more heroic character than our protagonist).

And finally, the lover and the oedipal. The lover seduces and impregnates his mature, fertile wife. The oedipal endlessly pursues simple, hedonistic pleasures with young girls and prostitutes, never blossoming the pollen of lust into the creativity of climax.

Quaid is as infertile as a 10 year old boy.

This is the third layer of interpretation intended in Total Recall: it is a critique of the 80s action movie in general, the juvenile fantasy to accolades and women as reward, as opposed to performance and woman as wife. Verhoeven was pointing out how childish and immature the “muscles and violence” genre truly was, as his protagonist who pursued this path ended his life in paranoid embolism and death, finally kissing Echo as she and Narcissus submerged below the water.

Since then we’ve had different versions of this childish, narcissist’s fantasy. We’ve had Titanic, where Rose throws a jewel into the ocean over a lustful tryst from her childhood. We’ve had Harry Potter, indict a whole school of being as ‘Evil Slytherin’, for having a different perspective from him. And we’ve had endless examples of “Not celebrating powerful wahmen means oppression,” throughout… everything.

Is that what you want? Celebration? I hear the new AIs are optimized to encourage healthy bowel movements.

So which way, Western Man, Western Woman? Will you grow? Will you learn? Will you build? Or will you sink into the waters of the unconscious, embracing your artificial lover?

I’ll be waiting here on the sandy shores.

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[i] This is why science fiction was so often dismissed in the previous century as inferior to serious literature. Rather than be a ‘good story’, it used simple, boring characters to explore weird ideas.