The Matrixxx
May. 17th, 2003 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistNormally I hate using livejournal cut tags, and won't do it on principle with anything that I write myself, I suppose I should, so, everyone who has not seen it yet, if you click below, there are spoilers for Reloaded.
I have mixed feelings about Reloaded. And I am debating whether or not to suspend judgement altogether until the third film, and wondering if I am not being too normative, since usually movies, even sequels are supposed to be self-contained entities, and this is really more akin to to a first part of a two-part finale. The problem is, it's not airing next week, I won't see it till November. So I'll try to talk about it with that caveat in mind.
The schtick of the first Matrix was taking existential questions, the stoned-and-paranoid-at-16 sort, transforming the metaphorical into the real (what if all reality is just a dream? from solipsism to the matrix!) and then transposing on top of it an archetypical "hero" narrative, an aesthetic of bleak dystopian sheik and of course unprecedented (at least in Hollywood) action scenes. Everyone liked it because it looked cool. Lots ofpeople also liked it because it had a pretty transparent antiestablishmentarian reading built into it. Cool. It was an amalgam of inherently Western values (individualism, individual choice, Cartesian dualism between the mind and the body in praxis, if not in theory) mixed with Hong-Kong martial arts, but at least those were the good Western values, for once on the other side of colonization. Okay, so the big Issue of the first movie was what's real and what's not, with a kind of "mind over matter, mind is matter" Saul Williams-esque twist at the end. The new film is all about Control and Choice, again, presented in a stoned-at-16 manner. What constitutes choice? What is the significance of choice in a discourse of total predestination? (that's the big Judeo-Christian question of the film). When is choice an illusion that is in fact another level of control? This all brings to mind William Connolly's critique of Foucault's discourse of localized resistance, arguing that that kind of resistance falls into the niche preemptively prescribed for it in the system of total domination, only serving to strengthen and legitimate it. I was confused for some of the movie, wishing that I were stoned, but things became more clear when Neo is in the room with the Architect. I was arguing about this with people yesterday. As I understand it, in the past every "The One" had chosen the door that led to "saving" Zion (through rebuilding) until the cycle repeated itself again, we'll call that the Sysiphian door, whereas Neo, because he was the first of the "Ones" to have love as a factor is his rationale, rather than just abstract logic, chose the door to save Trinity/destroy humankind, we'll call that the Amor Fati door. The implication of the tautological philosophy of the movie "we are here to do what we are here to do" is that that choice was inevitable and already made. At least according to the Oracle and the Prophecy. But the question that I have, that the third movie had better answer, is whether this kind of teleological discourse pivots around the fact that the same scenario plays out time and again, and by choosing a different door, Neo did bust outside of the system, in which case the prophecy is false, but that's a good thing, because the Prophesy is part of the System, a carrot part of the carrot-and-stick package outlined by the Architect, or does the Oracle's vague discourse function on a meta-level too, in which case everything is still predestined, in which case is it predestined in a kind of a) metaphysical or b) meta-textual way, for the viewer, or is it predestined within the narrative/Matrix as well, and how will it be addressed?
In terms of the other stuff--Zion was a little too Gladiator-style, I liked the syncretic religion thing, although was made uncomfortable by the Jesusizing of Neo (superman is OK, Jesus not so much). i really really liked the freeway chase scene, and i don't know how i feel about the "character development" being of the school of thought that in a genre archetype narrative, 2-dimensional characters make more sense (serving as a kind of implicit meta-comment on the genre) than 2-and-a-half dimentional characters (they ain't 3-D and that's ok, unless the movie tries to make gestures in that direction that won't succeed because that's not what the movie is about but then i am going to resent it for making me feel like the comic-book type characters it created lack in something when i was laready digging them on that level).
there is another interesting tidbit that Nicole and i were talking about last night, which is the Wachowski bros' penchant for specific female character types, based on this movie and Bound. Trinity has that Gina Gershon tough-androgenous-sexy thing going and Monica Belucci is pretty much the same character that Jennifer Tilly was in Bound--and ultra-femme mogul doll, bored and resentful, and doing subversive shit behing her husband's back.
There was more stuff, but I can't think of it right now. Except for Cornell West=awesome, and I just wish they could have stuck Baudrillard or Zizek in there. I am pretty sure Baudrillard is too self-important to consent to a cameo (just my inkling), even though he gets referenced all over the place in the first movie, like the book in the beginning is Simulacra and Simulacrum, and the "desert of the real" quote, but I bet they could have gotten Zizek on board. Maybe in Revolutions.
I have mixed feelings about Reloaded. And I am debating whether or not to suspend judgement altogether until the third film, and wondering if I am not being too normative, since usually movies, even sequels are supposed to be self-contained entities, and this is really more akin to to a first part of a two-part finale. The problem is, it's not airing next week, I won't see it till November. So I'll try to talk about it with that caveat in mind.
The schtick of the first Matrix was taking existential questions, the stoned-and-paranoid-at-16 sort, transforming the metaphorical into the real (what if all reality is just a dream? from solipsism to the matrix!) and then transposing on top of it an archetypical "hero" narrative, an aesthetic of bleak dystopian sheik and of course unprecedented (at least in Hollywood) action scenes. Everyone liked it because it looked cool. Lots ofpeople also liked it because it had a pretty transparent antiestablishmentarian reading built into it. Cool. It was an amalgam of inherently Western values (individualism, individual choice, Cartesian dualism between the mind and the body in praxis, if not in theory) mixed with Hong-Kong martial arts, but at least those were the good Western values, for once on the other side of colonization. Okay, so the big Issue of the first movie was what's real and what's not, with a kind of "mind over matter, mind is matter" Saul Williams-esque twist at the end. The new film is all about Control and Choice, again, presented in a stoned-at-16 manner. What constitutes choice? What is the significance of choice in a discourse of total predestination? (that's the big Judeo-Christian question of the film). When is choice an illusion that is in fact another level of control? This all brings to mind William Connolly's critique of Foucault's discourse of localized resistance, arguing that that kind of resistance falls into the niche preemptively prescribed for it in the system of total domination, only serving to strengthen and legitimate it. I was confused for some of the movie, wishing that I were stoned, but things became more clear when Neo is in the room with the Architect. I was arguing about this with people yesterday. As I understand it, in the past every "The One" had chosen the door that led to "saving" Zion (through rebuilding) until the cycle repeated itself again, we'll call that the Sysiphian door, whereas Neo, because he was the first of the "Ones" to have love as a factor is his rationale, rather than just abstract logic, chose the door to save Trinity/destroy humankind, we'll call that the Amor Fati door. The implication of the tautological philosophy of the movie "we are here to do what we are here to do" is that that choice was inevitable and already made. At least according to the Oracle and the Prophecy. But the question that I have, that the third movie had better answer, is whether this kind of teleological discourse pivots around the fact that the same scenario plays out time and again, and by choosing a different door, Neo did bust outside of the system, in which case the prophecy is false, but that's a good thing, because the Prophesy is part of the System, a carrot part of the carrot-and-stick package outlined by the Architect, or does the Oracle's vague discourse function on a meta-level too, in which case everything is still predestined, in which case is it predestined in a kind of a) metaphysical or b) meta-textual way, for the viewer, or is it predestined within the narrative/Matrix as well, and how will it be addressed?
In terms of the other stuff--Zion was a little too Gladiator-style, I liked the syncretic religion thing, although was made uncomfortable by the Jesusizing of Neo (superman is OK, Jesus not so much). i really really liked the freeway chase scene, and i don't know how i feel about the "character development" being of the school of thought that in a genre archetype narrative, 2-dimensional characters make more sense (serving as a kind of implicit meta-comment on the genre) than 2-and-a-half dimentional characters (they ain't 3-D and that's ok, unless the movie tries to make gestures in that direction that won't succeed because that's not what the movie is about but then i am going to resent it for making me feel like the comic-book type characters it created lack in something when i was laready digging them on that level).
there is another interesting tidbit that Nicole and i were talking about last night, which is the Wachowski bros' penchant for specific female character types, based on this movie and Bound. Trinity has that Gina Gershon tough-androgenous-sexy thing going and Monica Belucci is pretty much the same character that Jennifer Tilly was in Bound--and ultra-femme mogul doll, bored and resentful, and doing subversive shit behing her husband's back.
There was more stuff, but I can't think of it right now. Except for Cornell West=awesome, and I just wish they could have stuck Baudrillard or Zizek in there. I am pretty sure Baudrillard is too self-important to consent to a cameo (just my inkling), even though he gets referenced all over the place in the first movie, like the book in the beginning is Simulacra and Simulacrum, and the "desert of the real" quote, but I bet they could have gotten Zizek on board. Maybe in Revolutions.
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-17 10:59 am (UTC)An alternate reading I came up with on the car ride back from my first watching, which amused my friends into silence: the crisis which leads to the One is the crisis at the heart of the capitalist system.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-17 11:36 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-05-17 12:22 pm (UTC)Glad to see Neo making the proper Gnostic choice of rejecting Architect/Yaldabaoth, though.
Now what if they'd gotten Philip Pullman to write the Matrix movies...
no subject
Date: 2003-05-17 01:59 pm (UTC)i see what you are saying about what choice did the Ones before had, i hadn't thought of it, and now that i am thinking about it, you are right, it does not make sense. i wonder if their choice was more abstract, like one door leads back to the Martix/to "save" Zion, and the other door leads Out of the Matrix, and hell will ensue. so nobody gets out of the Matrix, because faced with the reality of that dream, they choose to go back...it could be like the blue pill/red pill thing again, only red pill holds no advantages in this case aside from the promise of some pure "aletheia" moment of praxis which is tantamount to destruction of humankind...much more abstract than bleeding Trinity. but those are just my speculations, i shouldn't have to do that, and if the writers weren't intellectually lazy in thinking this aspect through, i wouldn't have to...i guess i don't think they tried to leave it ambiguous on purpose, they were just like "let's have a Labyrinth thing in here, it'll be cool."
Speaking of Pullman, I just started reading The Golden Compass this week, and am really impressed so far. but i don't know if i can see him writing The Matrix...i think that's more of a job for Philip K. Dick, or maybe Stanislaw Lem.
Re:
Date: 2003-05-17 05:20 pm (UTC)I like the Marcusean reading.