Three Posts About One Topic

I just got through reading Scott Kurtz’s (of PVPOnline fame) review of Revolutions. It got me thinking about a personal struggle I had recently about fans and artists.

A few weeks back, I came across an article about a musician friend of mine who went into relative hiding after he had a “popular undergound” album. Jeff Mangum poured a lot of himself into In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and all the kids really took to it. If you ever saw Jeff perform live, you’d be hooked too. Due to the emotional depth of it, a lot of the album’s fans were able to hang their own personal troubles on it’s lush off-key chords and Jeff’s “through a glass darkly” lyrics. I read Kevin Griffis’s article with melancholy for both Jeff and Kevin. I was even moved to write Kevin an email.

The real power of a good work of art is that the audience finds pieces in the creation that fit the deep craters of the soul in a way more complicated than genes and proteins matching up. The gist of my missive to Kevin was that a lot of the things he found in Jeff’s music were his own emotional attachments to the work and were not neccesarily Jeff’s intentions. Jeff did not write ItAOtS to help Kevin with an emotionally trying time (though I know Jeff is glad that it did.) For Kevin to expect Jeff to continue creating songs that filled his needs is a guaranteed future let-down. Kevin wrote back and explained that he had written several versions of this article — some of them dealing with the exact issues I was bringing up. (Kevin’s email offered great insights into the depth of his writing and I was appreciative to get that look at it.) I was glad that Kevin recognized the therapeutic benefits of seperating his emotions entangled in the art from his expectations of the artist.

Reading Scott’s review (and several others I’ve seen around online) I get the same feeling I did reading Kevin’s article. The first Matrix movie was so powerful a work because nearly everyone who saw it could attach their own struggles with reality, the daily grind, hidden oppression, whatever — so it had a deep impact on an individual level. People like Scott attached so much need to the first movie that they laid out vectors in their mind for what they needed from the following movies. Since the politics and belief systems evolved in a manner different then their expectations, they felt the W brothers had let them down. They took it personal that what they needed from The Matrix was not availble in the sequels.

In an effort to fend off (the fictional projection in my mind of) Scott Kurtz, here’s some of my responses to his issues with the film.

The rebellion’s goal is no longer to fight the war against the machines but to stop it at any cost. Where before the humans were screaming LIBERATION, they now are just begging to be left alone so they can live out their life peacefully beneath the earth’s crust.
This is one of the things I really liked in the sequel. It’s easy to make a good guy/bad guy film — just ask the governor of California. It’s not easy to make a nuanced story where programs (the brains/souls behind the machines) can be good or bad, and then to take a character like the Oracle and put her good/evil polarity in question is even harder. I think the Ws did this well. Even more, I like the sermon that peace is achievable, war is not an inevitability for oppressed and oppressors (whether or not it’s realistic.)

he (Neo) restores the Matrix to working order, and starts the cycle of oppression over again. Then he dies. … The machines and humans will eventually go to war again and according to the oracle at the end of the movie, Neo will be back again when needed.
First, Scott needs to read kmc’s ideas about King Arthur. I’ll send him an email that will get lost in the deluge he’s sure to face. Second, I think it’s clear that humans lost the war in the five(six?) previous incarnations and the big diff this time is the truce. Hope survived. The Animatrix showed that the robots wanted peace originally, what’s to stop them from accepting it now? Also, oppression is only oppressive if it’s unwanted. I think the people currently in the Matrix will be given the choice of staying or leaving…but I may be adding my own emotional attachments. ;p

I hate how focus was changed in the second and third movies from the people imprisoned by the Matrix to the programs exiled in the matrix. None of those programs were good. They were either bastards or were just around to serve a purpose.
This is another thing I liked in the evolution of the Matrix. The conversation with Rama-Kandra hit me deep in the Chomskian language thought processes, in that the signs we attach to emotions are as useless as the flavors the Matrix builders assign to Tastee Wheat. ( Read this book — it is mandatory reading material for wannabe thinkers like me who aren’t quite smart enough to consume Language and Mind or Language and Thought ) The feeling of “love” could be so different from people to robots (or even person A to person B) but the end results — the externalization of the “signed objects”/emotions — are the same: protecting the things we love. If robots/programs are capable of externalizing in a manner that their actions look like love, what’s the difference? Better robots externalizing the actions we associate with love, then the tragic expression of love that warped human minds sometimes deliver.

If I’m fighting a war against machines, and I have a weapon that’s 100% effective against the machines, I would have a couple lying around my home city.
It’s pretty clear from the story (and is reflected in reality) that using EMPs eliminates the usefulness of ANY active electronics in the vicinity. Shutting down large systems (radar, security controls, etc) so you can activate an EMP and then waiting for them to come back online would be dangerous in a battle, leaving you vulnerable just before and after your only active weapon was used. Also, since there’s only one EMP on each ship and none at Zion, it’s easy to extrapolate that EMPs are expensive (time/materials/skill) to manufacture.

I can’t make any excuses for Keanu Reeve’s acting abilities (and I think it’s aprapos that the Drafthouse showed the trailer for Point Break before the film — {shudder}) but I think the W brothers did an excellent job of fulfilling their own needs in this film and time will probably reveal this to be one of the better film trilogies approaching the level of Star Wars IV - VI. If Scott and other overly-attached geeks can seperate themselves from the flim and approach it without expectations, I think they’ll learn to like it.

Posted by etrigan at November 7, 2003 11:36 AM