Re: The Matrix Redux (cont'd)

["duy nguyen" <jislober@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with Jon Flanders that the man against machine motif in the matrix
is pretty conventional Sci-Fi stuff; They way I read the move though (and
this was probably only because I had just gotten finished with the first
volume of capital) was as a kind of allegory about surplus value.  Labor
creates surplus value, whigh might be though of as a kind battery power for
capital, for the expansion of capitall; meanwhile the matrix, like all the
various kinds of bourgeous ideologies, particularly those related to
individualism, give people this false sense of control, over their own lives
as well as history, while the real subject of history (in the prehistory to
whatever comes after capitalism) remains capital (the machine)  itself,
whose self-expansion is almost completely out of human control.  I also
akinda liked all the themes in the New Matrix that Cornell West refers to as
"critical of salvation narratives."  This has become somewhat of a tired
theme itself, not to mention easily appropriated for all sort of reactionary
ideologies; but I think it does draw attention to all the different forms of
packaged and niche marketed rebellion that sprung up during the 90s (even
though it risks being just one more form of the latter!), alongside the tech
"revolution," and all the pseudo populist nonsense Thomas Frank discusses in
"One Market under god."

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