Re: The Matrix Redux (cont'd)

[MARIPOWER716@xxxxxxx]

>  So I think the guy laying next to Neo is a smith  agent.  The power neo
displays at the end in shutting down the sentinels  might also suggest that the
world outside of the matrix is actually only an  extension of it; that neo is
beginning to realize that they are actually  still in the matrix. <


Comment

The numerous discussions of "Matrix Reloaded" would appear to be crazy or
totally bourgeois to a segment of humanity outside the center of American
imperial power and this makes sense to me. However, the power of this 
blockbuster
moneymaking flick has much to do with the manner - categories, in which the
people of America think things out or their historically evolved ideological
frameworks. That is to say people with money and the time to watch and think 
about
the inner meaning of this movie. Those who write about the inner meaning of the
movie express a certain configuration in American society.

The makers of "Matrix" are very conscious in proceeding from what can be
called the lowest common denominator of social consciousness in America. This
"lowest common denominator of social consciousness" is undergoing shift change
because one can make a movie for the mass audience with thick ideological and
philosophic jargon. Matrix is not just another modern Western shoot-em-up or 
your
standard martial arts flick with great stunts.

There are several scenes in the Matrix dealing with the military and the
civic authority and to the credit of the makers of Matrix the movie falls on 
this
side of civic authority dominating the military or opposition to shifting
major authority to the executive branch of government.

"Which door to chose and go through in life," "what pill to take," "do I
really have a choice," and "what is the meaning of free will," are in 
themselves a
mode of thinking expressing the dominate ideological forms of thinking of the
bourgeoisie. "Which door to chose and go through in life," is in itself a
question raised based on actually existing conditions one encounters in real
life, real life access and how one understands or imagine themselves to under 
the
boundary of possibility. In a real way history itself creates the boundary of
social choice and in that sense we are only free to operate within a given
historical boundary. We are absolutely free to give shape and impart meaning to
our social actions; even through they are by definition of a historical
character or have a certain "shelf life."

Choice within the citadels of imperial power is of course very different than
the choice the majority of the people of earth face. Choice within the most
imperial of all citadels of imperial power is different from that faced by the
junior powers of Empire.

God, I hate the bourgeois inheritance of philosophy.

I am of the opinion that there does not exist a creature called a Marxist
approach to art, literature, music or cinema. There is of course a materialist
conception of history.
In this sense the Oracle is not so much a rogue program but a self correcting
assertion created by the system in recognition of the emergence of anomaly.
What is called anomaly is subject to dispute and philosophic interpretation.

Capital creates its own social relations and shapes of ideological discourse
and material interactions - and their shapes, that constitute the material
wherewithal of thinking and praxis. Stepping outside this historically evolved
system is not possible as such but what happens is an internal development -
compulsion, that compels society to leap to another political basis more than
less in conformity to the productivity and ideological infrastructure and
"superstructure."

Hey, this is a movie and not political discourse about the nature of society
as such. How do people eat and produce in Zion, and then reproduce themselves
and their social relations? On what basis does their form - shape, of thinking
assume and how is this explained? How does the civic authority assume its
form of authority? Civic authority does not arise on the basis of an abstraction
called democracy, but is always wedded to inheritance, which embody the
knowledge of authority and administration. Someone has to be charged with the 
task
of administering and maintaining the productivity infrastructure and producing
the clothing the people wear.  "X" amount of resources has to be earmarked to
sustain the military force capable of deterring aggression from the
"machines."

An aspect of Matrix Reloaded that makes me shutter is the idea we never
transcend barbarism which is the form that militarization takes in society. 
Behind
the power of the machines are men/women with power over the things that
dominate the individual.

For me this is a sci-fi flick that builds on the Terminator series and
reconfigures time travel into conception of time. In the last instance bourgeois
fantasy of "what might have been."

Kind of reminds me of an old Ike and Tina Turner song.

"Big wheels keep on turning . . .I never lost one minute of sleep thinking
about the ways things might have been . . ."

Matrix Revolution - due out in 6 or 7 months, will conclude like all such
movies conclude: "gee what I thought was real was not real and how do we really
know anything?"

Its a movie man.


Melvin P.