ARTelevision

In general, I think it's a pretty good thing when people talk amongst themselves about philosophical subjects.

Yeah, I think that's what I think...

.........................................................................
A 'Matrix'-Loaded Universe's Daydream Reality

By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 17, 2003; Page C01


In Matrix mania, there's the feeling that the entire country has just plopped onto a couch for a weekend bong party in a very big dorm room.

There's an idiocy -- the bad kind and the good kind -- that governs a Philosophy 101 class this large, munching and spitting tiny bits of popcorn while loudly trying to suss out the meaning of a story so indebted to Plato's allegory of the cave: Do we exist as we think we do? Is life a lie? Can we somehow unplug from this reality and find salvation in the real reality?

It can all make your head hurt. Web sites for "Matrix" fans have been crashing all week. So much to say, so much typing! Then comes the suspicion that all of blockbuster culture is itself a big lie, a universal bummer in the offing, as we hungrily pounce on new movies to see if they answer our questions or live up to their hype.

So often they do not. People take box office totals personally now: If the new episode of your favorite trilogy doesn't break all previous opening-weekend records, you feel like you've somehow lost your stake in it, as if both your heart and wallet were part of its creation.

The geeking of the American mind is now fully complete. (You don't like kung fu movies? Too bad. Everyone else does.)

Contrary to everything we're told about the dwindling national attention span, millions of people keep queuing up for long, big-budget movies that come with densely layered fantasy plots, confusing twists, unanswerable riddles, deadly-dull expository monologues and many years' worth of character back story.

All of it worth it when the characters fly. (Which is to say, when you fly.) The sensation of cluelessness and confusion and anxiety is rendered irrelevant by the thunder of digitized explosions and the way that special effects can eradicate all of Newtonian physics.

Are we high?

So high.

In the case of "The Matrix Reloaded," we're also too much cool.

Helplessly bound to the infotainment machine, waistlines sprawling, thumbs sore from video games, we ache for the physical movement that has become the trademark of "Matrix" living.

People now daydream in rotoscopic slow motion, with a pulsing techno beat soundtrack. You see it sometimes in how they handle their cell phones. You see it when men wear titanium sunglasses. Fashion designers are trench-coating us to death this fall -- monochrome is still with us. People wear Agent Smith scowls while walking down the street.

There's this vague vibe that our modern lives are really all just some predetermined, exquisitely programmed matrix. We've watched too many car commercials, earned too many liberal arts degrees, gone to the movies too much, read too many comic books, possessed too much shiny metal. This will be our characteristic pose in the history books: sullen, dystopian, jaded. All clad in black, with flecks of neon green here and there, living in a fantasy made solely of stuff we saw reflected on the cave wall.

The pose of "The Matrix Reloaded" keeps us firmly in a state of wishful thinking: In that world, time has moved ahead while aliens have enslaved the human race and lulled them into a permanent zombiehood, where it always seems to be 1999 or so.

In the original "Matrix," which was released before we knew about things like September 11 and the end of the gilded tech age, the heroes unplug so they can see life as it really is. But "The Matrix Reloaded" only becomes exciting when they plug back in. (Another bong hit, then another: The movie puts you back in that other state. In hindsight, who wouldn't want to retreat to 1999?)

Add to that the usual response to "The Matrix": the superior feeling that nobody gets the movie but you. When it comes up in conversation, you realize that there's going to be an argument, a louder discussion. ("No, you don't understaaaaannnnd.") Or you get the feeling that you're going to get lectured again, about Neo being the metaphorical messiah, about the nature of existence, about God.

Slowly, elegantly, from all angles, the reporter leaves the office and not so much walks as glides into Union Station. An imaginary, cassock-like trench coat billows behind him, digitally enhanced for even more perfect billowing. Agents try to prevent his entry. Judo ballet ensues. (All in his mind.) (Or all in yours?)

At the 1 p.m. matinee Thursday of "The Matrix Reloaded," amid an air of truancy and eager drool for the film, a capacity crowd seemed to make true the notion that this particular blockbuster crosses unexpected boundaries of age, gender, race, class: A reverent row of white college freshman males (expected) sits behind four black teenage girls (not so expected), who laugh at everything one or another of them says. A lone man in a leather jacket (the boring, Banana Republic kind of leather) reads the Economist while waiting for the lights to go down. A man in a business suit sneaks in late with his companion, an older blond woman in a red suit, like they've just stolen away from some trade association meeting.

In the intervening years between these "Matrix" chapters, the film industry has marveled at the way the story appeals to both the over-literate and sub-literate of American consumers, how preachers have seized on its themes for their sermons, how accused murderers, including sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, have incorporated its worldview into their own delusions.

Is it possible to love a movie (and the idea of a movie) too much? To watch it too many times, and to anticipate the extension of its canon with a zeal not seen since Paul started delivering epistles to early Christians?

Yes. (Witness all those postgraduate dissertations on "The Matrix.") For all the movie's sleek aesthetic, the act of thinking and talking about "The Matrix" has a remarkable way of turning people into blathering idiots.

As with the essential trope of "The Matrix," there is of course that other option: Skip it. Take that other pill, and remain blissfully unaware, part of that great mass of people who've skipped both movies and seem to be (seem to be) functioning just fine.

The rest of us continue looking for affirmation in the multiplex.

This is how it happens now: The last of the "Star Wars" devotees -- the Lucasites -- continue to deny the heartache of the prequels, insisting that films about galactic tax codes are as good as the originals. The Tolkienists have enjoyed a swelling of their ranks, thanks to the sprawling "Lord of the Rings" films, which, for all their florid dragons and drama, have an inviting, earthy appeal.

Fans of the X-Men -- apparently far more than we were led to believe, thinking back to those days when comic-book shops were thought to be the realm of the hopelessly marginalized egghead set -- have issued, like a council of bishops, approving marks for the film series' adherence to 40 years' worth of comic-book lore.

The Harry Potter children -- a rabid generation of meta-consumers, far too smart for their own good -- write long, complaining reviews to one another when each page of their favorite Potter novel has not been translated verbatim to the screen.

So this powerful identification with the idea of a matrix is perhaps merely a coping mechanism. It's one more fantasy that makes the reality more real. It gets you through those days where you don't know what to believe.

Before the movie started, while people were still talking on their phones and unwrapping contraband food-court nosh, a commercial came on featuring the evil Agent Smith. He told us to drink Powerade thirst quencher.

There was this creepy vibe in the air that we'd already drunk it, swallowed every drop, plugged in to such a degree that we never escape.
......................

Well, I dunno. I'm making up my mind whether to see it or not.

I don't really enjoy "...long, big-budget movies that come with densely layered fantasy plots, confusing twists, unanswerable riddles, deadly-dull expository monologues and many years' worth of character back story."

I did see the first one...so I guess I won't get totally ridiculed for saying all this.

Um, I'm trying to think of something to say here.
Let's see, I think I should see it because people are talking about it...
Is that a good reason?
I don't know.
How 'bout if I catch it when it gets to Blockbuster?
Uh.... I think mimi wants to see it.
Ok. I'll ask sus.
Just a sec....
(goes to ask sus)
OK she wants to see it.
I guess we'll go at some point.

Anyway, what this guy says is interesting to me as you can imagine just because he's talking about how INTO pop culture we are...and stuff.

__________________
create evolution