After seeing the film . . . and aside from the obvious comments about virtual reality . . .
The myth of the hero discovering his powers. At the end he can control the laws of the virtual world, take over the guard programs. In his final phone call to the Matrix, is he saying he will destroy it, or that he will make it into a paradise? (Material for the sequels?) We are ambiguous about our relation to technology.
The fight scenes were slowed down, distanced even in their violence done with little gore. Through the loud music during the titles at the end, I thought, "this isn't my culture." The movie's rhythm and noise is many's preferred environment today, that loudness, that jarring music, that perpetual being on those edges. That jarring sexy anxious being-on-edge comes from threats that popular culture wants to be neatly defined and polarized: drug lords, evil empires. But what puts us on edge is not so defined.
But then I should ask: is my talk about complex identities and places a way of avoiding today's world? Would it be better to have a new unrefined roughness -- all the same edgy tone -- and let it be and evolve, if it will? Maybe or maybe not, but in either case it is worth fighting against commercialized simplicity. How? By writing this? That and other ways. Encouraging, trying to find ways to make living more intense with different kinds of intensity.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001