Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 12:49:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matthew Levy <mlevy-AT-orion.oac.uci.edu>
Subject: RE: Adorno on TV


Ralph,
	I would very much like to hear your further thoughts on "The
Matrix" as well, should you choose to pursue this theme and in case you go
off list.  And let me say also while I'm here that your posts over the
last few years that I have been subscribed to this list have been some of
the most consistently provocative even when I find myself to be 
fundamentally skeptical of some of your basic assumptions (which happens
much less consistently).  The topic of the conspiratorial ideology of
American science fiction films is one of my favorites; I think science
fiction is perhaps *the* place where the politics of romantic reaction
against enlightement are most strongly expressed in our present
cultural climate.  What's more, I see my own psychological socialization
as deeply implicated in such ideologies - like April I am of the
generation that grew up with Star Wars (I can remember pretending to be
R2D2 while my father walked me to school when I was in the first grade)
and is now the core audience for shows like the X-Files.  At the same
time, I am committed to a left-critical analysis of these images which
"mean" so much to me even as I (partly ironically) enjoy them.  I have not
seen the other films you discuss here, but I have heard enough gossip to
be surprised at your affirmation of Truman Show (Jim Carrey seems to have
an almost 19th-century fixation on a mythic, waning small-town
authenticity) and Good Will Hunting (a coded social darwinist story of
natural excellence revealed, cloaked as humanistic growth psychology and
platonic master-pupil love).  Also, while I agree with you that there are
really no exceptions from the fascist libertarianism of American action
films, still I think it is important to specify within these the
variations on the theme ... Men in Black seemed to me less reactionary in
that it is in many ways a parody of nativism and racism.  The saturday
morning cartoon does an even better job of this, emphasizing the
deceptiveness of appearances and destabilizing any sense of a coherent and
inviolable natural subjectivity for the "defenders of the status quo" ...
in a sense the heroes are just as polymorphous as the aliens, as they are
mutated or chopped up or implanted or cloned or whatever in episode after
episode, resulting in a sort of absurdist take on the idea of "normal
Americans" ...
anyway I have more to say on this and on the Matrix and Star Wars among
others (anyone see eXistenZ?) but for now I need to get back to a paper on
(of all things) Chomsky and Heidegger ... but I will shut up before I let
anyone see my lunacy in its totality.

take care,
Matt
 

> 
> Night before last I stayed up to 5 am writing a lengthy review of CENTRAL
> STATION.  After having spent weeks bad-mouthing Adorno, to my surprise I
> end up writing an entire review animated by the aesthetic of negativity,
> refusing affirmative identification with a supposedly heartwarming
> human-interest story.  Not only that, this film made me rethink my lifelong
> infatuation with another Brazilian classic, BLACK ORPHEUS.
> 
> So I had to get through yesterday without any sleep, and then everybody
> wants me to do a movie review!
> 
> I was going to refuse the request to comment on THE MATRIX.  I still have
> not written up my comprehensive analysis of the film, although it would
> seem warranted to do so soon.  I don't want to do it now, but I can't
> completely refuse to comment, seeing as how many requests I've received to
> do so.  So I'm going to have to compromise.  I will confine myself to a
> couple of the barest essentials.  Forgive me if I'm too obvious.
> 
> (1) Quite obviously, the ideology informing this pseudo-revolutionary plot
> is the same animating all US films incorporating pseudo-rebellion:
> right-wing libertarianism.  Some of my black friends got all excited
> because Larry Fishburne played the revolutionary leader, and he was good,
> and it's a rare positive role for a black male, blah blah blah.  But I'm
> sorry, this is a computer hacker's cyberpunk idea of revolution.  There is
> not one film coming out that can get beyond the de rigeur American
> lone-wolf individualism, even truly great films like THE TRUMAN SHOW and
> GOOD WILL HUNTING.  Well, this isn't 100% individualist, but there is no
> role for mass action, only for small elite paramilitary commandos, so it's
> still the same old American shit.
> 
> (2) This film is not as reactionary as MEN IN BLACK, but it is very much
> like it.  THE MATRIX is basically of the paranoid, conspiracy theory genre.
>  The epistemology of this genre is essentially right-wing, you know, of the
> bullshit X-FILES type.  I have a very sophisticated analysis of how this
> epistemology applies to THE MATRIX, but you will have to wait for it.
> 
> (3)  The very aesthetic of this film and all hi-tech action films is
> basically a fascist one, but this too calls for a lengthy explanation that
> will be deferred.  As I generally avoid all American films except comedies,
> I only thought this through when I saw BATMAN AND ROBIN on my birthday a
> couple years back.   Let me also say that there is a fundamental
> performative contradiction in all conspiracy spectacles, in which our role
> as audience is crucial.
> 
> And yes, I can break all this down so that a child can understand it.  I
> just don't use words like libertarianism and capitalism and performative
> contradiction, but I explain the concepts, believe me.
> 
> At 04:08 PM 6/2/99 -0500, shandley wrote:
> >Actually, I'd be interested to hear your theory, too.  Sorry to 
> >turn this into MATRIX-list.
>  
> 
>