The Matrix, as viewed from Europe
Why Don't people put some stuff up on the Web about what they think the Matrix movies are about, really? Here's a piece that'll help to fill that yawning gap
A couple of weeks ago, the (allegedly) final installment of the Matrix series was released simultaneously around the world. In this piece, I’m going to argue that the series represents the desire of the US establishment to homogenise both their own society as well as the rest of the world. I think a lot of people would be in agreement, though the irony would probably be lost on the number-crunchers at AOL Time-Warner who made the descision. It may seem ironic also that a movie series I interpret as being so critical of American values could be made within the Hollywood studio system, but most great satires, from The Prince to The Great Dictator are implicitly critical of their patrons and I don't think it’s inapropriate to place the Wachowski brothers trilogy in such noble company.
What prompted this line of thought was a subtle shift in the name of one of the Characters. In the series, the machines are generally represented by Europeans, while humanity is by Americans, pretty much an inversion of reality, I’ll argue, though I acknowledge it could be argued differently, though is is pretty par for the course in American movies of the last 20 years. In the second film, the interface between the two world that Neo had to confront was known as the Merovingian, while in Matrix Revolutions, he’d become simply the Frenchman.. Could this have anything to do with France’s objections in the UN to the US-led war in Iraq and the subsequent, Orwellian demonising of France in the US? Just as The United States has always had one internal enemy, whether Native Americans, secessionist states, alcohol, communism, civil rights activists, drugs, or the current peace movement, so it’s needed one enemy in Europe, first it was Britain, then Spain, then Germany, then Russia; now, as, weirdly enough, that 1975 pulp classic Death Race 2000 predicted, it’s finally become the turn of France.
Many people in the US see the resistance of the French as being appeasement of terrorists, latent Anti-semitism, of even envy of the the power that the US currently holds. For many in Europe and the rest of the world, and, to be fair, many within the US as well, the perspective is different. Many see the attack on Iraq not as a liberation of an opressed people from a tyrannical despot, but the imposition of the American social, political and economic model on one of the few parts of the world on which it has been resisted. It’s no coincidence that the European countries most opposed to the US war in Iraq are France, Germany, and at least in terms of public opinion, Greece. All countries have at some stage in their history tried to impose their particular models of civilisation on the rest of the known world and know what a treacherous path this can be to take. The same is, of course, true of Britain, but this country sees itself as an extension of the US politically, which explains it’s more compliant attitude.
Yet to many in the world at the moment, the power of the US model of capitalism seems almost ineluctable. In the last 30 years countries like Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, India and China, Russia and the nations of the Easten Block have all abandoned attempts to adopt another economic system, generally because of pressure, milatary or economic, from the US juggernaut, all adopting the visible signifiers of Americanisation, Shopping Malls, Fast Food Shops, and, of course, Hollywood movies. Meanwhile, the US has become increasingly homogonised, with a small number of brands being allowed to dominate the market, while the larger cities become increasingly indistinguisbale architecturally. What’s most disturbing, and most pertinant from the point of view of this essay is the way any form of resistance to this relentless juggernaut is either assimilated or crushed mercilessly; indepdent record labels and film studios are bought up by big conglomorates, anti-conformist styles are marketed by clothing giants who outsource most the hard work abroad, and the government pursues an insane, Kafkesque war on illegal drugs while taking huge donations from large pharmaceutical and tobacco companies that promote illegal drugs of their own.
In the Third Matrix movie both the Merovingian and Agent Smith, the self-replicating rogue programme ask the resistance why they keep on trying to resist, when they know they’ll lose. Their words echo chillingly with the views of the American government when faced with resistance in both Afgahnistan and Iraq, as if they believed that any resistance to their power was futile. Yet, as suggested in the second film, nonconformity is not just a basic human desire but a necessity for society to function and advance. From a Darwinian standpoint, evolution is caused not by an inevitable progression to our current, American-dominated world, but by mutations, deviations from the norm, while, in medicine, a system can build up a resistance to a disease by assimilating some of it. The ideal society, therefore, as Plato, More, Mill and others have argued, is one where order is provided but a certain amount of intellectual freedom is allowed. Some liberals would argue that the US came close to getting the balance right in the 60’s and 70’s, but that in the last twenty years or so the nation has shifted incrementally towards one where the state’s powers over the individual have eclipsed some of the values of civil liberty on which the country was founded.
Watching the latest Matrix movie, I was struck by how like the machines the human’s military leaders felt they had to become to defeat the robots, riding hulking, and paradoxically humanoid transformer-like machines into the final battle. Some historians, taking their cue from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, argue that in order to defeat enemies, one has to become more like them; Nietzche warned that “those who wish to destroy monsters should be careful not to become monsters themselves” In his study of the global arms industry, Anthony Sampson illustrates how, before the two world wars, European governments spent a higher proportion of their budgets on arms than the US, which spent the bulk of it’s money on infrastructure. The second world war abrubtly reversed this trend, with the growth of a domestic arms industry becoming an extension of Roosevelt’s new deal, which inexorably created an economic dependence on arms production which led to the US becoming a military superpower, with global ambitions, as a leaked Project for a new American Century (PNAC) document reveals that rival those of their fascist opponents in that war. Notably, though, at the same time Germany’s refusal to become more like theiropponents in WWII, for example, by allowing women to work, or by accepting Einstein’s theories, was a factor in their defeat.
To suggest that the US is slowly vecoming a fascist country is contentious, and I’m not entirely convinced of it myself. What’s not in dispute is that the US is currrently both an economic and military superpower that eclipses Europe. Yet I’m forced to wonder what the ordinary citizens of the US get in return for the Stakhanovite labours that make their country so powerful, apart from a jingoistic patriotism that makes enemies of the rest of the world? Americans work the longest hours of any nation in the west, have the fewest holidays, and the smallest proportion of passport holders. In return, the state gives them no free health care or university education, things that most people in Europe are brought up to expect. Am I suggesting that Americans are being turned into machines that work tirelessly to impose their version of humanity on the rest of the world? No, but I think the Matrix films may be. I can’t help relating the ostensible happiness of the human slaves in the first film to a survey I saw in which around 70% of US citizens felt happy with their lives. I can’t help thinking that this is in large part because they are so unaware of what the rest of the world is like because of the misinformation that’s provided by their almost entirely corporate-owned media. When I meet some of the few Americans who travel abroad I’m always struck by how they seem to imagine that Ireland, where I come from, is some sort of war-torn hell-hole when it’s only got around a quarter of the homicide rate of the US. Similarly the scale of the mad cow and foot and mouth outbreaks in Britain are exagerated, as is the level of the Basque rebellion in Spain, the suicide rate in Sweden... I could go on, but the point is, to an outsider, this level of xenophobic propaganda seems almost Stalinist.
The fact that America is probably the most multicultural country in the world may seem to contradict my interpretation of the Matrix series. Yet, watching another excellent American film, the documentary Spellbound, I noticed that immigrants, like those from India become Americanised with alarming alacrity, competing with a zeal that could only be found in the US for a reward as trivial as being the best speller in the US. In The third matrix movie there’s an Indian family as well, in a liminal interface between the human and machine worlds. The religous overtones are obvious, as Hindus believe in such a liminal place between incarnations, but the upper castes in India often seem to live in such a place while still alive, watching American movies and listening to Western Music, ostensibly impervious to the poverty all around them. America, too sadly, seems to be becoming a caste-based society, with a super-rich elite (The average American CEO earns 500 times the minimnum wage, in Europe the figure is more like 40) that lives in gated communities, making contact with the lowest caste, immigrant workers, only when they come to clean their houses. In the middle are the blue-collar and lower-middle class workers who never have much contact with people on either extreme.
I’m painting a bleak view of the contemporary US, but I think there’s a red pill that can allow Americans to break free from this endless cycle of insularity, overwork, xenophobia and inequality. I think Americans need to get out more, and by “Out” I mean away from the US for a while. John Irving suggests this in A prayer for Owen Meany, and I think the Matrix films might be saying the same thing, as in the first movie Neo escapes to find a world that’s much less prosperous and shiny than the one he knew, but far more hedonistic. And make no mistake, in spite of the impression one would get from Hollywood movies or Coca-Cola ads, the rest of the world is much more hedonistic in many ways than the puritanical, work-ethic driven US. In many European countries, in stark contrast to the US, amny recreational drugs are being legalised, the age of consest is lower, alcohol can be purchased at a much lower age, yet crime remains far lower. European students, free from the crippling burden of student debt that their American counterparts are forced to pay are free to travel widely and have their minds broadened. I guess you’ve all seen the third installment of the series by now, so it’s not too much of a giveaway to tell people that when Neo goes back to the machine world to confront the central computer, he convinces it that Agent Smith is a threath to both of their worlds. Whether Smith represents the unfettered neo-liberal capitalism, the new American imperialism, or the power of multinationals, all of which are basically inimical to the spirit of America’s founding fathers, is a subject for another essay. The point is that only by leaving the machine world is he able to change it. And that seems to me like an imprecation to Americans to leave their country, even if it’s just for long enough to understand how the rest of the world percieves their country. And don't pretend to be Canadian. I’m hinting here that I’m not just another “sophisticated European” condescending towards the US. Notice how I argue that the current wave of American imperialism is caused as much by inexorable historical forces rather than by any inherent agression. Like everyone else in the Old World, I consume American movies, books and music. It’s probably because of this, rather than in spite of this that I’m so concerned at how insular and imperialistic the country is becoming. I’m also aware, of course, that there’s plenty of dissent within the US, with Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein all becoming bestsellers. It’s my hope that the dissenting, liberating messgae beneath the dazzling special effects of the Matrix movies won’t be lost on th
A couple of weeks ago, the (allegedly) final installment of the Matrix series was released simultaneously around the world. In this piece, I’m going to argue that the series represents the desire of the US establishment to homogenise both their own society as well as the rest of the world. I think a lot of people would be in agreement, though the irony would probably be lost on the number-crunchers at AOL Time-Warner who made the descision. It may seem ironic also that a movie series I interpret as being so critical of American values could be made within the Hollywood studio system, but most great satires, from The Prince to The Great Dictator are implicitly critical of their patrons and I don't think it’s inapropriate to place the Wachowski brothers trilogy in such noble company.
What prompted this line of thought was a subtle shift in the name of one of the Characters. In the series, the machines are generally represented by Europeans, while humanity is by Americans, pretty much an inversion of reality, I’ll argue, though I acknowledge it could be argued differently, though is is pretty par for the course in American movies of the last 20 years. In the second film, the interface between the two world that Neo had to confront was known as the Merovingian, while in Matrix Revolutions, he’d become simply the Frenchman.. Could this have anything to do with France’s objections in the UN to the US-led war in Iraq and the subsequent, Orwellian demonising of France in the US? Just as The United States has always had one internal enemy, whether Native Americans, secessionist states, alcohol, communism, civil rights activists, drugs, or the current peace movement, so it’s needed one enemy in Europe, first it was Britain, then Spain, then Germany, then Russia; now, as, weirdly enough, that 1975 pulp classic Death Race 2000 predicted, it’s finally become the turn of France.
Many people in the US see the resistance of the French as being appeasement of terrorists, latent Anti-semitism, of even envy of the the power that the US currently holds. For many in Europe and the rest of the world, and, to be fair, many within the US as well, the perspective is different. Many see the attack on Iraq not as a liberation of an opressed people from a tyrannical despot, but the imposition of the American social, political and economic model on one of the few parts of the world on which it has been resisted. It’s no coincidence that the European countries most opposed to the US war in Iraq are France, Germany, and at least in terms of public opinion, Greece. All countries have at some stage in their history tried to impose their particular models of civilisation on the rest of the known world and know what a treacherous path this can be to take. The same is, of course, true of Britain, but this country sees itself as an extension of the US politically, which explains it’s more compliant attitude.
Yet to many in the world at the moment, the power of the US model of capitalism seems almost ineluctable. In the last 30 years countries like Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, India and China, Russia and the nations of the Easten Block have all abandoned attempts to adopt another economic system, generally because of pressure, milatary or economic, from the US juggernaut, all adopting the visible signifiers of Americanisation, Shopping Malls, Fast Food Shops, and, of course, Hollywood movies. Meanwhile, the US has become increasingly homogonised, with a small number of brands being allowed to dominate the market, while the larger cities become increasingly indistinguisbale architecturally. What’s most disturbing, and most pertinant from the point of view of this essay is the way any form of resistance to this relentless juggernaut is either assimilated or crushed mercilessly; indepdent record labels and film studios are bought up by big conglomorates, anti-conformist styles are marketed by clothing giants who outsource most the hard work abroad, and the government pursues an insane, Kafkesque war on illegal drugs while taking huge donations from large pharmaceutical and tobacco companies that promote illegal drugs of their own.
In the Third Matrix movie both the Merovingian and Agent Smith, the self-replicating rogue programme ask the resistance why they keep on trying to resist, when they know they’ll lose. Their words echo chillingly with the views of the American government when faced with resistance in both Afgahnistan and Iraq, as if they believed that any resistance to their power was futile. Yet, as suggested in the second film, nonconformity is not just a basic human desire but a necessity for society to function and advance. From a Darwinian standpoint, evolution is caused not by an inevitable progression to our current, American-dominated world, but by mutations, deviations from the norm, while, in medicine, a system can build up a resistance to a disease by assimilating some of it. The ideal society, therefore, as Plato, More, Mill and others have argued, is one where order is provided but a certain amount of intellectual freedom is allowed. Some liberals would argue that the US came close to getting the balance right in the 60’s and 70’s, but that in the last twenty years or so the nation has shifted incrementally towards one where the state’s powers over the individual have eclipsed some of the values of civil liberty on which the country was founded.
Watching the latest Matrix movie, I was struck by how like the machines the human’s military leaders felt they had to become to defeat the robots, riding hulking, and paradoxically humanoid transformer-like machines into the final battle. Some historians, taking their cue from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, argue that in order to defeat enemies, one has to become more like them; Nietzche warned that “those who wish to destroy monsters should be careful not to become monsters themselves” In his study of the global arms industry, Anthony Sampson illustrates how, before the two world wars, European governments spent a higher proportion of their budgets on arms than the US, which spent the bulk of it’s money on infrastructure. The second world war abrubtly reversed this trend, with the growth of a domestic arms industry becoming an extension of Roosevelt’s new deal, which inexorably created an economic dependence on arms production which led to the US becoming a military superpower, with global ambitions, as a leaked Project for a new American Century (PNAC) document reveals that rival those of their fascist opponents in that war. Notably, though, at the same time Germany’s refusal to become more like theiropponents in WWII, for example, by allowing women to work, or by accepting Einstein’s theories, was a factor in their defeat.
To suggest that the US is slowly vecoming a fascist country is contentious, and I’m not entirely convinced of it myself. What’s not in dispute is that the US is currrently both an economic and military superpower that eclipses Europe. Yet I’m forced to wonder what the ordinary citizens of the US get in return for the Stakhanovite labours that make their country so powerful, apart from a jingoistic patriotism that makes enemies of the rest of the world? Americans work the longest hours of any nation in the west, have the fewest holidays, and the smallest proportion of passport holders. In return, the state gives them no free health care or university education, things that most people in Europe are brought up to expect. Am I suggesting that Americans are being turned into machines that work tirelessly to impose their version of humanity on the rest of the world? No, but I think the Matrix films may be. I can’t help relating the ostensible happiness of the human slaves in the first film to a survey I saw in which around 70% of US citizens felt happy with their lives. I can’t help thinking that this is in large part because they are so unaware of what the rest of the world is like because of the misinformation that’s provided by their almost entirely corporate-owned media. When I meet some of the few Americans who travel abroad I’m always struck by how they seem to imagine that Ireland, where I come from, is some sort of war-torn hell-hole when it’s only got around a quarter of the homicide rate of the US. Similarly the scale of the mad cow and foot and mouth outbreaks in Britain are exagerated, as is the level of the Basque rebellion in Spain, the suicide rate in Sweden... I could go on, but the point is, to an outsider, this level of xenophobic propaganda seems almost Stalinist.
The fact that America is probably the most multicultural country in the world may seem to contradict my interpretation of the Matrix series. Yet, watching another excellent American film, the documentary Spellbound, I noticed that immigrants, like those from India become Americanised with alarming alacrity, competing with a zeal that could only be found in the US for a reward as trivial as being the best speller in the US. In The third matrix movie there’s an Indian family as well, in a liminal interface between the human and machine worlds. The religous overtones are obvious, as Hindus believe in such a liminal place between incarnations, but the upper castes in India often seem to live in such a place while still alive, watching American movies and listening to Western Music, ostensibly impervious to the poverty all around them. America, too sadly, seems to be becoming a caste-based society, with a super-rich elite (The average American CEO earns 500 times the minimnum wage, in Europe the figure is more like 40) that lives in gated communities, making contact with the lowest caste, immigrant workers, only when they come to clean their houses. In the middle are the blue-collar and lower-middle class workers who never have much contact with people on either extreme.
I’m painting a bleak view of the contemporary US, but I think there’s a red pill that can allow Americans to break free from this endless cycle of insularity, overwork, xenophobia and inequality. I think Americans need to get out more, and by “Out” I mean away from the US for a while. John Irving suggests this in A prayer for Owen Meany, and I think the Matrix films might be saying the same thing, as in the first movie Neo escapes to find a world that’s much less prosperous and shiny than the one he knew, but far more hedonistic. And make no mistake, in spite of the impression one would get from Hollywood movies or Coca-Cola ads, the rest of the world is much more hedonistic in many ways than the puritanical, work-ethic driven US. In many European countries, in stark contrast to the US, amny recreational drugs are being legalised, the age of consest is lower, alcohol can be purchased at a much lower age, yet crime remains far lower. European students, free from the crippling burden of student debt that their American counterparts are forced to pay are free to travel widely and have their minds broadened. I guess you’ve all seen the third installment of the series by now, so it’s not too much of a giveaway to tell people that when Neo goes back to the machine world to confront the central computer, he convinces it that Agent Smith is a threath to both of their worlds. Whether Smith represents the unfettered neo-liberal capitalism, the new American imperialism, or the power of multinationals, all of which are basically inimical to the spirit of America’s founding fathers, is a subject for another essay. The point is that only by leaving the machine world is he able to change it. And that seems to me like an imprecation to Americans to leave their country, even if it’s just for long enough to understand how the rest of the world percieves their country. And don't pretend to be Canadian. I’m hinting here that I’m not just another “sophisticated European” condescending towards the US. Notice how I argue that the current wave of American imperialism is caused as much by inexorable historical forces rather than by any inherent agression. Like everyone else in the Old World, I consume American movies, books and music. It’s probably because of this, rather than in spite of this that I’m so concerned at how insular and imperialistic the country is becoming. I’m also aware, of course, that there’s plenty of dissent within the US, with Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein all becoming bestsellers. It’s my hope that the dissenting, liberating messgae beneath the dazzling special effects of the Matrix movies won’t be lost on th
posted by seamus @ 4:42 pm
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