In the Matrix, in the Scene or in with Mary W.?
Posted by Tanos on Wed 21 May 03, 11:26 AM
Tags: films
There's been a few references to "The Matrix"
films already in the weblogs on IC and I expect
references to it will crop up again after the
second film, "The Matrix Reloaded" starts
appearing in UK cinemas from today. These films
have a bunch of themes which it's tempting to
relate to BDSM and our interaction with the
mainstream, vanilla world, including some of the
intolerance and demands for conformity that I
found in my inbox this morning.
Since I've just finished "The Matrix and
Philosophy", I'm full of these kinds of links
between the Matrix and X, where X is whatever
you're into. The above book is a collection of
essays by different academics, all trying to pitch
their specialisation at students as something
worth studying, and it's pretty clear from all
this that you can see or make parallels between
random subject X and the films.
So I'm going to try to avoid falling into the
"Matrix is like BDSM" trap and instead find a more
general X, that themes from the Matrix and BDSM
both resemble. While it's true that there are a
few explicitly fetishy themes: the main female
character, Trinity, wears PVC, and first
meets Neo, the male lead, in some kind of club
(leather, cages, dark), these aren't what I'm
talking about.
The start of the film is a classic example of
finding some kind of "gateway" person or thing,
inviting you out of the everyday world and into a
deeper, but normally hidden reality.
Neo already leads two lives: "In one life, you're
Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a
respectable software company, you have a social
security number, you pay your taxes, and you help
your landlady carry out her garbage." But at
night, he spends his spare time very differently:
"The other life is lived in computers, where you
go by the hacker alias Neo and are guilty of
virtually every computer crime we have a law for."
And during one of these late night hacking
sessions he gets a strange invitation on his
computer: he's told to "Follow the White Rabbit"
(a nod to Alice) and immediately gets a knock on
his apartment door which leads to an invitation to
the above mentioned club, to meeting Trinity and
ultimately the uber-hacker Morpheus that Neo has
been searching for by name already.
There are obvious parallels here with the way the
Net allows people to find other individuals and
groups that they would normally be hard pressed to
discover; that through resources like IC, people
can discover a "hidden" subculture like BDSM and
find a way into it, and that although that journey
starts online, it leads into real life rather than
deeper into the online world.
But this kind of mechanism, usually without the
Net, has really been a general feature of
"underground" or "hidden subcultures", rather
than anything specific to BDSM. There are other
subcultures and other stories and films which
cover very much the same ground: from Alice
entering the Rabbit Hole or the Looking
Glass, to modern examples like Harry Potter
getting school invitations by Owl or knowing which
station column hides platform Nine and Three
Quarters, or even John Nash being invited into the
(literally) unreal world of the CIA in "A
Beautiful Mind."
But back to Neo. After his trip to the club, he is
abruptly brought back to earth by waking up late
for work. He ultimately finds himself sat in his
boringly respectable office, trying to make sense
of the night's events. (More parallels there  )
For some of us, part of the attraction of the BDSM
Scene - BDSM as a social space rather than just as
something you do - is it's departure from that
boringly respectable world, and its underground
and even rebellious nature. (For some, this is so
strong that they believe accusations of not being
a "sexual radical" is a critical statement, even
though, except in student politics, being
"radical" isn't by itself a virtue.)
I'm sure part of this romance of secret
subcultures and societies is what fuels the online
myths of ancient European (if you're in the US) or
Oriental (if you're in Europe) Slave Training
Houses, modelled on O's "Roissy" or some James
Clavell novel. It's that feeling that there's
always something bigger out there, that if we
could just break through and find it, life would
be so much more interesting.
In fact, Morpheus sums it all up himself, when he
finally meets Neo in the flesh: "Let me tell you
why you're here. You're here because you know
something. What you know you can't explain. But
you feel it. You've felt it your entire life.
That there's something wrong with the world. You
don't know what it is but it's there, like a
splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this
feeling that has brought you to me ...
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix
is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your
last chance. After this there is no turning back.
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake
up in your bed and believe whatever you want to
believe. You take the red pill, you stay in
Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit
hole goes..."
Which pill to take? And how will you feel
afterwards, when you look back at your choice?
In "The Matrix", one of the characters who took
the red pill and found reality, decides he didn't
like it and that he'd be better off back in the
apparent normality of the system: that flirting
with alternative ways of living is not for him,
and that he's happy to betray his crewmates to the
Authorities since they shouldn't be doing it
either.
I see this attitude as being just as bad as the
"Thou Must be Radical" element. Just as I don't
appreciate being told that to be "Real" you must
wear latex, I don't welcome the Mary Whitehouse
element threatening to involve "The Necessary
Authorities" if I don't take someone's reference
to piss-play off a website.
Who died and made you The One?
Edited Sat 10 Jan 09, 12:05 AM by Tanos
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