Guns ... lots of guns
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerHaving failed to find a final text for my Matrix coursebook, I've decided I may as well write one myself. Entitled Guns ... Lots of Guns, it's an investigation of the role and message of violence in The Matrix. Here's the section I've just written:
A central idea of The Matrix is hyper-reality, a term invented by Jean Baudrillard. Hyper-reality occurs when the simulation becomes more real than what it is supposed to be a simulation of. Baudrillard gives Disneyland as an example of hyper-reality: although it seems to be a fantasy, it is, he claims, more real to its visitors than either the fairy tales it plunders or the "real" America: Disneyland is America. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon, or even a Western phenomenon; we can see the same thing in developing countries. In Turkey there is a cultural style called arabesk, which started in music as a genuine expression of the disillusionment of rural migrants to the cities; it deals with poverty, impossible romantic love and the conflict between urban and rural values. Within a short time, arabesk became hyper-real. Now, young Turks define themselves in reference to arabesk music, films and soap operas: if they are in love, they compare themselves to arabesk lovers; when they have a fight on the street, they are thinking of the heroes of arabesk films.
In Baudrillard's view, hyper-real violence assimilates physical violence. This is why terrorism is not only immoral, it is self-defeating. The terrorist wants to make the ultimate act of defiance. The powers that be (the Matrix) have taken everything from him, or at least he thinks they have. His response is to declare war on that society by a spectacular act of violence. "The Israelis have killed my daughter, so I will go into a Jewish cafe and blow myself up---let's see how they feel about their daughters being killed." What he does not realise is that his action, as soon as it is observed, will become part of a hyper-real drama. For the Israeli whose daughter has just been blown into bloody meat, it is as real as you can get, but for everyone else it is a scene in a collective simulation: "Evil Arab kills innocent Israeli girl". If Baudrillard is right, then few people care about what really happened and why it happened; the important thing is what happens in the simulation. The father who was prepared to give up his life and commit murder to avenge the death of his daughter has become just another character in a film, no more real than Neo or Agent Smith. His compensation---which is really no compensation at all---is that he has become a character in a mass-media drama, and what is more, the meaning of that drama is obscured, according to Baudrillard, who, in a famous passage in Simulacra and Simulation, writes:
However, violence in the "desert of the real" is different from violence in the simulation. Any streetfighter will tell you that real fighting is nothing like kung fu films, and any soldier will tell you that war is not like war films. Nevertheless, when people do violent things, they are often trying to recreate the violence of television or films. It is not that films make us violent; it is that when we are violent, we try to make our violence more meaningful by imitating the violence of the simulation. This explains the statements by criminals that some film made them do it. The film did not make them do it; those people would probably have killed someone if they had been living in a world with no mass media. What the film did was make them try to turn an ordinary, banal act of murder into something they felt was important. Neo and Trinity gunning down a host of security guards has in this sense become more "real" than a drunken brawl turning into murder. Real physical violence is only interesting to those it directly concerns; if you want an audience outside your family, your neighbours and the local police, killing your wife is not enough; you have to kill her on Reality TV. If you can't do that, you need to convince yourself that your pathetic little murder is something like Neo killing an Agent, or, in a former age, John Wayne killing an Indian.
But of course, most people are not particularly violent. We are attracted to the violence of films, not because we really want to kill people, but because it represents things we really want. We want to assert ourselves, to rebel against authority. When Neo destroys Agent Smith (for the time being) we cheer because Smith represents our boss, father or whatever authority figure we want to rebel against. Smith may indeed represent the banality of our lives in general, as I.Q. Hunter claims: "Neo discovers another reality, where he can fight the dull everyday life---personified here by agent Smith." (Hunter, Banality as Saviour. Filmhaftet .121 May 2002, figure caption.)
This illustrates a problem with the idea of hyper-reality. By claiming that the hyper-real is somehow "more real", it fails to distinguish adequately between the hyper-real violence of a reported terrorist attack, and the hyper-real violence of The Matrix. To say that X is more real than Y is not terribly meaningful; the word "real" then becomes a cipher for vague ideas like "engaging", "authentic" or "seductive". I would claim that everything is real; the important question is "A real what?" The Palestinian blowing himself up in a cafe is a real physical event; the report on the evening news is a real media event, and Neo fighting agent Smith is a real cinematic event. They do not represent levels or orders of reality (with one being more real than another); they are simply different, although related. Television audiences may sometimes be confused by the correspondences between media events and physical events, often assuming that the former is a simple depiction of the latter rather than an entity in its own right (with its own social and political meaning) but they are rarely so naive as to assume the same of cinematic events. We know that the violence in The Matrix bears only a slight resemblance to physical violence, and either accept it as entertainment or look for alternative meanings.
A central idea of The Matrix is hyper-reality, a term invented by Jean Baudrillard. Hyper-reality occurs when the simulation becomes more real than what it is supposed to be a simulation of. Baudrillard gives Disneyland as an example of hyper-reality: although it seems to be a fantasy, it is, he claims, more real to its visitors than either the fairy tales it plunders or the "real" America: Disneyland is America. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon, or even a Western phenomenon; we can see the same thing in developing countries. In Turkey there is a cultural style called arabesk, which started in music as a genuine expression of the disillusionment of rural migrants to the cities; it deals with poverty, impossible romantic love and the conflict between urban and rural values. Within a short time, arabesk became hyper-real. Now, young Turks define themselves in reference to arabesk music, films and soap operas: if they are in love, they compare themselves to arabesk lovers; when they have a fight on the street, they are thinking of the heroes of arabesk films.
In Baudrillard's view, hyper-real violence assimilates physical violence. This is why terrorism is not only immoral, it is self-defeating. The terrorist wants to make the ultimate act of defiance. The powers that be (the Matrix) have taken everything from him, or at least he thinks they have. His response is to declare war on that society by a spectacular act of violence. "The Israelis have killed my daughter, so I will go into a Jewish cafe and blow myself up---let's see how they feel about their daughters being killed." What he does not realise is that his action, as soon as it is observed, will become part of a hyper-real drama. For the Israeli whose daughter has just been blown into bloody meat, it is as real as you can get, but for everyone else it is a scene in a collective simulation: "Evil Arab kills innocent Israeli girl". If Baudrillard is right, then few people care about what really happened and why it happened; the important thing is what happens in the simulation. The father who was prepared to give up his life and commit murder to avenge the death of his daughter has become just another character in a film, no more real than Neo or Agent Smith. His compensation---which is really no compensation at all---is that he has become a character in a mass-media drama, and what is more, the meaning of that drama is obscured, according to Baudrillard, who, in a famous passage in Simulacra and Simulation, writes:
Is any bombing in Italy the work of leftist extremists; or of extreme right-wing provocation; or staged by centrists to bring every terrorsit extreme into disrepute and to shore up its own failing power; or again, is it a police-inspired scenario in order to appeal to calls for public security? All this is equally true, and the search for proof---indeed the obectivity of the fact---does not check this vertigo of interpretation. We are in a logic of simulation which has nothing to do with a logic of facts and an order of reasons. (Baudrillard, Selected Writings, pp.177--178.)
However, violence in the "desert of the real" is different from violence in the simulation. Any streetfighter will tell you that real fighting is nothing like kung fu films, and any soldier will tell you that war is not like war films. Nevertheless, when people do violent things, they are often trying to recreate the violence of television or films. It is not that films make us violent; it is that when we are violent, we try to make our violence more meaningful by imitating the violence of the simulation. This explains the statements by criminals that some film made them do it. The film did not make them do it; those people would probably have killed someone if they had been living in a world with no mass media. What the film did was make them try to turn an ordinary, banal act of murder into something they felt was important. Neo and Trinity gunning down a host of security guards has in this sense become more "real" than a drunken brawl turning into murder. Real physical violence is only interesting to those it directly concerns; if you want an audience outside your family, your neighbours and the local police, killing your wife is not enough; you have to kill her on Reality TV. If you can't do that, you need to convince yourself that your pathetic little murder is something like Neo killing an Agent, or, in a former age, John Wayne killing an Indian.
But of course, most people are not particularly violent. We are attracted to the violence of films, not because we really want to kill people, but because it represents things we really want. We want to assert ourselves, to rebel against authority. When Neo destroys Agent Smith (for the time being) we cheer because Smith represents our boss, father or whatever authority figure we want to rebel against. Smith may indeed represent the banality of our lives in general, as I.Q. Hunter claims: "Neo discovers another reality, where he can fight the dull everyday life---personified here by agent Smith." (Hunter, Banality as Saviour. Filmhaftet .121 May 2002, figure caption.)
This illustrates a problem with the idea of hyper-reality. By claiming that the hyper-real is somehow "more real", it fails to distinguish adequately between the hyper-real violence of a reported terrorist attack, and the hyper-real violence of The Matrix. To say that X is more real than Y is not terribly meaningful; the word "real" then becomes a cipher for vague ideas like "engaging", "authentic" or "seductive". I would claim that everything is real; the important question is "A real what?" The Palestinian blowing himself up in a cafe is a real physical event; the report on the evening news is a real media event, and Neo fighting agent Smith is a real cinematic event. They do not represent levels or orders of reality (with one being more real than another); they are simply different, although related. Television audiences may sometimes be confused by the correspondences between media events and physical events, often assuming that the former is a simple depiction of the latter rather than an entity in its own right (with its own social and political meaning) but they are rarely so naive as to assume the same of cinematic events. We know that the violence in The Matrix bears only a slight resemblance to physical violence, and either accept it as entertainment or look for alternative meanings.
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Hmmm...
Date: 2003-07-02 06:19 am (UTC)Re: Hmmm...
Date: 2003-07-02 10:53 am (UTC)I became interested in Situationism round about the time I first became interested in Anarchism, reading Debord's Society of the Spectacle and Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life. Unfortunately I found the former pedantic and the latter facile: the Situationists were much better at grafitti than theory. Someone on LJ (I forget who) summed it up nicely as "The chiasmus of banality and the banality of chiasmus."
no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 04:30 pm (UTC)On The Matrix, you may find this useful:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/nickyludd/44300.html
Oh, I scoped your jrn. because of your kind comment on the philosophy forum.