Is this over the top?
Tuesday, July 8th, 2003 04:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerIn a marathon feat of raki-fuelled speed-writing, I've completed the next section of my Matrix essay. However, given the late hour and the amounts of raki consumed, I'm worried that it's more of a rant than serious academic writing (remember that this is going in a course book, and is implicitly a model for my students). Anyway, here it is - comments very welcome, especially from teenagers.
It is tempting to wonder if all this theorising about violence is reading too much into what might be just an adolescent fantasy. One reviewer described the Matrix worldview as follows:
However, if we can say anything about the Matrix films, it is that they are rarely "just" anything. The Wachowski brothers know all about Hollywood's exploitation of teenagers, so we can expect that any teen exploitation in the films is also a comment about itself.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is rarely easy, and different societies have found different ways of dealing with it, some of them extremely frightening and painful. Given that rites of passage can involve things like having your labia removed or your penis split in half, we should not be too alarmed at the treatment of adolescence in Western societies. Nevertheless, there is something interesting and disturbing in America's attitude to its adolescents (which must also be, to some extent, the attitude of the rest of us, since just as Disneyland is hyper-real America, America is hyper-real Earth). On the one hand, teenagers are pampered: they are given money, cars and expensive clothes made by Third World children; they are not required to work, and huge industries exist to cater to their desires. Carefully-sculpted pop-stars reflect their image back at them, whether these represent "nice" teens (boy bands), "nasty" teens (punk/metal) or something slightly rebellious but still essentially safe (Madonna, Avril Lavigne). Television series project a sanitised view of adolescence (Dawson's Creek) or even, occasionally, an intelligent one (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). So why are American teenagers not blissfully happy?
Part of it is probably due to the nature of adolescence. Our hormones do the best they can to make sure that the years between thirteen and nineteen are one long period pain. However, there are other, more important factors involved. It is dangerous to speculate about what teenagers really want, but a conservative estimate would be:
1. sex
2. combat
3. independence
4. truth.
American society allows teenagers more sexual activity than semi-conservative societies (in really traditional societies, you get married at fourteen, so you probably have more sex than you want). Combat is perhaps more important for males, but in any case the opportunities are limited in modern societies, at least among the moderately well-off (the poor have gang warfare or football hooliganism). The desire for combat is sublimated into sports or military training (which pretends to teach you how to fight, but actually teaches you to follow orders). This is probably just as well, but it causes frustration, hence, perhaps, the growing popularity of martial arts among young Western teenagers (The Karate Kid and Capoeira are films which capitalise on this).
Independence and truth are two things that America cannot provide for its adolescents. In traditional societies, you are married in your early teens and thus gain a measure of independence, but it is only relative---in a peasant society, no one is really independent. Western parents, quite understandably, want to limit their children's independence until they can survive in a complex world, which often means going through the extended childhood of university. As for truth, nobody gets that unless they spend a lifetime searching for it, but even the kind of relative truth that comes from people not lying to you is hard to find for the American teenager.
So far, I have looked at what benevolent families try to provide for their children. However, behind the understanding, pampering and commercial exploitation, there is something more sinister. A large proportion of American society hates teenagers. Just as there was a War on Drugs (which was lost) and now a War on Terror (which is being lost), there is, under the scenes, a War on Adolescence.
Conservatism and religious fundamentalism have reached epidemic proportions in the USA. 57% of Americans do not believe in evolution. "Family values", which started to be a source of political capital in the Reagan years, have now become the norm. Of course, teenagers are, by their nature, against family values, which also makes them, in the eyes of conservatives, an ally of all those who oppose conservative values: hippies, sexual perverts, drug-users, communists and terrorists. A worrying phenomenon is the growth of "teen boot camps" where families send their rebellious children to be abused by people who share their conservative principles. These boot camps claim to teach children discipline and make them give up their bad habits, such as drug-taking, sex or wearing the wrong clothes. Frequently they are a cover for physical, psychological and sometimes even sexual abuse.
The teenager is often taken to the camp by force. One Internet site advertises: "We can also make arrangements for your teen to be picked up and taken to the facility of your choice if he or she is not willing to cooperate with you" (there were also arrangements made for Neo to be taken to a facility of the Agents' choice). Once there, a program of brainwashing begins. Teenagers are told that their behaviour is self-destructive, and are encouraged to criticise each other:
If a teenage prisoner has a problem, it is seen as everyone's problem. This sounds vaguely familiar:
Prisoners at teen boot camps who rebel are punished, sometimes mildly, sometimes to the point of death. Of course, no one is deliberately murdered, but several accidental deaths have occurred, and even "normal" punishments, such as having to lie on the floor without moving for days on end, would be condemned by human rights organisations if they were applied to political prisoners.The record for withstanding this torture at "Tranquillity Bay" camp was held by a girl who withstood it for eighteen months, a feat which would have impressed the secret police of any country.
And of course, the prisoners are not allowed contact with the outside world.
Neo: You can't scare me with Gestapo crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call!
Agent Smith: And tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?
What is surprising is that few, if any, prisoners respond with serious violence. An adult who was imprisoned in one of these places would probably not feel guilty about killing his or her guards and escaping. The rare occasions where teenagers become murderously violent, such as the famous Columbine High School massacre, receive great publicity, but what is surprising is how rare these incidents are---teenagers are frequently violent, but they generally do so in a way that is criminal but not rebellious (gang fights or hooliganism, as mentioned before).
What is not surprising is that the violence of films like The Matrix appeals to teenagers. The important thing is that teenagers are simply acting out in a more dramatic way what any non-conformist adult feels. In fact, this drama is usually only perceived as such because it is ineffective, and is thus more of a spectacle than something to be taken seriously, except when it overflows into high-school shootings or drug-wars on the street. In practice, it is adults who have the big guns.
America's War on Adolescence
It is tempting to wonder if all this theorising about violence is reading too much into what might be just an adolescent fantasy. One reviewer described the Matrix worldview as follows:
The Matrix perfectly captured the late-adolescent male computer nerd's mindset:
You can't trust anyone but your online friends. Maybe you really will save the world. Computer games are more real than what adults, who are zombies or evil mechanical brain controllers, call real life. It would be cool to have a girlfriend who is a butt-kicking videogame character and doesn't care about dumb girl stuff.[Sai03]
However, if we can say anything about the Matrix films, it is that they are rarely "just" anything. The Wachowski brothers know all about Hollywood's exploitation of teenagers, so we can expect that any teen exploitation in the films is also a comment about itself.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is rarely easy, and different societies have found different ways of dealing with it, some of them extremely frightening and painful. Given that rites of passage can involve things like having your labia removed or your penis split in half, we should not be too alarmed at the treatment of adolescence in Western societies. Nevertheless, there is something interesting and disturbing in America's attitude to its adolescents (which must also be, to some extent, the attitude of the rest of us, since just as Disneyland is hyper-real America, America is hyper-real Earth). On the one hand, teenagers are pampered: they are given money, cars and expensive clothes made by Third World children; they are not required to work, and huge industries exist to cater to their desires. Carefully-sculpted pop-stars reflect their image back at them, whether these represent "nice" teens (boy bands), "nasty" teens (punk/metal) or something slightly rebellious but still essentially safe (Madonna, Avril Lavigne). Television series project a sanitised view of adolescence (Dawson's Creek) or even, occasionally, an intelligent one (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). So why are American teenagers not blissfully happy?
Part of it is probably due to the nature of adolescence. Our hormones do the best they can to make sure that the years between thirteen and nineteen are one long period pain. However, there are other, more important factors involved. It is dangerous to speculate about what teenagers really want, but a conservative estimate would be:
1. sex
2. combat
3. independence
4. truth.
American society allows teenagers more sexual activity than semi-conservative societies (in really traditional societies, you get married at fourteen, so you probably have more sex than you want). Combat is perhaps more important for males, but in any case the opportunities are limited in modern societies, at least among the moderately well-off (the poor have gang warfare or football hooliganism). The desire for combat is sublimated into sports or military training (which pretends to teach you how to fight, but actually teaches you to follow orders). This is probably just as well, but it causes frustration, hence, perhaps, the growing popularity of martial arts among young Western teenagers (The Karate Kid and Capoeira are films which capitalise on this).
Independence and truth are two things that America cannot provide for its adolescents. In traditional societies, you are married in your early teens and thus gain a measure of independence, but it is only relative---in a peasant society, no one is really independent. Western parents, quite understandably, want to limit their children's independence until they can survive in a complex world, which often means going through the extended childhood of university. As for truth, nobody gets that unless they spend a lifetime searching for it, but even the kind of relative truth that comes from people not lying to you is hard to find for the American teenager.
So far, I have looked at what benevolent families try to provide for their children. However, behind the understanding, pampering and commercial exploitation, there is something more sinister. A large proportion of American society hates teenagers. Just as there was a War on Drugs (which was lost) and now a War on Terror (which is being lost), there is, under the scenes, a War on Adolescence.
Conservatism and religious fundamentalism have reached epidemic proportions in the USA. 57% of Americans do not believe in evolution. "Family values", which started to be a source of political capital in the Reagan years, have now become the norm. Of course, teenagers are, by their nature, against family values, which also makes them, in the eyes of conservatives, an ally of all those who oppose conservative values: hippies, sexual perverts, drug-users, communists and terrorists. A worrying phenomenon is the growth of "teen boot camps" where families send their rebellious children to be abused by people who share their conservative principles. These boot camps claim to teach children discipline and make them give up their bad habits, such as drug-taking, sex or wearing the wrong clothes. Frequently they are a cover for physical, psychological and sometimes even sexual abuse.
The teenager is often taken to the camp by force. One Internet site advertises: "We can also make arrangements for your teen to be picked up and taken to the facility of your choice if he or she is not willing to cooperate with you" (there were also arrangements made for Neo to be taken to a facility of the Agents' choice). Once there, a program of brainwashing begins. Teenagers are told that their behaviour is self-destructive, and are encouraged to criticise each other:
A girl stands up and points at her victim's acne.
"Why is it that you feel so comfortable wallowing in your own crap? That's why you have that stuff on your face. It's because you're hurting yourself on the inside."
If a teenage prisoner has a problem, it is seen as everyone's problem. This sounds vaguely familiar:
Rhineheart: You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. ... This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole. Thus, if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem.
Prisoners at teen boot camps who rebel are punished, sometimes mildly, sometimes to the point of death. Of course, no one is deliberately murdered, but several accidental deaths have occurred, and even "normal" punishments, such as having to lie on the floor without moving for days on end, would be condemned by human rights organisations if they were applied to political prisoners.The record for withstanding this torture at "Tranquillity Bay" camp was held by a girl who withstood it for eighteen months, a feat which would have impressed the secret police of any country.
And of course, the prisoners are not allowed contact with the outside world.
Neo: You can't scare me with Gestapo crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call!
Agent Smith: And tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?
What is surprising is that few, if any, prisoners respond with serious violence. An adult who was imprisoned in one of these places would probably not feel guilty about killing his or her guards and escaping. The rare occasions where teenagers become murderously violent, such as the famous Columbine High School massacre, receive great publicity, but what is surprising is how rare these incidents are---teenagers are frequently violent, but they generally do so in a way that is criminal but not rebellious (gang fights or hooliganism, as mentioned before).
What is not surprising is that the violence of films like The Matrix appeals to teenagers. The important thing is that teenagers are simply acting out in a more dramatic way what any non-conformist adult feels. In fact, this drama is usually only perceived as such because it is ineffective, and is thus more of a spectacle than something to be taken seriously, except when it overflows into high-school shootings or drug-wars on the street. In practice, it is adults who have the big guns.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-07 07:22 pm (UTC)I think you have something with the teenage rebellion resonating with the rebellion presented in the Matrix, but I think you also have to more carefully qualify the teenagers about whom you're writing. In a way, these are hyper-real American teenagers. My American teenagehood was not what you describe. Granted, you start this section with a quote referencing male teenagers (which partially qualifies what's being discussed); but a lot of what you've described is a stereotypical middle class to upper-middle class, white, male teenagehood - there are a lot of Americans who don't fit that description. If you qualify this as an *image* of American teens, then I think you'll have a stronger case.
I was 22 when the first Matrix film came out - not a teenager, but not too far from it (especially considering I was coming to the end of my first year of grad school at the time - the fifth year of my university-provided suspended adolescence ;-). The reasons you gave for the resonance of the Matrix with American teens were not (exclusively, anyway) why I liked the film so much. I was looking at other things.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-07 07:43 pm (UTC)Having said that (hyper-real) America sets the model for the rest of the world, I've noticed big differences. British teenagers, to the extent that I see them, seem a lot more articulate and confident than the teenagers I remember when I was one in the 1970s. Turkish teenagers have a weird combination of passivity, idealism and resentment. A lot of it is simple economics.