h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

But *why* do you want your slaves to say 'bacon Jamaican'

Ah, but cannily, the Matrix doesn't pin its colours too firmly to the Judeo-Christian mast. It also has its cake and eats it too, even though there is no spoon, by bringing in concepts from Eastern religions - enlightenment and the path to self-knowledge (Morpheus reminds Neo, "All I'm offering is the truth"), mythology (the Oracle) and post-modern philosophy (Neo retrieves his disk of pirated software from a gimmicked copy of Baudrillard's "Simulation and Simulacra").

A good mish-mash of influences is, I think, one of the hallmarks of a really good film.

H.

I though the first one was very good, except for that horid creature they put inside him . My mum makes it mandatory viewing for her philoshophy students.

Oh, it has many of the hallmarks of a great film. Some of the miriad reasons that it was so appealing to nearly everyone, every group conceivable, is these problems with the world:
The illusion that perhaps their lives will have some meaning;
The illusion that perhaps, just perhaps, they could be dangerous, more than they seemed;
The fear of being overtaken by some new race;
The regular advertisements by large anti-viral companies of the ever-growing threat posed by hackers in an increasingly technology-reliant world;
The fear of the ever-growing power of computers, with still no end in sight;
The ill-omen of nearly every major religion losing massive amounts of believers;
The lack of an adequate religion which depicts strength in people, not god;
The upset caused by the modern world moving faster and faster away from the past;
The impending Armageddon, as advertised by millennial fears.
And of course, this list misses out the most important factor in the film’s huge success: the paranoia of a people trapped between the unsafe times of early-century McCarthy and Hoover and the Cold War, and the near-total control by the government which was obvious coming in the post-millennial days, from the hundreds of near daily articles by news media of ‘a war in the Middle East here, a suicide bombing there, a terrorist attack in here’, of which recent examples are Blair and Bush ignoring the massive tide of majority opinion in order to start a war for their own reasons.
My God, I hate this plane you made for me. It aches, this world, on shoulders such as mine. The sickness is evident in the hedonism in community as social order collapses around its ears.
-m3

Hoo,

Can hardly stand it! Am getting the tickets for Reloaded tomorrow and shall be taking my small Intensive English group to see it on Sunday (including Ricardo, my bank loan guarantor and nuclear medicine guy).

Then I have also promised to take young Agustin (my only child student - he's 12 and I made the exception to teach him as his father has been my student for 10 years - really, he's a great kid). So shall be seeing the film again on Wednesday.

Have just lent Ricardo my dvd of the first Matrix so he will know what is going on. Before we go to the cinema I'm going to ask Ricardo to give a synopsis of the film to the others in case they haven't seen it.

Soooooooo looking forward to this film! Eek! Seriously hope it doesn't disappoint - apparently it got quite a cool reception in Cannes. Most likely because it wasn't French.

Biblical references? I thought they were totally blatantly obvious. Am interested to see how much further they take all that.

squirmingly yours (can't wait, can't wait, can't wait)

az

I thought they were obvious too, until I talked to some of my (admittedly less aacademic) friends and they hadn't noticed them.
-m3

hi Fnord,

Nice to see you're getting the hang of the subject title.

Your friends didn't notice the bibical references - so? Moth told me I was the first person other than her who had seen this in the film. I think a lot of people just get caught up in the (wonderful) special effects and don't even think about the story-line.


Hoo,

I also liked how the film included all other sorts of mythology and mystic stuff - it was an all rounder in that sense. Also lots of humour and fab clothes. The clothes actually drove me wild (I love clothing, designing, ect) and especially the floor sweeping leather coats and Larry Fishburn's 'clip on' sunglasses. Too cool for words. But that is just me being shallow.

az

(still, very stylish film, in every sense . . . )

Another cool thing was that I didn't notice until I was told that the Matrix bits were tinted green, and the real world blue, and then it was literally blindingly obvious, and subtle somehow at the same time.

Patito (just for the record)
No, I'm not 'deserting the sinking ship'. I'm not really sure about this particular ship, I'm trying to work out whether I'm even on the same ship as you, but whichever ship it is, I'm not planning to desert until I've thought about it a bit more. I was disagreeing with Hoo at the start of the thread, not because I believed in God (I might do, I'm still not sure), but because I couldn't see why not to, or why he didn't. I'm certainly not the bible bashing fundamentalist creationist racist white Zimbabwean they tried to make me. That being said, I'm not at all sure what I am. Probably Christian I think, only I try not to say so as I hate that word. I'll stick with Anglican, I reckon, just for the moment, though I like az's idea of God being in all of us. It's in Gaia and Sikhism as well, I think.

"I'm certainly not the bible bashing fundamentalist creationist racist white Zimbabwean they tried to make me. "

And lo, it did come to pass that a warm glow did steal over the cynical old bones of Hoovooloo, and a grin did cross his face. And there was much rejoicing. And some beer, probably.

H.

Hoo,
Beer sounds good. Is there a legal drinking age for smiley beers? I'm delighted your cynical old bones were warmed . I shall keep the caveat (!) in mind however.

Az,
I hope reloaded is as good as the first one.

The great thing, I found, about the Matrix was the fact that it was actually 'philosophical', rather than just trying to be. What I mean is, it used philosophical ideas and presented them as reality, as opposed to people sitting around having supposedly deep discussions about not very much, which several films I have seen recently do.

Oh, and why the (hnm) after your name az?

I haven't seen Reloaded yet (three hours and counting... , but there was a review on the Today programme on Radio 4 the other day, in which a philospher was wheeled out to comment. And it was interesting, because what you might have expected was for him to be a stuffy old git who knows nothing about the modern world who'd just say "it was rubbish, and I haven't seen the first one". In fact James Naughtie fulfilled the role of stuffy git who knew nothing about either film, and the philosopher had very responsibly gone out and rented the first one before seeing the second one. His conclusion? The first one is a very good movie, and the second one is a very bad movie, which is nevertheless very exciting and exhilarating in parts. His reason? Pretty much precisely what you said, Clare - the first one doesn't just TALK about its philosophical points, it SHOWS you what they mean. It doesn't just talk the talk, it walks the walk. So far, reviews seem to indicate that Reloaded is a lot more talk, and a lot less walk, albeit with some really cool fighting and driving.

Interesting to see the professional philosopher and Clare thinking alike though...

H.

Hey cool, maybe I can become a proffestional philosoper...ah, but that position is already filled, by my mum!

Maybe I could even learn to spell at the same time...

hi Clare,

Nice to hear that you like my idea about god being in all of us - to me it's the only thing that makes any sense. It's also the only thing that 'resonates' in the deepest parts of me as being true. I've had plenty of personal experiences that should have left me doubting the existence of any sort of god, but then I remembered other times (when I was a kid) when I felt totally connected to this 'god idea' without putting any sort of name to it. The connection now is not as strong as it once was, but I still believe it to be true, at least for me. It has nothing to do with religion, just my personal concept of god. I mean, Fred.

The thing I loved most about the first Matrix film is that it brought together so many different religious beliefs and philosophical ideas and made them all work together very well. Also, as I said before - the totally cool clothes. The stylishness of the film. And the humour.

Have been purposely avoiding reading too much about the film before I get to see it on Sunday.

The 'hnm' tag was a response to a thread about racism. The person who began the thread questioned whether people of different 'races' should be allowed to 'interbreed'. Total stuff and nonsense. Anyhow, this person lashed out at the rest of us a lot and at one point called us all hippie nerdos! Also called us a bunch of mongrels who would end up breeding ourselves back into the sea. As you can imagine, a very enlightened sort of person. And then at one point someone called Chaiwallah decided to adopt the initials 'hnm' as a badge of pride to wear and several of us on that thread followed suit. Though we changed mongrel to mutt as that sounded more cosy. So now we are very happily 'hippie nerdo mutts'.

az

Are there *really* people who still believe in racial purity and all that cr*p?! I thought that was in the 20s and 30s, and they gave up after Hitler had shown how horribly wrong it would go.

Hey, but wasn't there a book recently, about some races being 'better' than others? Maybe the idea is coming back into fashion as Hitler seems more remote. Can't remember what it was called though.

*dashes off to find book*

'The Bell Curve' by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein.

Clare,

In fact, there is no such thing as a 'pure race' of humans. We are all mutts! And we have grown genetically stronger by mating with people from other places. I mean, just check out the royal family if you want a good argument against 'in-breeding'.

az

about Royal family az. Weren't there some really interbred Spanish kings too, in the 17 or 18 century? I think they had funny chins. Anyway, the idea of keeping a race 'pure', only has any point if you think some races are better than others, and that there really were pure races. Since both of these are patently not true, I don't see how people can still think in that way.

An indirect link for you Clare:

F124?thread=270078

Post 40 for what Jim describes as my "concise demolition job", and what someone else called "a good old fashioned Hoovoolooing" .

I did enjoy that thread, poking the liberals and trying to get them to react (and failing miserably, people on that thread were just *sooooo* civilised! ) to my proposition to outlaw intraracial breeding (i.e. force people to breed interracially to improve genetic diversity and strengthen the species - it's really the only scientifically defensible way...)

H.