This has been a noisy chick weekend. We had a sleep over and among other things we watched
The Matrix. On Sunday we ran in the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure. Now the house is so quite, I can here our dog, Goldfish, scratching like Thumper in the move, Bambi.
The movie,
The Matrix, set off a discussion of red lipstick, red eyeliner, and whether or not we should use them as a tribal indentification.
I don't think that
The Matrix compares to anything in Genesis. Maybe it would be more like Daniel or Revelations.
My feminist girlfriends like how the chicks in
The Matrix get to participate. In the movie the girls fight like the guys something like Keira Knightley when she plays Geneveve in the movie,
King Arthur. Guenevere in the musical,
Camelot, has the opposite role. She sits around looking pretty.
Artificial Intelligence forms the major point of interest in the movie. The idea of AI must have been coined by Alan Turing, who lead the mostly successful effort to break the German Naval code during World War. Alan and his fellow nerds are a real life analogue to Morpheus and his group.
The Matrix holds a place in a series of books about all knowing entities. The major religions, Communism, Christianity, and Islam look for the all knowing savior, calif, or leader. The twentieth century has a list of all knowing leaders, some more benevolent that others..
In the autobiography,
Andersonville by John McElroy, the prisoners rather than a single savior rise up against the thugs in the prison.
In the novel,
War and Peace, the Russians fight against the all knowing Napoleon. However, the novel has no savior. The Russian people or maybe the Russian winter destroy Napoleon. The novel even has a sort of time traveling character, Natasha, who appears to me to be a time traveling character from from a Daniel Steele novel.
In the novel,
The Octopus by Frank Norris, the farmers fight against globalization a sort of Matrix, which appears to have been a topic for talking heads since the invention of locomotives and the electric telegraph. I would put the
Wizard of Oz on the list.
As far as I remember none of Isaac Azimov's robots are all knowing. In
Dune by Frank Herbert, the Duke drinks the worm juice, which expands his knowledge. He becomes extra knowing. In
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, the computers make war on the humans.
The Matrix could be a sequil.to
Hyperion.
The Matrix also reminds me of Hemingway's,
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Both plots have a sort of objective and strategem. In
For Whom the Bell Tolls, a boy love a girl, and they destroy a bridge. In The Matrix, a boy loves a girl, and they destroy the computer. Maybe the plot switches to
The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy destroys the evil witch, or JP Morgan.
Some of us wondered about the symbolism of the phone booth and the dial telephone, two things from back in the dark ages. Somebody suggested that they symbolize the idea that time does not exist in the Matrix world. Saint Augustine said, "Before the creation, there was no time and there was not space." I learned that in dinner table conversation, so I have no footnote
I tried to explain the nature of Gnosticism to the other girls. I don't think I did a good job because none of them bought the idea that the movie promotes Gnosticism, the major objection being that Gnosticism sees the world as a battle between good and evil. In
The Matrix the two sides are two imperfect worlds.
My Thai girlfriend noticed some of the Buddhist references. Life is suffering, but the monk did not wear an orange robe. Do Buddhist monks wear orange robes? Maybe she was making a joke.
By majority vote we decided to fast forward through the Bruce Lee battle scenes. .
The Matrix's plot pits a small group of people against a large enemy, something like The Flying Tigers on the Burma Road or the Texans at the Alamo. Sometimes David does beat Goliath.
Can one man save the world? If Atlas Shrugged would the world really stop? I immediately think of Alan Turning who broke the German naval code, so that the convoys could destroy the uboats.I might consider TE Lawrence in Arabia.
I'm doing a study on the "shmita" (Sabbath) year and I am utterly shocked at the number of things that happen in the shmita year. It is a year of rest for the land for a blessing, but if it is not observed, a year of cursings. Here's a small taste of my study still in progress: