How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

another thing to note, is while the wachowski's do have intent, and goals with most of their films, they are pretty infamously bad at thinking thru all the implications of their decisions.

the lobby shootout, for example. I can completely buy, that they made that scene as a form of catharsis, but didn't realize it sent the unfortunate message of, "its cool to mass murder a bunch of innocent security guards!!!"

edited 15th Sep '17 1:27:14 PM by Jetyl

We have to understand also: a fiction with a message is also fiction meaning other things moves.

I feel this is in part beause the movie is also very cyberpunk and it was "Morpheus is more important than anything", problem is the movie really drop that angle and move into neo as jesus metaphor

Again, define 'innocent'. They're unaware of the deeper system of the Matrix, yes, but they're armed officers (and the SWAT guys are very, very heavily armed) standing guard while a black guy gets tortured upstairs. Morpheus' capture is pretty clearly intended to invoke police brutality (and note the demographic makeup of the fight scene - it's a bunch of white men versus a woman and a guy of extremely mixed racial ancestry).

It's also worth noting that the machines are specifically not aliens. They're human creations, an outgrowth of a broken system that Smith specifically lays at the feet of twentieth-century man and that has metastasised into something that exists for itself, with the interests of its creators taking a very secondary role - see Ta-Nehisi Coates's comments on the greatest threat to white men being whiteness.

The police officers in the Matrix are historical relics of its birth, the enforcers of the brutal capitalist system that it has taken to a logical extreme. The film doesn't go easy on them, or on Neo's invisible boss in his horrible job, because this is their fault. It's no coincidence that Neo's office, for instance, has remarkable visual similarities to the human-fields in the 'real world'.

Innocent as in "not responsible for or directly involved in an event yet suffering its consequences."

As far as we know, none of the guards in the lobby were aware of Morpheus's torture. its a big building. I assume a lot of thing happen in a big city high rise. it is the fact that they are dehumanized, made indispensable pawns for an action sequence, which is not something I think the Waschowski's realized when they were making the scene.

lets break it down like this:

Are they participating in a system that tortures and dehumanizes? Yes

Are they aware they are participating in it? We don't know, but I'm leaning towards no.

Should they pay for their participation within that system with their lives? the movie says, "yes! yes they should!"

whether the wachowski's planned it or not, that is what the scene reads as

edited 15th Sep '17 5:18:58 PM by Jetyl

This is why I hate literary analysis. Break everything down to its component parts and spend longer analysing any scene than it probably took to plan it, and you get some offensive message out of anything.

That's the thing, though - that only works if you assume a twentieth-century American police force to be inherently moral, or at least morally-neutral. The Wachowskis don't appear to be operating on that wavelength. The police are framed as a force of violence and oppression ruled by avatars of murderous conformity who are quick to resort to overwhelming lethal force. The ones who invade Neo's office, for instance, are basically framed like the Gestapo, the team who took Morpheus started the encounter by machine-gunning the crew while they were trapped and helpless, and the blurring between state police and private security (the security guards are presented as being part of the same organisation as the heavily-armoured, Stormtrooper-like SWAT guys) emphasises their complicity in the abusive capitalist system that eventually became the Matrix.

The thing is, art is, by definition, artificial. Someone made it, and presumably had a purpose for doing so rather than sitting around picking their nose. Furthermore, art, like most human activities, is shaped by and exists in the context of culture. You can tell this through a cursory glance at pieces of art from different cultures and time periods - what was popular when and where, and why? 'It just looked pretty' doesn't work as an answer when you notice how radically different standards of beauty can be, and when you notice particular cultural patterns in tastes. Why did people at this particular place and time think that this was the prettiest? Analysing the history of art involves asking some really basic, elementary questions about really obvious trends and patterns.

The tendency of such analysis to culminate in "and this is the main, driving argument behind this scene that ruins the entire work" rather spoils the concept. Which is what's going on here: by ridiculously overanalysing one fight scene and applying all sorts of assumed and hidden meanings, the entire movie is now bad. Bit excessive.

That's a pretty reductionist assessment of how literary analysis works.

"This work has some problematic/questionable elements to it when you look at it" does not automatically mean the work is ruined or bad.

edited 15th Sep '17 6:14:21 PM by Draghinazzo

Maybe if there weren't examples in this very thread of people saying "because of overthought interpretations of this scene, I think it's bad", that might be the case. But it happens and when it happens it's irritating.

I tend to agree with this. I also just find that the Internet is far too happy to psychoanalyze a writer based on a work of fiction. The result is that people write off works or creators as "bad" and that's the end of discussion, nothing of real value to be gained from further study.

There are many truly problematic pieces of fiction out there that are still very good and worth reading. Gone With The Wind for example is beyond racist, to the point it's just plain text as opposed to subtext, but to focus on that neglects the equally true facts that it stars a very compelling protagonist and tells a rather inspirational story of battling hardship.

edited 15th Sep '17 6:31:38 PM by Nikkolas

@Raineh: I don't think anyone in this Matrix conversation has said anything like 'the entire movie is now bad'. Plus, most of the chat seems to be talking about the lobby scene in the context of the rest of the movie (and because The Matrix is an action movie, much of the messaging, characterisation, and theme is going to be in the action). Wanna provide some quotes?

There are multiple reasons to write off a work. One is that you read for comfort and pleasure, and legit do not enjoy reading about how your ancestors were treated as livestock. Another is that you believe the racism compromises the value of the novel as a study of the human condition (because only a few characters in it are treated as human). Another could be that you genuinely believe that there were better works from the time period on a similar subject that weren't so thoroughly awful about race.

edited 15th Sep '17 7:03:35 PM by Iaculus

I don't really have an inherent issue with the matrix, or the lobby scene in particular. I can just acknowledge the scene has some really problematic undertones to it.

additionally, I also believe analyzing authorial intent, does not matter, beyond examining how well the author succeeded in aiming what they are going for. which I think the wachowski's are pretty bad at, when it comes to avoiding Unfortunate Implications in their works.

not really. not in terms of context of the crime, working with the machines, do the police come off as anything more than innocent members of the ordeal.

here's the thing, innocent does not mean they aren't part of an unjust power structure, just that they are unaware of said power structures unjust-ness, whether that be the fictional Matrix, or the very real unjustness in real world police forces. innocent is very close to ignorance in that way ^note for me, the difference lies in opportunity, and response to new conflicting information

and again, the Matrix's response to the security guards innocent sin, is death.

edited 15th Sep '17 7:30:04 PM by Jetyl

The Matrix presents that as irrelevant - in a world based on manipulatable illusion, what you believe you're doing matters more than what you're actually doing, and it doesn't matter whether the police know that they're working for mechanical slavemasters because the system as it manifests in the Matrix, as a dispenser of arbitrary brutality against a cowed underclass, is bad enough. Kind of like how you won't be too upset about a bunch of wall guards getting arrows in their throats when the heroes storm the castle of Lord Horribus the Defiler because they don't know that their master's cruelty is in service to a world-devouring snake-demon. Like, they may not have done anything personally evil, but they're still armed defenders of a monstrous institution.

edited 16th Sep '17 2:36:37 AM by Iaculus

So we're at, "It's justified to murder cops because cops are inherently bad and deserve to be murdered"?

That does seem to be the perspective that The Matrix is at least leaning towards. Remember that it came out when the Wachowskis were starting to come out (if you catch my drift), so it's a movie pretty heavily based on a dawning realisation of existential peril. Like, from a detached, rational perspective, you can see that's not a healthy attitude to take (few violent fantasies are), and if you asked the Wachowskis today whether they believe cops should be shot on sight, there's decent odds on them laughing in your face, but it does capture that particular terror and desperation when you realise what being trans actually means.

I think one other thing that rather softens the blow, though, is that The Matrix is very self-consciously a fantasy - when they gun down all those cops, Neo and Trinity are cartoon characters in an unreal world, bouncing off walls and ceilings in slo-mo while carrying a literally impossible number of guns in their sleek, sexy leather outfits while their frail, filthy real selves lie strapped to beds in a decaying rustbucket clinging to a wall on the side of a sewer. It's an indulgent dream, not a detailed manifesto, and the end goal is to bring the world into their less glamorous but more wholesome reality. I'm reminded of a speech Lana Wachowski made, about her reasons for wanting to write and her terror about what being trans would mean for her dreams, and I can't help but wonder how much the powers of the Zion resistance within the Matrix are meant to symbolise the ability of artists to shape and subvert popular culture.

edited 16th Sep '17 8:18:09 AM by Iaculus

that does not change the unfortunate implications of the actions.

and again, there is a difference between building security guard, and a Storm Trooper. both are part of unjust power structures yes, but the difference is context. a Storm Trooper is part of a military agency. they are expected to put their lives on the line for power structure if the need arises. A high rise security guard, significantly less so. they showed up to work, unaware that their entire lives are a lie by the matrix, and then 2 leather clad people walk in, guns a blazing, and mow them all down.

also, you say "what you believe your doing matters more than what you are actually doing" which would support the unjustness of the Lobby scene even more, not less. they believe they are just guards in a 20th century high rise, not aware they are pawns, allowing both the torture of morpheus, and the potential destruction of the last resistance of humanity, which is what they are actually doing.

and again, I'm not trying to discount the wachowski's experiences as Transgender women. that shit can be terrifying, I know. but ultimately, their intent, viewing the police as a force of evil, or the power fantasy nature of the scene, does not rid it of its Unfortunate Implications of mowing down innocent human beings, with zero knowledge as to what was going on.

edited 16th Sep '17 10:05:32 AM by Jetyl

Has anyone noticed some unfortunate implications of Dio Brando's (the main antagonist of Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure in origin? I mean, you've got the poor son of an abusive alcoholic who gets adopted by George Joestar due to a promise George made to Dario, Dio's father, years ago. Once he enters the Joestar family estate, Dio wastes no time making Jonathan's life a living hell and trying to take or destroy everything Jonathan holds dear. The character basically embodies every negative stereotype of the lower class.

TBF, he's balanced by Speedwagon in that part. And the other parts in the series have heroic and decent characters who are also poor.

"here's the thing, innocent does not mean they aren't part of an unjust power structure, just that they are unaware of said power structures unjust-ness, whether that be the fictional Matrix"

problem with that is it create the very "us versus them"; is pretty much "ether you help us or we will murder you, not pitty on that"

And about analizing movies....My problem is that people put is own view in a vacum but not the movie itself, suddenly their critics just sort of happen while the movie exist with all their problematic issue, it come as "there is not atheist fiction but there is atheist reviewing of fiction" which feel self indulgence.

I guess this is far from "dominant" but I've been in a Fallout mood lately and I was thus reading posts on Caesar's Legion across various forums I frequent. One of them was complaining about how RPG's try to have some grey morality by presenting democracies as inefficient and corrupt while autocracies are swift and just. For Fallout this sums up the NCR vs. the Legion.

Of course, I remember looking up all available polls on this matter and the Legion has never had anything resembling real support, being easily the lest popular faction in the game. Of course, this is a bit of a presentation issue since the Legion sales pitch was marred by missing content. Even still, I cannot imagine the Legion having any significant popularity even in hypothetical perfect New Vegas.

Which also coincides with this video I just saw from a pretty popular YT channel called Philosophy Tube:

It basically just gives a rough history of Liberalism, what ideology is and, most importantly, how Liberalism denies that it even IS an ideology.

We make a big deal about problematic stuff in fiction. This game has fascist themes, this book has authoritarian leanings, this movie is right wing.... But would anyone dispute the fact fiction has a liberal bias? It doesn't matter if you think Liberalism is right or not. I'm just wondering if anyone here thinks popular culture has any other trend in it besides liberalism? Perhaps it's because that trend is so pronounced that works that stick out as having a more authoritarian viewpoint are zeroed in on so quickly?

The most "dominant cultural narratives" we have is also a political narrative ie. our system of government is the best and that is reinforced in the media.

edited 23rd Sep '17 6:26:30 AM by Nikkolas

I'm skeptical of the idea that anyone denies that Liberalism is an ideology. Furthermore of course there is a liberal bias in our fiction, the writers of the fiction in question are born and raised in a liberal society so bias is unavoidable.

edited 23rd Sep '17 6:24:27 AM by Fourthspartan56

The "liberalism isn't just an ideology" claim that the You Tuber references is actually pretty famous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government"

If it does come across that Liberalism denies that it's an ideology (whatever that means in practice), it likely has more to do with the fact that it is (at least in North America and Western Europe) the status quo.

Worth noting that House's faction is also an autocracy.

edited 23rd Sep '17 6:39:06 AM by M84

And if you want to look for a "swift and just" autocracy in New Vegas, you're much better off analysing House and his plans than Caesar. The Legion lost the first time it tried to take the dam, has been milling about uselessly and not getting anything done, and gets flattened by actual weaponry in 3/4 endings. Only when the PC sides with them do they stand a chance.