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<div>Joe et. al.</div>
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<div>What a surprise. The best film for a Philosophy class?</div>
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<div>Though the Matrix films have some rather silly flaws as science fiction, and a few over wrought scenes more befitting of a Bruce Willis "Die Hard" action flick, than a film with the depth of thought that, for example, Bergman achieves, your list of questions explored in the film shows that the Wachowski Brothers did a good job making a mainstream commercial movie, with all the flaws this usually implies, and still sneaking in enough substance to provoke thought beyond the nail biting suspense of "will Neo save Zion from the machines!"
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<div>Of course Reeves is a slouch compared to McQueen, but we are in the age of the Third Order of Simulacra, the death of the real, thus McQueen is a quaint abstraction, while Reeves is a hyperreal media simulation. The kids go nuts!
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<div>Given the explicit reference to Baudrillard in the Matrix, I can't but wonder if you mention Baudrillard's philosophical relevance to the themes in this film to your students? And it seems that if you do not mention Baudrillard, the more careful student observers of the film might bring Baudrillard up for discussion. The hollowed out copy of "Simulacra and Simulation" in the Matrix is deliberately and plainly featured in the film, and what first prompted my reading of Baudrillard's work. I have not been much of a follower of European post modernist thinkers.
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<div>Regarding the dilemma of the fake life with a lot pleasure in the Matrix or an authentic life with less pleasure in the real world, it is interesting that the liberation of Neo from the Matrix was not presented to him as this sort of ethical quandary, or even offering more pleasure in the real world compared to less in the Matrix! He was not explicitly told he was living in a computer generated simulation from which Morpheus and his crew could free him. He was offered a choice of being shown the truth, almost tricked, it would seem, because if Neo had really known what he was in for he might have taken the blue pill!
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<div>Actually, the Matrix is not a totally "fake" life. Consider that the brain stimulation that the Matrix induces to simulate a "real" life is real; on a neurological/chemical basis it is as real as what a brain receiving sensations in a real life would be undergoing, in theory, a perfect simulation not distinguishable from "reality" unless the plug is pulled. Note also that humans interact with other humans in the Matrix...This means there is a "real" aspect to the Matrix that is not totally a simulation. Peoples' brains are relating to each other via the intermediary of the computer intelligence providing the background, aspects of the script (the computer generated agents appear), offering the simulation of their bodies interacting and moving, etc; and the humans are making "choices" about how they interact as they make love, talk, work together, etc. Recall that "choice" was the flaw in the Matrix program that gave rise to the more "intuitive" Oracle program designed to cope with the subsequent "systemic failure," according to the Architect, the artificial intelligence master Matrix programmer.
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<div>I suspect if a Matrix virtual world hookup were possible now, people would pay big bucks for this ultimate interactive virtual game! And some would not want to pull the plug. Scary, yes? This is the future we are heading for, it seems.
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<div>Baudrillard is/was (I guess he died this year?) onto something...</div>
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<div>Here are a few short paragraphs attempting to explain Baurdrillard's concepts of simulation, simulacra and the hyperreal, along with a chart explicating Baudrillard's orders of simulacra that can help immensely to get a handle on his thinking. Note the bottom paragraph where the quote in the Matrix film spoken by Morpheus referencing Baudrillard ("The desert of the real") is explained:
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<div><a href="http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann/baudrillard1.htm">http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann/baudrillard1.htm</a></div>
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<div><font face="Times New Roman,Times">Going back to the beginning of his "postmodern" phase, Baudrillard starts his important essay "The Precession of the Simulacra" by recounting the feat of imperial map-makers in an story by Jorge Luis Borges who make a map so large and detailed that it covers the whole empire, existing in a one-to-one relationship with the territory underlying it. It is a perfect replica of the empire. After a while the map begins to fray and tatter, the citizens of the empire mourning its loss (having long taken the map - the simulacrum of the empire - for the real empire). Under the map the real territory has turned into a desert, a "desert of the real." In its place, a
<i>simulacrum</i> of reality - the frayed mega-map - is all that's left.</font> </div>
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<div><font face="Times New Roman,Times">The term "simulacrum" goes all the way back to Plato, who used it to describe a false copy of something. Baudrillard has built his whole post-1970s theory of media effects and culture around his own notion of the simulacrum. He argues that in a postmodern culture dominated by TV, films, news media, and the Internet, the whole idea of a true or a false copy of something has been destroyed: all we have now are
<i>simulations </i>of reality, which aren't any more or less "real" than the reality they simulate.</font> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman,Times">In our culture, claims Baudrillard, we take "maps" of reality like television, film, etc. as more real than our actual lives - these "simulacra" (hyperreal copies) precede our lives. Our television "friends" (
e.g. sit-com characters) might seem more alive to us than their flesh-and-blood equivalents ("did you see what Jerry/Rachel/Frasier did last night?"). We communicate by e-mail, and relate to video game characters like Lara Croft better than our own friends and family. We drive on freeways to shopping malls full of identical chain stores and products, watch television shows about film directors and actors, go to films about television production, vote for ex-Hollywood actors for president (is he really an actor? Or a politician? It doesn't matter). In fact, we get nervous and edgy if we're away too long from our computers, our e-mail accounts, our cell phones. Now the
<i>real</i> empire lays in tatters, the hyerreal map still quite intact. We have entered an era where third-order simulacra dominate our lives, where the image has lost any connection to real things.</font> </div>
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<table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="4" width="100%" bgcolor="#ffd5aa" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr valign="top">
<td><b><font face="Times New Roman,Times">Orders of Simulacra</font></b></td>
<td><b><font face="Times New Roman,Times">Phases of the Image</font></b></td>
<td><b><font face="Times New Roman,Times">Utopias & Science-Fiction</font></b></td></tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">1.<b> Symbolic Order:</b> Society is organized as a fixed system of signs distributed according to rank and obligation (e.g. in the feudal era a peasant couldn't become the King). The question of reality doesn't arise: the meaning of signs is already established in advance (by God or power structures).
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">1. Art reflects a basic reality (see "Precession of the Simulacra" for an extended discussion). Example: Gothic paintings depict the birth of Jesus as the true son of God, replete with signs of his divinity (the Three Wise Men, a halo over the Madonna's head, etc.).
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">1. No need for utopian or science-fiction writing: the utopian order already exists in the here and now.</font></font></td></tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">2. <b>First Order of Simulacra: </b>The Early Modern period, from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution. A competition for the meaning of signs starts. Simulacra aim to restore an ideal image of nature. Fakes and counterfeits enter the scene: baroque angels, concrete chairs, theatre, fashion. But true originals underlie the fakes.
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">2. Art masks and perverts a basic reality. Example: baroque paintings of an impossibly beautiful Jesus ascending to the heavens like Superman, with the Madonna watching with a blissful look on her face.
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">2. Utopias: Transcendental or romantic dreams, counterfeit copies of the real world. "If only we got everything right, life would be beautiful!" Thomas More's
<i>Utopia. </i>Francis Bacon's <i>New Atlantis.</i></font></font></td></tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">3. <b>Second Order of Simulacra: </b>From the Industrial Revolution up til the middle of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Mass production of copies or replicas of a single prototype: cars, planes, fridges, clothes, books. Liberation of energy through the machine (Marx's world). Copies more or less indistinguishable. Reproduced things aren't counterfeits: they're just as "real" as their prototype (though we can still recognize the prototype).
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">3. Art masks the absence of a basic reality. Example: photography and the mechanical reproduction of paintings (see Walter Benjamin's important essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"). A framed reproduction of a Renaissance painting of the Madonna hung over one's bed, right beside a velvet image of Elvis.
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">3. The Classic Science-Fiction of the Age of Mass Production: robots, rocket-ships to Mars, space exploration, alien invasion, intergalactic wars. Present technology projected into the future and outer space. Robert Heinlein's
<i>Starship Troopers.</i> Isaac Asimov's <i>I, Robot. </i>Fifties Hollywood sci-fi films (e.g. <i>Them, It Came from Outer Space)</i>. The original <i>Star Trek </i>television series. Borges' imperial map.</font></font>
</td></tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">4. <b>Third Order of Simulacra:</b> The present age - dominated by simulations, things that have no original or prototype (though they may parallel something). Era of the model or code: computers, virtual reality, opinion polls, DNA, genetic engineering, cloning, the news media make the news, Nike sneakers as status symbols, Disneyland. The death of the real: no more counterfeits or prototypes, just simulations of reality - hyperreality. Information replaces the machine as the basic mode of production.
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">4. Art bears no relation to reality at all. Example: a virtual reality female talking head reads news headlines to us over the Internet. Is she real? A fake? The question has lost its meaning - there is no original to compare her to. Or Madonna (the singer) made up like Marilyn Monroe vamping it up with a troupe of lithe male dancers in a music video on MTV.
</font></font></td>
<td><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size="-1">4. The End of Science Fiction: the real absorbed into a hyperreal, cybernetic world. Not about an alternative universe, but about a simulation of the present one. Philip K. Dick's
<i>Simulacra.</i> J. G. Ballard's <i>Crash.</i> William Gibson's <i>Neuromancer. </i>Ridley Scott's film <i>Blade Runner. </i>Paul Verhoeven's film <i>Total Recall. </i>David Cronenberg's films <i>Crash
</i>and <i>eXistenZ.</i> The Wachowski brothers' <i>The Matrix. </i>The Borg, the holodeck, and VR characters (Voyager's doctor) in the later <i>Star Trek </i>television series. </font></font></td></tr></tbody></table>
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<div><font face="Times New Roman,Times"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman,Times">Baudrillard's writing is difficult, and for starting philosophers and social and cultural theorists is best taken in small doses. If you read his work, remember that his central claim about postmodern culture (thought he claims that he himself is
<i>not</i> a postmodernist) is quite simple - that we live in a "desert of the real," a cultural space where television, film, and computer images are more "real" to us than the non-media physical reality that surrounds us. This loss of reality isn't so hard to understand, even if it's difficult for some of us to swallow.
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<div>------------------------------------------</div>
<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div>
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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Joe Campbell</b> <<a href="mailto:joekc@adelphia.net">joekc@adelphia.net</a>> wrote:</span></div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Great post, Ted!<br><br>Baudrillard baffles me, in part because I adopt a completely different philosophical methodology: I'm an analytic philosopher; he's a continental philosopher. What I love about continental philosophers like Baudrillard, though, is the emphasis on politics and philosophy as a way of life, which is absent in most analytic works that are not dealing explicitly with ethics, politics, or value theory (
e.g., it is absent in my own work). Baudrillard's adeptness in dealing with both metaphysics and politics is impressive.<br><br>Right now I'm teaching Philosophy Through Film as part of the Summer Cougar Quest at WSU. I have a class with 18 kids from junior high school and next week I get to do it all over again with another group. Of course, anyone who is thinking of college while in junior high is way ahead of the curve, so the kids are wonderful. It is much different -- and much harder -- than teaching college age students but I'm learning a lot.
<br><br>Each day I show and discuss various clips from popular films and the best film for a philosophy class is the Matrix. In addition to the political aspects of the film, which you note, there is epistemology (How do you know that you're not in the Matrix world?), metaphysics (What is the nature of reality? If Neo is known to be the One by the Oricle, are his actions still free?), and ethics (Is it better to live a fake life with a lot of pleasure in the Matrix world, as Cypher chooses to do, or an authentic life with less pleasure in the real world?).
<br><br>At WSU I created and taught a course called 'Philosophy in Film' and the first (or second) time that I taught the course I showed a bunch of movies, one of which was Bullit with Steve McQueen. The class hated it. I was heartbroken and I asked them to suggest a move that we could see together. That summer the Matrix came out and we went to see it at Eastside Cinemas in Moscow. Afterwards we went to Pizza Hut and talked about the film over pizza and pop. Initially, I hated it – likely a reaction to their response to Bullit. (Come on, do you really want to compare Keanu Reeves with Steve McQueen?) But since then, I've realized the errors of my ways.
<br><br>So much I learn from my students through teaching! And an appreciation of the Matrix is near the top of that list.<br><br>Best, Joe<br><br>------------------------------<br><br>From: "Ted Moffett" <<a href="mailto:starbliss@gmail.com">
starbliss@gmail.com</a>><br>Subject: [Vision2020] Simulation, Hypermarkets, Hypercommodity<br>To: "Vision 2020" <<a href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</a>><br>Message-ID:<br> <
<a href="mailto:d03f69e0707190148v64b7ea76x7f1ddf112a754268@mail.gmail.com">d03f69e0707190148v64b7ea76x7f1ddf112a754268@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br><br>All-<br><br>
The first Matric film features Neo before his awakening from the Matrix<br>being greeted at his front door by a band of revelers (follow the White<br>Rabbit), one of whom is buying illegal software. Neo opens a hollowed out
<br>book to facilitate the transaction: a copy of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra<br>and Simulation."<br><br>Later in the same film Morpheus announces to Neo when revealing the "real"<br>appearance of Earth, "Welcome to the desert of the real." a reference to a
<br>statement in "Simulacra and Simulation:"<br><br><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/trivia">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/trivia</a><br><br>Passage from link above:<br><br>When Morpheus is explaining "What the Matrix is" to Neo, he uses the phrase,
<br>"Welcome, to the desert of the real." This is a paraphrase from Jean<br>Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation", the hollowed-out book where Neo<br>keeps his illegal software. The quote can be found in Chapter One - The
<br>Precession of Simulacra, Page one, Paragraph 2, "It is the real, and not the<br>map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer<br>those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself."
<br>--------------------------------------------------<br>Given the recent discussion of the worth of studying Philosophy, I thought<br>my recent explorations of Jean Baudrillard's work relevant. I find him at<br>once baffling, obscure and absurd, then suddenly full of genius when he
<br>describes and illuminates modern forms of economic/cultural process in media<br>and virtual worlds, in advertising and marketing of products, development of<br>shopping centers as cultural centers, the Internet, video games, the
<br>emerging global culture sold world wide, etc.<br><br>I do not have a firm grasp on Baudrillard's thinking. He writes almost in a<br>foreign language (and I do not mean because I read translations from the<br>original French), designed to reveal developments in culture that require
<br>unusual uses of words and concepts, sometimes appearing closer to poetry<br>than Philosophy.<br><br>Many in Moscow want aggressive economic growth and development. Do we<br>understand what this means for the future as we walk backwards into a world
<br>becoming more and more global by the moment, where marketing and<br>commodity are becoming a kind of globalized simulated cultural invasion,<br>where the copy is the real, the "hyperreal?" This places the immigration
<br>issue into a whole new realm!<br><br>This will be old news to those well versed in post modernist thinking, but I<br>still find these concepts endlessly thought provoking:<br><br><a href="http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/baudrillardone.html">
http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/baudrillardone.html</a><br><br><a href="http://web3.woodbury.edu/faculty/dcremer/courses/pomo/BaudrillardSS2.htm">http://web3.woodbury.edu/faculty/dcremer/courses/pomo/BaudrillardSS2.htm
</a><br><br><a href="http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberspace_internet_virtuality_postmodernity.html">http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberspace_internet_virtuality_postmodernity.html</a><br><br>-----------------<br>Ted Moffett
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