Krug

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/movies/18AGGE.html

And the Oscar for Best Scholar . . .
By MICHAEL AGGER

What is Cornel West doing in "The Matrix Reloaded"?

Maybe this Princeton philosophy professor's cameo shouldn't be a surprise. In 1999, Larry and Andy Wachowski stated their ambition to make an "intellectual action movie" and they actually pulled it off. The first "Matrix" movie gave the equivalent of a cinematic high-five to the French thinker and philosopher Jean Baudrillard by featuring his book "Simulacra and Simulation" in an early scene. If you look closely (and people did), you could see that the book was open to a particular chapter, "On Nihilism." The Wachowski brothers seized upon Mr. Baudrillard's general nihilistic notion that we must deconstruct the images (television, movies, advertising, clothing) that oppress us and imbue them with a new set of values. They skillfully retold an archetypal messiah story with a dash of postmodern theory.

In an interview with The New York Times last year, Mr. Baudrillard said that the movie's use of his work "stemmed mostly from misunderstandings." But this time, the Wachowskis have found a more willing philosophical accomplice. Dr. West appears (minus his trademark glasses) as a wise councillor of Zion, the last free human city on earth. He delivers only one line, but it's a doozy: "Comprehension is not requisite for cooperation." Those words have already been spotted on T-shirts in Los Angeles.

Like the Wachowskis, Dr. West draws on an impressively wide array of sources for his work. And Dr. West has always aspired to be a very public intellectual — he's recorded a rap album, he's a regular on television shows and he writes for a nonacademic audience in publications like Spin — so it's not surprising to find him involved in one of the biggest spectacles of the decade. A self-described "intellectual freedom fighter," his studies address the legacy of racism and the problem of nihilism in black America. Larry Wachowski loved Dr. West's writings so much — particularly the books "Race Matters" and "Prophesy Deliverance!" — that he decided to write a role for Dr. West in the movie, playing a loose version of himself. Which makes one wonder: after the Wachowskis told us to deconstruct reality à la Baudrillard, are they now rebuilding reality with the ideas of Dr. West?

Reached by telephone in his office in Princeton, Dr. West said that he and the Wachowski brothers had come together in "acknowledging the full-fledged and complex humanity of black people, which is a relatively new idea in Hollywood given pervasive racist stereotypes." And, indeed, "The Matrix Reloaded" gives prominent roles and screen time to African-American stars like Laurence Fishburne and Jada Pinkett Smith. A more tantalizing connection seems to be Dr. West's notion of the jazz freedom fighter that concludes his book "Race Matters." He writes: "I use the term `jazz' here not so much as a term for a musical art form as for a mode of being in the world, an improvisational mode of protean, fluid and flexible dispositions toward reality suspicious of `either/or viewpoints.' "

This seems to jibe with the direction that Neo, the character played by Mr. Reeves, is taking, as he discovers that the world of the Matrix is not operating by fixed rules but is something more permeable and uncertain. Dr. West also pointed out that "the second Matrix movie actually critiques the idea of the first. It's suspicious of salvation narratives. It's deeply anti-dogmatic. The critics haven't figured that out yet, but the scholars will get to it."

While in Sydney for the movie shoot, Dr. West said he and the Wachowskis had bonded over "wrestling with the meaning of life and the purpose of human existence." They share an affinity for plucking ideas from religion, philosophy, pop music, television and movies, and synthesizing them into a prophetic, liberating message. They want to make the world a more philosophical place. (The brothers even gave reading assignments to all of the principal actors in the movie.)

Dr. West was coy when asked if he had a longer speech in the final installment of the trilogy, but he did say that he will appear in a documentary about the series where he expounds further on his ideas. Until then, he has some advice for the audiences going to see the movie: "You've got to look beneath the special effects."

Variable697

I think that the Wachowskis are taking themselves way too seriously. The Matrix is not about philosophy and the meaning of life. It's about kung-fu, guns, looking cool, and kicking ass.

Krug

Yeah I agree too; however, it does give it an edge over other action movies and fanboys can feel like they're discussing deep philosophical issues when they're talking abotu the movie.

inVectiVe

I've been criticizing many faults I found in the movie, but so far, I've mostly managed to avoid tearing into this shameless bit of "stunt casting." I'm glad there's a thread about it now.

So I'm watching the movie, and I had no idea beforehand that West was in it. But I'd seen him on C-SPAN before, talking about........exactly what you'd expect a professor of "Afro-American Studies" to talk about: "Affirmative action = good," and other highly original insights. His hair (top of the head, and around his mouth) is very distinctive, so I realized it was him almost immediately. Spectacular job, Brothers Wachowski, yanking my brain right out of the movie so I can be reminded of contemporary American politics. I appreciate it.

So you're probably thinking, "Oh, I can tell by your sig that you're conservative; of course West's presence won't appeal to you." Well, that's half right. But you don't even have to be a right-winger to harbor anti-CW feelings. I'm recalling a quote I saw online some time ago that *really* ridiculed the man's entire academic "output." IIRC the quote came from The New Republic or some other left-leaning mag, and the author deemed West's books "almost completely worthless" - or if that wasn't the exact wording, it was something equally damning. I'll see if I can find the quote and link it later.

Edit: Here's a nice quote - "West deploys his vocabulary much as a 13-year-old girl deploys Kleenex in her training bra: to obscure the embarrassing fact that there's not much there" from http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher010402.shtml

Here's the quote I was looking for - reproduced in a pro-West site at http://www.theamericanscene.com/pubs/thc11102.html - "And sometimes even his fellow liberals sell out to The Man, as The New Republic did in 1995 when its Leon Wieseltier famously called West’s work 'almost completely worthless...noisy, tedious, slippery, sectarian, humorless, pedantic, and self-endeared.'" [Hot damn, my memory is good!]

But if you only click on one of the links I've provided, make it this one: a hilariously sarcastic review of West's rap CD called "C-Dub Is Not in the Hizz-ouse" (?!) located at http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Pu...0/598rgzea.asp [I'm tempted to cut-and-paste the whole thing, but it's a tad long]. You might say it's a positive development for an academic to reach out to non-Harvard-student audiences by dabbling in rap. But what if a professor of "White Studies" recorded a heavy metal CD - wouldn't that warrant pointing and giggling as well? Oops! I forgot: there's no such thing as "White Studies"!

hmurchison

inVectiVe.....man lighten up...you'll be happier.

The Wachowskis are definitely into Philosphy among other things but there is only so much you add in before you lose the audience.

inVectiVe

You tell me to "lighten up" *before* my edit? I'm scared what you'll say after it!

Seriously though, I am "happier" now that this thread has been created. It's given me the opportunity to link an article I busted a gut over when I first read it (the rap CD review). Some liberals make me swell with burning hatred; Michael Moore comes to mind. But West is different. I'm sure we wouldn't agree on much politically, but I don't "hate" him - I just like laughing at his expense.

When Moore calls Bush a "fictitious President," I get
When West says, "Following the model of the black diasporan traditions of music, athletics, and rhetoric, black cultural workers must constitute and sustain discursive and institutional networks that deconstruct earlier modern black strategies for identity-formation, demystify power relations that incorporate class, patriarchal and homophobic biases, and construct more multivalent and multidimensional responses that articulate the complexity and diversity of black practices in the modern and postmodern world," my reaction is followed by

lesterlong

Now I know why there were so many black people in Zion.

hmurchison

LOL......ahhhhhh I gotta crack up IV...that quote is really funny.

inVectiVe

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic.....

hmurchison

I'm not. That's why I can't always read books from certain Authors. I mean it great to see some people have mastered language to a point in which they can babble paragraphs using $500 words when .50 would do.

inVectiVe

Here's West delivering his lecture (sermon?) titled "The Reality of Dialectic: Objectivism in the works of The Brothers Wachowski."

"If one examines the textual paradigm of consensus, one is faced with a choice: either reject subcapitalist socialism or conclude that the raison d'etre of the reader is social comment, but only if reality is interchangeable with truth; otherwise, we can assume that society, perhaps surprisingly, has significance. Dietrich[1] holds that we have to choose between textual deconstruction and Derridaist reading. Therefore, Debord promotes the use of subcapitalist socialism to modify and challenge class.

"The characteristic theme of the works of The Brothers Wachowski is the role of the poet as writer. If textual deconstruction holds, we have to choose between subcapitalist socialism and subsemiotic destructuralism. But the subject is interpolated into a textual deconstruction that includes sexuality as a totality.

"The collapse of objectivism intrinsic to The Matrix emerges again in The Matrix Reloaded, although in a more self-referential sense. It could be said that Marx suggests the use of Sontagist camp to deconstruct sexism......."

Then he abandons his clear-cut, straight-to-the-point style and begins to whip out the "$500 words."

[OK, West never said any of this stuff. Sounds like something he'd say, though, based on the previous quote, which I'm pretty sure is genuine.]

Decadance

omg iintelligence beyond us, Bash it!

inVectiVe

Dammit, I've been exposed as the simple-minded fraud I am!

You're right, of course. It's clear that those of us who would poke fun at a professional academic who records a rap CD are simply jealous that West's mind operates on a higher level than ours. Consider, for instance, this gem: "Time gets interwoven to refrig and / or oven with variance coming after centuries of scientific observation. Heliocentric puts specific comprehension to circular flow with mass bind of mind velocity." Or the following pearl of wisdom: "Brother Martin . . . grand titan of love, drum major for justice." Wow.

Is there a Nobel Prize for music? Probably not. That's okay, though, since West's eloquent, articulate "rhyme-busting" undoubtedly qualifies as "literature," a field for which I believe there is the possibility of "mad props" from the Nobel Committee.

Edit: It seems the "Heliocentric" knee-slapper was actually spoken by West's nephew, although the fact that it appears on the CD at all still entitles me to use it when making fun of West himself.

gcribbs

I must say I do find it interesting when people find the need to use words most people will not understand in an attempt to get people to understand something


It is even funnier when it turns out they really are not saying anything worth understanding

Since I had no idea who he was when watching the movie it had no effect on me.

I also feel that it is a bit unfair to say that by using him they yanked your mind out of the movie. Most of the Actors have previous movies they were in. So should Keanu Reeves have not been allowed to be Neo because of Bill and Ted?

every Actor choice has the potential to yank someone's brain out of the movie mood. I did not know who he was and felt he did a fine job with his one line.

Numanoid

My brain was pulled out of the movie when I realized that the traitorous admiral from Star Trek: Insurrection was running Zion. And then it was pulled out again when I realized that chick from Maxim was the Marovingian's girlfriend.

Then, I went to research all of their political beliefs so for those with whom I don't agree, I could then run and post to an Internet forum about how ridiculous I think they are. Another chance to espouse my personal politics, who could pass up such a great opportunity?

Then I realized I should get a life.

inVectiVe

I'll admit that usually when I watch a movie, I fail to immerse myself in the experience 100%. Even viewing a De Niro or Pacino flick, it's always in the back of my mind that "This is the guy who said 'You talkin' to me?'" or "I hope he works 'Hoo-waaaah!' into this role!"

But there are bits of "stunt casting" that go beyond that. I've critiqued Finding Forrester (I think that's the movie) for its totally uncalled for A-list celeb cameo at the end. In that case, as with The Matrix Reloaded, it's as if the filmmakers were expressing the idea: Look who we got to appear in our movie! Perhaps if I'd known ahead of time that West would be lending intellectual / philosophical weight to the project with his participation, I would have been adequately prepared (as I was with boxer Roy Jones Junior, though I have nothing against his conduct in the "real world").

Unfortunately, my reaction to West's scene went something like, "Hey, is that.........Cornel West?! Why the hell would they put that clown in the movie?!"
Obviously directed at me, so I'll helpfully point out where you're wrong. I did not *need* to "research" West's "political beliefs"; I've known all about him for.......it's probably been years by now. As for passing up this great opportunity, I'm patting myself on the back for restraining my urge to mention West at all until another DVDTalker started a thread about him. Speaking of which, what's the Numanoid-approved method of replying to this thread? Should we focus exclusively on analyzing the handful of words that West delivered in the film, totally disregarding the man's "accomplishments" outside the Matrix?
I'm sure you're entirely capable of crafting a more, shall we say, "Westesque" insult - but you feared I would then attack you for employing overly fancy verbiage. So you went with the classic "get a life" line. Well played! I haven't heard that one much since I graduated. From elementary school.

Still, if anyone's being too uptight here, perhaps it's those who are unable to see the humor in a lot of what I've posted (er, cut-and-pasted)? The review of West's rap CD, to draw a semi-relevant comparison, is much funnier than a lot of what I've read in The Onion lately. And the "heliocentric" and "diasporan" howlers totally deserve to be in somebody's sig.

Now, where's that "User CP" Button.....

Edit: It's hardly even worth mentioning at this point, but I just got back from seeing the movie for a second time. I feared that Cornel "America Has Been ***********ized [By 9/11]" West's appearance would be even more distracting this time around, since seeing him would trigger memories not only of all the little tidbits I'd already known about him (his rap CD, his involvement with Al Sharpton, his comparing government spending in the aftermath of 9/11 to reparations for slavery...), but also of this thread, which has been........an "interesting" experience, to say the least.

Happily, I can report that the CW scene did *not* "yank my brain right out of the movie" as severely as it did the first time. So, I guess the reason it proved so problematic during my maiden viewing was largely due to "the element of surprise."