Thread by @PnictogenHorses

there's so much that can be said about "The #Matrix". so much *has* been said--most of it has been utter garbage.

that's not a simple Sturgeonesque lament about how most things are crap. (I don't agree with Sturgeon anyway.)

it's *malicious*. it's willful misinformation.

(1/x)

https://twitter.com/PnictogenHorses/status/1611543931522809857

the massed money and might of #capitalism—for "The Matrix" may as well be called "Capital", or more precisely the rigid and regimented society created by global capitalism—wishes to imitate heroism, so they've copied iconography from heroic fiction, including "The Matrix".

(2/x)

this sort of thing has been going on a while.

President John F. Kennedy benefited from such conscious mythography, when he was openly compared to King Arthur (no doubt galling Mr. @dick_nixon). @RonaldReagan imitated the fictional heroism of stereotypical Western lawmen.

(3/x)

but the process has accelerated from the 1980s onward, thanks to the explosion of popular entertainment catering to the deep human need to see extraordinary feats of selfless heroism. the "action movie" became the predominant Hollywood genre in the West during the 1980s.

(4/x)

Western pop culture steadily grew more and more escapist--thanks to @RonaldReagan and @PMThatcher and other right-wing politicians and "movement conservatism", wealth inequality skyrocketed and the quality of life for the ordinary Western citizen dropped like a stone.

(5/x)

for most Western citizens after about 1980, the world has been growing ever worse and worse: poorer, more precarious, more dilapidated, more likely to end in bankruptcy or mental breakdown or incarceration...

...thus people have *needed* to believe in salvation by heroes.

(6/x)

#capitalism, ever prepared to squeeze the maximum amount of money and blood out of human beings' fundamental needed, responded to the suffering public's craving to see *some* kind of happiness and justice in their fiction, even if it was just in movies or comics or games.

(7/x)

#capitalism has both supplied us with heroes, *and* furnished us with real-life people--people with actual power over other human beings--whom they sold to us as the real-life equivalents to the action stars and superheroes that were crowding out all other entertainments.

(8/x)

soldiers, cops, mercenaries, right-wing politicians like @RonaldReagan, right-wing blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and @BillOReilly, flashy celebrity #CEOs like @elonmusk...we've been sold a *lot* of fake heroes.

all of these people are _of the system_, part of "The Matrix".

(9/x)

the Wachowskis' "Matrix" films were products of this same system--they've had to make the same devil's bargain with #capitalism that *any* artist is forced to make, if they're to have any hope of reaching a mass audience. Gen Urobuchi and Hideaki Anno have done the same.

(10/x)

"The Matrix" and its successors, however, have *tried* at least to remind us that all the heroism and the action stunts and the cinematically pleasing fights are supposed to have an ultimate point, a *revolutionary* one: #capitalism and its systems must be _shattered_.

(11/x)

there's no peaceful way out of the bind that #capitalism has put us in: global capital and "Western civilization", which is mostly an artifact of the growth and spread of capitalism, holds sway via repression and violence.

it can only be broken by revolutionary means.

(12/x)

hence "The Matrix" films, in particular, have aroused a massive inflammatory response from a Western culture utterly dedicated to the preservation of capitalism, police-statism, and the harsh cruel social order of the West.

fascism has tried to *steal* "The Matrix".

(13/x)

@elonmusk, in particular, has tried to steal "The Matrix". his fanboys, as Chara and I have both mentioned, tend to be people very much like himself: middle-aged male professionals like @mtaibbi, people desperately clinging to some illusion of youthful rebelliousness.

(14/x)

there's nothing the tiniest bit "rebellious" about a celebrity #CEO who poured vast amounts of money into publicizing himself and his @Tesla / @SpaceX / @boringcompany / @neuralink boondoggles; @elonmusk's a mere aristocrat, a pampered elitist, and he's no "Mr. Anderson".

(15/x)

it's some measure of the desperate state of "Western civilization", which thanks to #capitalism is slowly choking itself to death on its own waste products, that fools like @Timcast and @mtaibbi can make themselves believe even for a moment that @elonmusk is like Neo.

(16/x)

I suppose @elonmusk and Neo have one thing in common: they've both played with computers. but then, so have we, and so have millions of other people.

no superstar #CEO, not even one as "rebellious" as @mtaibbi pretends @elonmusk to be, can possibly be "The One".

~Mona Drafter

@UnrollThread

@threadreaderapp unroll