How revolutionary is the revolution in The Matrix? It would seem not very. According to the end of the film, Neo intends to reenter the matrix, teaching the people there to break free of the rules and boundaries of the world in which they live. However, the possibility of completely freeing everyone from the matrix and of taking down the big bad AI seems to be impossible. Well, let me rephrase that. It is not impossible. However, it would most likely result in the deaths of millions of people. In fact, Morpheus himself alludes to this fact when he apologizes to Neo for pulling him from the Matrix, stating that he has a rule wherein he normally does not release people over a certain age from the matrix since it gives too great a shock to their system. Since we can assume that Neo is in his late twenties, perhaps early thirties in this film, the age limit on who can be saved seems to be relatively low. If he directly attacked the matrix, he would risk killing millions. So, which is better—leaving people in the matrix, living false, but probably relatively contented lives, or releasing them into a cold, harsh world with no sunlight and most likely not enough resources to support them? The Matrix, while alluding to the presence of a reality, does not really make that reality a viable option for the majority of humanity. If they are freed, people will just be substituting one “prison” for another. This “revolution” seems to be doomed from the start.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about these images (yet)–I just thought it would be fun to show them in time for the Caleb Williams class. You’ll see that many of the topics the woodchipper shows are expected, such as the ones dealing with criminality, existence, grief, and nature/character. I find the positive topics more surprising, like the ones that include “good” and “hope.”

It was only a matter of time before Snoop Dogg found our course blog, became intrigued by Blake, and consequently hacked the (song-, match-)book for (smoking-, hip-hop-) culture.

We’ve been discussing in class what makes a something (or a ourselves, for that matter) monstrous.  However, recently I’ve started to wonder what happens when a “classic monster,” such as Frankenstein’s creation or Dracula, is faced with a “monster” of the modern age–digital or technological.  I’m curious, does Frankenstein’s creature appear as monstrous if he faced with a robot?  Or does he somehow seem less infused with alterity and more “human” by comparison?

I’ve always had a particular love for Dracula and the gentleman vampire.  While I was doing some research, I came across a mention of “psychic vampires.”  They are not entirely a new idea; in fact, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame wrote a tale about one in Dracula’s Brood.  His female vampire slowly preys on a young man, stripping him of all he holds dear: love, respectability, and livelihood.  She drains his life without ever touching his blood.  However, what interests me now is what they have come to represent: our fears of hackers.

There is little difference between a psychic vampire and a modern hacker intent on identity theft.  Psychic vampires don’t need any connection with their victim, they need not even know their victim’s name or face.  The psychic vampire impersonally drains them of life, just as a hacker might drain one’s bank account.  In the end, the psychic vampires has consumed the host’s life, just as identity theft can destroy all that one has worked to create: reputation, credit, stability, and one’s happiness.  Worst of all, the psychic vampire can undermine one’s  sense of self, slowly stripping away from one and altering all that was once “I.”  We become nothing and they become us.

Compared to these, the classic vampire and his descendants don’t look nearly as bad.  They must forge a personal relationship with their victims.  They conduct their business face to face.  And if they cannot survive without their host, at least the host is offered something in return (in the case of Dracula, Lucy the flirt and Mina the clever one are enhanced through their relationship with Dracula).  There is a very good reason why the hideous Dracula becomes the idealized lover and hero: he offers intimacy.  The traditional blood sucking vampire, like Byron, is “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” but he exists through connections, as intimate as they are social.

Frank Langella as Dracula from the 1979 John Badham film. Langella's Dracula was the culmination of years of evolution for the gentleman vampire from villain to hero, champion of women. Sensual and Byronic, he cares for Lucy as a true companion rather than an object of beauty.

At least compared to the psychic vampire, I feel as though the traditional blood-sucking vampire doesn’t come out too badly.  If the psychic vampire represents our fears of technology, the threats it opens us up to, and the distancing effect technology has on people (replacing human interaction with digital alternatives); then the traditional vampire comes to represent a return to intimacy and human interaction.  Even if he’s a threat, the traditional vampire is at least one that must stand before us to attack rather than draining us from the shadows, unknown and unseen.

I wonder, if Frankenstein created two creatures–one his traditional creature made, ultimately, of flesh and blood and the other of wires and springs–which would we find more desirable?  Would it be easier for us to feel for the creature because his emotions are inherently human rather than the result of programming instilled in him like the memories of the Replicants?  Is it therefore easier to see the basic humanity of something when it is opposed to technology?  Do we still want to create a dichotomy between human and technological even though we are all “cyborgs?”  A sort of monstrous nostalgia?

It seems silly, but I keep thinking of Godzilla.  He started out a monster, but with the introduction of new threats he became the hero. (Sure, a few cities are destroyed along the way, but accidents happen, right?)  At one point Godzilla is pitted Hedorah, the embodiment of pollution from factories.  In another film, he is faced with the threat of a mechanical version of himself: Mechagodzilla.

It may seem rather silly, but it shows how what once is monstrous can become a hero and even an ally in the face of technological changes.  Monsters are our ways of examining our fears, but a changing world means changing fears.  Our monsters can’t always be the same and rather than becoming more frightening, they become our champions against new monsters as we learn to accept them and ourselves.

If you’re interested, I’ve made some additions to my earlier post on Steve Seeley’s “Holy Monsters here.

Enjoy.

Mary Wollstonecraft has a twitter account.

I have been the guest tweeter this week for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas twitter account (@LMDAmericas).  One of the things I have tweeted about is our class, especially in the lead-up to the group teaching we did this week.  I got a response from Mary Wollstonecraft.  You can find her at @1759MaryWol1797.  Her response led me to her blog.  The blog (and twitter account) are actually run by a woman named Roberta Wedge.  Her reply to my tweet actually led me directly to this post on her blog, about Vindications readability.  Ms. Wedge ran a section of Vindication through a readability calculator.  Then she attempts to re-write the passage two times.  So we go from this:

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonimous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

to this:

“Look, I’m sorry, but you’re a thinking person, right? I’m not going to flatter you by saying how amazing you are, like you’re a little girl or a doll. You can stand on your own two feet. I’m here to tell you what real happiness is about. Strengthen your mind! Strengthen your body! Soft chat, falling in love, doing what other people want, all these are weak. If people pity you, their love will turn to contempt.”

for readability suited to approximately a 5th grade reading level.

Check out her full post (and explore the blog) here.

It turns out Mary is a cyborg too.

I’ve been sick in bed all day watching March Madness and, consequently, all the noise, noise, noise, noise! of its commercials. This one for the new Jaguar, however, piqued my interest, given today’s reading of Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto:

Jaguar: How Alive Are You? (YouTube)

Well, fears of computers (A.I.) taking over and humans being obsolete may have been brought into fruition.  A global advertising firm has tried to be a trendsetter and used homeless people as roving Wi-Fi hotspots…