‘The Matrix’ and Asian Pacific America
May 30, 2003
It was a dreary, wet Memorial Day weekend here in D.C., so I ended up seeing the second installment of The Matrix trilogy, known as The Matrix Reloaded, with my teenagers and their friends.
I read in a magazine, when the first Matrix installment came out in 1999, that Keanu Reeves, the lead character, was a Canadian citizen of Chinese, Hawaiian and English heritage. As a person of Asian and European heritage myself, I was anxious to see a multiracial lead character who not only kicks butt but who also fulfills his romantic fantasies. The Asian and Asian Pacific American man in too many films has been the goofy sidekick. To be macho, sensitive and passionate at the same time was almost too much to ask of Hollywood.
In The Matrix Reloaded, Reeves does kick butt and he does have a loving, passionate relationship with another lead character (Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays Trinity). And, the filmmakers went out of their way to include women and racial minorities such as Reeves and Laurence Fishburne (who plays Captain Morpheus) in key roles. So, on some levels, I left the theater feeling good.
On other levels, however, The Matrix Reloaded represents trends in filmmaking and in American society that are deeply troubling for APAs. A society that is desensitized to graphic violence, which sees war as the only way to solve problems and which believes that only one person can be the savior of all is a society that will passively accept the brutalization of some members of society as a necessary means to preserve the interests of the rest.
Like many of the films being released these days, The Matrix Reloaded contains a lot of real and simulated violence. Yes, I know that even Charlie Chaplin and the Three Stooges had violence in their movies, but modern technology makes the violence today so real that you almost wince in pain when you see the protagonists getting hurt. And, unlike Jackie Chan, who choreographs his fight scenes to include humor and a dance-like sense of motion, the bullets and blood flying in The Matrix Reloaded went beyond what was necessary to make a point.
The initial Matrix is one of my all-time favorite films, with just the right mix of excitement, dialogue and a plot that makes you look at your own world with new eyes. Indeed, the idea that an evil cyber-intelligence (“the Matrix”) is enslaving humankind and that a resistance movement is needed to rescue humanity and preserve civil rights, civil liberties and human dignity is not so far-fetched when you read recent proposals to use the Internet for government surveillance of “terrorists” — especially if the definition of that word is expanded too broadly.
The second Matrix film fails, however, because its forced attempt to link violence and philosophy creates a mishmash that is a cross between the dialogue-heavy My Dinner With Andre and a Bruce Lee flick.
Last Sunday’s Washington Post described another reason to fear the popularity of The Matrix Reloaded and the third part of the trilogy, which is slated for release at the end of this year. Daphne White of The Lion & Lamb Project, who recently spent half an hour watching a teenage boy play the current No. 1-selling video game in the world, Enter the Matrix, said “As I looked on, he cheerfully killed six police officers by shooting them in the stomach with a shotgun, broke the necks of four others, stabbed two people with a stake and participated in several drive-by shootings.”
Over one million youngsters have purchased this game in the first week of its release, and it is available to any child 13 or older, thanks to a secretive ratings system that is controlled by the video game industry itself. According to the Post, both the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), representing the movie industry, and the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), representing the video game industry, tell us that their ratings boards are “independent,” but these trade associations actually created the boards, hired the boards’ directors, and paid their raters salaries. If this were a scientific experiment, it would probably be deemed invalid because the results were too controlled by those with an interest in the outcome.
Washington was the first state to pass a law limiting sales or rentals of videos to minors if the videos depict violence against police officers, and a similar bill is pending in Congress. Six public health groups, in a joint statement to Congress in July 2000, said that, based on more than 30 years of research, “viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children.”
The APA community has been on the receiving end of far too much violence, going back to the lynchings of railroad builders and burnings of Chinatowns in the 1800s to the killings and harassment of Sikh Americans today. And with the perpetual state of war envisioned by some in the Bush Administration, pre-emptive violence as a substitute for dialogue and diplomacy could be legitimized.
Instead of waiting for Neo, the character played by Keanu Reeves, to come and save our world, we APAs should join together and start raising our voices about the growing legitimization of violence in our society. Whether or not The Matrix is defeated when Neo returns to the movie screens next December, our fragile real-life democracy will continue to need our help.
Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at asianweek(AT)nashinteractive.com.
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