And best egghead prize goes to ...
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 pulled it off. The Matrix , whose party was the talk of Cannes last week, gave a cinematic high-five to French thinker and philosopher Jean Baudrillard by featuring his book Simulacra and Simulation in an early scene. The Wachowski brothers seized on Baudrillard's nihilistic notion that we must deconstruct the images (TV, movies, advertising, clothing) that oppress us and imbue them with new values. They skillfully retold an archetypal messiah story with a dash of postmodern theory.
Baudrillard has said the movie's use of his work 'stemmed mostly from misunderstandings'. But this time the Wachowskis have found a more willing philosophical accomplice. Cornel West appears (minus trademark glasses) as a wise councillor of Zion, the last free human city on earth. He delivers only one line, but it's a gem: 'Comprehension is not requisite for cooperation.' Those words have already been spotted on T-shirts in Los Angeles.
Like the Wachowskis, West draws on an impressively wide array of sources for his work. And he has always aspired to be a very public intellectual - he's recorded a rap album, is a TV show regular and writes for a non-academic audience in publications such as Spin. A self-styled 'intellectual freedom-fighter', his studies address the legacy of racism and the problem of nihilism in black America. Larry Wachowski loved West's writings so much he decided to write a role for him in the movie. 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?
West says he and the Wachowskis came 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 to African-American stars such as Laurence Fishburne and Jada Pinkett Smith. A more tantalising connection seems to be 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 Keanu Reeves character - is taking, as he discovers that the world of the Matrix is permeable and uncertain. West also points 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, West says he and the Wachowskis bonded over 'wrestling with the meaning of life and the purpose of human existence'. He is coy when asked if he had a longer speech in the final instalment of the trilogy, but says he will appear in a documentary about the series where he expounds further on his ideas. Until then, he has some advice for audiences: 'You've got to look beneath the special effects.'
© New York Times
Philip French reviews The Matrix Reloaded , p8