The Matrix Reloaded: sexual politics
May. 19th, 2003 06:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI'm starting this post at quarter to six. Welcome to Truepenny's wonderful world of insomnia.
There's gonna be reviewish bits in what follows, but mostly I'm talking about the FUCKED-UP sexual politics in this movie. I may get vulgar. (I already have got vulgar.) You have been warned.
First, the reviewish bits, because I want to point out the things I did like before I throw down with the stuff that felt unbelievably squicky. So.
I liked TMR better than The Matrix, as I said yesterday. This movie had PLOT. And plot TWISTS. And the Architect was fucking amazing. I love Gloria Foster as the Oracle (requiesce in pace, Gloria), and I have this completely insane and inexplicable Thing about Hugo Weaving. Believe me, it baffles me as much as it does anyone else, but I am fangirly about him beyond belief. Plus, he got some of the best lines ("Still using every muscle except the one that counts," as a random example).
And Harold Perrineau--the best damn thing Romeo + Juliet had going for it. Under-utilized (more Link! less Morpheus! more Link! less Morpheus!), but doing a really superb job with what he's got.
Also, all things considered, I really like Keanu Reeves in this movie. Yes, he's affectless and clearly NOT the brightest porch light on the block (which I was amused to discover on the IMDb's biography page he freely admits: You've got smart people, and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.)--but this movie, like The Matrix, is clearly very carefully tailored around that essential acting style. (Also, I want to point out that KR can act; The Gift was sadly a fairly stupid and exceedingly manipulative movie, but his performance was incredible.) HL propounded the theory recently that he would have been a natural for silent comedy in the Buster Keaton mode, and I agree with that. And, actually, I find Neo extremely sweet--not too bright, but doing the best he can in a seriously fubar'd life.
And, of course, the action sequences were jaw-dropping, although they went on too long. (Except Neo against the Agents Smith--I could have watched that all day. But as I said, I'm not rational on the subject of HW.)
However.
There are other problems with the movie--Laurence Fishburne's scenery chewing being perhaps the most egregious--but the thing that was grating my cheese was, hey, as I've already said, the sexual politics.
First off, a thing that just bugged me. There are a lot of African-American actors in TMR,as in TM. (And Gina Torres! Yay! But give the girl more screentime, wouldya?) But did anyone notice any biracial couples? The crews of the ships have been desegregated, and the council, but the romantic couples seemed to be keeping each to their own side of the dance-floor. I would be delighted if someone could prove me wrong.
Also? Strictly heterosexual. The homoeroticism is all over the subtext, but it's certainly not being allowed to come out to play.
And then we get to the Problem (if you don't mind the capital P). This movie has strong women characters. I don't deny it, and Trinity and Niobe are a joy to watch. How-freaking-ever, what exactly is it they get to do? Let's look, shall we?
All the villains are male--or machines--or machines pretending to be men. This is great for the Architect: patriarchy in a suit! And there's probably--hell, there is--a feminist reading of Zion. The machines boring to reach it in their very VERY phallic shaft, the womb-like nature of the city, the caves, all of it. But all the villains? The Merovingian, Agent Smith, the other Agents, Commander Lock (who also needed to be smacked down for the scenery chewing). All the antagonists are men, or in the shape of men. The only female character--aside from Trinity, Niobe, and Link's passive-aggressive little wife--is the Oracle, who's motherly and wise, blah blah Gaia, blah blah moon, menstrual life-force power thingy. Also Persephone, but we'll get to her in a second.
So I don't mind the forces of evil being patriarchal (hey, I love Mutant Enemy shows--I really don't have a leg to stand on there), but I object strenuously to the fact that the forces of good are signally failing to be feminist. We have TWO major female characters; both of them exist in the plot, and act in the plot, for purely romantic/erotic reasons and motivations. The moment when I seriously started to fall out of the movie was when Neo asks what's up between Lock and Morpheus and gets told: "Niobe." This shows such a fundamental lack of understanding of human conflict that it made me sit in the movie theater and just despair. There are all sorts of reasons for Lock and Morpheus to be antagonistic (many of which we SEE ON SCREEN); to have it be reduced to boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl-to-other-boy, other-boy-is-insecure-and-jealous ... is absolutely infuriating. Also demeaning. I especially and with extra loathing hated the bit after Morpheus's reenactment of the Nuremberg rallies, where Niobe gives him a come-on, and then gets called away by Lock AND GOES. She is a strong, kick-ass woman. Why is she with this idiot in the first place? And why doesn't that little bit of phallocentric egotism get exactly what it deserves? Which is, so we're all clear on this, Fuck you, Lock, I'm dancing with Morpheus.
There's nothing wrong with a good romance triangle, but the movie puts it in place of the genuine conflict between Morpheus and Lock, as if it thinks we won't understand why Niobe would volunteer to follow the Nebuchadnezzar unless it was for Love.
Pardon me while I seethe.
And then there's Trinity. I love Trinity, and I love Carrie-Anne Moss, and I am grateful forever that she doesn't have any lines as stupid in this movie as she did in the first one. And she, like Niobe, is undeniably, physically, a strong character. She gets good fight scenes. But, again, Trinity's motivations and existence are all subordinate to Neo--like their literal missionary-position sex. The ending is ambiguous in this regard. Does Trinity obey Neo because, like Niobe, she's one-down on the totem pole? Or does she do it because she loves him, KNOWS he's not the sharpest thumbtack in the box, and understands that he's grappling with something he can't articulate to her? Does she then disobey him for the sake of the mission, or to save his life? How do we feel about the fact that Neo is ready to sacrifice the whole human race in order to save Trinity? (And is it just me, or has he--regardless of what happens to Zion--just doomed every single person still in the Matrix? Did I miss something?) That's a judgment call, I think, and I'm willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt. I'll take the better motivations for Trinity, and I'm willing to go with the fact that Neo is trying to make a third choice out of the Architect's nasty little binary.
The bit that completely sticks in my craw, though, is the interlude with the Merovingian and Persephone. As characters, those two are clearly ALL ABOUT male-female power games, as the Merovingian's little stunt with the blonde chick (and Persephone's revenge) proves. And that's fine--even a comment on the way in which that kind of structure can be reversed if the disempowered party decides she wants to change the rules. But why the fuck is Trinity (and Neo, but especially Trinity) buying into the rules Persephone and the Merovingian play by? The scene in the bathroom is the most horribly dysfunctional thing I've seen on the screen in quite a while (which may just be a sign I don't watch many movies). Persephone is behaving according to her nature, but Trinity's jealousy belittles her as a character (the audience was laughing) and likewise belittles her and Neo's relationship. And if they're going to make a big deal out of it, they can't just then drop it. Well, I mean, they can, because they did, but they shouldn't have. If it's this viscerally upsetting thing, it has to have consequences, fall-out. Frankly, I was expecting that to be the choice that led to Trinity's death--which would have been itself an extraordinarily sexist bit of psychological logic, but would at least have meant the scene MATTERED.
Women exist in The Matrix Reloaded only as adjuncts, appendages, and accessories of men. Trinity's the only female crew member of the Nebuchadnezzar; Niobe's a captain, but we see her much more often in the context of Lock and Morpheus than we do in the context of her own crew, her own agenda, her own goals. Even the Oracle turns out to be the partner of the Architect (although I believe her when she says she believes the only way they're going to get where they're going is together, humans and machines). There's a veneer of feminism, like Trinity's shiny patent-leather suit, but underneath it is the same old ugliness--a complete and utter failure to think outside the box.
There's gonna be reviewish bits in what follows, but mostly I'm talking about the FUCKED-UP sexual politics in this movie. I may get vulgar. (I already have got vulgar.) You have been warned.
First, the reviewish bits, because I want to point out the things I did like before I throw down with the stuff that felt unbelievably squicky. So.
I liked TMR better than The Matrix, as I said yesterday. This movie had PLOT. And plot TWISTS. And the Architect was fucking amazing. I love Gloria Foster as the Oracle (requiesce in pace, Gloria), and I have this completely insane and inexplicable Thing about Hugo Weaving. Believe me, it baffles me as much as it does anyone else, but I am fangirly about him beyond belief. Plus, he got some of the best lines ("Still using every muscle except the one that counts," as a random example).
And Harold Perrineau--the best damn thing Romeo + Juliet had going for it. Under-utilized (more Link! less Morpheus! more Link! less Morpheus!), but doing a really superb job with what he's got.
Also, all things considered, I really like Keanu Reeves in this movie. Yes, he's affectless and clearly NOT the brightest porch light on the block (which I was amused to discover on the IMDb's biography page he freely admits: You've got smart people, and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.)--but this movie, like The Matrix, is clearly very carefully tailored around that essential acting style. (Also, I want to point out that KR can act; The Gift was sadly a fairly stupid and exceedingly manipulative movie, but his performance was incredible.) HL propounded the theory recently that he would have been a natural for silent comedy in the Buster Keaton mode, and I agree with that. And, actually, I find Neo extremely sweet--not too bright, but doing the best he can in a seriously fubar'd life.
And, of course, the action sequences were jaw-dropping, although they went on too long. (Except Neo against the Agents Smith--I could have watched that all day. But as I said, I'm not rational on the subject of HW.)
However.
There are other problems with the movie--Laurence Fishburne's scenery chewing being perhaps the most egregious--but the thing that was grating my cheese was, hey, as I've already said, the sexual politics.
First off, a thing that just bugged me. There are a lot of African-American actors in TMR,as in TM. (And Gina Torres! Yay! But give the girl more screentime, wouldya?) But did anyone notice any biracial couples? The crews of the ships have been desegregated, and the council, but the romantic couples seemed to be keeping each to their own side of the dance-floor. I would be delighted if someone could prove me wrong.
Also? Strictly heterosexual. The homoeroticism is all over the subtext, but it's certainly not being allowed to come out to play.
And then we get to the Problem (if you don't mind the capital P). This movie has strong women characters. I don't deny it, and Trinity and Niobe are a joy to watch. How-freaking-ever, what exactly is it they get to do? Let's look, shall we?
All the villains are male--or machines--or machines pretending to be men. This is great for the Architect: patriarchy in a suit! And there's probably--hell, there is--a feminist reading of Zion. The machines boring to reach it in their very VERY phallic shaft, the womb-like nature of the city, the caves, all of it. But all the villains? The Merovingian, Agent Smith, the other Agents, Commander Lock (who also needed to be smacked down for the scenery chewing). All the antagonists are men, or in the shape of men. The only female character--aside from Trinity, Niobe, and Link's passive-aggressive little wife--is the Oracle, who's motherly and wise, blah blah Gaia, blah blah moon, menstrual life-force power thingy. Also Persephone, but we'll get to her in a second.
So I don't mind the forces of evil being patriarchal (hey, I love Mutant Enemy shows--I really don't have a leg to stand on there), but I object strenuously to the fact that the forces of good are signally failing to be feminist. We have TWO major female characters; both of them exist in the plot, and act in the plot, for purely romantic/erotic reasons and motivations. The moment when I seriously started to fall out of the movie was when Neo asks what's up between Lock and Morpheus and gets told: "Niobe." This shows such a fundamental lack of understanding of human conflict that it made me sit in the movie theater and just despair. There are all sorts of reasons for Lock and Morpheus to be antagonistic (many of which we SEE ON SCREEN); to have it be reduced to boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl-to-other-boy, other-boy-is-insecure-and-jealous ... is absolutely infuriating. Also demeaning. I especially and with extra loathing hated the bit after Morpheus's reenactment of the Nuremberg rallies, where Niobe gives him a come-on, and then gets called away by Lock AND GOES. She is a strong, kick-ass woman. Why is she with this idiot in the first place? And why doesn't that little bit of phallocentric egotism get exactly what it deserves? Which is, so we're all clear on this, Fuck you, Lock, I'm dancing with Morpheus.
There's nothing wrong with a good romance triangle, but the movie puts it in place of the genuine conflict between Morpheus and Lock, as if it thinks we won't understand why Niobe would volunteer to follow the Nebuchadnezzar unless it was for Love.
Pardon me while I seethe.
And then there's Trinity. I love Trinity, and I love Carrie-Anne Moss, and I am grateful forever that she doesn't have any lines as stupid in this movie as she did in the first one. And she, like Niobe, is undeniably, physically, a strong character. She gets good fight scenes. But, again, Trinity's motivations and existence are all subordinate to Neo--like their literal missionary-position sex. The ending is ambiguous in this regard. Does Trinity obey Neo because, like Niobe, she's one-down on the totem pole? Or does she do it because she loves him, KNOWS he's not the sharpest thumbtack in the box, and understands that he's grappling with something he can't articulate to her? Does she then disobey him for the sake of the mission, or to save his life? How do we feel about the fact that Neo is ready to sacrifice the whole human race in order to save Trinity? (And is it just me, or has he--regardless of what happens to Zion--just doomed every single person still in the Matrix? Did I miss something?) That's a judgment call, I think, and I'm willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt. I'll take the better motivations for Trinity, and I'm willing to go with the fact that Neo is trying to make a third choice out of the Architect's nasty little binary.
The bit that completely sticks in my craw, though, is the interlude with the Merovingian and Persephone. As characters, those two are clearly ALL ABOUT male-female power games, as the Merovingian's little stunt with the blonde chick (and Persephone's revenge) proves. And that's fine--even a comment on the way in which that kind of structure can be reversed if the disempowered party decides she wants to change the rules. But why the fuck is Trinity (and Neo, but especially Trinity) buying into the rules Persephone and the Merovingian play by? The scene in the bathroom is the most horribly dysfunctional thing I've seen on the screen in quite a while (which may just be a sign I don't watch many movies). Persephone is behaving according to her nature, but Trinity's jealousy belittles her as a character (the audience was laughing) and likewise belittles her and Neo's relationship. And if they're going to make a big deal out of it, they can't just then drop it. Well, I mean, they can, because they did, but they shouldn't have. If it's this viscerally upsetting thing, it has to have consequences, fall-out. Frankly, I was expecting that to be the choice that led to Trinity's death--which would have been itself an extraordinarily sexist bit of psychological logic, but would at least have meant the scene MATTERED.
Women exist in The Matrix Reloaded only as adjuncts, appendages, and accessories of men. Trinity's the only female crew member of the Nebuchadnezzar; Niobe's a captain, but we see her much more often in the context of Lock and Morpheus than we do in the context of her own crew, her own agenda, her own goals. Even the Oracle turns out to be the partner of the Architect (although I believe her when she says she believes the only way they're going to get where they're going is together, humans and machines). There's a veneer of feminism, like Trinity's shiny patent-leather suit, but underneath it is the same old ugliness--a complete and utter failure to think outside the box.
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-19 03:03 pm (UTC)... Is it really sad and wrong if I say that your articulate and interesting review tearing it apart has made me want to see the movie just so that I can follow you better on its specifics?
no subject
Date: 2003-05-19 04:54 pm (UTC)I don't know how you feel about action movies, but I did genuinely enjoy TMR, so it wouldn't necessarily be a waste of time & money. And at least this way you'll be braced for some of the badness. *g* But if you don't care for action movies, really, don't go.
Right on...
Date: 2003-05-20 06:30 am (UTC)Well, except some of the bits where you talk about liking the movie. Yes, Hugo Weaving (the only person, Architect included, who can speak the claptrap with conviction), yes, Gloria Foster, even yes Link -- no, no, NO everything else.
Ungood movie. Not plusungood, not doubleplusungood, but ungood.
Me? Wanted to see Persephone demand a kiss from Trinity. That might actually have been warmish, if not hot -- unlike everything else supposedly erotic in the flick.
Re: Right on...
Date: 2003-05-20 09:59 am (UTC)I freely admit that when it comes to cinema, I have no taste. I've known that for years. I think also my reaction to TMR was strongly colored by how monumentally underwhelmed I was by The Matrix. So a lot of what I saw in this movie (aside from the creepy-ass chauvinistic sexual politics) were the ways in which it was an improvement on the first movie. And they were legion--at least from my perspective.
However, my heart is pure. I have the RotK Frodo pic the official site put out as my desktop. *g*
Re: Right on...
Date: 2003-05-20 11:01 am (UTC)Re: Right on...
Date: 2003-05-23 02:49 am (UTC)http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue317/news.html
"Starring the cast of Reloaded, Enter the Matrix features a scene in which Niobe (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Persephone (Monica Bellucci) kiss, as well as additional footage that weaves in and out of the movie and offers players a deeper look into the film's storyline."
Though I'm not buying the videogame just to see that. There's a photo of Belluci and Pinkett kissing at the premiere, somewhere on the web.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-21 08:55 am (UTC)As usual, what can a heroine do? Fall in love. Blergh. We seriously need more SF movies written by women who've gotten over that one.
(When Switch died in The Matrix, Trinity was the only female character left onscreen. No possible female solidarity there, and the division continues.)
That said, Hugo Weaving is growing on me.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-21 03:52 pm (UTC)But, yeah, how many times in TMR do we see two women on screen together? Gina Torres and Link's passive-aggressive little wife doing the domestic thing--and GT leaves as soon as HP comes in. And anyway, their connection is all about the dead male crew members of the Nebuchadnezzar from the first movie.
There's Trinity and the doctor-type chick at the very end, but that's All About Neo and Trinity is basically blowing the other gal off.
No other women on the Nebuchadnezzar. Does Niobe have any female crew members? And then of course there's Trinity and Persephone, and I've already said what I think of that.
So, no. No community of women. No room for women to be strong without men. Bleah.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-22 05:35 am (UTC)[ Brought up in Caucasian monoculture, very not familiar with US usages in such issues. ]
no subject
Date: 2003-05-22 06:00 am (UTC)Let's distinguish between Keanu Reeves and Neo, a.k.a. Thomas A. Anderson.
I don't know how KR chooses to define his ethnic identity, but the character in the movie(s) seems fairly unambiguously caucasian. That name couldn't be more WASPy without actually being "Miles Standish" or "Cotton Mather," and whether intentionally or not, the all-black costuming and the lighting effects make Neo read as white--especially when surrounded by African-American characters
If Neo were Hawaiian-Chinese-English, as KR is, then the racial divide would at least be a little more ambiguous. But given that the movie is not trying for racial subtlety (the only white characters with any markers of non-Caucasianality are the twins with their dreads, and they are AGGRESSIVELY white), and given that the default setting for much of the audience is going to be "white until proven otherwise," I don't think we can read the actor's ethnicity onto the character.
Maybe I'm wrong. Dissenting opinions welcome.
Odds and ends
Date: 2003-05-22 07:18 pm (UTC)2) Confused over the ending, I discussed it with a computer geek friend who proposed a hacker rereading of the ending which I like, but don't know if it's what the directors will go with: we never actually see Neo go into the door damning the Matrix dwellers. What if he actually went into the Source and hacked himself going through the other door? Then he would have actually gone through both doors. (Both doors, after all, being inside the Matrix itself.) We'll find out later this year.
Re: Odds and ends
Date: 2003-05-27 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-25 03:32 am (UTC)I read an interesting theory about how something changes in Neo at crucial points where he uses his mouth...(pops a pill from Morpheus, eats a candy from the Oracle, gets a kiss from Trinity).
I think the Persephone kiss has a lot more to it that we saw.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-27 07:45 am (UTC)Yes, yes, yes.
Date: 2003-05-25 10:00 am (UTC)Unlike you, I didn't actually enjoy the other aspects of the movie, but as a cultural phenomenon I still think it's well worth deconstructing. Thanks for the fantastic work.
Off to friend you...
Re: Yes, yes, yes.
Date: 2003-05-27 07:49 am (UTC)As I think I said upthread, I have basically no taste in movies--as opposed to my hypercriticality about books. Which means that I went into The Matrix Reloaded absolutely prepared to accept it on its own terms: big, silly, starring Keanu Reeves. But somehow I just don't feel that sexism is a term I have to accept.
General comments
Date: 2003-06-23 10:36 am (UTC)It's absurd to see Trinity's "motivations and existence" as "subordinate to Neo". She was around fighting the Matrix for years before Neo turned up. Similarly, it's made pretty clear that Niobe is not following Morpheus because of any feelings she might still have for him, rather because of she felt it was right to take the chance on the prophecy. And in the context of a film that's all about choice, the Niobe/Locke/Morpheus triangle is all about Niobe's choice between two quite different people with different beliefs and characters - you can't treat it as simply a trite love triangle. It has its own meaning but is also part of a broader scheme.
You're right of course about the predominance of patriarchy (though in Zion's Council male and female seems balanced) and male protagonists. Partly that may be due to the male perspective of the creators, but partly it also arises from the dense interweaving of references to many ideas, symbols, themes, many of which are bound up in the real-world with a maleness they can't easily be stripped of without making a deliberate statement that may be too distracting from the central themes. They couldn't have made the Architect female, for example, without it being a statement and having implications, and losing resonances and references which a male one carries. Ultimately the real-world is male-dominated, and there are limits to how much you can casually ignore or subvert that in the context of what the film is trying to do.