[Nottingham] Matrix Reloaded

[Graeme Fowler]

On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 18:37, James Gibbon wrote:
> I mentioned the fact that I had read and understood Kant and Plato
> only because I was specifically asked, otherwise I would not have
> referred to it.  

Indeed, that is correct.

> Studying philosophy on a humanities degree course
> is a pretty modest achievement anyway, and not actually relevant to
> the discussion, since I would expect any adult of reasonable
> intelligent to understand that the Matrix films are not to be taken
> seriously from a philosophical point of view.  That's my whole
> point.

Now far be it from to attempt to be arguing about this, but I did not,
at any point in the original email, go as far as saying that the film
was a major piece of philosophical study. The point I was making, which
for someone so well educated you seem destined to miss repeatedly, was
that the cast had to read a large number of classical philosophical
works in order to understand some of the nuances in the script.

It's a little bit like saying that in order to understand an application
fully, you have to read some of the source code. That doesn't make the
application a compiler, does it? [good lord, did I crawl
ever-so-slightly back on topic there?]

I fully understand your reticence to admit any form of link between
classical philosophy and the script, or the film itself, as you clearly
feel yourself to have been well educated. What I find funny (amusing,
actually, rather than peculiar) is your abject refusal to allow even the
smallest piece of philosophical thinking into what is - according to
your present descriptions, at least - a fairly poor form of modern
mass-market entertainment. Why shouldn't there be?

Do we find ourselves decrying the fact that the cast move around in a
craft which appears to utilise some form of anti-gravity device just
because the science is - at present - deemed impossible? Do we find, in
any form of entertainment, that there cannot possibly be "layers" to the
message or story being told? Do we ever regard advertising as clever, or
do we think it's all bunkum?

There's many things buried in many modern forms of communication
(remember blipverts?). Perhaps, with your level of education, you should
open your mind ever-so-slightly and peer through the cracks which open
up.

G
-- 
Graeme Fowler <graeme@graemef.net>