Pynchon, media, control: The Matrix Reloaded

[pynchonoid]

"Every day public opinion is the target of rewritten
history, official amnesia and outright lying, all of
which is benevolently termed 'spin,' as if it were no
more harm than a ride on a merry-go-round. We know
better than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We
believe and doubt at the same time--it seems a
condition of political thought in a modern superstate
to be permanently of at least two minds on most
issues. Needless to say, this is of inestimable use to
those in power who wish to remain there preferably
forever."
--Thomas Pynchon, _1984_ Foreword, p xiii

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/arts/25RICH.html>

May 25, 2003 

FRANK RICH

There's No Exit From the Matrix

[...] The genius of the P.R. strategy was its
exploitation of the original film's geeky cult status
as a thinking kid's kung fu extravaganza. "The Matrix
Reloaded" would not be just another bloated Hollywood
sequel but instead would have the philosophical heft
to fuel a new generation of metaphysical Web sites.
And so every puff piece about the film has emphasized
that its creators, the siblings Andy and Larry
Wachowski, do not give interviews — as if behaving
like Thomas Pynchon would give their movie the
gravitas of "Gravity's Rainbow." To second the motion,
along came Cornel West, the Princeton professor who
has a cameo in "The Matrix Reloaded" and is not at all
shy about meeting the press. He told Time (for its
cover story) that "the brothers are very into epic
poetry and philosophy, into Schopenhauer and William
James" and that "Larry Wachowski knows more about
Hermann Hesse than most German scholars." This does
not explain why the movie's multicultural orgy scene
looks like a Club Med luau run amok, but maybe the
inspiration for that was Kahlil Gibran. 

So high-minded are the Wachowskis, the publicists
assured us, that they even clamped down on "Matrix"
merchandising. "The filmmakers did not want to
alienate their fan base by selling out," one executive
involved with the movie told The Wall Street Journal.
Thus they strictly limited the sequel's ancillary
products to an Enter the Matrix video game, action
figures, sunglasses (featured in another AOL Time
Warner magazine, People) and an animated DVD. They
kept the movie's product tie-ins to a bare minimum as
well: Powerade drinks, Cadillac, Ducati motorcycles
and Heineken. Lest anyone think that such commerce
constitutes a sellout, we were told that the
Wachowskis drew the line by nixing Matrix-theme
burgers at McDonald's. Siddhartha lives!

And so does AOL Time Warner. It is the most troubled
of the media giants these days — crippled by billions
in debt, internecine warfare and a Securities and
Exchange Commission investigation for fraud. But even
in its weakened state, it has the Herculean resources
to fix much of the nation's attention on whatever
story it chooses to sell. Its pushing of "The Matrix
Reloaded" is a fairly benign use of that enormous
power: if you are sucked into a film and don't like
it, the worst that happens is that you lose a few
hours and the price of a movie ticket. 

But the media giants that wield such clout don't
always put it to such frivolous use. We are not just
plugged into their matrix to be sold movies and other
entertainment products. These companies can also plug
the nation into news narratives as ubiquitous and
lightweight as "The Matrix Reloaded," but with more
damaging side effects.

This is what has happened consistently during
America's struggle with Osama bin Laden. During the
years when Al Qaeda's terrorists were gearing up for
9/11, the media giants were in overdrive selling
escapist fare like the Clinton scandals, Gary Condit's
sex life and shark attacks. They were all legitimate
stories. But just as "The Matrix Reloaded," playing on
a record 8,517 screens, crowded most other movies out
of the marketplace last weekend, so those entertaining
melodramas drove any reports of threatening
developments beyond our shores to the periphery of the
mass-media news culture. 

The media giants took the same tack in banding
together to push the administration-dictated narrative
of Saddam Hussein — and with the same results. The
networks' various productions of "Countdown: Iraq,"
though as ponderous as "The Matrix Reloaded," were so
effective that by the time we went to war, 51 percent
of the country, according to a Knight-Ridder poll,
believed that Iraqis were among the 9/11 hijackers. It
took the bloody re-emergence of Qaeda terrorists in
Riyadh two weeks ago to recover the repressed memory
that none of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis and that
most of them were Saudis. And whatever happened to
Saddam's arsenal, all those advanced nuclear weapons
programs and biological poisons that George W. Bush
kept citing as the justification for going to war?
Well, sarin today, gone tomorrow. That laundry list of
terrors, none of them yet found, vanished from the
national consciousness as soon as the cable outlets of
AOL Time Warner, Fox and NBC put their muscle behind
The Laci Peterson Murder. 

The power of the five companies that foster this
sequential amnesia is increasing, not declining. In a
vote set for June 2, the Federal Communications
Commission is expected to relax some of the few
ownership restrictions meant to rein them in.
Companies like Viacom (which already owns CBS and
Paramount) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation
(which owns Fox and is on its way to controlling the
satellite giant DirecTV) are likely to go on shopping
sprees for more TV outlets. But who knows or cares?
Though liberal and conservative organizations alike,
from Common Cause to the National Rifle Association,
are protesting this further consolidation of media
power, most of the country is oblivious to it. That's
partly because the companies that program America's
matrix have shut out all but bare-bones coverage of
the imminent F.C.C. action, much as the ruling
machines in "The Matrix" do not feed their captive
humans any truths that might set them free. [...] 



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<http://www.pynchonoid.org/>

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