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comment by kleinbl00

It is not.

The problem with The Matrix is it took all the Gibson/Williams/Sterling tropes of cyberpunk - mirror shades, implants, "jacking into the net", etc - and shoved them into a garden-variety Campbellian heroe's-journey messiah arc. The Matrix is Dune is Harry Potter is Lord of the Rings is every "one true savior" bullshit monomyth story perpetrated by Hollywood since Ben fucking Hur.

What got left out was the fundamental disenchantment with technology, the splintering of society, the class issues, the intrusion of technology on everyday life, the alienation fostered by corporate dominance, all the actual social issues at the heart of Cyberpunk.

Bruce Sterling observed that Neuromancer was the most important sci fi book in 25 years because it was the first exploration of a future that hadn't either been entirely wiped clean by nuclear war or advanced so far ahead that modern underpinnings didn't matter. Cyberpunk explored the mental space occupied by a perpetual cold war, by corporate dominance of daily life, by our gradual alienation from each other due to technology. But a movie like New Rose Hotel doesn't stand a chance in a bullet-time universe inhabited by The One.

FWIW, we had this discussion with Vince Gerardis and he didn't disagree. He also didn't buy anything we were selling. ;-)





user-inactivated  ·  2918 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    What got left out was the fundamental disenchantment with technology

I don't think disenchantment is the right word. It wouldn't have been very interesting if it had been just been "technology is scary, also get of my lawn." It was more ambivalence. Technology as a mechanism for corporate dominance and alienation on the one hand, technology is a mechanism for liberation on the other. I mean, Neuromancer had space Rastafarians.