COM 470 Fall 2009

Dear Prof, Lopez,
forgive me for the late response. Here is the outline for my post modernism paper. I made an extensive search on the JCU library databases and found a handful of interesting articles. I have chosen to analyze Drawn Together in my paper, following your suggestion to discuss a topic that could illustrate an example of postmodernism.
-Postmodernism should not be understood as a particular age or movement with more or less definite boundaries. Rather, it is a vague analytical framework and a set of implications for the understanding of the post-fordist, globalized, cyberspace world we inhabit today.
The fields of study used to understand and analyze postmodernism: Psychoanalysis, sociology, philosophy and history
-Postmodernism exacerbates the condition of post modernity and heightens our sense of arbitrariness through the progressive loss of the cultural norms, values, traditions, and other psychological structures we used to take for granted.
In Drawn Together, a certain postmodern sensibility is reflected in the tongue-in-cheek parody and acknowledgement/consideration of pop culture artifacts and references. These have been extrapolated from their original context and each reference acquires new meaning and significance in light of the circumstances in which they appear.

I am really enjoying the topic
, see you in class

Daniele Schiavo

When I first watched The Truman Show, I immediately sympathized with Truman. I felt his misery, I perceived his will to escape and find a new course, a new life. I despised all the characters that had made a show is “real” life. I despised the public that spent his life looking at what Truman was doing in his world.

Then something strange happened to me: I started thinking about whether my life was real or it was all set up by an enormous machine that is able to control everything that exists around me. I questioned people I considered friends, even family, but then I smiled and I realized I had simply fallen into the vicious cycle of falsity that the movie presents. It may seem crazy to think that our lives are fake, that every person in our life is simply a paid actor: who can we trust? Can we trust our eyes and our feelings?

With the prigress that media and information sources have reached, we may never be too sure. As Baudrillard claims, we live in an hyperreal world. Nothing can be defined as objective and consistent anymore. We are surrounded by representations, or better, by simulacra, which go beyond representing objects. Simulacra deny existance. Simulacra deny essence.

What is real in The Truman show? If we pay attention nothing is real. The movie itself is fake, it is the fruit of the director’s imagination. The life that pretends to be real in the movie is fake as well. The actresses who work at the coffee shop and watch Truman’s life on the screen are paid actresses and they represent a role in the movie. Then Truman’s life comes along. The ultimate set up of a “Big Brother”-like show. The life of a man portrayed on the screen. The life of a man ruled by strangers and over his own will. What is painful, and what appears not to hurt the public is the fact that Truman has no rights. His destiny is written on a screenplay and everyone has to follow these directions.

Is Truman real as it is claimed in the movie? I do not think so. As Baudrillard talks about the Loud Family show in 1971, Truman is Truman because of the fake environment he has lived in. If the show did not exist, he would have probably had long hair, dressed like a hippie, never married a “barbie”, earned money by selling his paintings! Who knows?

If we stop for a second then, we see how we (I) have fallen in the same loop: The Truman Show is a movie. The story is fake, and yet we(I) are here commenting about it. We sympathize with movie characters because we forget that they do not exist. We immediately find common feelings, common values, common experiences and we incarnate their role. As Baudrillard says, TV (and the movie industry) is a kind of genetic code: it creates our essence as we identify, and influence at the same time, with its content.

Is it a way to keep us under control? Is it a way to keep the status quo? Is it a way to sustain the current balance of power, economic and social one? I believe so. Maybe the theories about the end of our system( or world) in 2012 are correct and a new phase is approaching. Will it be a war, aliens or climate change that will cause the planet revolution, we do not know, or we could picture it by watching 2012, the movie that just came out… oh well, but that’s another movie so it is not real!

Giorgia

The Matrix draws heavily from the Buddhist and Gnostic view points of the material world as false and lacking substance. People’s lives are lived in a dream state where individuals believe that the events occurring are truly happening.

Following the model of Jesus or Buddha, Neo the protagonist of the movie and the chosen Messiah, sees something the other unplugged cannot see. He literally sees the Matrix as a code and not as reality. Total awareness of the truth makes for him possible to manipulate almost everything within the Matrix itself; Neo sees in totality the falsity of the Matrix.

In the movie, our conception of earth has changed; the real world is a nuclear wasteland, is de-personalized, there is no true identity and life is only possible beneath the surface and if you conform. However, an exact copy of the earth exists in the form of a computer program. People are living life in a simulacrum, a copy that is its own reality.

 In line with Baudrillard’s argument, the Matrix becomes the model and the determinant of our perception of reality. What we are following and trusting is not reality itself, but an ideal model of what reality should be or is conceived to be. The boundary between reality, image and simulation breaks down and all these three fuse together and create a hyper-reality where one cannot distinguish anymore the real from the unreal.

TheMatrix

Baudrillard claims that our society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that in fact all that we know as real is actually a simulation of reality. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media that create the reality that we perceive. He furthermore describes a world saturated by imagery, infused with media, sound, and advertising. This simulacra of the real surpasses the real world and thus becomes hyper real, a world that is more real than real. It presupposes and precedes the real.

The Matrix is a supposed world of fiction where humans experience a simulated life programmed by a computer generated environment set in the late 20th century.

In The Matrix film, the humans exist physically in the pods while their minds are plugged into a computer hard drive. The Matrix is that hard drive. It is a computer program designed by the machines to stimulate true life through stimulation of the brain.

Parallels of the human experience: birth, life, death, are drawn for the film from various traditions. These traditions uphold that the human experience is simply an ILLUSION.

The Matrix film is drawn heavily from the Buddhist and Gnostic view points of the material world as false. There is no substance in it.

A life is lived in a complete DREAM-STATE where the participant is unaware of dreaming and fully believes the events occurring are truly happening.

The idea of a false material world is a proclamation of the Buddhist thought. Buddha expressed a disbelief in the concept of the cyclical human being. Furthermore, his message is to raise humanity above life and death through consciousness.

Gnoticism,(knowledge) implies elevation above the valueless material world through realization of its inherent lack of value.

The ideas of light and darkness can only truly be understood by someone who has awakened. They are hidden to those who are not paying attention. The unplugged inhabitants of Zeon, represent the enlightened ones who have some evident knowledge of truth. The unplugged humans in the film, furthermore, are set free from the Matrix by being woken up.

Sleep and awakening, symbolize an experience of two separate worlds, but also the awakening of the mind that realizes and sees the truth. The truth is that a race of artificial computer intelligence is controlling the human race.

The characters in the Matrix have awoken to discover the human race enslaved by machines. If one is content with his life and has no desire to seek anything other than the material stimulus of the material world, beginning at birth and ending at death.

Blue pill: believe whatever individuals want to believe.

Red pill: if there is a question to be asked, then the journey begins. The Journey leads to the identity and nature of ourselves.

The Matrix makes use of iconography, traditions, and imagery:

-Falsity of the material world from Buddhist and Gnostic perception

-Messiah/ Christ figure

-The satanic and malevolent evil force deceiving mankind, bureaoracy, and unchecked federal government.

MATRIX RELEASES AGE-OLD MESSAGES INTO THE PSYCHE OF A NEW GENERATION.

Neo: is the Messiah/ Savior. The icon represents someone who gives something to mankind, something it did not have before, associated with healing, salvation from cataclysm, mission, wisdom, hope.

Following the model of Jesus, the Savior, healer, representative of truth, Neo sees something that the other unplugged don’t see. He sees the matrix as code and not as reality. It is through this complete and total awareness of the truth that he is able to manipulate most anything within the Matrix at will.

Neo not only represents the savior but also all the humanity. There is a distinct separation between material and spiritual. Thomas Anderson is a regular human being, while spirituality comes from the Source. * It isn’t the human being itself who is the Savior or Messiah , it is the Savior or Messiah manifesting in the human.

While the human is ordinary, energy is extraordinary.

Where there is a Savior saving us from cataclysm, there is an anti-savior causing the cataclysm. GOD AND SATAN, GOOD AND EVIL, LIGHT AND DARK.

*THE FILM SHOWS US THAT THERE IS SOMETHING GREATER THAN GOOD AND EVIL: THERE IS PEACE

The Matrix blurs the lines between reality versus a computer generated fantasy in an interesting and unique manner.  The film has been constructed in such a way that you are really never confused even when the secrets have not been revealed yet. This film depicts simulacra, as if people are living a copy that is its own reality. The Matrix is undeniably science fiction, but, unlike most pictures claiming that association, it never falls into the boring, expected patterns of space battle. Instead, it ventures into territory that is sufficiently interesting to provide scenery that is involving and invigorating. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is leading a double life. To most people, he’s a hard-working computer programmer who holds down a nine-to-five job for a major software corporation. But, in the privacy of his home, he’s a hacker named Neo who is guilty for most hacking crimes. Neo is dissatisfied with his existence and as he attempts to discover for a meaning to it, he is contacted by a mysterious computer presence known as Morpheus. All in all, after a brief summary of the film, it appears as if people in this movie are not trusting reality itself but an ambiguous reality of what it is conceived and projected to be like. This confusion creates a hyper-reality where one cannot absorb a clear idea from what is real from unreal.

Personally this movie is not my style and the storyline does not really interest me. However, I have to admit this film is visually amusing in merit to its visual effects and sound effects and it consists of constructed action sequences that are really eye capturing. Therefore I conducted some research on the technology that was implemented into the production process of the film. The Matrix is directed by brothers Andy and Larry Wachowskis. These directors have created themselves as innovative filmmakers who push the boundaries of live-action films, such as Star Wars and The Terminator, which display a unique visual style. The Wachowskis’ achieved this breakthrough on a display of techniques and digital effects, some never before seen in Hollywood films. The Wachowskis’ were the first to use “Flow-Mo” according to the Wachoskis’, “Flow-Mo” is a time-bending digital effect that utilizes both computer-generated imagery and still photography. These are the types of predominate scenes that are used throughout the film. The term “Flow-Mo” refers to the technique used to create primary foreground subjects. For “Flo-Mo,” the Wachowski brothers wanted to be able to move a “high-speed” camera around subjects so that the scene will have a slow motion shot with a dynamic camera move.

Ludi Mayer

I personally didn’t enjoy the film, but I did find interesting the way in which it spoke about religious ideas and also the hacker subcultures. It was too violent from my point of view.

After the class I did some research on how money is made. I don’t agree and the way that it is done due to the fact that it costs nothing to produce and it is given to us with much more value that it is actually worth.

This movie really makes one think about what reality really is. What is reality and who is to say what it actually is, we could be living in reality that is made up for us like Truman’s. I liked how the film brought out the thought of ones own reality and I especially liked how they put commercials throughout his life. I found it almost mirror like to the way commercials are placed in everyday life today. For example, walking at night to go get a drink there will be women dressed up to sell certain alcoholic beverages, but will act charming so that you will than buy it. It is interesting and somewhat scary to try to compare events from the film to real life.

While many theorists and cultural studies analysts have a tendency to focus on the content of the message, McLuhan reminds us that we can’t forget the importance of the medium itself by which the message is transmitted and its crucial importance in the transmission and reception of the content. It interesting and important to keep in mind how it is that we receive the information that we receive and how it is that the medium affects our understanding of the world. Using as an example Berlusconi, an important individual regarding this theory, Berlusconi would not exist if it weren’t for the television, or at least not as we know him today, and never would have gotten where he is. His strategy is so highly dependent on the many media forms and so little on his actual political capabilities and ideological values that without his control over the inaccurate messages broadcasted to his viewers, he would have much more difficulty if not absolutely no success in gaining the support of the majority.

The age of the transmission model of communication is slowing down and we are moving more and more towards a ritual model. According to Carey, the transmission model is defined by terms such as imparting, sending, transmitting, or giving information to others. This is being more and more challenged by new media which aim to reach a form of sharing information, in which people are participants of their media, there is a sense of community, of give and take. This concept of ritual versus transmission is similar to the concept of one-to-many versus many-to-many. While each of these concepts helps in analyzing communication, it is important to keep in mind counter arguments. The transmission model tends to assume that society is simply injected with information and tends to lack the individual aspect behind the machine, that along with the message there is a receiver and the encoded message may not always be decoded using the preferred reading. The ritual model has loopholes as well. The information transmitted is different from individual to individual based on personal interest, thus we are fed what the computer understands us to want, not necessarily what we should perhaps see. This too has limitations in that we all receive different information and it may not always be the information that we should receive or may like to receive, but rather what a machine thinks we want.