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Interesting article on the Matrix.


And the Oscar for Best Scholar . . .
By MICHAEL AGGER
Cornel West plays Councillor West in "The Matrix
Reloaded."
What is Cornel West doing in "The Matrix Reloaded"?

Maybe this Princeton philosophy professor's cameo
shouldn't be a surprise. In 1999, Larry and Andy
Wachowski stated their ambition to make an
"intellectual action movie" and they actually pulled
it off. The first "Matrix" movie gave the equivalent
of a cinematic high-five to the French thinker and
philosopher Jean Baudrillard by featuring his book
"Simulacra and Simulation" in an early scene. If you
look closely (and people did), you could see that the
book was open to a particular chapter, "On Nihilism."
The Wachowski brothers seized upon Mr. Baudrillard's
general nihilistic notion that we must deconstruct the
images (television, movies, advertising, clothing)
that oppress us and imbue them with a new set of
values. They skillfully retold an archetypal messiah
story with a dash of postmodern theory.

In an interview with The New York Times last year, Mr.
Baudrillard said that the movie's use of his work
"stemmed mostly from misunderstandings." But this
time, the Wachowskis have found a more willing
philosophical accomplice. Dr. West appears (minus his
trademark glasses) as a wise councillor of Zion, the
last free human city on earth. He delivers only one
line, but it's a doozy: "Comprehension is not
requisite for cooperation." Those words have already
been spotted on T-shirts in Los Angeles.

Like the Wachowskis, Dr. West draws on an impressively
wide array of sources for his work. And Dr. West has
always aspired to be a very public intellectual — he's
recorded a rap album, he's a regular on television
shows and he writes for a nonacademic audience in
publications like Spin — so it's not surprising to
find him involved in one of the biggest spectacles of
the decade. A self-described "intellectual freedom
fighter," his studies address the legacy of racism and
the problem of nihilism in black America. Larry
Wachowski loved Dr. West's writings so much —
particularly the books "Race Matters" and "Prophesy
Deliverance!" — that he decided to write a role for
Dr. West in the movie, playing a loose version of
himself. Which makes one wonder: after the Wachowskis
told us to deconstruct reality Ã* la Baudrillard, are
they now rebuilding reality with the ideas of Dr.
West?

Reached by telephone in his office in Princeton, Dr.
West said that he and the Wachowski brothers had come
together in "acknowledging the full-fledged and
complex humanity of black people, which is a
relatively new idea in Hollywood given pervasive
racist stereotypes." And, indeed, "The Matrix
Reloaded" gives prominent roles and screen time to
African-American stars like Laurence Fishburne and
Jada Pinkett Smith. A more tantalizing connection
seems to be Dr. West's notion of the jazz freedom
fighter that concludes his book "Race Matters." He
writes: "I use the term `jazz' here not so much as a
term for a musical art form as for a mode of being in
the world, an improvisational mode of protean, fluid
and flexible dispositions toward reality suspicious of
`either/or viewpoints.' "

This seems to jibe with the direction that Neo, the
character played by Mr. Reeves, is taking, as he
discovers that the world of the Matrix is not
operating by fixed rules but is something more
permeable and uncertain. Dr. West also pointed out
that "the second Matrix movie actually critiques the
idea of the first. It's suspicious of salvation
narratives. It's deeply anti-dogmatic. The critics
haven't figured that out yet, but the scholars will
get to it."

While in Sydney for the movie shoot, Dr. West said he
and the Wachowskis had bonded over "wrestling with the
meaning of life and the purpose of human existence."
They share an affinity for plucking ideas from
religion, philosophy, pop music, television and
movies, and synthesizing them into a prophetic,
liberating message. They want to make the world a more
philosophical place. (The brothers even gave reading
assignments to all of the principal actors in the
movie.)

Dr. West was coy when asked if he had a longer speech
in the final installment of the trilogy, but he did
say that he will appear in a documentary about the
series where he expounds further on his ideas. Until
then, he has some advice for the audiences going to
see the movie: "You've got to look beneath the special
effects."

{Michael Agger is an editor and writer for the Goings
On About Town section of The New Yorker.}