the ramble dump

'The most logical way is to think that the death god exists.'

I recently discovered the Death Note franchise, apparently very popular worldwide, via an interesting tie with the title logo on it that somebody was wearing in a photograph. It's one of many Japanese franchises, it seems, that started out as a manga, received an anime adaptation and made its way to live-action films, soon to be needlessly remade again for a Western audience.

I got hold of the live-action film first, or at least the first part of it (they split it into two), expecting a pretty awful adaptation but feeling, for some reason, in the mood for just that. But though it felt like a TV production at times, mostly in special effects, and though I'd managed to get a horrible dubbed version which made it very hard to take seriously (as dubbing always does), it was better than I expected, and about halfway through the second one, The Last Name (after a switch to subtitles), I realised that I was actually really enjoying it.

The reason for that is genuinely clever writing, and a plot that feels like it really earns all of its twists and developments, without pulling its advancements out of thin air or resorting to the abuse of narrative tricks like misdirection.

The premise of the film is that a college-aged boy, Light Yagami, finds a Death Note dropped by a shinigami--a death god--called Ryuk. The Death Note is a notebook that causes the death of anyone whose name is written inside it as long as the user has the face of that person in mind. It contains a list of written rules specifying the terms and conditions regarding how exactly it can be used, with stuff like time limits, detailing the way a person dies, etc; all kinds of arbitrary rules resembling those of a kid making up a game as he goes along, with the primary purpose of imposing some limitations so the concept can be integrated and doesn't become immediately unwieldy and the story over very quickly.

With this context set, the story then develops into a continually inverted cat-and-mouse game between Light Yagami and the equally intelligent mysterious detective known only as L, who is trying to track him down. Obviously the concept behind the Death Note opens the story up for a lot of big questions about murder, justice, morality and so on, but the battle between these two characters, the ongoing attempts by each to outwit the other, is where this story really finds its grip.

And it works so well because it uses the rules of the Death Note (and one or two others given by the shinigami) to frame it, providing all kinds of stuff for the characters to get around or deduce or to use in imaginative ways. Characters are constantly testing the boundaries and making sacrifices, but always operating strictly by this Death Note logic, however arbitrary that logic might be. It's a what-if scenario that almost invites the viewer to take part, because we're free to try and figure out for ourselves how we might act in each situation and what the next move might be.

The result of all this is that the plot develops with some integrity, consistency and thus believability, becoming wholly immersive even though Light does have an obviously computer-generated shinigami hovering over his shoulder all the time. The story sucks you in anyway, and whatever relevance there is to the obvious big themes of morality and justice comes to arise naturally, making the whole thing much more honest and worthwhile.

This kind of sums up for me, in a sense, the strength of the sort of storytelling that isn't a slave to the kind of realism that demands a world exactly like ours, whether this fictional world logic comes to be the focused object of the plot, like the Death Note or Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics or the Loom of Fate in that ridiculous film Wanted, or whether it functions as a wider truth of the world, like magic in a Tolkien-type fantasy or the existence of anthropomorphic aliens in a space opera. These worlds, these what-if scenarios, are a way of framing our experience that allows us to transcend the literal facts of how things really, physically are in order to focus in different ways on those aspects of experience that make us tell stories in the first place. And this is something all stories do to some extent, by virtue of plotting at all.

Death Note does it well.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, morality, rabbit-hole theory, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 6:14 PM 0 comments

Warning: the following contains spoilers for 24 Season 7.

JACK BAUER
I can't tell you what to do. I've been wrestling with this one my whole life. I see fifteen people held hostage and...everything else goes out the window. I will do whatever it takes to save them and I mean whatever it takes. I guess maybe I thought...if I save them...I save myself.

RENEE WALKER
Do you regret anything that you did today?

JACK BAUER
No. But then again, I don't work for the FBI.

RENEE WALKER
I don't understand.

JACK BAUER
You took an oath. You made a promise to uphold the law. When you cross that line it always starts with a small step. Before you know it you're running as fast as you can in the wrong direction, just to justify what you started in the first place. These laws were written by much smarter men than me. And in the end I know that these laws have to be more important than the fifteen people on the bus. I know that's right. In my mind, I know that's right. I just don't think my heart could ever have lived with that. I guess the only advice I can give you is...try to make choices that you can live with.

The above exchange, from the final episode of 24 Season 7, book-ends an exploration of Jack Bauer's politics that began with his trial for criminal actions in the season's premiere. I don't really want to get into a debate about the actual politics here, but rather once again look at the way that such politics have been handled by the show in this latest season, whose thematic focus has been a specific response to the controversy surrounding the depiction of its protagonist's dubious actions.

As mentioned, this was done rather bluntly in the first episode by supposedly cutting straight to the chase and placing Bauer in a Senate hearing. I found this scene pretty obnoxious for the way in which it seemed to serve only as an opportunity for some self-righteous, grandstanding obstinance by the character of Jack Bauer, before a committee whose integrity was compromised by an individual, it is stated, with questionable motives. Combined with the introduction of very minor characters whose sole purpose was to give Bauer outpourings of sympathy and to berate the very idea of a trial in the first place, the whole premise felt like something of a bitter joke and a middle finger to the prospect of any genuine exploration.

Fortunately, the season improved. It was by far at its best when it avoided such clumsy handling of politics and went straight for the story, but when it did pause to ponder the actions of Jack Bauer and his associates, we soon learn that Jack isn't as certain about his actions as his public performance at the start would have us believe. The conversation quoted above serves as a kind of thematic epilogue, a welcome moment in which Bauer openly admits to having very human motives that may not always have led to the right decisions, even though he might strongly feel that they do. Though a little stilted and inelegantly inserted, it does allow Jack some room as a character in his own right by openly separating his justification from what appears to be the writers' tentative moral conclusion that the laws should always be upheld, a point that is emphasised by President Taylor's difficult sacrifice in the ending of a parallel storyline.

That both Jack Bauer and Allison Taylor seem to support this conclusion might seem to threaten the morality of the story with too much closure, and yet we see that Taylor is racked with guilt, acknowledging that her decision was at least difficult if not wrong, and Bauer has two clearly conflicting views that never completely resolve, leaving the matter very open to suggestion. In addition to this, Bauer's monologue is directed at Renee Walker, whom at certain points in the story had functioned as an alarmingly easily persuaded advocate of his questionable approach, despite some occasional slapping fits, and yet her anxious recourse to Jack's advice denies her, in this final instance, an easy answer. This resolves the potential problem of her portrayal as some kind of student for whom lessons are learned, a position that could very easily be extended to the audience. We never find out what she decides to do to the creepy, uncooperative bad guy. Thus the writers' moral conclusion remains tentative, never definite. Until next season, at least.

And this, of course, is just how it ends. Throughout the season, Jack has been challenged by good guys and loyal friends who are reluctant to compromise the law and won't abide by his more drastic measures: old pal Bill Buchanan refuses to torture a suspect despite a time-sensitive situation; Jack constantly butts heads with FBI Special Agent in Charge Larry Moss, who replaces the usual role of bureaucratic obstacle as someone who might just have a point; and it's even contrived that Jack gets to pay a visit to Senator Blaine Mayer, the man out for his blood in the earlier trial scene, where we discover that the Senator might not be quite the affront to heroism he was made out to be in his first appearance. The fact that all three of these men wind up dead is, I'm sure, purely incidental. And while in itself the court scene seemed guilty of pretty extreme and disingenuous posturing, the ongoing exploration of the theme renders it merely a starting point, from which some of the caricatures and assumptions are gradually dismantled.

24 remains, in many ways, pretty mindless entertainment, with the primary aim of pushing the plot along from one dramatic setpiece to the next. But its emotional and intellectual core, in its more successful storylines, has always been its investment in character, even if over time it has come to abuse and depend on the fact that we often find ourselves so gripped by the story just to see if a character will make it through the day alive. It's not great that the writers still resort to the hamfisted insertion of clumsy exposition wherever they can find a gap between the action, and there is still a little too much posturing in the kind of speeches we're offered--Jack's confession speech, for example, strikes me as a very deliberate, slightly pompous act by the writers of stepping back from the accusations that have been levelled at them--but it does something, at least, to return the focus to character. And it acknowledges the kind of challenge that has always made the series interesting beyond the excitement of gunfights and explosions--potential that was ignominiously shat upon by the obstinate, closed-book attitude of the season's opening scenes, or so it seemed. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't in it for the instant, visceral gratification as much as anyone else, but it wasn't this alone that got me hooked on the show in the first place, and I'm glad that, however bluntly they've done it, the writers have worked a little harder to treat the day-of-difficult-decisions premise with some of the complexity it deserves.

All in all, I thought the seventh season was pretty good. I get too caught up in my own rants to mention the things that I actually really liked, but there were plenty of them. And at least now a regular injection of hyoscine-pentothal to the brain is not needed to obscure my memory of Season 6.

Labels: 24, i am the ramblemaster, morality

# posted by Chris @ 3:57 PM 0 comments

[Warning: the following contains very minor spoilers for the first two episodes of 24 Season 7.]

I finally got around to watching the two-episode premiere of 24 Season 7. It's pretty good, so far, though it's amazing how different it feels just by giving everything the subtle blue bias of its Washington DC location rather than the old yellow. The story hasn't really got a great pace going yet, but I'm hoping that will be remedied in the next few episodes.

I'd already seen the first fifteen minutes as a bonus feature on the Redemption DVD, so I'd already seen the bit I'd been wincing at since they'd shown bits of it in the trailer: Jack Bauer on trial. In the context of the show's internal history, we'd feel that maybe Jack Bauer should have earned a little more respect by saving the (American) world as many times as he has--which is exactly what the writers are angling for, and might have been something they got away with more comfortably had the show not insisted on being so politically charged.

By that I mean that there's no way that this isn't some kind of pointed response to the controversy about the show's repeated depiction of torture. And it's a bit I knew I was going to dislike, because even in the trailer the Senator conducting the trial is characterised as smug, elaborated on in the actual episode as someone with an agenda who is somehow false in his supposed representation of the American people. Once again, the writers are disingenuously attaching negative personality traits to put down those political views critical of the kind of Jack Bauer Justice that the show continually touts.

The fact is, Jack Bauer is 'above the law' because he exists under fantastical terms. Throughout the show's history, the writers have granted that nearly all of Jack Bauer's hunches be proven correct in all the situations that they have contrived, so much so that even in the earlier seasons it had become a character trait. It's in the same way that torture is always depicted as a failsafe method of extracting the truth, with only one or two exceptions. So when people like US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia try to defend Jack Bauer-like actions in the real world, what they don't seem to realise is how mind-bogglingly unlikely it is that this will be the case with any real person and any real instance where torture might be considered. It seems painfully obvious to say, and yet apparently it still needs saying: any greater-good logic you might want to apply in policy-making is just not validated by the fictional actions of Jack Bauer. The way the world works in 24 is skewed to evoke sympathy and respect for a protagonist who is just as fantastical as any other superhero. And a superhero he is.

So this is why I found the trial scene so obnoxious. Bauer makes it clear that he's willing to have his actions judged by the American people, but it's so obvious that the genuine opinion of 'the people' (as opposed to that represented by the Senator) is assumed to be in his favour, and by extension in favour of the show's politics generally. This is evidenced a short while later by Bauer's conversation with the FBI agent in the car, who says that he believes putting Bauer on trial was 'wrong' and that he's 'not the only one who thinks so'. In the context of Jack Bauer's world alone, where someone like Jack Bauer exists and has done what he's done, it might make sense for us to share the FBI agent's opinion (assuming the trial is as unfair as purported, and not just trying to establish the truth). And in a similar situation in the real world, we might even decide the same. But the writers can't seem to let Bauer just exist as a character who has done a lot of questionable things, whatever his reasons might be for doing so and even if we feel that he is generally a good person. They insist on being Jack Bauer apologists and going out of their way to excuse or even applaud everything he's done. As always, he's made to be completely absolute and unquestionable, and it's not necessary. The writers become exactly like the Senator: guilty of deliberate distortion for the sake of an agenda, and eager to pre-emptively deal moral judgement in place of having 'the people'--in this case, the audience--decide for themselves.

As scenes like the trial demonstrate, 24 is explicitly reacting to outside criticism, to the point where it appears to revel in the controversy, if the Fox website's recent promotion in the form of the 24 Dossier is anything to go by, using it as a selling point. This strikes me as a little perverse, for as long as they're going to be so insistently black-and-white in their treatment of Bauer in the show itself. It's a case of the writers once again failing to address an issue with the integrity it deserves. Whether 24 wants to be taken as displaying real political consciousness, or whether it's supposed to be taken as pure entertainment--which I just don't think is possible, given its subject matter--posturing like this just shouldn't take place.

In his conversation with the aforementioned FBI agent, Bauer says:

It's better that everything comes out in the open. We've done so many secret things over the years. In the name of protecting this country, we've created two worlds: ours and the people we promised to protect. They deserve to know the truth. And they can decide how far they want to let us go.

This is good stuff. It's just a shame that the writers give it so much bias in their insistent arbitration. For as long as they do, the show remains an unsuitable platform or medium for such discussion. In any debate about the show's politics, it has to be acknowledged that there are two worlds here also: Jack Bauer's world and the real world. And the show's creators are only widening the gap when they do what they've done by putting Bauer on such a sham of a trial.

Still...I'm expecting good things this season. Aside from all the above stuff, it's made a promising start.

Update: I just watched episode three, blissfully free of the mangled politics that plagued the first two episodes. And you know what? 24 is awesome.

Labels: 24, i am the ramblemaster, morality

# posted by Chris @ 5:36 PM 0 comments

So it's Christmas time again, and it's become tradition that every Christmas I get some delicious pop fiction to suit the dumbed-down state of my brain. It's a little break from the higher forms of literature that I spend my academic life consuming. As it's only Christmas Eve and I don't yet have a fresh supply, I've been reading one of last year's that I never got around to finishing: a 24 Declassified novel by Marc Cerasini called Trojan Horse.

Now, I've read two of these 24 novels before, and generally they're pretty decent for what they are. But there are a few things that really jumped out at me in this one as, well, plain bad form.

Take the following extract. This little section of conversation crops up as characters Tony Almeida and Fay Hubley are setting up equipment in their undercover hideout.

Tony folded his arms. "Funny how extending the RICO Act makes some people crazy. But if we can use these laws to prosecute drug dealers, why not apply the same laws to stopping terrorists, too?"

"Yeah, strange how no one complains about the IRS knowing every single financial transaction a citizen makes in a given year, but knowing what book a suspect borrows from the library is suddenly a problem."

"It's the theoretical world versus the real world," said Tony. "Most people aren't lying awake at night worrying whether the Feds know what book they borrowed from the library. They're worried red tape is going to prevent the government from failing to stop a terrorist attack like Beslan, or Bali, or London."

Fay fumbled with one of the laptops, almost losing her towel. "Here, check this out."

Sexual tension ensues.

But what the hell was all that doing there, so sneakily wedged in between some technobabble and a meaningful shoulder massage? Were we supposed to believe that this was part of natural conversation? There's nothing like sticking your opinion in the mouths of some righteous fictional characters as they're out saving the world to lend it some credibility, but could Mr Cerasini not have been a little less blatant? The TV show from whence this came also has a bad habit of less-than-subtle political posturing, but it was still a surprise to find it quite so barefaced, slipped into the scene as it was. A similar effect would be achieved by the TV show if Jack Bauer were in a scene brushing his teeth and suddenly turned to the camera to advertise the toothpaste.

And it gets worse.

He could see the war behind Castalano's eyes. "Believe me, Frank," Jack continued. "I can break this man, but not here. Police methods are inadequate in the face of this man's fanaticism."

Castalano's features darkened. "A couple of years ago, the loss of basic civil liberties you're talking about would have scared the hell out of me...but that was before I saw the horrors in Hugh Vetri's home this morning."

The detective paused, thought of that van full of innocent kids, thought of his own.

Context: Hugh Vetri is a movie director who is murdered by said man along with his wife and child. Detective Castalano is then recalling an event that took place once this murderer fled the scene in Vetri's car: the man, high on drugs and speeding, accidentally forces a van full of church-going kids off the road (along with the bus driver, described beforehand as 'a mother of five') before fleeing the scene again. Not very morally responsible of him, you might agree. But even though what happened with 'that van full of innocent kids' is completely incidental to the suspect's fanaticism, note the recourse to a 'think of the children' sentimentality used to help justify Castalano's decision anyway.

I'm not even going to get into the dubious logic of Jack Bauer's request. The politics behind it are questionable enough--Jack isn't even aware of any time-sensitive situation at this point, which is usually what the show uses to rationalise such actions--but Cerasini's attempts to feed it to us, his disingenuous manipulation of our emotions over such a tricky subject, strikes me as grotesque.

The man's eyes glazed once again and he struggled anew. His cries were in another language now. Castalano figured it was some form of Arabic because the words Allah Akbar were repeated many times--never a good sign.

Yeah, you hear someone uttering that and you know you've got a madman on your hands. If they say it ten times, you've got yourself a terrorist. Detective Castalano is experienced enough to know that his man didn't even need the fresh blood around his mouth from having recently ripped open a State Trooper's carotid artery with his teeth; he didn't need to be screaming or rambling or jumping about. He just needed to say the A-word, and Detective Frank Castalano knew in his stomach that something was wrong.

Maybe I should blame clumsy syntax, but I think Mr Cerasini just let slip a prejudice.

And now Mr Cerasini's most heinous crime, which I have saved until last.

"Listen, Milo...I updated the archives last night at nine o'clock, before I went home. You can see the update log right on the screen."

"Calm down. I'm not accusing you of anything."

"Can you isolate it?"

"W00t!" cheered Milo. "I already have."

W00t? W00t?

Labels: 24, morality

# posted by Chris @ 11:33 AM 0 comments

[Warning: the following contains spoilers great and small for 24 Seasons 1-6, and also Redemption.]

Despite its mangled politics, occasional stink of nationalism, stockpiles of kitschy villains and recent abuse of just about every convention that made it such a gripping show in the first place, 24 remains the best thing on television. When it succeeds, which it often does, it showcases the thriller as an artform: its primary objective is to keep the viewer gripped, immersed in the story from start to finish, through whatever means it has at its disposal. When it's at its best, the creators achieve a kind of fireworks display of cause and effect: cleverly interwoven plot-threads lead to countless perilous situations, small triumphs and unexpected outcomes. We find ourself engaged with characters we can love and hate and, best of all, not really know what to think of with the more complex characters about whom we're constantly trying to make up our minds. Supported by all the cinematic magic of camerawork, split-screen boxes, music and sound effects, reactive character dynamics are played off each other and multiple storylines collide with explosive results--all with the aim of throwing us into the next episode so that we can find out what happens next.

In other words, it makes for stellar entertainment. Pandering to the audience as it does (if it didn't do that to some extent, we'd probably never have reached Season 7), 24 would probably not get many marks from, say, Oscar Wilde for artistic merit, but, pure plot-machine though it may be, true to its genre it delivers the sheer thrill of the story itself. And it is still very much capable of delivering its share of interesting characters whose predicaments, moral or mortal or both, feel worth caring about--even if during its less successful moments the whole show ends up being carried by the presence of Jack Bauer alone.

The show's writers have in the past made public knowledge their lack of planning, which means to a large extent they're making it up as they go along. Sometimes this backfires and we're left, for example, with Kim Bauer stuck in Season 2's infamous cougar trap (amongst other things), the dubious writing off of Season 3's Salazar arc, Marwan's overstayed welcome in Season 4, or, let's be honest, the majority of Season 6--but this making it up as they go along doesn't mean that the show lacks substance or isn't worth investing in. Most of the time, through equal amounts of skill and perhaps happy accident, amongst all the action and technobabble and soap opera that is generated in a standard episode, the writers have an uncanny knack for finding gold.

This ongoing generation of plot can be just as fruitful as it is frustrating; for example, Seasons 3 and 4 both feature heavily contrived storylines with the apparently sole purpose of bringing back old fan favourites: Nina Myers and Sherry Palmer in one; Tony, Michelle and David Palmer in the other. But while, in my view, the second return of Nina and Sherry does nothing but damage their credibility as characters after the decent storylines they had in the previous two seasons (and even in Season 2, Nina's reappearance had the stink of contrivance), the writers' story for reintroducing David Palmer in Season 4 inadvertently gave rise to the majority of Season 5's incredibly compelling story, and one of the most interesting and complex characters in 24 history, in the form of Charles Logan. It's worth noting--to bring Oscar Wilde's points back into play--that it's pretty much never the regurgitation of fan favourites itself that generates the good story, and indeed most missteps in 24 seem to come from being overly attentive to the audience in this way (not dissimilar to the Season 3 stories of Sherry and Nina are the completely arbitrary shock deaths of main characters in Season 6, for example). On the other hand, when the writers are paying more attention to the story than the audience and seem to do a good job of getting a feel for the characters, that's when we get the good stuff. In Logan's case, the high quality of Gregory Itzin's acting is no doubt partly responsible for that character's success, and the same is true of Jean Smart's Martha Logan; but together these characters offer many of the most gripping, believable moments in Season 5 because, whatever the reasons are for why they emerged in the first place, the writers have, so to speak, listened to the needs of the story instead of just going for what the fans want. Their brief reappearance in Season 6 was, tellingly, less convincing.

* * *

What 24 is especially good at is presenting us with those grey areas of morality: putting us in those tense and tortuous dilemmas, forcing the characters to act in various situations and make choices that most people would be horrified to even consider. Where I think it disappoints, however (and somewhat paradoxically), is in sometimes being too black-and-white in then addressing these situations, at times very blatantly appointing itself as the moral arbiter. Jack Bauer himself is the perfect example of this paradox: as the seasons progress, he becomes an increasingly unhinged character, leaving us oggling as he tortures and later massacres his way through all these people to get to where he needs to be; but his conduct is somehow never questionable. One way or another, it's always justified by the writers and there is never any point at which we're meant to view Jack as anything but a morally absolute, heroic character. A 'greater good' logic to the character's motives is not only employed by the writers but endorsed, and however dubious or valid that logic might be, in the end it undermines the talking point of these complex situations by forcing the answer on us. Torture done by Jack Bauer, for example, is meant to be shocking--at least as far as drama is concerned--but it's also meant to be perfectly excusable whenever he does it. The writers are happy to show us all kinds of horrors portrayed by Jack Bauer for the purposes of entertainment--something to 'ooh' and 'aah' at--but they're constantly acting as apologists on his behalf, leading to a very confused sense of morality for the show itself.

In addition to this, the moral arbitration is often done disingenuously: whether it's to Bauer's greater-good imperative or unhinged character that we're supposed to attribute his murder of Marshall Goren in the first episode of Season 2, the act is excused by the fact that Goren is made to be a murderer and a paedophile and, on top of that, smug and unlikeable in every possible way, right down to blowing a dirty little kiss to Michelle. The majority of villains are so single-minded as to be cartoon characters, and we don't feel bad about the hundreds of people Jack mows his way through, because they're rarely given any character or backstory at all. They're evil, mindless goons because they work for the terrorist mastermind, and we don't have to deal with any of the possible reasons why they might have ended up where they are in the first place because they're just henchmen and that's that. This fact is enough to sentence them to death, and we don't even flinch when they go down. In the end, they're really nothing more than terrorist decoration. (Go buy the boxset for the Æon Flux animated series and watch 'Pilot'--it illustrates this point perfectly.)

There are a few occasions where the writers seem unwilling to morally arbitrate because they've offered us a moral complexity that seems too difficult for them to deal with conclusively, and they instead find the easy way out, like introducing a character just to get Stephen Saunders shot dead in Season 3, or having Dina Araz executed off-screen in Season 4, or killing off reformed terrorist Hamri Al-Assad in Season 6--a mistake seeing as he was one of the very few interesting characters in that season. In these cases, the characters are too morally complex to keep on living: they've served their purpose of putting some plotworthy moral complexity on display and then there has to be a way of removing them so the writers are freed from the responsibility of judging definitively in the way they can do so easily with the cartoon goons. Similarly, Mike Novick never has to suffer the true consequences of his role in Lynn Kresge's stairwell plummet because we never find out if she lives or dies. If she did die, Mike's character might be all the more tainted in our view; if she didn't, Mike probably wouldn't be in Seasons 4 and 5. But that particular part of Mike's history is essentially voided: he gets to reappear as if Lynn really is out of the picture, but without ever having to shoulder the responsibility of his complicity in her death.

The show also has the nasty habit of taking political potshots through its characters: Season 4's 'Amnesty Global' representative is a plot complication and therefore a hindrance to the show's righteous, ever-necessary brand of Jack Bauer Justice™; and Redemption's United Nations worker is nothing but a slimy coward. The writers are dutiful enough to balance their portayal of evil cartoon Muslims/Arabs with good cartoon Muslims/Arabs (we get that amazingly cringeworthy dialogue with the Arab shop-owners in Season 4), but one suspects that this has more to do with dodging the fallout of a controversial subject rather than any attempts to seriously address the situation.

As a result of all this, the kind of verbal sparring seen between Karen Hayes and Tom Lennox in Season 6 is just painful--not because it doesn't, in its very simple way, illustrate a potential debate, but because it really has no place in this show. As much as it might be a 'political thriller' and use the War on Terror as its subject matter from Season 2 onwards, the way the writers approach political issues in 24 strikes me as, by and large, irresponsible, and as much as I might agree with Hayes' side of the argument with regards to Lennox's 'detention facilities', I think the show would be better off if it didn't try so awkwardly to align itself at all (especially as, in this particular case, it feels like another very forced, shallow effort to defend itself against claims of political bias). A writer's personal opinion is always going to seep through into his or her work, but the subject matter can be dealt with in a way that's not so heavy-handed. The writers do later redeem themselves a little by balancing Lennox's character, and he ends up being one of the season's better offerings, but it's still clear that we're supposed to get behind Karen Hayes in that debate--an inevitable result of her being portrayed as the more sympathetic character, just like we're always supposed to be on Jack's side. A viewer's sympathies are always manipulated by the way characters are represented, and this makes using them as a platform for two sides of a supposedly objective debate distorting and dishonest.

* * *

When it achieves at least some level of subtlety, 24 demonstrates expertly the virtues of the thriller's structure, the whole plot taking the form of a kind of giant iceberg, or an onion, or whatever metaphor you like for the idea that there's always, always a lot more to the events taking place than we at first suspect--that things are not what they seem, and that any moment the floor can be pulled out from beneath everything we thought we knew. We hitch onto the back of the narrative of multiple characters, all of whom may yet present previously unseen sides to themselves, and follow their stories as in gradual increments all the layers of the plot are peeled back to reveal a new perspective--possibly a whole new onion. And on whatever level we're invested with these characters, be it sympathetically rooting for them or academically detached, we share their multiple experiences as they're left to keep their heads admidst a sense of mounting absurdity, constantly trying to form a picture for ourselves in the plot's continually shifting landscape.

Thus, the recipient is constantly left to mentally parse the way in which further aspects to the plot are revealed. It is the suggestion in these revelations, the implications of these new perspectives on how we view everything else in the story, that make the thriller a valuable tool for exploration of an idea. In this way, the author is repeatedly, deliberately, overturning the audience's assumptions. And this has the potential to extend a long way. Though the author will, of course, always have their own assumptions that will no doubt show up their work, the audience is deliberately prevented from ever absolutely trusting anything that the story says is occurring at any given time, encouraging them to engage in a process of perhaps doubting even those assumptions that were unintentional.

There will obviously always be limits to this: like the author, the viewer cannot be depended on to recognise every single assumption for what it is. But there remains a huge difference between something that presents itself as a moral arbiter and something that merely suggests. 24, along with most other pulpy thrillers, doesn't make the most of its potential for exploration nearly as much as it could: it forsakes the value of ambiguity, the complexity of suggestion, by telling you exactly what you're supposed to think, having the habit of making it very clear where you're supposed to align yourself, with a tendency to stomp the first hints of doubt about an absolute perspective wherever it can and quickly replacing it with another assumption, equally absolute and unquestionable: a character, for example, is usually either good or evil at any given time, else they are treated somehow evasively (see above). At the end of a 24 story, the big picture is supposed to be very clear. At the end of a thriller that's a little less presumptuous, the picture might remain complex and hazy, but in encouraging a more active participation on the part of the recipient, it would be more valuable as an artwork. As a political thriller, 24 has always had the potential to achieve this, and it would not necessarily have lost its grip for it--in fact, its grip would probably have been all the tighter as a result. Unfortunately, ratings have always been the show's primary concern, and ratings are rarely achieved by requiring from the audience anything but the least amount of effort.

I want to add that I'm not against something that offers nothing more than escapism, as I'm sure this has benefits in itself. But the purpose of 24 becomes dubious, if not downright dangerous, because its chosen subject matter necessarily makes it political--it would do even if the creators didn't so explicitly advertise it as 'relevant' in this way--and the writers' treatment of this subject matter, for all the reasons I've mentioned above, prevents the show's politics from being as considered as they should be. There are many times when 24 demonstrates brilliance at the art of immersive storytelling, but despite its conceits of exploring morally and politically difficult situations, more often than not easy answers, morally speaking, are offered in the name of passive entertainment and pushing the story along, turning these in-story dilemmas into something of a cheap thrill.

Labels: 24, aeon flux, i am the ramblemaster, morality

# posted by Chris @ 1:53 AM 0 comments

It returned to that same old fight, as it always does after a few drinks. I was arguing that literature can change the way people look at the world. Then one friend asked me something interesting. She asked, 'But has there really been a book that's done that? What novel has changed your life?'

I paused. The honest answer was that no single novel had ever radically changed my outlook on life. I told her that. But then I told her that literature doesn't need to radically change anything. It only has to make you think.

We talked about Orwell's 1984. It was her own choice of example, presumably because it has had the label of 'great novel' attached to it. She seemed to view it as some kind of paranoid manifesto against government and surveillance and declared it unlikely. I countered that it served as a warning. Maybe it was unlikely to happen, but it wasn't just about how many CCTV cameras we get captured on every day. I told her it was about the potential dangers of a controlling government, refuting as I usually do the line of thought that 'if you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about', because that entirely depends on what the government considers to be 'wrong'. If you have a Big Brother character whose main aim is to stay in power, 'wrong' could be anything that is felt to be a threat to that power. This threat could even be the ability of people to think for themselves: while we were so busy arguing over surveillance, we both completely forgot to mention anything about doublethink, about dumbing down the language, about how this language can be used to control...

1984 isn't important because it makes us go around pointing the accusing finger at every sign of government we see. It's not seeking revolution through paranoia. It's there to make us think. It is there to make us aware of the potential issues, however much we might feel they apply to our own lives, our own government, our own whatever.

No single book has ever completely changed how I look at the world, but countless novels have, for better or for worse, caused countless small shifts in my perspective. Like all art, literature can still have massive influence on the way we think. I think it's worth taking seriously just for that.

Labels: censorship, i am the ramblemaster, literature, morality, orwell

# posted by Chris @ 11:32 AM 1 comments

Today, in an effort to be healthy, I bought an apple for 35p.

It has since acquired some kind of disease.



Will trade for salt and vinegar crisps.

Labels: apples, disease, morality

# posted by Chris @ 2:13 PM 0 comments

I'm not getting Halo 3. Not any time soon, at least. The reason is simple: I don't have an Xbox 360. The problem with following video game franchises is that they are so ridiculously expensive. If you're lucky, you'll get one or two games out of one console. Then the industry will have advanced enough to require the next generation of consoles, and sometimes franchises will switch which series of consoles they play on to make it even more complicated. This latter point is not the case with the Halo series, but it was with another favourite of mine, Oddworld. Either way, however, that's £30-40 dished out for each game these days, on top of the cost of whatever mercilessly progressing technology is required to play it. This may be a reasonable price for what you're getting, but that issue aside, the endeavour remains gorgingly uncheap.

I wish I was getting Halo 3. I want to splatter higher-definition aliens. I want to experience that familiar and solid gameplay at the next level, as well as enjoying all the exciting new stuff. I want to see how the story ends. In many ways, a post about Halo 3 is pointless, because I haven't played it and therefore can't praise or bewail things all that much. But I thought I'd share my reasons for why I liked the first two games, which I hope have made it through to the third.

Originally, I couldn't have cared less about Halo. I would happily have chosen a PS2 to get my hands on the next Tekken game, but my brother persuaded me that we should go for an Xbox because that had the next Oddworld instalment. On Christmas Day, I waited impatiently to play it, and was unimpressed with Halo and the Star Trek aesthetic of the people behind bland control panels in the Pillar of Autumn opening sequence. Captain Keyes placed his blocky fingers thoughtfully at the chin of his barely moving face in utmost seriousness, and I laughed.

But when I gave it a chance, it was a lot of fun to play. Halo succeeds as a solid game because it's not overly complicated - it essentially provides you with lots of aliens to eliminate - but what it does, it does extremely well. It feels well-rounded and the campaign battles feel well-matched and satisfying, with very few encounters that will spike your irritation too much. Depending on the level of difficulty, it's often challenging but almost always enjoyable.

The aesthetic of the game also contributes to this feeling of a happy balance. The universe of Halo is a clunky, colourful one; slightly cartoonish, but perfectly capable of introducing darker themes and creepy places. The best example of this is probably how the walls end up smeared in copious amounts of brightly coloured alien blood. It's a bit like the Harry Potter of the video game world (in more than just popularity and hype, although perhaps for the same reasons): it never ventures too far in any direction and is arguably not all that innovative in terms of its medium¹ nor of the story itself, but while critics have accused both franchises of a certain mediocrity in this respect, as I already said about Potter, I think this criticism sort misses the point: in what they're trying to do - creating an entertaining and immersive experience - they succeed. And, in Halo's case, I think it exceeds. Halo hasn't marched forward in innovation, but it has expertly refined its medium, striking a successful balance with all the things it deals with.

Given that many elements of the story are pretty generic, there must something else that gives the story itself some interest. Like a Potter book, the plot is immersive enough. The story in the games themselves is really a bare minimum, but in the franchise as a whole they have a pretty good mythology going. Without knowing the ending, I don't know if it all leads to a satisfying conclusion, but so far it's been intriguing. What I find most appealing about the story, however, is exactly how they go about it.

Amidst all the generic sci-fi stuff, coupled with its unusual aesthetic, the series' story does have a few of its own unique quirks that, if nothing else, serve to give it character. I'd highlight characters like 343 Guilty Spark and the mysterious Forerunners with the novelly cryptic nature of everything about them; and then the thematic use of religious symbology and imagery in everything about the Covenant. If the Halo series attempts to make a point, the most interesting one for me is how the Covenant, in their religious conquest, wrap everything they say and do in terms of poetic, religious language. The series may or may not have anything against the religions of our world per se, but they bring this aspect of religion - and general language use - to stark, transparent ridiculousness. It's not subtle (none of the thematic devices in Halo are) and it's an almost cartoon-like dimension of the Covenant, but it's still an effective view, if perhaps oversimplified (those Elites must be extremely gullible by nature), of how these things can work.

Just to address the portrayal of religion in general: it's not clear to me if any other point against it is being made. With the story drenched in so many references and symbolic allusions, especially with the Covenant, you'd think maybe there might be, but if this is so, really everything is too morally black and white (aliens vs. humans) to be an accurate representation or allegory of any one religion or of religion as a whole. The Covenant is categorically and blatantly evil - even when the Arbiter is introduced in the second game, that's really only to chronicle his escape from the Covenant's illusions and mental clutches rather than to balance their portrayal. Thematically, at least following this particular line of thought, while it offers some simple, effective illustrations, you can't go very deep with Halo before you hit that cartoon factor again.

I think the structure of both the narrative and the gameplay was better in Halo than it was in Halo 2. The first game has garnered many accusations of being repetitive, and a good portion of the levels are done backwards later on in the game. Gameplaywise, this didn't bother me much, because I thought the rearrangement made it fresh enough. Storywise, it gave the narrative a nice symmetrical structure. It begins with the escape from the exploding Pillar of Autumn, and the game ends with a return trip to the ship's creepy ruin, made all the more creepy because we'd seen it before in better conditions (then, of course, followed by an amazing countdown finale). The unexpected appearance of the Flood in the middle of the game really adds to it in this way, transforming both the story and the gameplay despite the level repetition.

Halo 2 was a bit messier. The introduction of the Arbiter's storyline was interesting, but I don't think it quite worked in some ways. For one thing, I always found the Elites more menacing when they weren't speaking English, and while this might be narratively important for showing some sympathy towards Elite-kind, they seemed like more of a threat during gameplay, somehow, in the previous game. I felt there was generally a slight increase in the cartooniness of the proceedings, especially with the appearance of the Prophets and Gravemind. Halo 2 also lacked the narrative structure: the ending wasn't half as interesting and was, of course, notoriously abrupt. The opening attack and the appearance of the Flood had been done before, and though I did like the civil war stuff, and it was generally a solid game, it didn't achieve quite the same balance as its predecessor.

Despite some slight shortcomings, however, the sequel shared many of the original's positive attributes, and both games are excellent. In gameplay, they're good--extremely good--at what they do. Combine this with Halo's quirky (albeit slightly cartoony) character, and it makes for an appealing series of games. Probably some of my fondness for the series comes from the familiarity I gained when I chose to explore it for that certain parody, but weird sentimentality aside, Halo has a lot going for it. If anyone wants to buy me a copy of Halo 3 along with an Xbox 360, feel free.

See also: Master Beef vs. Master Chief 2007.

¹ Halo is a pretty straightforward shoot-'em-up; Rowling's writing is technically nothing amazing in any artistic or linguistic sense, but as an entertaining and absorbing read, it's very successful.

Labels: halo, harry potter, i am the ramblemaster, language, morality, oddworld, tekken, the aberration, videogames

# posted by Chris @ 2:10 PM 0 comments

Last month I read Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and mentioned that I'd pick out one or two other interesting points of those that it raises. So here's another:

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question. [...] A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.

Wilde's tone here, not surprising given the events of his own life, would seem to demonstrate a fair amount of scorn towards the attitudes of the general public. At a first read it might also come across as almost self-important, as no doubt Wilde viewed himself as one of these artists, with his dismissiveness of the idea of criticism. But Wilde makes a good point. In describing 'silly views' and 'foolish prejudices', he is not necessarily being dismissive of all the opinions a member of the public might have, but is identifying that such prejudices do exist.

This got me thinking about the way in which people do approach art: novels or films or paintings or whatever. To be 'receptive', do we have to accept absolutely anything as 'art'? Wilde never suggests that everything and anything can count as art, although for him it only seems to stop being art if it starts catering towards the wants of the population. Surely there's more to it than that, though. Is a person doing their own thing irrespective of the public, whatever it is, enough to qualify something as 'art'?

Wilde would seem to be referring to preconceptions and prejudices that might affect our appreciation of art that we have before we've even experienced it, which leaves it open whether or not he believes any kind of criticism can be applied to art (beyond for whom, or for what reasons, it was created) after the art has been experienced. He talks a lot about authority and how that has no place in matters relating to art, but what exactly does he mean by 'authority'? Does he mean that nobody can have an authoritative opinion on art, nobody can decide what counts or what doesn't, or just that any attempts to control art are unwanted?

We all approach things with our own ideas of what they should be, what it is that makes it good, and so on. For example, one might look with scorn upon the idea of techno or heavy metal as 'good music' because they define it in orchestral terms. One person might think that a good plot or realistic characters are important in a novel, whereas another might view the richness of the language itself as more important. I have a friend who gets set to rant every time Tolkien is even mentioned because it doesn't fulfill his own criteria of what makes a good story. An example Wilde uses is judging all literature by the standard of Shakespeare. We all appreciate different things. But that doesn't mean that other aspects of something, other qualities, aren't still there as something that can be appreciated by someone else. But what exactly counts as a 'quality'? This seems to depend on whether or not a person views a feature as something to appreciate. Is everything potentially something to appreciate?

Take, for example, a painting of a soup can. Or a steaming pile of shit. You might appreciate the simplicity, or maybe you could appreciate the irony of some kind of visual statement it's trying to make. In and of itself, it'd be hard to find a way to consider a pile of shit a work of art, but with context, maybe it could represent or show something else, and that would be its quality as art, whether everybody appreciates the statement made or not.

The point Wilde seems to be trying to make is that we should allow 'art' in all its forms, not seek to control it, not seek to define it in our own prejudiced terms. According to Wilde, it seems, everything is something to potentially appreciate, and what's where being receptive comes in. We should let art flourish, free from control through prejudices, so that we are enabling ourselves to truly recognise those things in art that ought to be appreciated.

But, of course, you can only appreciate something that's really there to appreciate. There's still some vagueness about what qualifies as something to artistically appreciate. How subjective is 'art' under Wilde's definition? Does objective quality come into it at all? Wilde's definition of what doesn't count as art is still hazy beyond his for-the-self/for-the-public distinction. What else might stop something being 'art'?

We might consider some so-called 'art' to be pretentious. If a supposed work of art is produced just to promote the artist's superficial image, for example, or if all the talk of irony or representation or whatever is really just about shocking the audience or being controversial in order to get a bit of attention, then maybe pretence is all that's there. While it isn't exactly catering to what the public wants, the art is still relying on the reaction of the public, in which case, according to Wilde, it ceases to be art.

So maybe, looking at it like that, Wilde's distinction is all that's needed in art's definition. Rather than including it in any kind of definition, however, maybe this distinction is put better simply in terms of avoiding anything that can affect our receptivity: for as long as we're attending to the public, more likely than not we're also attending to its prejudices and therefore restricting ourselves. Maybe art is mostly undefinable, or at least defining it is very difficult. There's a whole load of possible subjective and objective reasons for why a person might look at or experience a piece of art and find certain appreciable qualities in it. There's no reason why it has to be either-or. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to define it. The point Wilde is driving at with receptivity, and one that perhaps overrides all discussion of objectivity versus subjectivity, is that we need to be able to keep an open mind to truly appreciate anything.

The moment [the spectator] seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art and of himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers.

Labels: censorship, i am the ramblemaster, morality, oscar wilde, philosophy, shakespeare, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 6:52 PM 0 comments

As part of some extra material I was been emailed by my philosophy teacher for the exam today, I read Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism. It's full of interesting stuff. I'll probably pick out some other bits some other time, but here's a big fat one to start off with:

...I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessary dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.

And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure which, and not labour, is the aim of man - or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own joy and the joy of every one else. There will be great storages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

To start with, I was surprised to read this just because it strikes me as a before-his-time kind of thing. The Victorians had made significant technological progress (at least so far as inventing the machines, even if, as he mentions, there were huge difficulties implementing the things), but this kind of stuff is the stuff of your modern-day science fiction. Presumably, if he's talking about abolishing human labour, he has to be talking about machines at the stage of automatons, because otherwise you'd still need humans to operate them.

What's really interesting, though, is the bit about the necessity of slaves. Somebody's got to do the work, after all. In all the accounts of moral philosophers that I've studied in any detail--namely Plato, Nietzsche and Aristotle--there's been a class of 'slaves'. They don't always mean it in the strict sense of labour; usually they mean it at least in part as those who are 'slaves' to their desires and instincts and who consequently can't live truly fulfilled lives or whatever. But Plato, at least, explicitly assigns them as the labouring class, and while I don't remember any specific mention of labour in the other accounts, I don't think that either Nietzsche nor Aristotle had menial tasks in mind for their nobles. It's something that, for me, has always sat uncomfortably. The idea of machines doing it instead is an interesting one.

Wilde has the romantic sort of notion that the future of the world depends on this mechanical slavery, because then in their 'delightful leisure' the freed humans will be able to excel and create wonderful things. But are we humans really so progressive? Maybe this view is too optimistic, and maybe most people will just eat themselves into grotesque and slovenly states. I don't think you need to go as far as Wilde does, though. You don't need to claim a utopia as the outcome. I think the important thing is that the choice is there and that people aren't condemned to the life of a machine. If you don't trust in the progressiveness of human nature, or want to give people the sense of responsibility or other moral benefits that come from work, then give everyone a good education to set them on the right path and then give them some work that's meaningful; something actually productive. This is, after all, about abolishing the kind of menial work that goes nowhere: not all work. We don't live in the same regimented class system that Wilde did, but the classes definitely haven't gone away, and if there are some in the middle-classes and above able to leisure their lives away, why shouldn't everyone have the same opportunity?

Anyway, these are just a few cogitations, and I don't know the ins and outs of the economy well enough to know the wider economic effects or just how radical a restructuring it would require, but it's an interesting thought. And something that's already happening in many ways. Maybe one day something like it will be possible.

As long as we don't make the machines too human, of course.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, morality, oscar wilde, philosophy, science

# posted by Chris @ 11:39 PM 0 comments

When I studied Orwell's Animal Farm in school at the age of about eleven or twelve, it was never a book I was particularly fond of, perhaps just because I found the subject matter so bleak. But it still held its status as a book of value and an important piece of satirical literature.

However, while being an obvious allegory may have been the whole point of it, when I found out that all the events and characters were supposed to represent different aspects of the Soviet Union and its history, with the pigs based on certain individuals and the horses representing the classes and the building of the windmill an analogy of the Soviet's Five-Year Plans and so on and so forth - I remember feeling a bit disappointed that it was so blatant. Sure, it's supposed to be like that; it's supposed to be a frank and direct criticism of the Soviet Union. But nevertheless, I felt there was something ungenuine about it, which took the shine off the book's prestige for me. Not that all this was consciously articulated in my twelve-year-old mind - back then it was just the slight feeling that I was being lectured and that I didn't much like it.

Many people have suggested that Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was an allegory for the World Wars. Tolkien responded to this in a foreword to the second edition:

It is neither allegorical nor topical...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Another real danger of allegories as well as this is that characters are too often reduced to abstractions. They're there to have some kind of meaning but can end up, as characters, a bit meaningless. A notorious example of this would be one from the world of recent cinema: the Matrix trilogy. The trilogy as a whole illustrates some fine and worthy philosophical issues (albeit not especially original ones), with regards to metaphysics at least. However, one of the criticisms of the sequels in particular was that they were convoluted, bloated on all the philosophy the Wachowski brothers were trying to cram into it.

A good deal of this was religious allegory. The allusions to Neo as Christ had been strong since the first film. The same was true of the allusions to Nietzsche's ubermensch. But the first film at least worked as a story independent of allegory going by the logic of the world presented. In the sequels, however, when they continued down this path, the story began to break down. After Neo lifts up his hand and fries the Sentinel at the end of Reloaded, we're never really given an explanation for it in the third film. Exchanges between characters which should have provided us with some explanation of what was happening were vague because they couldn't be any other way. Neo's powers have supposedly transcended the Matrix. He's supposedly connected to the Source. But really, how does that work when he's in the Real World? You can believe it at a stretch going by the logic of the world as it's been presented to you so far, but it's a long stretch and a sloppy explanation. Eventually it seems to break down to, 'Because it's an allegory of...' And all these characters who were vaguely interesting in the first film have been reduced to passive, dimensionless parts of it.

Of course, if I've missed something in my attempts to understand the trilogy, I'd be happy to hear it. But despite all these allusions and allegories that were piled on top of me, it ends up feeling a bit empty.

[Edit: amendment.]

Labels: allegory, films, i am the ramblemaster, literature, morality, orwell, rabbit-hole theory, the matrix, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 3:19 PM 4 comments