My Official Matrix Opionion Was: Re: Alliekatt's official AniMatrix opinion

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 11, 2003

Legume <none@yerbiz.com> wrote:
> A lack of solid physical evidence makes the difference, as far as legend
> and mythos are concerned, between a mighty minotaur drinking a flagon of
> whiskey and fucking a hundred women and Modemac drinking sugar-free
> Koolaid while wearing a fuzzy brown hat.

SIG HILE!

I had been wanting to make a last-ditch effort to edit the 5X-Day home
movies -- which are already taking up 30 gigs of drive -- but now I'm
thinking... maybe... just... not. Sinphaltimus has a digital dupe of
the rough cut, anyway. As long as one copy of everything exists outside
of my house, that's probably enough copies.

About ANIMATRIX -- I saw "The Final Flight of the Osiris" and thought
it was gorgeous LOOKING and very pedestrian, story-wise. Same problems
as with Reloaded -- much yak, much style, no soul, dead emotionally.
LOOKED great, though. This particular segment must be by the same team
that did "Final Fantasy," another case of stupifying visuals combined
with a story that's the OTHER kind of stupifying.

I am working on an essay about how The Matrix Reloaded AND Spy Kids II
are both obviously about me, but I haven't been working very hard on
it.

Well, maybe I should just get it over with.

THE MATRIX IS REALLY ABOUT ME

by Rev. Ivan Stang

But Spy Kids II is MORE about me, and slightly better.

Both are, of course, purely symbolic, through and through. Everything
that happens in either movie is symbolic of aspects of my life.

In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo obviously represents the lone rebel "Stang"
personality struggling to protect The SubGenius Foundation bank account
-- represented by Zion -- from the Pink side of himself, represented by
the replicating Agent Smiths. ("Oh, God!" "SMITH will suffice...").
"The Architect" is of course my own superego, which attempts to
integrate and manage the Smith-Stang conflict. (Note: "Bob" himself is
NOT symbolized in either movie.)

Neo -- handsome, young, an incredibly snappy dresser -- is the innocent
Young Stang. Obviously. The Smiths are the evil, middle-aged me. The
Architect: the wise old me. The Architect is simply one more of the
long line of Wise Old Stang-based characters in popular movies. Most of
them resemble me physically more closely than The Architect does.
Gandalf, Count Pudu in Star Wars, Magneto, that wizard headmaster in
Harry Potter... all Stang-archetypes. Obvious.

In The Matrix Reloaded, as in Spy Kids II, the dialog is DELIBERATELY
written to be vapid -- like Kevin Smith-level 10th-grade New Age
philosophy, mixed with video game instructions. This is to point out
the inanity of the Conspiracy... as well as of the SubGenius
newsgroups!

Note also that Matrix Reloaded "pre-predicts" my short story "The Third
Fist" in the anthology, Three Fisted Tales of "Bob." By using the
forbidden science of Retrocausality, developed by Dr. Ahmed Fishmonger
in 1977, I was able to rip off the idea of "Bob's" fighting technique
for my 1988 story from the fight scenes in a 2003 movie! No one who
reads my descriptions of how "Bob" uses The Martian Arts of Grutledge
could fail to see how I pre-plagiarized the amazingly contrived and
outrageously unlikely fight scenes which comprise the non-lecture parts
of Reloaded.

While Matrix is perfect wish-fulfillment for semi-schizophrenic
Asperger's Syndrome victims with messiah complexes, Spy Kids II is
perfect wish fulfillment for 10 year old boys who like monsters.

Obviously, based on me. Spy Kids II doesn't even HAVE a story; it's
just a series of vignettes in which irritating children fulfill one
wish after another. They constantly show up their parents as
well-meaning, hopelessly outdated, behind the times, easily outsmarted,
and computer illiterate duds. They fight ever-weirder-looking monsters
with ever-cooler weapons. All adults are demonstrably dolts. The kids
have the greatest treehouse in the world. They can do ANYTHING, even
ballet, to impress others. They have JET-SHOES. They fall into
"rabbit-holes" that go on forever. Whenever the cool kids appear it is
to studly rock music, and they're fitted with the LATEST gear. They can
halt killer robots in their tracks with sheer HATE, and bring the dead
back to life with sheer LOVE.

So you start to see how the only real differences between the Matrix
and Spy Kids is in the art design and music. Matrix Reloaded is done
graphically in "Giger Trenchcoat" and Spy Kids is done in "Mexican
Restaurant Dr. Seuss" (like Sterno's house!). And the guy who scored
Spy Kids II owes far less of an explanation to Phillip Glass than does
the guy who scored Reloaded.

One might also draw comparisons with The Lord of the Rings:
The RIng = The Transmooker (Spy Kids) = The Key Maker
The 2 spy kids = "The NeoFrodo"

Both movies feature video game storylines, understandable to
nonreaders. In both -- as in much else from TRON to TOMB RAIDER, with
Saturday morning cartoons in between -- the protagonists must fight
Computer Villains while acquiring "power objects" like Keys,
Transmookers, Rings etc. -- in order to finally pass through The Door,
or The Gate, or the Whatever Big Set Piece, for a final showdown with
The Bad Bad Guy. What a STARTLINGLY FRESH concept!

In both The Matric and Spy Kids, many attractive and tough persons of
color are involved as soldiers or generals... but they're all just
"trigger niggers," ultimately doing the bidding of a distant Wise White
Man (Neo in Reloaded, The President in Spy Kids II). A subtext many
reviewers have missed.

Both have NERD APPEAL. A key scene in the Matrix hinges on the anxiety
of WAITING FOR THE COMPUTER TO FINISH ITS COUNTDOWN (Trinity waiting
for Grid Nodes to go offline). Who among us, especially in multimedia,
hasn't experienced that anxiety DOZENS OF TIMES A DAY for much of our
recent lives? What recent movies, during the past 10 years, HAVEN'T
also utilized that specific form of tension-filled count-down?

Whereas Spy Kids satisfies the 10-year-old in us all, The Matrix
satisfies the sophomore year college student in us all. For instance,
the room full of TVs in which Neo confronts The Architect. What college
student hasn't dreamed of outfitting his dorm room just that way, with
live cams of himself, in angst and cool black clothes, filling every
screen in a huge, ever-changing mosaic? Heck many of us created just
such a scene for our own college underground movies. But back then, we
wer ripping off George Lucas's student film, THX 1138, not William
Gibson. And... isn't this the 8th film in 2 years to feature a million
TV screens making uber-pics? Minority Report, etc etc?

Well, whatever.

But it's obvious that every part of ALL these movies is really about Me.

((Note: this essay has been a take-off on semi-schizophrenic Asperger's
Syndrome victims with messiah complexes, and is not meant to be taken
seriously nor incorporated into suicide notes.))

--
"A lack of solid physical evidence makes the difference, as far as legend and
mythos are concerned, between a mighty minotaur drinking a flagon of whiskey
and fucking a hundred women, and Modemac drinking sugar-free Koolaid while
wearing a fuzzy brown hat." -- Dr. K'taden Legume

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Legume <none@yerbiz.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> I am working on an essay about how The Matrix Reloaded AND Spy Kids II
> are both obviously about me

Why did you bother? You may as well write an essay telling us all the sky
is blue or water wet. You yourself said it was OBVIOUSLY about you. We're
not so stupid that we didn't see that those movies were about you when we
went to the theater.

Hell, even the two people in the theatre who don't know you and never heard
of you were muttering "It's all about Stang" as the left to go back to
their cars.
--
----------------------------------
Dr. K. "Cortez" Legume
----------------------------------
Mecagum les cinc llagues de Crist,
mecagum D'eu, en la creu, en el fuster
que la fue i en fill de puta que va plantar el pi

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Original file name: My Official Matrix O#1AD1C0.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05