Davis on Kracauer and The Matrix

Kracauer Reloaded: The Matrix and the Radical Potential
By Charles Davis

Siegfried Kracauer wrote in the 1920s that “films are the mirror of the prevailing society:” they are “the daydreams of society” that “reveal how a society wants to see itself" (1).  The film medium has grown in terms of style, genre, and subject matter since Kracauer wrote his early perspectives on cinema. Yet some aspects of his theory hold true as we enter the 21st Century. Perhaps the more controversial characteristics of his early theory deal with his Marxist influenced view of society. He envisioned a working class recognizing itself through film as exploited, and consequently taking action to overthrow the capitalist bourgeois class to improve its situation. He attacked films of his time for keeping the proletariat from envisioning massive change, satisfying the “need for social critique among consumers,” but never presenting “material that in any way attacks the foundations of society” (2).  He made accusations against an entrenched social structure that uses film to assuage social tension and divert or “distract” normal people’s attention from their situation in life (3).

Both society and film have changed dramatically in the past century, yet it remains clear that much mainstream film still does not question the foundations of society. Many major blockbusters seem to typify some of the same plot stereotypes that Kracauer identifies in his “The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies” essay. In Batman (1989), Bruce Wayne is an extremely wealthy capitalist, but his real passion is as a superhero working to save Gotham from evildoers, typifying Kracauer’s caricature of the young handsome Berlin businessman who is “made of gold on the inside as well" (4).  “Why does Wayne continue to live in a mansion as a wealthy bachelor, if he is honestly working for the betterment of mankind?” Kracauer might ask. Films like The Patriot (2000) or Braveheart (1995) correspond with the depiction of “revolution in historical costumes in order to induce people to forget modern revolutions" (5). The Star Wars trilogy uses groundbreaking special effects techniques to go even further, placing the battle of rebels against empire in a remote location, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” It is clear that Kracauer’s stereotyped plotlines have been expanded upon and re-worked using modern cinema techniques and innovations, while remaining subject to his Marxist-proletariat oriented critique. Does mainstream cinema simply reinforce the status quo, distracting the modern consumer from their oppressive and fragmented existence? Do films exist that question the reality of the average person in a modern or even post-modern society?

The Matrix (1999) is a film that was released on the brink of the dawn of the new millennium, hailed as a “wonderland of tricks and stunts" (6), a “visually dazzling cyberadventure" (7),  and less flatteringly, a movie that makes “people who sit on their asses in front of a computer seem like they're doing something cool and dangerous" (8).  Some reviewers dismissed the plot while others felt it combined stunning action scenes with a fairly intriguing storyline. The combination of these two factors are the strength of this film for a mainstream audience, especially a younger media savvy one that has grown up around television, computers, and video games. Yet the film also strikes at what Kracauer viewed as the fragmented and meaningless life of the proletariat in an industrialized world, conditions that are maintained by the ruling bourgeois class through the rise of the entertainment and leisure industry that keep the masses as bay and domesticate their “radical potential.”

Before embarking on an analysis of The Matrix in relation to Kracauer’s early theory, it is important to place Kracauer within the larger context of film theory, to show how his early writing and the film relate to more traditional theorists. Early film theory tends to be divided camps which stress two major cinematic alternatives: formalism and realism. Formalist theory stresses the ability of cinema to reorganize and manipulate the cinematic representation of reality, and is most often aligned with theorists such as Sergei Eisenstein (9),  Dziga Vertov, or early filmmakers such as Georges Méliès. In contrast, realist theory focuses on the ability of film to represent reality more closely than any other medium, capturing time, movement, and space through mechanical reproduction. Realism as a theory is generally associated with André Bazin and late Kracauer, among other theorists. Bazin helped develop modern film criticism and the “myth of total cinema,” a cinema that accurately depicts reality in all its dimensions, something that he argued should be strived for but will never be achieved (10). Instead the viewer must take a leap of faith in believing that “the image is the object itself” and “cinema is objectivity in time" (11). He argued that we suspend our disbelief when we view images onscreen, greatly contributing to the power of film. Kracauer is considered a realist largely because of his later work, Theory of Film: the Redemption of Physical Reality, but his earlier work tends to inspect film as a part of society, both reflecting and reinforcing sociopolitical structures in its production, reception and regulation (12).

The Matrix is a film that could be analyzed from the perspective of any of the major early film theories, but Kracauer’s early culture and society based theory offers the ability to address some of the relevant social concerns related to the film. The violence in The Matrix drew much attention in American culture, especially after the Columbine High School killings on 20 April 1999, shortly after the release of the film. Subsequent shootings have been similarly blamed on not only violence in the media, but The Matrix specifically. Clearly this is a powerful film that has had major sociopolitical ramifications, but it is unclear that it questions the foundations of society, at least not in the way that Kracauer would have envisioned.

The film introduces its central character, known both as Neo and Mr. Anderson, as a computer hacker in search of an answer to something. He is told by a strange woman in a dance club, Trinity, that she knows why he can hardly sleep, why he lies alone at night, and why he sits at his computer. This is followed the next morning by Neo getting chewed out by his boss at a “respectable software company,” who tells him:

You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You feel the rules do not apply to you...  Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Do I make myself clear?

The power structure is obvious in this relationship, as Neo quietly returns to his desk and carries on with his job that keeps him busy and regimented, filling his “day fully without making it fulfilling,” a classic Kracauer description of the employed proletariat constantly at work or distracted (13).  Yet something has been added to Neo’s unfulfilling existence, and he has gotten involved in something bigger than himself through the time that he has spent “distracted” at his computer. Although the Internet did not exist during Kracauer’s time, it seems he would have applauded this use of medium as a proletariat tool, as an “opposition from below” rather than a “tool of social domination" (14).

After Neo is captured by the authority figure, the “Agents,” he is described as having two lives; a description that not only implies the sense of unfulfillment as an employee, but also the fragmentation of society. In post-industrial America, with the advent of new forms of entertainment and leisure activities, job flexibility, and bombardment with technology, this fragmentation seems to be correlated with the type of schizophrenic split-lives we see manifested in the character of Neo. He could be fired at any moment, so he cannot identify with his workplace, we have seen him drawn into techno pulsing dance clubs earlier, and he spends most of his free time on the Internet. The Agent says that “one of his lives has a future,” referring to his job as an employee for a software company, but it is his time spent on the Internet where he finds his true self along with his “radical potential.” Thus Neo denies the power of these authority figures, the Agents, and does not accept their “Gestapo” bribery in order to bring “a known terrorist to justice,” even though Neo himself is guilty of numerous computer hacking crimes and would be set free.

There is a continuous reference to “rules” imposed upon the individual throughout the film, and Neo’s ability to “bend or break them,” as his mentor Morpheus helps him realize his “radical potential.” The dialogue often refers to these rules in relation to Newtonian physics (15),  but the film also hints at the relationship between the rules of physical reality and societal rules. Morpheus describes the Matrix as a system that is their enemy, just as they walk through a crowded street full of men in suits surrounded by tall buildings. The visual reference to the capitalist system and Neo’s former job in a skyscraper office building is implicit. Morpheus continues, describing those within the Matrix as “so dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.” The system can be interpreted as a reference to bureaucracy, “a system for organizing human enterprise,” and the structural configurations that became hegemonic during the rise of modernity. Ben Singer notes that there was even a business magazine in America during the first quarter of the 20th Century titled System (16). The psychological influence of the system on the individual, as Max Weber describes it, leaves her/him trapped in “an iron cage,” a “small cog in a ceaselessly moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route to march" (17).

Before Neo decides to leave behind his normal existence as an accepter of this societal structure, Morpheus describes Neo’s previous reality:

You've felt it your whole life, felt that something is wrong with the world… you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind… the Matrix: It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

These descriptions of Neo’s existence also correspond with Kracauer’s view of the distracted masses, trapped in a world of “pure externality,” that deflect “attention from the external damages of society onto the private individual" (18).  Morpheus continues instructing Neo, adding that he can only defeat the Agents by breaking the rules of this system, by seeing the world as it really is and surpassing the Agents that must act in a world based on rules which only Neo can surpass. The Agents represent authority figures with the ability to control the system and use it to achieve their ends: the suppression of the masses of human being as slaves (crops) in the service of machines.

All of these descriptions of Neo’s life along with the Matrix and its function seem to greatly correspond with the life of the proletariat within a capitalist system according to Kracauer. However, the concealed reference to the Matrix as “the System” may work against the possibly realistic radical social interpretation of the film by a viewer. Instead this potential is displaced into the science-fiction fantasy world in which the film is based. Just as the viewer begins to identify with Neo and even look to Morpheus as a guide, someone who sees the world for what it really is, the film climaxes to achieve a level of unparalleled viewer distraction. We are bombarded with fight scenes, special effects, and plot twists, including an antagonistic traitor who wants to go back to the Matrix system and remain ignorant of reality and is later killed.

 

This distraction culminates as Morpheus is captured by the Agents then rescued by Neo and Trinity in the famous trench coat and shotgun scene, where the duo unrepentantly kill anyone in their way, justifiable homicide by the fact that the victims do not understand that they are slaves to machines, living their lives in naïve servitude. The violence is vindicated through the plot and made aesthetically pleasurable through the work of the camera and digital editing techniques. It almost seems that the entire plot of the film has been constructed to make this pleasure in violence acceptable to the fully absorbed viewer.

The end of the film provides a kind of epilogue from the newly enlightened Neo, who directs his voice towards the robots through a telephone booth: 

I know that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.

This is followed by a superman-style flight out of the telephone booth accompanied by music from Rage Against the Machine, in a song called “Wake Up,” which refers to historical social movements and their leaders: “You know they went after King / When he spoke out on Vietnam / He turned the power to the have-nots /And then came the shot.” This seems to be a clear message from the directors that the film should not be taken simply at face value, as “pure externality” that revels in the image for the sake of distraction, but rather a cinematic metaphor.

Even after these correlations between Kracauer’s theory and the film have been made, it is still not clear whether the film is an argument for the potential of the masses to fight the system, or a mirror of the prevailing (or subversive) society. Within a month after the release of the film, two high school students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed with shotguns and wearing leather trench coats, entered Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado and opened fire on their classmates, killed 14 students and one teacher, wounded 22, and then committed suicide. It is highly unlikely that the film caused these two students to take such action, as it was clear that there had been a process of extensive planning and preparation before the event. Harris and Klebold were members of an “outcast school group” called the Trench Coat Mafia and had been arrested stealing a car in 1998 (19).   The film undoubtedly reinforces some of the violent tendencies displayed, even justifying them, as news sources were quick to identify (20). More recent cases of violence have been directly linked to the film, and a term has even been developed for the argument in defense of the perpetrators of these crimes: “The Matrix defense.” One 36-year-old woman from Ohio shot her landlady three times and was granted an insanity plea by the judge after she explained that “they commit a lot of crimes in The Matrix.” Another man shot his landlady in San Francisco in 2000 with a similar explanation (21).  One member of the Washington, D.C. sniper duo used The Matrix as part of his insanity defense argument, telling FBI agents that if they wanted to understand him they should “watch The Matrix.” Lines of Morpheus’ dialogue were found written on a piece of paper in his jail cell (22).

Another 19-year-old Matrix fanatic killed his two foster parents outside of D.C. area. He often wore a trench coat and army boots, watched The Matrix incessantly and had a poster of Neo in his room, along with a 12-guage shotgun. But perhaps the most relevant item about his case is the fact that his biological parents were both schizophrenic, and he was diagnosed with “simple” schizophrenia, a condition in which the individual “can explain the outside world” but it is “scarcely real to him.” This clarifies why he always “felt different,” just as Neo did in The Matrix, and why he could relate so easily to the film’s protagonist (23).

A Kracauerian analysis of The Matrix can be extremely fruitful, with a strong and recognizable relationship between Neo’s unfulfilling life; as a “cog in the machine” program editor and the repressed working class; the Matrix and the hegemonic capitalist bureaucratic system; the Agents as the controllers of this system and the capitalist bourgeois class. The literal interpretation, however, seems to have been even more compelling for those that take the movie seriously as a questioning of the “reality” of reality itself, and even a justification for violence against authority or power figures such as landlords, parents, the “cool” kids, or innocent bystanders. This interpretation does not view the film as an attack on the foundations of society, but an attack on the foundations of reality and our perception of it. Bazin’s argument that we as viewers perceive the film as real, even though we know it is not, takes on even more weight with these spectators. Yet is important to maintain Kracauer’s focus on society and how it is reflected in film. The Matrix may not necessarily reveal how a society wants to see itself, but it reveals how some of these marginalized individuals want to (or do) see society, as unreal and meaningless.

Kracauer tended to speak of things in broad terms rather than specifics; in terms social class and the “masses” rather than the individual. He chided films that rescue the individual at the expense of the entire proletarian class (24).  Yet individualism is one of the major concepts that arose within the context of modernity. The sovereign individual’s place in the world “was no longer a given, no longer predetermined by birth into a particular status, religion, or community, … by vocational ties to a family trade passed from generation to generation, [or] by kinship customs" (25).  Neo lives alone in the film, does not seem to have any friends or family, and has almost no connection to the real world other than his meaningless job. He does not believe in fate because he admits, “I do not like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.” He wants to believe that he is master of his own destiny, but he is unsatisfied with his life and searching for something. Kracauer (or Karl Marx) might offer an explanation for Neo’s dissatisfaction as an individual, and argue that although capitalism is based on the freedom of the individual, the reality is that this freedom remains under the discretion of bourgeois society, and the proletariat is only free as long as he chooses to accept his condition. The only means of obtaining true individual freedom for the proletariat is the overthrow of the system. Morpheus response to Neo’s search and desire to control his own destiny is the overthrow of the Matrix instead, the destruction of reality as we know it.

In reality (at least as I know it), no one is ever in control of their own destiny entirely. We are bound by our past and present conditions, by our experiences, and by our own personal limitations. This is why Neo’s character provides such a powerful example of the possibilities of the individual, if she or he can only look beyond the scope of her or his immediate existence. The film is especially powerful to those in which these feelings of helplessness or marginalization are most strong. Neo begins the film as a lonely computer hacker with a dead-end job, and throughout the narrative of the film comes to realize that he is the “One,” the savior of all humanity. Part of the strength of this realization is that it comes from Neo himself, going against what he is told specifically by  the “Oracle” (read fate or destiny), that he is not the One and he would know it if he was. The message is that any one of us could be the One, if only we could realize our own potential and think outside the box, outside of this reality. The danger in this message is that it also has the potential to provide a justification for mass slaughter. However virtually enhanced it may be in the film, we perceive it as real.

Kracauer wrote that “in order to investigate today’s society, one must listen to the confessions of the products of its film industries. They are all blabbing a rude secret, without really wanting to.” He states that films are the daydreams of a society, but perhaps modern films are more the daydreams of the individual. The film does not reveal how society wants to see itself, but how the individual envisions herself or himself. The rude secret that The Matrix blabs is that of an isolated, media bombarded, and unfulfilled individual in a society, offering a solution, a way out of the system, the Matrix. Josh Cooke, who killed his foster parents at the age of 19 perhaps embodies this view best: “I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be cool if that was real? What if we were in the Matrix?’ … I remember thinking, ‘That's me'"(26).  Just like Bazin, Cooke wanted to believe in the reality of the film image. He took this desire so far as to make his daydreams a reality through action, but only because the film reflected how he felt as an individual. Could this power of cinema be used to harness these same feelings for a better cause, as Kracauer hoped, or is the structure of modern society too strong a force to be tempered with in any other way than distraction and senseless violence for these marginalized individuals? The “rude secret” will be revealed in the future of the individual and society, mirrored and reinforced in pop culture and film.

Notes:

1. Siegfried Kracauer, “The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies,” in The Mass Ornament, ed. and trans. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 291-294.
2. Ibid., p. 291.
3. Siegfried Kracauer, “Cult of Distraction,” in The Mass Ornament, ed. and trans. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
4. Ibid., “Little Shopgirls,”  pp. 299-300.
5. Ibid., 293.
6. Philip Strick, “The Matrix,” Sight and Sound (July 1999).
7. Roger Ebert, “The Matrix,” Chicago Sun Times (31 March 1999).
8. Andrew O’Hehir, “The Matrix,” Salon.com (2 April 1999) URL: <http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/reviews/1999/04/02reviewa.html?CP=SAL&DN=110>
9. Eisenstein’s early theory viewed films a means of spurring the spectator into action, influenced by Pavlovian psychology, a notion that also seems present in some early Kracauer. David Bordwell, “Eisenstein’s Epistomological Shift,” Screen 15:4 (Winter 1975), p. 33.
10. André Bazin, “The Myth of Total Cinema,” in Film Theory and Criticism, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 170-173.
11. André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in Film Theory and Criticism, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 169.
12. Thomas Y. Levin, “Introduction,” in The Mass Ornament, ed. and trans. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 25.
13. Siegfried Kracauer, “Cult of Distraction,” p. 325.
14. Heide Schlüpmann, “Kracauer’s Writings of the 1920’s,” New German Critique 40 Special Issue on Wiemar Film Theory (Winter 1987), p. 102.
15. An interesting reference could also be made to CGI images and their basis in Cartesian space and perceptual reality, described by Stephen Prince in “True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory,” in Film Theory and Criticism, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 278.
16. Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p.23.
17. Max Weber, Economy and Society 1:637, quoted in Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p.23.
18. Kracauer, “Cult of Distraction,” p. 326.
19. Mark Obmascik, “Healing Begins: Colorado, World Mourn Deaths at Columbine High,” Denver Post (22 April 1999), p. A1.
20. Tony Norman, “Life Imitates Art,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (23 April 1999), p. B1.
21. Duncan Campbell, “Matrix Films Blamed for Series of Murders by Obsessed Fans,” The Guardian (19 May 2009), p. 3.
22. Mark Schone, “The Matrix Defense,” Boston Globe (9 November 2003), p. D1.
23. Ibid.
24. Kracauer, “Little Shopgirls,” p. 295.
25. Singer, p. 30.
26. Schone, “The Matrix Defense”

Comments

[Morgan Weiland]

Although Charles Davis’ assessment of The Matrix in light of Kracauer’s work engages much of Kracauer’s ideological ties to Marx, there are two fundamental aspects of his analysis that do not mesh with Kracauer’s argument. Both of these limitations of Davis’ argument reveal the Kracauer would not, in fact, describe The Matrix as a revolutionary film. First, I will discuss the inability of The Matrix to ignite the revolutionary fire in the masses, as Kracauer would hope, but instead in only a few, separated individuals. Second, I will analyze The Matrix through the lens of Kracuer’s argument concerning the revolutionary potential embedded within the content of films.

The protagonist and hero of The Matrix is, as Davis notes, named Neo, or the “One.” This name implies alienation in enlightenment, aloneness in his rebellion. Davis connects the character of Neo to the spectators who were inspired to “rebel” because of this film. These people, Davis shows, rebelled individually, in separate and distinct locations. Further, Davis subtly suggests that many of these rebels were not mentally stable; he notes that one of the Neo-devotees was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This, which is to serve as part of Davis’ evidence of the revolutionary potential of The Matrix, fundamentally omits an important quality of Kracauer’s revolution. For Kracauer, the audience that rebels is one that is unified. Essentially, the revolutionary potential of films that Kracauer describes entails the uniting of a mass of people, of the entire class of the proletariat, much as Marx envisioned. As Kracauer explains:

"The more people perceive themselves as a mass, however, the sooner the masses will also develop productive powers in the spiritual and cultural domain which are worth financing (“Cult of Distraction,” 93)."

By viewing the film through the lens of Kracuer’s argument, the revolutionary power of the film is discredited. Although it motivated some to action, it did not motivate the masses, which does not qualify in Kracuer’s (or Marx’s) terms as revolutionary. Further, it could be argued that The Matrix actually has alienating effects on its audience as it encourages viewers to identify with Neo, the “One,” thus implying that individuals must rebel on their own, or at least with a small group of chosen others.

Whatever The Matrix’s effects on the audience may be, the content of the film itself does not qualify in Kracauer’s terms as revolutionary. As he explains, “The more incorrectly [films] present the surface of things, the more correct they become and the more clearly they mirror the secret mechanism of society (“The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies,” 292). Simply, Kracauer focuses on films in which the dominant narrative is reproducing the fundamental structures of society, and the subversive reading is embedded within this visual and aural text. In The Matrix, however, Kracauer’s notion of the subversive is actually the dominant, problematizing Davis’ claim that the film has revolutionary potential. According to Kracauer’s argument, there seem to be two appropriate assessments of The Matrix’s content: either the alleged subversion in the film is inauthentic, a mere reflection of the dominant social and economic structure in society, or society has already undergone a revolution and revolutionary films are the status quo. I would opt for the former explanation, arguing that The Matrix, much like Fight Club, is a predominately male escapist fantasy in which the daydream of subversion is passively lived out, mollifying the audience and undercutting its collective revolutionary potential. (1) This point is evident through Kracuer’s analysis: it is only through the oppression of reality in films (under the dominant) that the revolutionary potential exists because individuals perceive that oppression – thus the oppression must be maintained throughout the film. In The Matrix as in Fight Club, the oppression is overcome, and the oppressed are symbolically empowered and valorized. In this case, the audience will not realize their revolutionary potential because the revolution has already played out for them on screen. There is no tension to motivate them to action, removing Kracuer’s impetus and unifying drive that would serve to compel the masses to revolt. Ultimately, Kracauer would not classify The Matrix as revolutionary.

(1) It should also be noted that as these films primarily target a male spectator, the potential for unifying the masses is again undercut because half of the audience (the women) and not called to action. Although there are women in both The Matrix and Fight Club, these films focus primarily on their male protagonist’s ability to rebel.