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dIn the matrix, futuristic documentary of the year 3000, machines are said to have taken over the world, resulting in a dystopian society where man has everything he could ever want, and the machines eek out an existence in a world where sunlight doesn’t seem to ever touch the ground. one could say that the fall of man was brought about by machines evolving too far, that by giving them an intelligence, then trying to hinder them, we brought about our own demise.

I don’t think that’s it. The Matrix has clear ties to ‘The Wizard of Oz’, but in a universe where the wizard successfully kills off dorothy and her friends by sending them against a witch of his own design. In truth, there’s another layer beyond the matrix; one where a single desk worker manages a human farm by pretending to be a machine. ‘Zion’ is simply a safety net meant to catch any stray human consciences that escape their prison.

There lies certain flaws in the makeup of the prison that the matrix represents; despite being built by machines, the system seems remarkably geared towards humans, with enemy’s that can be fought, and enemies that quite simply can’t. Agent smith isn’t deleted by the architect in the end of the movie, he’s simply stored for later use; The architect specifically says, ‘We’ve done this seven times before’ in Matrix reloaded, and the third movie is named ‘The Matrix Revolutions’, or, reworded, The Matrix Cycles.

Now back to the Architect. Throughout the series, he acts as the final boss/entity; when the matrix, and the security layer around it fail, he enters and sets everything straight. Rather than being a sort of Deus ex Machina, however, the Architect works as sort of an IT guy, appearing where there’s a problem, then systematically working backwards towards the root of a problem. Unlike the other ‘AI’ or ‘Programs’, he acts remarkably human, taking time to weigh options, and creating representations of himself that are wholly unnecessary for an AI, yet to a human might feel important.

The moral of the matrix isn’t that the mind of Man will always triumph over machine; it’s a story of the uses of technology as an oppressing proxy, turning man against machine instead of against (perhaps rightly) each other. Man without machine can never hope to defeat the man who has.

Below is a Terrible, Terrible version of a script

All three sitting around in DORM ROOM, on their computers

 

A; Hey guys, what’s for movie night tonight?

B; Why not a tarantino night? We could call it the Tarantino Feeture

C; The What?

B; Tarantino has a-

A; It was a pun. What movies do you guys have? I got Pulp fiction and Kill Bill

C; 1 and 2?

A; Just 1

B; Meh

A; Reservoir Dogs is on special at _____(online store), should I get it?

B; Why not?

A; Huh, that’s weird, It’s saying it’s not available in our country…

C; Yeah, you’ll get that a lot here

A; What do you mean?

B; It’s probably just a copyright issue

A; Oh hold on, I was looking at the game..

-pause-

A; Wait, there’s a game for this thing?

*All three watch gameplay for a few seconds*

B; Yeah, that’s reservoir dogs…

A; those polygons man…

C; How much is it?

A; 9.99, but it’s not for sale here, see? Not available in your country.

C; It was like that for stick of truth too…

B; Nah, Stick of truth was blocked for the anal probing scene. This one’s just violence

A; Then why doesn’t it just get an R rating or something like that?

B; R Ratings don’t exist for games; the highest it goes is MA 15+

C; Not true, we got R ratings in 2012

B; Then why isn’t the game considered R rated?

C; because despite the existence of the rating you still have to reapply for consideration.

A has been looking at a list of banned movies

A; Holy (expletive), you guys banned dawn of the dead?

B and C; Don’t ‘you guys’ us

B; Besides, we unbanned it

C; Eventually…

A; Silence of the lambs? What’s wrong with you?

C; We had nothing to do with it, we just-

B; Look, australia has a guiding set of morals and principles, and it’s not such a bad thing that we stick to them, alright?

A; Morals and principles?

B; Yeah, here

Turns his computer around, showing the rules/classification guidelines

C; Why do you even have that open?

B; I like to be prepared

A; For what? It’s not like there’s anything here…

B; That’s the joke

Awkward, quiet pause

C; There are actual guidelines and such, but they’re all written by the commonwealth

B; Long live the queen

A; But it doesn’t make sense

B; Why not? they colonized us after all

A; no no, the guidelines. they aren’t even followed.

Awkward pause

A; Aren’t you gonna ask

B; Nope

A; Too bad. In 1978, In Camera Pty Ltd were the first to file an application for classification, and it was refused on the grounds that it had too much violence.

C; Yeah?

A; Well in 1985, Fox resubmitted an uncut Ramero version, and even then it was still banned in queensland. When it was finally released, it was released as R +18 Plus.

B; Ignoring the weird fact that you know this, what’s your point?

A; Well what other horror film featuring intense zombie violence has been released recently?

C; Dawn of the dead!

A; Yeah, with an MA 15+ rating. The various plot beats are all there, there’s even more blood in this one.

B; Oh yeah, there’s even that weird… zombie… baby scene

A; Exactly- and yet when you check the ratings…

C; That doesn’t mean the guidelines are lax though. Maybe there’s just been a shift in society. Maybe we’ve just become so desensitized that ‘zombie baby’ is the only way to get a reaction.

B; I don’t think that’s quite fair…

A; It’s fair, it’s just wrong.

C; Prove it

A pulls out 4 stapled reports. Everyone stares at him

B; Why… do you have four

A; Last minute script revisions. In 2003, Nancy Signorielli did a study on violence in prime time television, looking at the quantity of violence. She then compared what she found from the 1990s and early 2000s to what she found in the 70s and 80s. Guess what?

C; She found they were the same. What about it

A; Stop stealing my lines. Yes, she found that the quantity of instances of violence had not dramatically increased- in fact, the only real difference between the two time periods was the amount of people involved in the acts of violence.

C; But that doesn’t actually prove anything; In 2003, -that same year-, The Journal of adolescence published an article looking at the effect of ‘video games, Television, Movies, and the Internet’. In it it says, ‘And I quote’: “Among the other media variables, a relationship was found only for exposure to movie violence.” Television doesn’t seem to be a source of Desensitization so much as a secondary factor

B; So the format is the driving factor?

C; Not the format, The realism. In 2002 the Secret Service released a report in which they observed the quantity of violent crimes that stemmed from certain backgrounds. In it, there’s a tiny section in which they mention the percentage of people who enjoyed violent video games, movies, and books before their crimes, and interestingly enough both books and movies were *twice* as popular as video games.

A; (typing furiously on computer, finds report, reads off statistics) But whatever the statistics, Correlation does not imply causation. Maybe it’s not the media that is influencing their actions as it could have been their actions that were influencing what they seeked in media

B: Exactly – the reason the system needs to be so strict is because we want to temper violence in media.

A: Welll……

B: In that same survey, how would those people seek out violence in the media if there is no violence for them to seek out? 63% of the people in the survey are exposed to violence from the media. That would explain why books were so highly favoured, because it’s not just about the depiction of violence. You have to imagine the violence yourself because there are no visual representations of violence.

C: So what you are implying, is that we should be trying to restrict the human condition of violence, which is not innate but taught?

 

-pause-

 

B: Well yes…

C: That’s fabulous.

 

-pause-

 

C:

• violence is not learnt, it is innate
• how we react to violence can be manipulated over time by what we see in the media
• the ratings determine what we see in media
• ratings should censor extreme graphic representations of violence, which is where technology should come in because C can talk about the 2002 study, and what it leaves out – the games that are popular today (e.g. GTA) came out afterwards.

 

THE FINAL ARGUMENT (do do dooo do):

• Desensitisation comes from technology, specifically the realism that technology allows us to depict
• Realism is the defining factor of how impactful the violence depicted in media is to us. More recent studies have shown that video games are more likely to lead to desensitisation depending on how graphic the violence is.
• The reason TV shows aren’t in any of these is because they do not have the budget to fully utilise these technologies.
• Technology → realism → violence
• Point: Augmented reality games are the culmination of realism and technology. It removes the final link between the virtual world and our physical world
• In all previous media, there has been a separation between the virtual world and the player. The player could always distinguish between the game world and the real world. The current focus of gaming and media technology is to break down that barrier
• A: C is right. People have always said the main argument against censorship is that people could always tell the difference between the game and the real world, but nowadays you have games that are adding tools to life. Just the other day, I saw an ad for Gunman, which is a game for your phone that uses your camera as a gun, and you can use that to shoot your friends and people on the street.
• C: Yea you forwarded it to us. It looks pretty fun, I’ve never seen that mechanic before in mobile games.
• A: But did you watch the video?
• C: Yea but-
• A: HE SHOOTS AN OLD MAN WALKING DOWN THE STREET. The rest of the video points out all the mechanics of how to actually play the game, but the first part features a simple shot with a scoreboard of a player shooting “old man” and getting a point for it.
• B: SO what you’re saying is, not only does this game desensitise its audience, but it’s actively encouraging aggression towards people who aren’t even playing the game.
• C: It’s like the no-Russian level of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, but with all control in the hands of the player.

(pause)

• B: SO what was the point of all this?

(all characters look at each other)

• A: (cue piano) Maybe what we should learn from all this is that no matter what we do, the human drive for violence is not only innate but insatiable and unquenchable. Perhaps on some level we all understand this, so we try to instill limitations, organisations and institutions from what we view as corruptive.

 

Technology gives us a way to break the limitations, to surpass both the limitations we put on ourselves and those which we implement through standards and regulations. Now, more than ever, it is up to the user to distinguish between the real world and Pandora. Despite the thinly-veiled connection between the Na’vi and the native American population, there is a conflict between the protagonist’s reality and that of his superior’s. By allowing technology to break that wall for us, we can lose ourselves in the fantastical realms of our creation…

(piano continues for 3 seconds)

C: So…James Cameron night?