reality and fantasy

If you know me you know that I am huge fan of the movie The Matrix, the groundbreaking Wachowski brothers film depicting a future world where the computer has become a controlling independent entity of humankind. If you know me you know how many times I’ve watched The Matrix, if you don’t, now you know something at least.

When the movie came out no one had ever seen the kind of cinematic special effects developed by the Wachowski’s. Even if you’ve seen the movie you may not have even realized that the movie The Matrix absolutely reinvented cinematic special effects. To watch it now you might shrug your shoulders and think aloud, “What’s the big deal?”

What’s the big deal?!!!! These guys did something no one had ever done before! That’s what! They reinvented action cinematography. They are the Walter Murch of modern film (Murch is considered the inventor of sound design in film). They created a virtual world where real people/actors did things that only cartoon/video game/Pixar characters could do up to that point. The visuals in the movie may be blasé now, but when the movie opened they were revolutionary. When I first saw the movie (the first of somewhere around 28 times), in a smelly north Seattle theater with sticky floors and all you can eat popcorn, I nearly cried. I KNOW! Now you know…I am a complete geek! It even surprised me. I’m a sucker for anything and anyone that breaks the mold!

Which, by the way, reminds me that I have to tell EVERYONE to go see WALL-E the new Pixar film that just came out. The best film by Pixar, and perhaps one of the best ever. Sorry Matrix.

I seriously could go on and on about The Matrix but would eventually have to ask you to forgive the Wachowski brothers for dropping the veritable relay baton when they finished up the Matrix trilogy with the incrementally disappointing Reloaded and Revolution. I would also have to beg your forgiveness that they cast Keanu Reeves as the title character. As I said, I could go on.

However, the reason I have aired out my inner geek is to talk about fantasy. As a side note, I am in fact more a fan of The Matrix’s cinematic slam-dunk and of the lead female character, Trinity, played by Carrie-Anne Moss than I am of the entire plot. Yet the plot is indeed fascinating in its postulation of a future where humans become enslaved by their computers. What?! Oh, for a second there I thought I was talking about the present. My bad.

Really though, Reeves’ character, Neo, discovers early in the movie that he has been living entirely in his head. In reality the computers have been using coma induced human bodies, like Energizer batteries, to run the machines. Neo discovers that he has been living a life that was never really real. It was all just a dream that the computers wired into his brain to keep him, and every single human being, docile until their use ran out.

In the video I’ve provided below (take a look now so the rest of the blog makes sense), Neo has come to question his reality…or at least begun to think that something just isn’t right with the way things are. As he follows the rabbit down the rabbit hole (there are all kinds of literary, cinematic, and religious references throughout the movie that does make this a philosophically rich movie…by comparison…even with Keanu as the lead), Neo finds out that the real world is not so great. In reality the computers have targeted him because he is no longer comatose. In reality the food sucks, clothes aren’t pressed, street fights hurt, and even in reality you’re a bad actor. The upside is that you can go in and out of fantasy and reality and kick some cyber butt with your newly acquired Kung Fu skills. Really though, the movie does indeed incite some semblance of deep thought with regards to how we choose to experience reality, why we live in/prefer fantasy, and how we discern the two interchangeably. Or not discern.

Let me clarify. But first let’s talk about Alice a bit. Alice in Wonderland, that is. Now we all know that Alice’s “hole” is perhaps suggestive of drug use. But for the sake of this blog let’s believe, based on the fact that there is no proof, that Carroll was not taking drugs, was not writing about drug trips when he wrote “The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland”, and that the “hole” is not the drug allusion that Carroll’s moronic interpreters like to believe it is. That old “wives” tale started in the ‘60’s…which should fully explain the oft misinterpretation of Carroll’s entire plot.

So, do you remember what happened to Alice when she fell down the hole? I know, I’m thinking hard too. I remember that it was pretty wacky. Alice, sitting around in some field with her sister, bored out of her mind, is blindsided by a rabbit. Not just any rabbit. Not a "silly rabbit", but a rabbit with a coat and a pocket-watch. Odd. So it is no wonder, really, that she follows this rabbit and into a hole at that. Who wouldn’t?

As with a great many of our children’s stories, we are tempted, in our modern sophisticate, to interpret them as something more than they really are. I believe that Carroll (his pen name) was simply writing about something we all experience when we are children. Fantasy. And something we still have a hard time living in when we grow into “sophisticated” adults. Reality. He was relaying a child’s story from the fount of a jealous grown up.

Again, I could go on and on, but on with my point. I think one of the many reasons I really like The Matrix is because I absolutely get Neo’s desire to understand what is real.

Come on! Don’t we all? Haven’t we all been in Alice’s place once or twice? “Down the rabbit hole” has become a part of Western colloquialism. Yet I have been thinking a lot about reality and fantasy as of late. And I have one question, “What IS reality exactly?”

When I say reality, I don’t entirely mean it strictly in the “mental health” way. Not entirely, but partly of course. I do think that I suffer from an alternate reality syndrome known as bipolar disorder. However I do not think I am so completely pathologically different than all my neighbors that you don't know what I'm talking about to some extent. It's just that I do things, like go to my doctor occasionally and after listening to her lecture me for 15 minutes about my poor self-care with regards to my bipolar condition, I say, stunned, “You sound like you’re talking so someone with a mental illness.” Fortunately she regards me with compassion at that point. Then I get kind of weepy because the reality is that I do have a mental illness, and she was talking to me and not someone else. The rabbit hole or Neo’s real world? They kind of feel the same sometimes. I find it tough to discern.

I have other questions about reality. Is a mortgage reality? Is daily bread, water, and other sustenance reality? How do we know when we are acquisitioning someone else’s reality and thereby living in a fantasy? Is the pursuit of living within your present cultural norms reality? Is there something else besides what the culture mandates? Are you reality challenged if you don't live by current cultural mandates? Does the guy with the most toys really win? Or does the guy in total debt? How about the guy who dies with nothing and never had it? Which of these guys staked the claim on reality?

Have you ever watched someone die? I watched someone I barely knew die just a week after he turned 85, and just days after finally believing, for the first time, that Jesus was going to greet him on the other side of this “reality”. I also watched someone I love deeply die just weeks before his birthday and with no belief, that I’m aware of, that Jesus is on this side or the other waiting. That kind of thing messes with my sense of “reality” as a Christian. I don’t like the horrible reality that I think I’m supposed to believe about the future of those two. I really don’t know what to do with it. I’d like to not do anything really. And that brings me to this.

I don’t know how to see things sometimes. If I look into the abysmal face of some aspects of my own reality, it kind of freaks me out and has exactly the affect on me that my doctor tries to tell me to avoid. So I say to myself, “Okay, instead of looking into the abyss, don’t, and say you did.” Everyone likes me better when I’m not detached, depressed, and, well, completely out of reality. So I choose sometimes to live on the mean side of fantasy. However, I’m left with the thought that, if I’m not plummeting down the hole after the rabbit, and I’m not plunging into the cesspool of reality with Neo, then I’m very likely flying around Neverland with my fairy Tinkerbell with no immediate plans to do otherwise.

Which brings me to my point. How do you know? How do you know if your life is built on reality and less on fantasy? How do you know if your life is mostly fantasy? How do you know that you haven't built yourself a glass house until some character comes along and shatters it with a rock? What denotes a life that is real? Tangible, touchable. Not like a fountain in a square, but a well in a poor village? When, I ask myself ALL THE TIME, is living the American life the reality I need to wake up to? When do my aspirations have to become that of my culture? I don’t know what to do with my own questions other than cast them outside of myself like a fisherman’s net.

Paul, the Jewish apostle of Christ, otherwise known as St. Paul, said, “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.” This passage, out of Paul’s letter to his brothers and sisters in the new Christ-ian church in Corinth, is incredibly applicable. And not. First, it tells me that I am right in my total confusion! Yes, indeed I can’t see further than my face now, but I will someday. When I die. And still, I gleen nothing from this passage how to deal with my ambiguities and the mystery of my own seriously irritating life. All I know is that I don’t know and knowing that is somewhat of a relief. At least someone bigger than me knows me.

I must include the surrounding parts of Paul’s letter.

“Charity doesn’t fail [or, ‘love never ends’]. But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known. And now abide faith, hope, charity [or, ‘love’], these three; but the greatest of these is charity [also translated ‘love’].”

So then, what is reality again? According to this guy, LOVE. Wow! That is completely not the answer I was looking for. But I guess it is better than a lot of things that we often believe are most important. Hm. Faith, hope, and love (i.e. charity). It seems to me that these ingredients in one’s life make for a seriously unconventional lifestyle. I don’t know, I’m going to have to think about this some more. It just doesn’t seem very realistic to live that way.