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Popular Culture Review
Some articles were more successful than others in adhering to this
mandate. In particular, Richard R. Jones is to be commended for the
accessibility of his article “Religion, Community, and Revitalization: Why
Cinematic Myth Resonates/’ It is the high drama of the hero that grabs us
because ordinary people aren’t interesting. We are used to intense drama in
contemporary “reality shows,” but that intensity is only achieved through a
highly structured environment; to the viewer’s eyes, the people on these shows
are revealed to be anything but ordinary. Movies and the moviegoing experience
also work as highly effective cultural disseminators: “When a moviegoer enters
a theater, he or she enters a highly structured environment to view a highly
stylized and generalized depiction of human interaction for the two hours or so
that the theater patron sits in front of the silver screen, she shares a common
experience with millions of other people—especially if it is a very successful
movie" (59). A successful (or spectacularly unsuccessful) movie then generates
a veritable forest of cultural connections: discussions with friends, reviews are
written, it is seen on the news, and it becomes part of trivia games and contests.
The article submitted by John Shelton Lawrence ("Fascist Redemption
or Democratic Hope?") also does an admirable job of presenting a highly
technical thesis without excessive scholarly jargon. Certainly, Heidegger’s
philosophy is not an easy topic to interpret even for scholars. The premise is
initially startling: "the Matrix narratives strike me as celebrating a mythology
with anti-democratic implications; its narratives are sketched with a chiaroscuro
of elements that thrilled the millions who cheered early twentieth-century
fascisms" (81); yet it all makes sense in light of the authorial discussions about
the American monomyth, rites of initiation, heroism, and providential
leadership. It is impossible to do the article justice in a short review; you must
read it for yourself.
These are but two out of a total of eleven essays about various aspects
of the Matrix franchise, covering nearly every cultural topic one could think
of—gender, race, religion, violence, politics, technology, and philosophy (i.e.:
free will, choice, and why does “reality” matter)—not to mention the usual “isms”: feminism, racism, and postmodernism. Some articles even combine
several of these topics into one discussion. Although the topic choices are
numerous, and the potential for chaos is high, there is not one weak link in the
entire book.
Mindy Hutchings, Independent Scholar