Iwas raped.
It happened a few months ago. I was woozy when I entered the movie theater in an upscale mall in Pasig, intoxicated by false promises and repeated assurances from my companion that it would be great and I’d be thankful afterwards. Uncertain but trusting, I sat down in my assigned seat (near the screen because in the rush to meet the time I forgot my glasses) and prepared to watch the film. Theater darkened; it began. Just about what seemed to be the start of the second act, I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was all too late.
Typical date rape you say? Hardly.
My companion was impeccably chaste and female and – unless you count a half-unzipped fly – I kept every stitch on throughout the ordeal. There were no visible bruises or signs of any struggle. When I left the theater, though, I was aghast and felt thoroughly violated but like most victims was unable to comprehend why or what exactly happened.
It only hit me a few days ago what it was. To be exact, the realization came just about when I was falling asleep during what seemed to be the start of the second act of The Matrix Revolutions, the sequel of the film I saw that night some months ago. Both movies turned out to be crap, of course, but they are guilty of much more.
It’s interesting to note that in more than a century of filmmaking that Hollywood has moved so little past the Lumiere brothers’ footage of an oncoming train. The cinema of spectacle pervades, dulling the senses to the point where the CGI-enhanced carnage no longer strikes the same synapses as it once did. I am by no means a prude when it comes to screen violence; as many can attest, I quite enjoy it. But with The Matrix, I felt at first like an unwitting but willing spectator of some Hollywood-organized atrocity exhibition but not long after it got boring. (Enough to the point that I just wanted everyone in the damn film to die so it would end but like all offenders it didn’t know when to stop.) The death of affect, as some social analysts have said, is the true crime of the last century, one that will color this one as well.
Some have said that it offers particularly good insight on the "modern world" and even quotes a few dead French guys. This makes it more than entertainment. This is even more sinister. Beneath the Cliff Notes references to Guy Débord’s Society of the Spectacle, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Jean Baudrillard’s Simulcra and Simulation (cleverly planted in the first movie), the films are just what they are: escapist entertainment. Maverick Filipino director Lav Diaz has said quite correctly that this kind of filmmaking causes the "death of one’s soul" and he should know, having made the most important Filipino film in this century so far. Those who proffer that the pseudo-babble offered up by Morpheus, Neo or The Architect are akin to understanding the world that surrounds us are just too lazy to read the books themselves or just don’t want to admit that what they’re after is a glimpse of Monica Bellucci’s cleavage, chicks in PVC and big guns which go bang a lot.
Yet the question of violation or to be put more bluntly, can someone be raped by a film is not so easily leap-frogged. Actor Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus) has said in interviews that The Matrix is the mythology of our times. It’s a valid viewpoint and only heightens the more alarming point that the film is a cultural phenomenon, a bible for the Internet generation. There are alarming questions why it always has to be some white dude who saves the world (and to make it worse, it’s Ted!) but the fact that future filmmakers will want to make more films that look, sound and feel like The Matrix. With all its stereotypes and prejudices, its racial minority type-casting and its wooden lead characters, it dumbs down an audience the same way the Wachowski’s were damaged by watching Star Wars. Given that it’s got some intellectual claptrap, it only heightens the suspicion that its makers have got more on their mind than just the box-office.
To be fair, there are many films that are as guilty as this one but who in their right mind would take Terminator 3 seriously? The Matrix is all the more guilty because it could’ve done better but didn’t.
Why didn’t I just choose not to see the movies? Like all victims of date rape, I was suckered into it, led by its alluring mystique and glamour. Why didn’t I just walk out? Well, let’s say I was the victim of a rape of a more insidious type, the one where you’re in the middle of coitus (having paid your due, in this case a ticket) and your partner heaves on long after the pleasure is gone. It was fun in parts but there’s only so much bullshit one can take.
And this bitch won’t take it lying down anymore.