The Descent

Watching a good, well made horror film is scary enough sometimes in broad daylight. Watching one after midnight in an empty house because you can't sleep compounds all the nuances of the horror film experience. I'm pretty sure Neil Marshall's horror film "The Descent" would have been easier to watch with sunlight leaking in through the venetian blinds, but I don't think it was ever meant to be viewed that way. I think it was meant to be viewed in a solitary environment, because its where the film takes its lead character, and character is really the powerhouse behind this picture.

The storyline is very simple. A group of female adventure seekers gather together to go caving in the Appalachian mountains. The film plays with all three of the classic conflicts of story; woman against the elements, when they discover that the cave network they are in is not the one they thought they were exploring, compounded by a cave-in which drives them forward in a potentially vain attempt to find another opening to the caves; woman against other, in this case both a stalking presence within the caves, as well as against each other due to past history; and woman against self, in almost all the characters, but most thoroughly explored in the characters of Sarah, a woman who lost her family in a car accident a year earlier, and Juno, the expedition's leader.

I've read some reviews that said the performances were weak, wooden, etc. I don't think I saw the same film those reviewers did, because Shauna MacDonald's complete meltdown in a hospital hallway in the opening moments of the film were gut wrenching. It produced tension in my body, tension which only let up for the moments the women were aboveground preparing to begin their caving expedition. I think the reason some may have disliked the portrayals is because this all-woman cast is thoroughly feminine and strong. Some men just can't handle that. They need a male to come in and rescue, and this film does not provide that.

Often when I'm very frightened by a film, I start watching in on x2 speed. I couldn't bring myself to do that on this film, even when I knew I really ought to be getting to bed already. Even at the points where it was scene after scene of claustraphobic crawling through narrow pipes and passages. Even when it was shot after shot of nothing but lights bobbing in darkness. I could sense the immersion in the environment Marshall had created, and wanted to stay down in the cave with the characters until the film reached its resolution, whatever it would be.

For a horror movie that works with "something down there", it spent the better part of the picture letting the "down there" be the monster. The women in the caves, in the darkness created enough tension that by the time the "something down there" finally shows up, you're wound tight enough to come apart. I jumped, I gasped, I gave my head a shake. I exhaled deeply. There are cheap "make you jump" gags, but they aren't the source of the real horror. Truth be told, this film would have been nearly as awful in its resolution without the "something down there". If anything, the Crawlers serve as a counterpoint to ask what is truly monstrous?

On that note, a discussion that contains spoilers. Jump to the following paragraph if you plan on seeing "The Descent" yourself. Or go rent it and come back...

I've read the theories that state that the whole experience was Shauna's delusion. I need about twenty more viewings to really debunk that theory to be sure, and while "The Descent" definitely works as a piece of uncanny or fantastic narrative, the fact that focalization switches between Shauna and Juno throughout makes that problematic. If we only saw Crawlers when Shauna was the focalizer, then the madness theory could hold water. But Juno has several very real encounters with the Crawlers, so their presence is more likely physical than psychological. When the film reverts back to the cave in its very last moments, I think its more that Shauna's descent into madness is now complete. Its a powerful statement on revenge to be sure. The question could be asked, would Shauna's tenuous hold on her sanity have been lost had she forgiven Juno and they had emerged from the cave together, leaving behind their myriad personal demons within? The trouble with that ending is that it would have been just upbeat enough to have been merely a "happy ending" and the subtlety of the revenge motif lost in a Hollywood cliche.

A good horror movie should haunt you. After the stomach turning, the adrenaline rushes, the heart in your throat or in your toes moments, you should feel somewhat haunted. And you should have a sense of wonder, of awe, of a terror that goes deeper than bump in the night. It should involve introspection, of questions of what it means to be human, of what it means to be alive, of the meaning of the cosmos. If all a horror film does is make you jump, it's no better than porn; it titilates for a reaction, and once that reaction is achieved, is discarded. "The Descent" is a powerful example of horror at its very best, and as such, edged Constantine off my top 10 films of 2005. I've included an adjusted list here for those who, like me, love lists, and to show how very much I esteem this piece of film.

Top Ten Movies of 2005
1. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2. King Kong
3. Batman Begins
4. The Descent
5. Sin City
6. Serenity
7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
9. War of the Worlds
10. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

My Superman movie

Jenica and I just got done watching the original Superman: The Movie (1978), its sequel, Superman II and last year's Superman Returns. Watching them all and ruminating on the pros and cons of each film got me thinking. What if I had the means to make my own Superman movie?

The reason I'm speculating on this possibility is how frustrated I've been since I was about 10 or 11 with the ending to the original film. Turning back time to fix everything that happened? Wouldn't the dam still burst? Or are people drowning while Superman is talking to Jimmy and Lois in the middle of the desert? I was somewhat placated when I discovered the story behind how that ending got slapped on the film (it was supposed to be the ending for the sequel -- Superman does it so Lois doesn't remember that he's Clark Kent--and they were shooting the sequel simultaneous to making the original), but it doesn't change the fact that I still can't watch an alternate cut where it isn't the way the movie ends.

Don't get me wrong. I really do love the first film...I cry when Superman catches Lois falling from the helicopter, and I honestly couldn't tell you why. I remember the day I saw the original with clarity; looking in the Calgary Herald to see a large quarter page advertisement (I used to love reading the Herald's entertainment section as a kid, just to look at the film advertisements) of the crystalline S-emblem. I nearly died. I remember running to my dad and pointing it out (we were only visiting and who knows how long it would take for this film to reach Medicine Hat?). And then the afternoon matinee that followed. My dad and I, just the two of us, seeing Superman: The Movie. But turning back the world and Superman and Lois in the sequel having sex are two things which have tainted my love for these films. Yes, I said tainted.

And Bryan Singer didn't make my Super Universe much better with his Superman Returns. Sure, he didn't totally screw it up, but neither did he add anything to it, outside a great plane catching scene. And seeing the original again reminded me how much Christopher Reeve embodied Superman where Brandon Routh is really more of a Superyoungadult. Never mind that Singer compounded the taint by building on the Superman and Lois mattress dancing incident. So he's got two apologies to make to me; one, for leaving the X-men franchise and two, for giving Superman a kid...I dread the sequels...

So I want my crack at making a Superman movie. I want my chance to do what I'd do.

I think I'd be looking to work on a combination of Tom DeHaven's novel, It's Superman! and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's graphic novel Superman for All Seasons, which would make the film a period piece in the 1930's which I really think would work. Not so much as a kid's Superman movie...more like Batman Begins really. For Superman I'd want someone with classic old movie features...but he's got to be young, in his late 20's. Lois Lane is a really firecracker in DeHaven's book, reminscent of Jennifer Jason Leigh in the Hudsucker Proxy. I hear Alexis Bledel is nearly done with Gilmour Girls...

Both works look at the beginning of Superman's career, from his departure from Smallville to his first defeat of Lex Luthor. They're both quality narratives with lots of great Superheroics. The advantage of an adaptation is you already know you have a great story. Finding a Superman for my film would be tough - Sale's drawings are of a very husky, broad shouldered Superman. Closer in build to Dominic Purcell than Christopher Reeve. And again, in his late 20's. I would also try for a very stylized approach to the film, ala Sin City and 300. Seems like the cool thing to do when adapting graphic novels.

In either case, it's the story of how it all begins, which is really the story most of us care about. Once Superman is up and flying, there isn't much that can hurt him, so the storylines ending up relying on more human drama than the mythology is meant to contain, unless you're going with DeHaven's approach by revisioning the characters who make up the mythology.

Bottom line? We're all more interested in seeing Superman catch a falling plane than we are in seeing him deal with angst. Superman doesn't have angst...that's Batman. And romantic turmoil is Peter Parker's department.

Tell Singer he's off the project and Gotthammer's on. Sure, I don't have any directorial experience, but Singer obviously doesn't have any comic book geek experience. I have a PhD in that, which will more than make up for my lack of directorial chops.

Magik Beans Episode 10: Into the Deep Dark Woods

New Magik Beans available for your reading pleasure! Here's a preview:

"Why, what's in the wood?" Adam asked. "The big bad wolf?"

"A few of them," James replied. "And worse."

"But...isn't this all inside the Tree?"

"It is," James said.

"Well...isn't the Tree good?" Andrew asked.

"It is," James said. "But not everything in the Tree is."

300

Tough to write a review for this one. I'm still digesting the images and looking forward to an encore vieiwing. However, given that I'm pretty sure there's a few people who are interested in knowing what I thought about it, here are some reflections.

My journey to seeing this movie began in September of last year when I saw the first trailer for it. The combination of digital art (literally moving paintings!) and Trent Reznor's music blew me away. I hadn't been that excited for a film since the Lord of the Rings trilogy was in theaters. This was followed by the second trailer, which merely whetted the appetite.

Then at Christmas, Gunnar bought me Frank Miller's graphic novel; I remember telling my brother-in-law Brian that if the movie even remotely resembled the graphic novel, it was going to rock. While still on holidays, I picked up a paperback version of Steven Pressfields' Gates of Fire and read it over the first weeks of January.

Then came the wait. The long wait between finishing Gates of Fire and the weeks leading up to the release of the film. There were clips released to various sites, showing moments from the movie. I watched them all.

I bought the soundtrack. And then...I saw the movie, which became a culmination of this journey rather than an entity unto itself. It stands in addition to all the steps leading up to it. For me, the trailers are works of art in their own right, part of the whole that is 300, much in the same way I experience the Lord of the Rings films as part of 30 years of loving Tolkien's work.

I would call 300 an example of what Thomas Elsaesser refers to as the "historical imaginary". It's based on a graphic novel that's based on a historical event. It doesn't pretend to be an adaptation of Herodotus' Histories. It is like an expressionist version of the Battle of Thermopylae; it evokes all the visceral feelings that one associates with the event, but doesn't get bogged down in historical minutae.

It is mythic. It is epic. It is more interested in visual poetry than accuracy. This is not a prose work to be sure. The fights are too choreographed, too stylized. Their perfection is a dance, not a stumbling mess. The only beings who fight this way are immortalized in epic poetry such as the Illiad. I couldn't help but think that this is the way Troy should have looked.

It is sensual and sexy in a way films rarely are. The cerulean beauty and purity of the lovemaking between King Leonidas and Queen Gorgo is juxtaposed against the scarlet inferno of Xerxes' temptation of the traitor Ephialtes, where so much naked flesh is exposed the eye can't discern where one person begins and another ends. It's a scene I'd very much love to use for a sermon and know no amount of editing will make it possible. Xerxes' words to Ephialtes are powerful, for anyone who seeks to hold themselves accountable to a higher purpose: "It was cruel that the Spartan King required you to stand...but I am kind. All I ask you to do is kneel."

Made me think of Ephesians 6:13, where the writer encourages the believer to "put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

Standing is tough. Kneeling comes easy. I kneel before many things that don't deserve my submission, and stand, chin raised in defiance of many things that deserve my bended knee. I kneel to my desire, and stand against God, when it ought to be the other way around.

The movie is long form of what I've chosen as the bilbical verse I hope I live my life by, 2 Samuel 23:10 "...he stood his ground and struck down the Philistines till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword. The LORD brought about a great victory that day. The troops returned to Eleazar, but only to strip the dead." I get the impression Eleazar died there, taking his stand. I'm not a warmonger, but I believe in standing firm for justice and for a better world. The metaphor might be violent; the action it inspires isn't necessarily. We can take a stand against poverty.

A quick note on the already hot topic of whether or not this film is political. We always find what we're looking for. After all, I found a sermon illustration. Someone looking for a right-wing agenda will find one. Strangely, I'm pretty sure a left-wing thinker could find a leftist agenda as well. Me? I was into Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian before I studied Edward Said's Orientalism.

Magik Beans Episode 9 is up!

Here, 9 weeks in, I'm feeling really good about how the story is progressing. Take today's episode for example. The storyline did a flip in my brain about three weeks back where I realized that all wasn't as it seemed with the Leprechauns. It's amazing how one little change spawns a myriad of big ones.

Here's a preview from the new episode.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she said, and then, gesturing at the stack of gold coins, "We've got a few gold ones."

"I think I'm going with them," Andrew replied.

Lara followed Andrew's gaze to where the Leprechauns were entering the deep foliage of the tree, passing from the shop's electric light into green shadow.

"I keep thinking to myself, this can't be happening to me," Andrew continued. "And just now, watching you talking to Finn, just as naturally as if you were talking to any normal person instead of a...leprechaun, I realized, it isn't happening to me. It's happening around me."

He stopped and looked at her. "Does that make any sense?"

Lara laughed. "You're leaning against a tree which grew overnight from magic coffee beans, watching Leprechauns get ready to go kick the shit out of Santa's elves and you're asking me if what you just said makes sense?"

Getting Real in Virtual Reality

Introduction

“Can there be effective critique in such a conservative genre?” E.L. McCallum asks of cyberpunk in his article “Mapping the Real in Cyberfiction” (356-7). His inquiry is posed in response to the earlier question of “why the real world that [cyberpunk relies upon] maps so closely to ours, despite imagined technological and geopolitical changes” (356). Dissatisfied with cyberfictions which “rehearse old geographic interpretations of space” (350), McCallum derides cyberpunk’s written literature as lacking innovation, a sense of adventure, and failing to chart new territory, “real or unreal, graphical or narrative” (McCallum 374). While his contempt echoes cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling’s lament that “cyberpunk is dead because it has become restrained, commercialized, and mimetic” (Barnett 360), it is doubtful the same could be argued for cyberpunk’s cinematic legacy, specifically as manifest in the blockbuster film The Matrix and its sequels, which have become “a vital point in the history of popular culture, film studies and cultural theory” (Gillis 1). The fact that this paper cites four academic works devoted solely to the subject of the Matrix trilogy, each of which cites other academic works on the same subject speaks volumes regarding the films’ cultural impact.

McCallum notes that “narrative theory has not engaged as fully with the roles of spatiality in comparison to those of temporality” (McCallum 351), so our inquiry will focus on how spatiality produces meaning in cybernarratives. While our focus will be cyberspace as a cultural phenomenon, the individual cyberpunk novels Neuromancer and Snow Crash will serve as references, given that “for many cultural critics, SF has become the pre-eminent literary genre of the postmodern era, since it alone seems capable of understanding the rapid technological and cultural changes occurring in late capitalist, postindustrial society” (Sponsler in Barnett 360). Further, the debt The Matrix owes to these earlier narratives will be examined to show the progression of cyberspace from an escapist ontology to a “prison for your mind” (Wachowski 28). With our minds free, we will then finally turn to how cyberspace’s polysemous nature provides a useful perspective on reality.

Virtual Reality as cyberspace, space and non-space

Science fiction is capable of doing more than to simply act as a decoder for technological and cultural changes. At times it seems to anticipate or predicate them; the very term “cyberspace” was made popular by William Gibson in his cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer. A plethora of synonyms exist; Stephenson called it the Metaverse, Baudrillard called it telematic culture, we popularly refer to it as ‘the Web’ or ‘the Net’ (Bukataman 105) but all refer to a virtual reality which has been “defined as an ‘interactive, immersive experience generated by a computer’” (Ryan 2).

In its earliest conceptions and realizations, access to cyberspace involved cumbersome bodysuits and goggles intended to replicate sensory input. However, “[the] popular acceptance of cyberspace as a space has not needed to wait for the arrival of bodysuit-and-goggle “virtual reality”; for literally millions of users, cyberspace already “exists” as a place, as real as the work and play conducted “in” it.” (Nunes 61). While none of us have data-ports built into the base of our spines, millions of people around the world connect daily to the virtual realities of email, the world wide web, multi-user video games, and chat rooms, to name only a few. The reality of cybersex alone provides a compelling argument that “a new and decentered spatiality has arisen that exists parallel to, but outside of, the geographic topography of experiential reality” (Bukataman 105).

People commonly use the phrase; “I saw it on the Internet” or “I’m going on the Web” as though either were actual places of storage or locations to arrive at. Regarding an advertisement offering the chance to “Own A Piece of Cyberspace for Free”, P. Chad Barnett asks the question, “does this suggest that there is some tangible thing that is to be purchased?” (359). When a person goes to purchase a 300GB hard drive, they are thinking in terms of how much space they will have to store data. However, the actual size of a 40GB hard drive compared to a 300GB one is negligible. RAM sticks all fit into the same socket regardless of size. Flash drives the size of cigarette lighters can store anywhere from 64MB to 2GB and cost no more than $100, which makes trying to fence “three megabytes of hot RAM” (Gibson 20) nothing short of laughable. And while Stephenson’s hyper-real Metaverse may have seemed ludicrous at the time of Snow Crash’s publication, describing the need to “get zoning approval, obtain permits, bribe inspectors, the whole bit” (25) to build virtual architecture, current websites such as Second Life (with it’s virtual population of 1,982,809 “residents”) offer the ability to buy and improve virtual real estate (secondlife.com). As Nunes has observed, “with increasing frequency, cultural representations of the Internet call upon us to conceive of computer-mediated communication in terms of space: more precisely, “cyberspace” (Nunes 61).

Marie-Laure Ryan states that: “A sense of place is not the same thing as a mental model of space: through the former, readers inhale an atmosphere; through the latter, they orient themselves on the map of the visional world, and they picture in imagination the changing landscape along the routes followed by the characters” (Ryan 123). In Narratology, Mieke Bal differentiates between space as a representation of the “topological position” (133) and place, which is “linked to certain points of perception”. The frame of perception, Bal states “can be heavily invested with meaning” (134), although as McCallum notes, Bal “tends to restrict herself to describing spaces narratives can have, without elucidating the interpretive ramifications of attending to space” (McCallum 351-footnote). This should come as no surprise, since in Narratology’s characteristically vague manner, Bal echoes Ryan’s ‘changing landscape’ with the statement that “these meanings are not fixed” (134). This ambivalence serves an exploration of cyberspace well, since “[m]apping cyberspace, or the landscape of a virtual world, is difficult because like the multinational capitalist system that it is an extension of, Virtual Reality cannot be completely known” (Barnett 367).

Cyberspace is a sort of floating signifier, standing for everything and nothing. It is “a nonspace realm” (Bukataman 123), “space that isn’t space” (Barnett 368), and a labyrinth (Veel 154). In William Gibson’s short story “Johnny Mnemonic”, the hero is “outside and inside and outside and inside cyberspace, like some bizarre arrangement of Chinese nested tables” (Berry 254). One might say it is a liminal space, a place of transformation, a shamanic otherworld for the twenty-first century. The shamanic concept seems most appropriate, given that if there was ever a need for Bal’s concept of focalization as “a certain ‘vision’” (142), it would be in cybernarratives. While the actual experience of cyberspace is still linked to actual sensory input (touch of the keyboard and mouse, viewing the pixels on a screen, hearing the digital audio), fictional cyberspace relates directly to the sublime mystery of how the brain interprets electronic impulses, as is the case in The Matrix where “The Matrix is neither in the head nor is it located in the wasteland of 2199. The Matrix is a psycho-technical site, neither internal nor external. It is the interface between human and machine” (During 138). As such, since it does not occupy any actual space, it serves as a perfect example of Bal’s narrative space; since it relies upon characters’ focalizations of cyberspace, it lacks a fixed meaning. However, as has been noted, the idea that there are no absolutes is an absolute itself. Therefore, we can paradoxically take the absence of fixed meaning as the fixed meaning for cyberspace in cybernarratives.

This virtual world looks too good to be true!

So the question becomes, what fixed meaning might be derived from the polysemous nature of cyberspace? To arrive at that point, we must first wend our way first by time traveling through cyberpunk’s history in brief, since it is cyberpunk narratives which “offer us the most likely source for answers to questions regarding the machine-human dynamic in multinational society” (Barnett 360). We will then turn to examining the difference in the meaning of cyberspace which is constructed at the outset and most recent manifestations of that history. Cyberpunk began in the 80’s as “a voice of Bohemia” coming from “the underground, from the outside, from the young and energetic and disenfranchised…from people who didn’t know their limits, and refused the limits offered them by mere custom and habit” (Sterling in Barnett 360), and “proved to be a revitalizing force in science fiction, fusing the literary values and technological expertise which had previously been disported into separate subgenres” (Bukatman 137). It was a mixture of the real emerging technologies combined with a rock and roll aesthetic of “counterculture associated with the drug culture, punk rock, video games, Heavy Metal comic books, and the gore-and splatter SF/horror films of George Romero, David Cronenberg, and Ridley Scott” (McCaffery 12).

However, these narratives which seemed on the surface to pioneer new directions were sometimes perceived as being merely escapist fiction in hip new clothes. Even cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling shared the opinion that cyberpunk had become a stale genre by the 1990’s, perhaps exaggerating too much when he announced its death (Gillis 3). Furthermore, Frederic Jameson criticized the genre for functioning “more like realism than science fiction” and for it failure to provide a “a satisfactory cognitive map of multinational capitalism” Barnett (361). Nevertheless, the heyday of cyberpunk and cyberspace in narrative was most certainly the late 1980’s—and its recent renaissance has been cinematic, not textual. The Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix trilogy launched this renaissance, restoring “a Bohemian edge and smart postmodern aesthetic…to cyberpunk” (Barnett 362). The huge success and attraction of The Matrix’s cyberpunk aesthetic can be attested to by the proliferation of associated marketing; DVD’s, video games, action figures, posters, Halloween costumes, and a veritable deluge of films which attempted to replicate the brilliant pastiche the Wachowskis had achieved.

Interestingly, the use of cyberspace in The Matrix violates the basis for McCallum’s criticism of cybernarratives further than its literary predecessors: “If some recognizable representation of real space persists in a genre whose emphasis on postmodern aesthetics and cyberspace networks makes it most likely to be able to dispense with the dimension of real space altogether, this persistence should give us pause to consider why this other world’s landscape and its subjects look so much like ours” (351). It was this adherence to a realistic topography in cyberspace which enabled McCallum’s argument against cyberpunk classics Snow Crash and Neuromancer. McCallum classifies cyberpunk as an ancestor of pulp fiction, and by extension to the adventure narratives of the nineteenth century, which are “closely linked to imperialist expansion” and as such “tend to articulate conservative ways of seeing the world” (356). He attests that most of the genre continues to hold to the “conservative ideologies” of adventure narratives which served an “imperialist aim, sustaining empire, justifying colonization, and consolidating gubernatorial power” (353). It is my contention that this argument is a strained one at best, given the destabilizing counter-cultural nature of most cyberpunk. He cites the fact that most cyberpunk locates the United States “as the geographical center,” which is more likely due to the proliferation of the cyberpunk genre in North America coupled with a desire to indict the rampant capitalism of the States than any sense of colonialism on the part of the writers. Further, he states that in adventure narratives, the unknown territory waiting to be explored “often takes the shape of an island” (355), and then draws connections to the Raft (a man made ‘island’ of small refugee craft surrounding a privately owned aircraft carrier) in Snow Crash, and the space islands of Neuromancer. The argument seems to be, put colloquially, trying too hard to make its point. Nevertheless, it is the one McCallum makes, trying to underscore the criticism of an overabundance of realistic imagery in cyberspace focalizations. Yet The Matrix, the most successful narrative representing cyberspace, “is rendered through the aesthetic of spectacular realism. Instead of being asked to believe that a digital aesthetic or a screen should signify cyberspace, the audience is asked to collude in the imagining of cyberspace as somewhere that looks no different and is ‘virtually’ impossible to distinguish from actual and physical space” (O’Riordan 144).

The simplest answer to the question of why cyberpunk represents virtual reality in a realistic way is that it is a genre of popular fiction, and its readership is not interested in an narrative “without a hero or country or conquest” which seeks to “represent the unrepresentable” (McCallum 375). From a filmic perspective, while the box office for Lawnmower Man was respectable for its time, the film only spent a portion of screen time portraying the virtual world, which was utterly mercurial with a chrome-like texture. Hardly the sort of thing anyone wants to look at for lengthy periods of time. This may seem like a mundane explanation, but will be demonstrated shortly how it pertains to our inquiry.

Bal attests that in some realistic novels, “descriptions of space are executed with great precision. It is important that the realistic aspects in such descriptions be clearly visible: the space must resemble the actual world, so that the events situated within it also become plausible” (Bal 141). I would argue that the same holds for novels which describe fantastic worlds, in this case, cyberspace realities. Veel references the notion of “schemata” in the work of certain cognitive semanticists to show how people conceive “everything that goes on around us as spatial stories, which are comprehended in correlation with the experience of our own body” (Veel 153). New metaphorical constructions are made when a source (or physical space) is correlated to a target space (which merely handles information). The mundane example Veel gives is the expression that “something has gone down the drain”, which utilizes the source space of plumbing and the target space of being wasteful. She applies such a schema to cyberspace, showing how cyberspace can “be conceived in bodily terms of navigation while being performed in an abstract mathematical space consisting of the 0s and 1s of a computer” (Veel 153). It might be more ‘realistic’ to say that cyberspace shouldn’t resemble reality at all, but in order for the reader or viewer to make any sense of what is happening, references to reality are necessary in organizing the virtual space.

Marie-Laure Ryan addresses the issue of reader/viewer immersion in Narrative as Virtual Reality when she categorizes the place names of fictional worlds. The first two, places the reader has likely visited and then secondly, places the reader hopes to visit are somewhat immaterial to our discussion. However, the third category is salient:

“The ultimate function …of concrete details whose sole purpose is to fix an atmosphere and to jog the reader’s memory… is to tell the reader, “This is the real world.” But the device is not merely a convention of realistic fiction…The reader’s sense of being there is independent of the verisimilitude of the textual world” (Ryan 130).

Simply put, if virtual reality was described as place instead of focalized as space, it would likely be so unintelligible that readers would become disoriented and give up on the text. Looking at cultural manifestations of cyberspace such as chat rooms, the abundance of anthropomorphic avatars over symbols shows how even in a space where the main representation of self is text-based, people still want to be essentially human in cyberspace. In the same way, when reading, there is a desire to connect with the imagined world; while the reader may never be able to actually go to the place they imagine, it helps if they can conceive of the possibility (however improbable it may be) of going to such a place. Ryan notes that it is a blending of the “reader’s private landscapes” along with “the textual geography” which produce the “most complete forms of spatial immersion” (122). Put another way, “The reader’s natural tendency is to try to understand a fictional world in terms of the actual world” (Maitre 17). However, giving readers/viewers ready access to narrative cyberspaces is only the first step towards the meaning of cyberspace as narrative space.

Just Like Heaven

A realistic cyberspace also serves to destabilize the idea of cyberspace as paradise or spiritual otherworld, “a good place for big ideas… to get religion, search for the divine, find your dream house” (Berry 261). Margaret Wertheim has noted the spiritual inclination of the actual cyberspace dwellers as a spirituality which ignores the body:

“Cybernauts, like angels, are beings of the ether, unassailed by physical limitations. Like angels, they are also free of deformity, illness and ugliness. On entering netspace, the frailities of the flesh are left behind. Fat, acne, bad eyes, weedy physiques and creaky joints are jettisoned. In cyberspace, its latest promoters say, one can simply be, a pure, immaterial soul, transcending the boundaries of both body and nation. For cybernauts, as for angles, the tyrannies of race, sex and distance can begin to dissolve, and one becomes part of the universal fellowship of the ether…A society of “souls” umimpeded by material bodies, free to commune across space and time: What would that be if not the medieval vision of paradise? The difference of course, is that silicon lets you dream of getting there before you die” (Wertheim 25)

Veel argues that the expression of cyberspace in eutopian terms needs to stop. She states that a fallacy occurs “when cyberspace is infused with redemptive and liberating qualities and conceived of as an “other” space that is cut off from geographical space, thus “forgetting” that the experience of physical space is what makes us able to relate to cyberspace in the first place” (Veel 170). This assumes a gnostic sort of eutopia, which wishes to be free of the constraints of the body. As Jack Voller observes, the sublime nature of infinity is relocated, “removing it from its exalted place in the heaves or on the terrestrial horizon and squeezing it into the interface between human mind and computer technology” (20) in Gibson’s Neuromancer. Likewise in Snow Crash the Metaverse is an example of the sublime simply based on its massive size of “65,536 kilometers around”, but gains a spiritual aspect when compared to the spiritual world (208).

Like many cyberpunk writers before him, Stephenson uses religious imagery to construct the narrative world of Snow Crash but maintains the cyberpunk’s characteristic ambivalence toward organized religion, and more importantly here, metaphysics. Stephenson has created a narrative wherein cyberspace serves the function that the otherworld would have in mythic tales. Anyone with a computer can visit the Metaverse, but since hacker extraordinaire Hiro is part of the elite few, the “technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong” (192) who have designed parts of it, he is able to do more than simply travel there – he can transform it, like some sort of cyber-shaman.

Stephenson goes a step further by introducing a physical way in which the code that has constructed the Metaverse can be used as a form of magic, namely the nam-shub of Enki. Stephenson describes Enki as a sort of messianic figure, stating that Enki was “…a fully conscious human being, just like us…he created the nam-shub of Enki, a countervirus that spread along the same routes as the me and the metavirus. It went into the deep structures of the brain and reprogrammed them” (397-8). This messianic aspect is reinforced by the further exposition that “the ministry of Jesus Christ was an effort to break Judaism out of this condition—sort of an echo of what Enki did. Christ’s gospel is a new nam-shub, an attempt to take religion out of the temple, out of the hands of the priesthood, and bring the Kingdom of God to everyone” (401). Here Stephenson is referencing Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar, when he says that “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” but rather “the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:21, 23, NIV). If the words of the Christian messiah are merely an echo of Enki’s nam-shub, then the reader must conclude that Enki possessed a potent spiritual power.

Yet, despite the groundwork Stephenson has laid with this idea of the nam-shub being something that works both in and outside cyberspace, Hiro never attains the ability to use it. He is set up as a sort of Enki, but is never granted an actual nam-shub; his ability to transform reality remains limited to the Metaverse. Even the character of Juanita, who becomes a “ba’al shem” who can “hack the brainstem” (430) is treated dismissively by Hiro, despite the reality the narrative has developed, which should make her “an extremely righteous rabbi, someone possessing such deep penetration that he knows the unutterable name of God and can use it to control nature” (Porush, 568). Yet her awesome ability only serves to rescue Hiro so that he can reenter the Metaverse, the cyberpunk otherworld and foil L. Bob Rife’s plans using a computer hack.

Porush sees Stephenson’s “rejection of the metaphysical turn not as a lack of insight, but as the residual hold that one of the most potent viral ideas in our culture has on Stephenson and on his hero: a commitment to orthodox rationalism” (569). In her book, The Secret Life of Puppets, Victoria Nelson explores this issue by saying “it is because of our culture’s post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment prohibition on the supernatural and the exclusion of a transcendent, nonmaterialist level of reality from the allowable universe has created the ontological equivalent of a perversion caused by repression” (19). Nelson’s book is an exploration of the sublimation of the supernatural in popular fiction into cybernetic entities such as cyborgs, androids and robots. The post-Enlightenment mindset cannot admit angels and demons, or gods and goddesses. Strangely, it seems to be able to admit aliens, robots and artificial intelligences. However, if cyberpunk is truly a postmodern form of literature, then when the narrative demands, (as is seemingly the case in Snow Crash) then metaphysical possibilities should be embraced rather than avoided:

“The inability of Snow Crash to confront its own metaphysics, the spiritual transcendence it conjures only to banish, comes from the fashionable unwillingness to grant any credence to narratives of metaphysics, even while so much of postmodern culture apparently yearns for it” (Porush, 569).

Despite its philosophical pastiche of “Christian exegesis, a Redeemer myth…Jean Baudrillard…martial-arts mysticism, oracular prophecy, spoon-bending telekinesis, Joseph Campbell and Godelian mathematical metaphysics” (Sterling 24), as regards our discussion, the first film of the Matrix trilogy could be said to follow along the same ambivalence toward metaphysics Stephenson has. It is only within the cyberspace reality of the Matrix that characters are able to defy gravity, “know Kung-Fu” in the space of a minute, and “dodge bullets”. However, in the final moments of the second film, The Matrix: Reloaded and throughout the third film, The Matrix: Revolutions, Neo, the messianic “One” is able to transfer his transformative shamanic abilities into the “desert of the real”. In watching all three films back to back, the viewer notices a marked increase of action in the real world, while action in the virtual realm of the Matrix decreases. Further, the color shifting done to the film for scenes within the Matrix is towards a pale green tone, evoking the lines of green code on black screens which is the code of the Matrix, while the colors of the real world are more vibrant, and flesh tones are healthier looking. And in the end, Agent Smith’s defeat at the hands of Neo (and by extension, the machines) is due to real actions, not virtual ones. It is Neo’s actual physical journey to the machine world and the reality that he is physically connected to the machine mainframe when Smith tries to take him over that enables the victory. While the first Matrix film may reflect the “utopian wish for cyberspace to create a parallel world in which the traditional notion of space in geographical terms is abolished on behalf of a hope vested in the liberating effects of not being limited by space” (Veel 169), the third one has clearly sent the message that ““The newly revived aesthetic of cyberpunk suggests that virtual reality offers only an illusion of enhanced interactivity and not a real possibility of empowerment” (Barnett 372).

Getting Real

In the first film, on his first foray back into the Matrix, Neo sees familiar places and says, “I have these memories of my entire life, but…none of them really happened…what does that mean?” To which Trinity replies, “That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are” (Wachowski 65). Barnett states that the realistic way in which virtual reality is presented in The Matrix trilogy represents the postmodern sublime in a way that allows those who experience it to begin to grasp their position as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spatial as well as social confusion” (Barnett 372). Unlike early cyberpunk, where virtual reality was a place to escape from the real world, in The Matrix trilogy, it becomes the place to escape from into the real world. The fixed meaning of a space without fixed meaning is that since at some level, all reality is constructed by the individual, then that individual also has both the power and responsibility to help construct the consensual illusion of reality. “Cyberspace is clearly a produced space that defines the subject’s relation to culture and politics. Like all such spaces, however, it does not simply exist to be inhabited; space implies position and negotiation” (Bukataman155). Likewise, we might say that empirical space is also focalized by individuals, and as such is somewhat virtual, and therefore subject to position and negotiation. If, indeed, “Cola is not the ‘real thing’ in a Baudriallardian world, but Coke – the logo – is,” (Currie 318) and neither is ‘human’ the real thing, but rather a construction of gender, sexuality, religious preference, ethic, morality, physical ability and on and on, then what virtual logo are we constructing of ourselves?

The malleability of the virtual hero is a challenge to continually be remaking and reinventing ourselves against the grain of the ideological matrixes of the ‘real’ world. If “reality is seen as contingent and constructed” (Wolfreys 318) then there is an aspect to which individual choice affects that construction. The hyper-real cyberspace of the Matrix causes us “to understand the fantasy world in terms of the actual world, at the same time [coming] to understand the actual world in terms of the fantasy world” (Maitre 67-8). Cyberspace offers a fantastically clear picture of the malleability of reality, challenging “our basic ideals and aspirations by presenting them with embarrassing and undisguised, if over-simplified, clarity” (Maitre 74). And while it would be ludicrous to suggest that one could alter the physical laws, the “coded rules” (Berry 257) of the empirical universe, the idea that a person can make a social-psychological difference in the world is a valuable one. One might say we can’t change the hardware, but we can rewrite the software.

Mark Nunes gives an appropriate metaphor for this idea of a simultaneously fixed and yet highly malleable world, one that is “metastable and dynamic” (65), through the concepts of striated and smooth space as descriptors for cyberspace, specifically in regards to the Internet:

“On Internet, however, these metaphors do not just organize space, they create a space, or more accurately, the substantiate cyberspace as a virtual topography. A striated “highway” topography determines cyberspace as a system of regulated connections between determined points on dedicated lines; conversely, a smooth “plane” topography “writes” a cyberspace of fluid transit and continual passage” (62).

He writes that “[a]ny account of computer-mediated communication that seriously engages the concept of “cyberspace,” then, would have to come to terms with the mixing of these two topographies” (73). What emerges is a topography which is both “restrictive and regulatory” as well as “open and originative” (66). The hardware of life might be said to be the physical world; the need to eat, sleep, breathe, etc. The software would be, to use Marxist terminology, the ideology of our society. If people see empirical reality as somewhat virtual, then what prevents individuals from destabilizing “the familiarity of architectural and social norms, the reassurance of control by stable authority, and of predictability, certainty, and the routinization of behavior” (69)? Nunes states that what is gained by such action is “a clear articulation of….potential” (69), namely the potential of cyberspace to open us up to the potential of real space. As such, cyberspace exists as a sort of metaphor for a postmodern Marxism, where “piratic, nomadic smooth space constantly erupts from within the striated space of legitimated government and business activities” (73).

The consistent pull between these two poles keeps both cyberspace, as well as empirical space “always “virtual,” always in the act of becoming: real, yet never completely determined” (74). If cyberspace is seen as an escape, a type of heaven or paradise, then there is no need for struggle or tension. A hyper-real cyberspace, one which is not an “exotic construction which displays its fictional character through an excess of ingenious devices” (During 140) nor an “obvious Oz of cyberspace” (Berry 255), but rather “the double of the real world, virtually indistinguishable from it” (During 140), which forces the viewer to focus on the “moviegoer’s present, warts and all” (Berry 255). And what is this condition? Leonard Sweet refers to our present technological age as the Bionomic Age, and describes it as a “Promethean hell” and “technological slavery, beeper bondage, and bionomic experimentation” where “anytime-anywhere work quickly becomes everytime-everywhere work” (33). The aesthetically realistic representation of cyberspace in The Matrix mirrors this again with over-simplified clarity through the veritable omnipresence of technology in the trilogy: “The subjects of The Matrix cannot move beyond technology but only reflect it back, as it is no longer distinct but ontological” (O’Riordan 142), an ontology defined by technology as “the enclosure of everything digetically known” (147). However, while the ontologies of both the film world of The Matrix and the modern Western world may be defined by technology, it is ultimately still humans who emerge as the final creators of the reality in which that technology is used.

In The Matrix Revolutions, when Neo offers to help the machines by sacrificing himself to defeat the viral Agent Smith, the machines respond with a thunderous, “WE DO NOT NEED YOU! WE NEED NOTHING”. Neo replies, “If that’s true then I’ve made a mistake and you should kill me now,” which leads to his insertion into the Matrix and the final showdown between Neo and Smith. While it may seem to people leading 24-7 lives that they are slaves to their cell phone or laptop or fax machine, the truth is that none of these things have any meaning or significance without the humans who use them. Cyberspace in all its forms ultimately serves as a “defining metaphor, an attempt to recognize and overcome the technological estrangements of the electronic age, and a preliminary attempt to resituate the human as its fundamental force” (Bukataman 156). However, the cyberspace of The Matrix reminds us that despite the fact that, “in an era of ATMs and global banking, cyberspace is where your money is”, cyberspace is ultimately a responsive and modifiable financial, capital and social space; “it is a place of testing and the arena for new technological rites of passage…cyberspace produces a unified experience of spatiality, and thus social being, in a culture that has become impossibly fragmented” (Bukataman 156).

Conclusion

Chris Seay has appropriated the films for modern Christianity in The Gospel Reloaded, which notes the irony of a film about virtual reality relying heavily upon computer technology for its inception. However, Seay concludes, “in the hands of the Wachowski brothers, the technology is used not to sedate, but to support; not to exploit, but to enlighten” (146).

It is no longer in vogue to assume that texts have meanings which can provide such outdated and idealistic concepts as hope, but that is certainly what The Matrix trilogy as the apex of cyberpunk leaves us with. What began in dystopia fleeing to cyberspace ends in cyberspace emerging to transform reality, and perhaps the future. And it is, as Kristin Veel states, the obligation of literary scholars “to use their abilities of aesthetic analysis on new phenomena such as the interface, and to learn to take advantage of the possibilities that the new media offer their profession. Only by doing so is it possible to take part in the ongoing definition of what purposes these technologies serve” (Veel 151).

Perhaps making a point about hope unmasks a desire for something essential within text, but I would argue that it is, instead, a further questioning of the virtual reality of narrative, since by its very nature, hope like postmodernist thought “suspends answers and defers completion, though it does not ignore the possibility” of answer or completion. After all, as Trinity said to Neo, “It’s the question that drives us.”

Works Cited

Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 2^nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Barnett, P. Chad. “Reviving Cyberpunk: (Re)Constructing the Subject and Mapping Cyberspace in the Wachowski Brothers’ Film The Matrix” Extrapolation 41. (2000): 359-74.

Berry, Rick. “Dreaming Real” Haber, 250-264.

Bukataman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. London: Duke University Press, 1993.

During, Ellie. “Is There an Exit from “Virtual Reality?” Grid and Network—From Tron to The Matrix” The Matrix in Theory (Critical Studies 29) (Critical Studies). Ed. Myriam Diocaretz and Stefan Herbrechter. Critical Studies. 29. Amsterdam: Rodopt, 2006.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984.

Gillis, Stacy, ed. The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded. London: Wallflower Press, 2005.

Haber, Karen, ed. Exploring the Matrix: Visions of the Cyber Present (Byron Preiss Book). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

Maitre, Doreen. Literature and Possible Worlds. London: Middlesex Polytechnic Press, 1983.

McCaffery, Larry, ed. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science Fiction. London: Duke University Press, 1991.

McCallum, E.L. “Mapping the Real in Cyberfiction” Poetics Today 21 (2000): 349-76.

Nelson, Victoria. The Secret Life of Puppets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Nunes, Mark. “Virtual Topographies: Smooth and Striated Cyberspace” Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory. Marie-Laure Ryan, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

O’Riordan, Kate. “Changing Cyberspaces: Dystopia and Technological Excess” in Gillis. 138-150.

Porush, David. “Hacking the Brainstem: Postmodern Metaphysics and Stephenson's SnowCrash” Configurations 3 (1994): 537-71.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society). Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Seay, Chris and Greg Garrett. The Gospel Reloaded: Exploring Spirituality and Faith in The Matrix. Colorado Springs: Piñon Press, 2003.

Second Life. 2006. Second Life. 14 December 2006

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book). Toronto: Bantam Books, 2003.

Sterling, Bruce. “Every Other Movie is the Blue Pill” Haber, 16-28.

Sweet, Leonard. SoulTsunami. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999.

The Matrix Reloaded (Widescreen Edition). Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss. Village Roadshow Pictures, 2003.

The Matrix Revolutions (2-Disc Widescreen Edition). Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss. Village Roadshow Pictures, 2003.

The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss. Village Roadshow Pictures, 1999.

Veel, Kristin. “The Irreducibility of Space: Labyrinths, Cities, Cyberspace” Diacritics 33 (2003): 151-72.

Voller, Jack. “Neuromanticism: Cyberspace and the Sublime.” Extrapolation 1 (1993): 18-29.

Wertheim, Margaret. “The Medieval Consolations of Cyberspace” Sciences 35 (1995): 24-25.

Wolfreys, Julian, ed. Literary Theories: A Reader and Guide. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

Photo Essay - Weekend in Jasper

Last week's photo essay (which was really just one picture...so only 1000 words) featured the snowy landscapes of Water Valley, Alberta. This past weekend Jenica's parents took the family on our annual trip to the mountains; the traditional destination the past three years has been Jasper, Alberta. Here's a few moments from the weekend:

Running down the streets in Jasper...















Will get you put in one of THESE:















Because you never know when you'll run into a bear.
And bears eat little boys. Or maybe the blonde one will eat the bear. He looks like he might.















A moment for the Thomas the Tank engine fanboys















And the obligatory family pic. Gunnar is practicing to be a teenager.

Slither

I'm one of those "Browncoat" types; the sort of person who loved Firefly; was angry that it got taken off the air after only one season; can relate some sort of conspiracy theory over why the people at FOX insist on vomiting out reality shows instead of giving established creative minds like Joss Whedon the chance to develop something original and new; was elated when the film Serenity was released to theaters; have another conspiracy theory about Serenity's release date being the reason it's box office wasn't great; have read Serenity and Beyond.

In addition, like Nathan Fillion, the star of Firefly, I'm an Edmontonian, which gives Nathan has a special place in my fanboy world. I have better than a snowball's chance in hell of meeting him on the street. And I think he's got one of the best delivery's for snappy dialogue in the film business.

Hence my initial interest in Slither, a horror film with snappy dialogue which tips its hat to everything that was good and cheesy about horror movies in the 80's. From the use of physical makeup effects in a CGI world to the plot borrowed from Night of the Creeps, this film is a thorough 80's horror homage. There's even a department store in the film named R.J. MacCready, the name of Kurt Russell's character from John Carpenter's The Thing.

It is crude. Over the top gross. It has the highest body count of any movie I saw in 2006. And it's good, gory, horror-flick fun. Slither never takes itself seriously, although the actors playing their roles certainly do, so it's classically campy; you wonder who's going to get consumed, rip apart or blown up next, and you're never sure if the heroes are going to make it. After all, MacCready likely froze to death in the Antarctica...

Like Serenity, Slither did poorly as the box office, despite an 85% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I am sad to say my DVD purchase made no contribution to the box office, but instead can only hope it contributes to the same fame-game John Carpenter's The Thing evolved through, going from box office bomb to cult-status via the home theater market.

For those who watched The Thing on Superchannel as a kid, taped it, and then watched it too many times to count, I cannot recommend Slither enough. If the idea of alien slugs tunneling into people's bodies through their digestive tract is enough description to put you off, go rent Serenity again, or better yet, go buy it already.

Since Slither was released in 2006 and made it onto my top 10, I've included an adjusted list below.

Gotthammer's Top 10 of 2006...
1. Pan's Labyrinth
2. V for Vendetta
3. Casino Royale
4. Miami Vice
5. The Prestige
6. Silent Hill
7. Slither
8. Superman Returns
9. Underworld: Evolution
10. Cars

Only one left to see from my "must see" list..."The Illusionist"!

Photo Essay: A weekend in Water Valley

Jenica, Gunnar and I spent last weekend in Water Valley, at MCA's Camp Valaqua where I was the guest speaker. Despite the fact that I had 50+ short essays to mark over the course of the weekend, Jenica encouraged me to find time to come for a walk with her and Gunnar. She took this picture of me pulling Gunnar in his sled. It gets a lot bigger when you click on it.

Magik Beans Episode 7 now up!

The adventure continues. Here's a preview:

"You said you need to travel the tree," Lara interrupted. "How exactly are you going to do that? And...where will you end up?"

"Well, normally we leprechaun travel by rainbow," Finn explained, sitting down at one of the tables. His companions followed suite, putting their feet up on the assorted debris and chairs. "But there isn't exactly what you'd be callin' an abundance of rain this time of year in these parts."

"Wait." Andrew was running a hand down his face, squeezing it enough that as his hand slid past his eyes, he pulled all the skin down. "You're supposed to be leprechauns? St. Patrick's day isn't for another two weeks."

The leprechauns all looked at each other. "Look here Boyo," Finn said, leaning forward with an air of seriousness. "We aren't supposed to be anything. We are what we are. And what we are...is leprechauns."