However, it is quite easy to feel the intellectual challenge of "The Matrix": Isn't it just a film with Rorschach psychological test effect? The Rorschach test created a universal cognitive testing method [its website: http: //rorschach.test.at/]. Just like the well-known statue of God, no matter where you look at it, he always seems to be looking directly at you-in fact, it provides the possibility of recognizing yourself from every angle. Therefore, my Lacan fan friend said to me that the screenwriter of the film must have read Lacan’s work; scholars of the Frankfurt School will definitely regard Matrix3 as the incarnation of the cultural industry, and consider it as a concrete symbol of alienation of social wealth (capital). Takes over and colonizes our inner life and regards us as the source of its energy; young people living in the new century see from it that the world we live in is nothing but a mirage, which is embodied in the international broadband network. Built by a globalized mindset. This question goes back to Plato’s ideal country: "The Matrix" does not exactly repeat Plato’s cave fables-ordinary people become prisoners, tied tightly in their seats, and forced to watch the so-called weird images of reality (they mistakenly believe that this is reality) )? Of course, the important difference between "The Matrix" and it is that when some of them escaped from their caves, they no longer saw the bright space illuminated by the sun, the highest and the best beauty, but "True Desert". The key objection between the Frankfurt School and the Lacanists is here: Should we define Matrix as a historical metaphor of capital that colonizes culture and thinking, or the concretization of the symbolic sequence itself? But what if the latter is also wrong? What if the virtual characters of the symbolic sequence "itself" are historically extraordinary?
Reach the end of the world
Of course, the idea of designing a protagonist to live in an artificial world that is completely manipulated and controlled is not original: The Matrix just brings it into virtual reality and makes it more thorough. The crux of the question here is whether virtual reality can subvert the tradition itself has fundamentally ambiguous ambiguities. On the one hand, virtual reality has completely reduced our rich sensory experience, not only to letters, but even to the smallest number sequence of 0 and 1, that is, those electronic signals that pass and fail. On the other hand, this kind of digital machine produces an "analog" experience about reality, which seems indistinguishable from the "real" reality. With the continuous erosion of the concept of "real" reality, virtual reality has thus become an extreme proof of the allure of images at the same time.
If a person lives in a carefree California town-it is a paradise for consumers-but one day he suddenly begins to doubt that the world he lives in is just a fictitious environment, one that convinces him that he is living in reality On the public stage in the world, the surrounding crowd are just some well-trained actors or extras in this huge performance. Is this the most extreme American paranoia? The most recent example is Peter Will’s "Trumen's World". Kim Kelly plays a civil servant in a small town. He gradually discovers the truth of the matter: he is the protagonist of a 24-hour TV show, his hometown. Set up in a huge studio, the camera will never stop tracking and shooting him. Sloterdijk's "sphere" theory (sphere) is really explained here: In the film, a huge blond commanding sphere encircles and isolates the entire city. The last scene of "Trumen's World" seems to be a kind of liberation. Kim Kelly broke through the ideological stitching of the shackles of the world and rushed into its outer space, which is invisible from the inside of the ideology. of. However, if the "happy" ending of this movie (we must not forget that millions of viewers around the world can’t help applauding during the last few seconds of watching this movie), that is, the protagonist rushes out, just like we Being led to miss it, he is going to find his true love (so we have another pattern of love ending!), is it just another ideology in the most essential sense? Perhaps, ideology also exists in the belief that, outside of this finite universe, there is a "real reality" waiting for us to enter? 4
Among the predecessors who hold this view, it is very necessary to mention Phillip Dick's "Time Out of Joint" (1959). In his work, at the beginning of the 1950s, the protagonist of the novel lived a simple life in a pleasant California town, but he gradually discovered that the entire town was just a fictional stage to satisfy him... "Time of Chaos" And the underlying meaning of "Trumen's World" is that the capitalist California consumer paradise is becoming surreal in an unreal, immaterial way that has lost material inertia. Therefore, it is not only Hollywood that has filmed the appearance of real life without the material inertia of material entities-in the recent capitalist consumer society, "real social life" itself also needs fictional characters on the stage, our neighbors Like those stage actors, they act as if they are living in a "real" life... The utilitarian world of capitalism has lost its spiritual meaning, and its ultimate truth, that is, the dematerialized "real life" itself, it turns into The above weird performance.
In the realm of science fiction, we must mention "Starship" by Brain Aldiss. In his novel, a group of tribe members are left in the tunnel of a huge star ship, which is a closed world, isolated from the rest of the star ship by dense herbs. There is another world; in the end, a few children passed through the bushes, reached the outside world, and were welcomed by other tribes. Among those older and more "naive" predecessors, people may remember George Seaton's "36 Hours" (36Hours), this early 1960s movie about an American official [James ·Garner (Jamess Garner), he knew all the plans for the Normandy landing, but shortly before the landing, he was accidentally captured by the Germans. Because he was in a coma when he was arrested due to the impact of the blast, the Germans quickly built a "small American military sanatorium" in an attempt to convince him that he is now living in the 1950s and that the Americans have won in World War II, but He has lost 6 years of memory-the Germans did this because they thought that he could tell them all the plans for the invasion and landing, so that he could prepare early; of course, the buildings that were so carefully constructed still soon showed cracks... …
Behind this, of course, is the pre-modern concept of "reaching the end of the world": in that very famous engraving of the same name, the surprising rambler approaches the screen/table of heaven, which is a painting with twinkling stars. The big plane, strolling through this screen, reached the other side-this is the last scene that actually happened in the movie "Trumen's World". There is no doubt that in the last scene of the movie, Truman stepped up the ladder, reached the wall where the "blue sky" was drawn, and opened a door there. This was obviously Magritte. Style brushstrokes: Doesn’t that mean that this same feeling is completely restored now? Isn't this like Syberberg's new Parsifal? 5 The infinitely expanding horizon was also blocked by the apparently "artificial" set. Does this mean that the era of Descartes' infinite perspective has passed, and we are back in the resurrected medieval non-perspective universe? Frederick Jameson keenly discovered the same phenomenon in some of Raymond Chandler's novels and some of Hitchcock's films: the novel "Farewell, Dear" (Farewell, The Pacific Coast in My Lovely) is regarded as the “end/limit” of the world, and there is an unknown abyss beyond it; and in the film "North by Northwest", the huge valley of President Mountain also plays a similar role, avoiding chase In the escape of the writer, Eva-Marie Saint and Gary Grant escaped to the top. Before Eva-Marie almost fell into the valley, Gary Grant seized her firmly; now some people think about "Apocalypse Now". The famous war scenes that took place on the Vietnam/Puzhai front bridge in "Record" are added to this series? Hundreds of "beyond the world we know" under the space outside the bridge. So how can we not recall the statement that our earth is not floating in infinite space, but in an open round hole, surrounded forever with endless ice blocks, and the sun is in the center. Isn't this one of the favorite ideas of pure pseudoscience? (According to some reports, they even think that some telescopes should be placed on the island of Sylt to observe the United States)?
The "really existed" big other
So, what is Matrix? Simply put, it is what Lacan calls the "big other", the virtual symbolic sequence, the network that builds the reality for us. The dimension of this "big Other" is the basic structure of the alienated subject in the symbolic sequence: the other is pulling the rope that holds the puppet, and the subject does not speak, but he is "speaking" controlled by the symbolic structure. In short, this "big other" is synonymous with social entities. Because of its existence, the subject can never completely control the effects of his actions, that is to say, the results of all the actions of the subject always deviate from his expectations and goals. . However, the key point to be pointed out here is that in the key chapters of Lacan’s main work Seminar XI, he tried to outline the results of alienation, which, in a sense, is the contrast of alienation. , That is, detachment: After the alienation in the other, what immediately follows is the detachment from the other. When the subject realizes that the Big Other is inherently contradictory, looking at the virtual, "bolted", and loses materiality, the action of breaking away from the Big Other begins-the purpose of fantasy is not to supplement the lack of the subject , But to make up for the defects of the Other, that is, to build (reconstruct) the consistency of the Big Other. For this purpose, fantasy and delusion hold hands internally: delusion essentially means believing that there is another "other of the other", believing that there is another other hidden behind the other of the clear social mechanism Those who plan (let us see it so) unforeseen consequences in our social life, and therefore guarantee the continuity of others: for example, behind the chaotic market economy, behind the loss of morality, etc. , With a purposeful strategy in the Jewish plot... This kind of paranoid view has been further advanced for our digital daily life: when our entire (society) exists, in the computer network When this big Other has become more and more materialized, you can easily imagine that if an evil programmer eliminates all our digital identities, we will also lose our social existence, and we will no longer be a society. The recognized "person".
The theory in "The Matrix" also follows this same delusional approach: In the movie, the other is embodied by a real supercomputer. There is one – there must be one – Matrix, because "the situation is wrong, the opportunity is missed, something is always going wrong", that is to say, the idea of this movie is that the above situation occurs because of the Matrix The existence of hinders the expression of the "real" reality that exists behind itself. Therefore, the problem with this movie is that it is not "crazy" enough, because it assumes that there is another "real" reality behind our daily reality maintained by Matrix. However, in order to avoid this fatal misunderstanding, the opposite statement put forward is also completely ideological, that is, for "everything is generated by Matrix", the opposite statement put forward is that there is no ultimate reality, everything is just mutual Mirroring each other’s endless sequence of virtual reality is completely ideological. (Another) What Matrix gave birth to]. More subversive than the proliferation of the virtual world will be the proliferation of reality itself-this reproduces a paradoxical danger that some physicists have seen in recent particle accelerator experiments. As we all know, scientists are now trying to build an accelerator close to the speed of light, which can impact atoms and fission the nucleus. The idea is that this kind of impact can not only make the nucleus fission into its constituent parts-neutrons and protons, but also make the neutrons and protons themselves turn into powder, leaving some "plasma" (Plasma), a kind of free Unbound particles-energy juice composed of quarks and gluons. People have never studied the structure of matter in this state before, because this state only existed briefly after the Big Bang. However, this will lead to a nightmarish vision: if the success of the experiment will create an apocalyptic machine, a devil that will destroy the whole world, it will destroy the ordinary matter around it with a ruthless inevitability, so As we know, what should we do if our world is wiped out? Ironically, the end of the world and the disintegration of the universe are the final irrefutable argument to prove the correctness of this theory, because it will suck all matter into the black hole and create a whole new universe, which is Said, the perfect reproduction of the Big Bang scene.
The paradox that comes from this is that there are two opposing statements – 1. A subject drifts freely from one virtual reality to another, which is a fully awake ghost who knows that every reality is a fiction; 2. Behind Matrix there is a delusional assumption of true reality-all false: they all ignore the truth. "The Matrix" insisted that there is no reality behind the simulation of virtual reality. This is not wrong. When Morpheus took Neo to see the ruins of Chicago, he said: "Welcome to the real desert." But, the truth. It is not the "real reality" behind the virtual, but the void that makes the reality incomplete/incoherent. Every symbolic Matrix has its function to conceal this incoherence and complete this concealing behavior. One of the ways is to declare: Behind the incomplete/incoherent reality we understand, there is another reality, which is constructed from endless impossibility.
"The Big Other does not exist"
The "big other" also represents a field of common sense, a field that a person can reach after free and deep thought; from a philosophical point of view, its most recent excellent version is Habermas's social interaction theory, which contains coordinated management. idea. This "big other" is what is gradually breaking down today. The society we have today is a kind of radical split: on the one hand, the objective language used by experts and scientists can no longer be converted into ordinary language that everyone can understand, but in the way of speaking in obsessed with this idiomatic language , This discourse is everywhere. Although no one can really understand, these words have outlined the imagination of our arty masses (for example, black holes, the Big Bang, superstring theory, quantum oscillations...). This is not only true in the natural sciences, but also in other economic and social science fields. Professional jargon is regarded as an objective insight that no one can question, nor can it be transformed into our daily experience. In short, the gap between scientific knowledge and general knowledge is insurmountable. It is this gap that allows scientists to become popular and educated persons and become "subjects who should have knowledge of things" (such as Stephen Hawking's phenomenon). ). The grim counterpart to this objective reality is that we, from a cultural perspective, are facing a world with diverse lifestyles, and everyone cannot be transformed into another person: all we can do is to ensure this state, in Their coexistence is tolerated in a diverse society. Today, the main image may be an Indian programmer. During the day, he performed very well in professional skills, but at night, as soon as he got home, he would light candles to the local Indian gods and worship the sacred cow. Cybernetic perfectly demonstrates this division. It is said that Cybernet allows all of us to live in a global village; but what really happened is that we were bombarded by a huge amount of information belonging to this incompatible, incompatible world – so we had a huge amount of information. The "little other", a large number of special identities of the clan and region of our own choice, replaced the big other of the global village. Avoid such a misunderstanding: Lacan does not tie science to an authoritarian narrative, so that it is reduced to a myth similar to political correctness. Such myths include: science does “touch the truth” and its knowledge is indeed “knowledge of the truth” – it’s just that Lacan believes that science is a good thing. This forms a stalemate with the fact that scientific knowledge cannot become Symbolic "The Big Other". The gap between modern science and Aristotle's philosophical ontology-common sense is difficult to bridge: it appeared as early as Galileo's life, and is now pushed to the extreme by quantum physics. In quantum physics, we use effective rules/laws to deal with everything, although these rules/laws cannot be retranslated into our experience of a descriptive reality.
The Risk Society theory and its globalized introspective consciousness are correct. It emphasizes that, as predicted by the universalists in the classical Enlightenment, after a long period of time, all fundamental issues can be consulted by experts. "Objective knowledge" can be answered in this way, so now we are on the opposite side of things: when we are faced with conflicts about the environmental consequences of a new product (for example, genetically modified vegetables) When it comes to opinions, it is futile to find the final expert opinion. The crux of the problem is that it is not just the substantive issues being obscured, because science has become corrupted through the financial support of large companies and government agencies – and even within science itself, science cannot provide answers. Ecologists predicted the desolation of our forests 15 years ago-but the problem now is that trees are growing too fast. But the short-sightedness of the risk society theory is that it emphasizes those absurd dilemmas. These so-called dilemmas make us ordinary people forced to make decisions over and over again, although we are so clear that we have no right to make decisions at all, and our The decision is also arbitrary. Ulrich Beck and his posterity attributed this to the feasibility of democratic discussions in order to build consensus; but this does not solve the constant dilemma: why democratic discussions among the masses lead to The more correct answer is that many people are ignorant and ignorant. The public’s political frustration can also be understood from this: they receive information that they cannot make judgments, but at the same time, they are asked to make decisions, that is, to weigh pros and cons objectively. Turning to "conspiracy theories" is a desperate way to escape this deadlock, and is to try to regain Frederick's troublesome material as the smallest part of the "knowledge map".
Jodi Dean (Jodi Dean)6 mentioned an interesting phenomenon, in the “silent dialogue” between official science (ie, “serious” and institutionalized by the academy) and the huge kingdom of so-called pseudoscience, in the belief that Those who have UFOs and those who want
Anyone who deciphers the secrets of the pyramid can clearly see this phenomenon: one cannot help being impressed by the fact that official scientists are conducting research with a dogmatic and contemptuous attitude, while pseudo-scientists are turning to help. Facts and arguments with popular bias. Of course, the answer is that the recognized scientist uses the authority of the scientific institution, the other to speak; but the problem is that the scientific other is just exposed again and again as a recognized symbolic fiction. So when we face the conspiracy theory, we should read Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw strictly simultaneously: we should neither consider the existence of ghosts as part of (narrative) reality, nor Analyze them as heroines in a Freudian way? The frustrated projection anti-field conspiracy doctrine of course cannot be regarded as "facts", but one cannot analyze it as a phenomenon of modern group hysteria. This formulation is still based on the “big other”, based on the “normal” conceptual model of people sharing the social reality, so it does not take into account that it is precisely this reality that is now collapsing. The problem is not that those who believe in UFOs and those who hold "conspiracy theories" regress into a delusional thinking attitude and cannot accept (social) reality; the problem is that reality itself becomes a delusion. Contemporary experience has pushed this situation before us time and time again, that is, we are forced to realize that our normal attitudes and feelings about reality are so based on a symbolic assumption, that is, what the “big Other” determines It is the norms of normality and public earnestness. What is the basis for the boundary of meaning in a particular society is by no means directly based on the “facts” of the meaning of “true knowledge” of science. Let us enter a traditional society where modern science has not yet been elevated to the status of mainstream discourse: then, in this symbolic space, if a person preaches the propositions of modern science, he will be "expelled" as a lunatic-the key to the problem Yes, say he is not" "Really crazy" is not enough. This is exactly what the society that has short-sighted and put him in this position does it-to some extent, he is really treated as a "lunatic", and he is treated as a "crazy" by society. "The other" is abandoned, and this society is exactly like a real lunatic. "Madness" is not an appellation based on a direct correspondence with "facts." Because his heart is firmly occupied by the illusion projection), it only represents the relationship between an individual and the "big Other." Lacan usually emphasizes the opposite side of this paradox: "A lunatic is not just taking himself A beggar who imagines a king, a madman is also a king who imagines himself as a king. "In other words, madness marks the collapse of the distance between symbol and reality, and marks a direct name given to oneself by symbolic designation; in other words, we use another example of it to express it: a sickly jealous husband has all in his head. It’s his wife’s idea of having sex with someone else, so if he is proved to be correct, and his wife did have sex with someone, his jealousy is still pathological. We can obviously learn from this paradox: pathological jealousy. It has nothing to do with whether the facts are turned into errors, but with how these facts are integrated into the subject’s sexual desire organism. However, what can be declared here is that this paradox can also occur on its opposite side: society (its The social symbolic domain, the big Other) is "sound" and "normal", even if it is proved to be wrong in fact (maybe, this is because of this, the late Lacan defined himself as a "mental illness" "Patient": He is indeed at the level of a mentally ill, because he can't put his words into the realm of the Other).
Someone tried to claim in the Kant philosophy model that the errors of conspiracy theory are homologous to "pure theoretical fallacies", and are similar to the confusion between the following two: One is doubt (suspicion of known science, society, common sense, etc.) ) Is regarded as a formal methodology, one is to use another global transcendence theory that includes all explanations to confirm this suspicion.
Shield the real
from another standpoint, "The Matrix" is a real shield us isolated, so that "desert of the real" bearable "shield." However, it is precisely this point that we should not forget the fundamental ambiguity of Lacanian reality: Lacanian reality is not the end of being obscured/naturalized by the screen of illusion – reality is, and first of all, the screen itself, which is Always be prepared to distort the obstacles to our perception of the signified and screen reality. In philosophical discourse, this point lies in the difference between Kant and Hegel: for Kant, reality is the realm of ontology, and we perceive “systematization” through the screen award of the transcendental category; while for Hegel, On the contrary, as he said in the introduction to his "Phenomenology of Mind", this Kantian screen spacing is wrong. Hegel used three terms in the introduction: When the screen intervenes between ourselves and reality, then it will always produce the concept of "within oneself" outside the screen (the apparent screen), so " For us, the gap between appearance and oneself is always set forever. The result is that if we extract the entity from the distorted screen, we also lose the entity itself (in religious terms, the death of Christ is the death of God himself, not just his death as a concrete person)-this is Why does Lacan follow Hegel on this point, the entity itself, the thing-in-itself, is finally stared at, rather than the perceived object. So, back to The Matrix: Matrix itself is the truth that distorts our perception of reality.
In structural anthropology, Levi-Strauss mentioned an example of his analysis of Winnebago, one of the tribal clans of the Great Lakes region in North America, which may be helpful to us. He described the spatial treatment of buildings by the Winnebago people. This tribe is divided into two subgroups (half-races), "those who are above" and "those who are below"; when we ask the two individuals of these two half-races to draw his pictures on paper or sand When it comes to the plan of her/her village (spatial arrangement of the farm), depending on which subgroup he/she belongs to, we will get two completely different answers. Both of these people will regard their village as a circle; but for one of the subgroups, the circle that includes the central housing area of the other subgroup is within their own circle, so we have two concentric circles ; For another subgroup, the circle is clearly divided into two halves by a dividing line. In other words, the members of the first subgroup (let us call it “conservative cooperators”) view the plan of the village as a circle of houses built more or less evenly around the central temple; For the members of the subgroup of the scholars (we call them "revolutionary antagonists"), he/she sees his/her tribe as two distinct settlements separated by an invisible border... Levi- Strauss’ central point is that this example will certainly not lead us into cultural relativism, and the view of social space depends on the community identity of the observer: the divergence of two “opposite” views implies a constant fact – It is not the “confirmed” spatial division of the audience, but the core of creation, that is, the fundamental confrontation that prevents the village residents from symbolizing the imbalance in social relations, explaining, “adapting”, and compromising. This imbalance prevents the community from fixing itself in a harmonious whole. The two different perspectives of the floor plan are the two efforts of mutually exclusive groups to cope with the confrontation caused by the trauma. They relied on forced acceptance of this balanced symbolic structure to heal the wound. The same situation exists in the confrontation between the sexes: Are "male" and "female" not exactly like the structure of the two houses in the village described by Levi-Strauss? To get rid of the misconception that our "evolved" society is not governed by the same logic as above, it is enough to recall how we divided the political realm into "left" and "right": a leftist and A right-winger behaves exactly like the members of the two opposite subgroups in the village described by Levi Strauss. Not only do they occupy different positions in the political realm; each of them also holds a completely different view of the division of the political realm-a leftist believes that this field is inherently divided by some fundamental confrontation, while a rightist believes that a social The organic whole is only disturbed by foreign invaders. However, Levi-Strauss put forward a more critical insight here: because although these two subgroups form the same whole, the same tribe, and live in the same village, this identity, a certain This kind of degree must be inscribed symbolically-if the entire symbolic representation of this tribe, all its social systems are not neutral, but are determined by multiple factors such as basic principles and institutional confrontation and division? Levi Strauss's original title, "Zero System", is a system relative to the famous supernatural power. This meaningless signifier does not have any definite meaning, because it is only the present signifier of the meaning itself, contrary to the absence of meaning: a special system, but constantly speaking and uncertain of its connotation-its only function is to be passive Point out the existence and reality of the social system, deny its absence, and deny the chaos of the former society. Such a zero system allows all members of the tribe to experience that they themselves are members of the same tribe. Then, isn't the zero system ideology in its purest sense? In other words, isn't it the direct embodiment of the ideological function that provides a neutral space? In that space, social confrontation is obliterated, and all members of society can confirm themselves. The struggle to resist hegemony is not exactly this kind of struggle, that is, how can the zero system of resistance be defined and colored by some special signifiers? To give a specific example: the emergence of such a zero system is accompanied by the decomposition of social connections, which were originally based on direct families or traditions, "Matrix". Isn't this a modern concept of a country? In other words, with the impact of modernization, social systems are less and less built on the tradition of naturalization, and more and more are experienced as a "contract." The special significance here lies in the fact that national identity is considered to be at least the minimum "natural", an identity based on "blood and soil", and an "artificial" identity subordinate to the social system itself ( Country, occupation) On the contrary: the pre-modern social system operates as a symbolic entity of "naturalization" (it is an undoubtedly traditional system), and the current system is imagined as an artificial product of society It is the rising need for a zero system of "naturalization". This zero system can be used as a common basis for their neutrality.
So, back to the difference between the sexes, I tried to take the risk to establish such a hypothesis that maybe, the same logic as the zero system should not only be applied to the integration of a society, but also to the confrontation and disagreement of the society; the gender difference is not just A kind of zero system in the division of human society is the lowest degree of zero distinction that enables humans to be naturalized. It is a division that is more important than any signifier of a clear social distinction. Is this distinction itself a sign? Therefore, the struggle against hegemony is once again the struggle against how this zero distinction is determined by other special social distinctions. One should read Lacan’s signifier scheme on the basis of opposing this. This scheme is very important, although it is often overestimated: Lacan uses the standard Saussure scheme (above the horizontal line with a The word "arbra", with a tree drawn under the horizontal line) is replaced with: on the horizontal line two words are next to each other, "man" and "woman", and then, under the horizontal line, two leaves are drawn to represent each The door of identity. In order to emphasize this personality difference of the signifier, Lacan first replaced Saussure’s single schema with a male/female opposition and a gender difference with a pair of signifiers; but this fact exists. The real surprise in, however, is that there is no difference between the two on the imaginary referent level (in the schema, we do not have some graphical indications of gender, such as a simplified depiction of a man and a woman, just Like the most common situation in today's bathroom, but the same door that is duplicated twice). So, is it feasible to use clear terms? That is to say, the difference between the sexes does not indicate any physical opposition based on the "real" props, but only a symbolic opposition. There is no correspondence between this opposition and the marked objective object-just some uncertain X's. Reality, this reality can never be captured by signified imagination.
Going back to the two examples of Levi-Strauss's depiction of the village: in this example, one can clearly see the precise feeling of the real intervention in the distortion. First, we get the "definite" and "objective" arrangement of houses, and then, its two different symbols, both of which have been distorted in a distorted way. However, the "reality" here is not the arrangement of reality, but the traumatic core of social confrontation, which distorts tribal members' view of true confrontation. Because our view of reality has been distorted by distortion, reality has therefore been denied X (by the way, this three-level division method is exactly the same as Freud’s three-part analysis of dreams: dreams The real core is not the subconsciousness of the dream. This subconsciousness can be replaced/translated into the clear text of the dream, and it is the unconscious desire that records itself in the distortion process of transforming the subconscious into the clear text).
The same is true in today's art scene: here, the truth does not return at all, that is, the use of excretory equipment, corpses, dog feces and other violent expressions of sensationalism are used as guise. These objects appear where they shouldn’t be, but in order for them to be where they shouldn’t be, these (empty) places should already be there, created by Malevitch (Kazimir Malevitch)" Minimalist art" is performed on it. There is a similar connection between the following two diametrically opposed highly modernist works: One is Kazmir Malevich’s famous painting "Black on White" (The
Black Square on the White Surface), one is Marcel Duchamp's "off-the-shelf method". Duchamp took the inherent inherent properties of ordinary objects in daily life; it was the artist himself who first occupied this (or any) object and placed it in a specific position before turning it into a work of art-a work of art The key is not "why", but "where". Then what Malevich's minimalism does is to restore-alienate-the peak of this situation, this empty situation (or structure). His method is to rely on the magical power of transformation to change all objects, as long as they are found to have the potential to become art. In short, there is Malevich in Duchamp's works: only when the artistic practice is separated from the structure/context itself and emptied all of its content, can you fully participate in the process of "ready-made materials". Before Malevich, a urinal was just a urinal, even if it was placed in the most famous gallery.
The excretion equipment that appears in an inappropriate place is closely related to an empty situation and the empty structure itself. Therefore, "reality" in contemporary art has three dimensions. To a certain extent, reality is the repetition of the imagination-symbol-reality triad. Here, reality is first of all the distorted dirt. The distortion of reality that is taken for granted is a distorted imagination, a pure illusion of "subjective" objective reality. Then, reality is again as a situation of nothingness, as a structure, a structure that has never existed and has never been experienced. It can only be constructed retrospectively, and therefore must be presupposed – here reality is a symbolic structure . Finally, the truth is the filthy excretion equipment that does not appear in the right place, and it is the truth itself. This last fact, if it is alienated, becomes a pure idol. Its fantasy/seductive presence masks the reality of the structure. Similarly, in the pure anti-Semitism consciousness, reality is Think of Jews as excretion tools to conceal the unbearable "structural" reality, that is, social opposition. These three dimensions of reality finally led to three modes, in order to learn the distance from the "normal" reality: one is to subdue reality to distortion and deformation; the other is to advocate the extraction of all the objects of the situation, and the other is to extract / Eliminate all the contents (objects) of reality, and what remains is the empty space once filled with objects.
Freudian brushwork
In "The Matrix", the most directly recognizable falsehood is that it defines Neo as a "unique person." Who is the unique person? In fact, such a position in the entire social relationship has long been reserved, and it has been given priority to the unique person in the mainstream signifier that symbolizes authority. In social life, even in its most terrifying form, the memories of concentration camp survivors always mention that unique person, an individual who will not be overwhelmed, survived miraculously under unbearable circumstances. And exudes "unbelievable" spirit and dignity, while others are only struggling for self-interest for survival-in Lacan's terminology, we can use "there is a person" (Y'a de I'un) function to explain: even in that situation, there is a unique person who supports the minimum unity and opposes the social relationship itself as merely cooperation under a pure survival strategy. Here, two points are crucial: First, this individual is always regarded as one (there has never been a bunch of such people, like out of a certain vague need, that extreme unspeakable magical unity is only Can be embodied in one person); Secondly, rather than saying that what this unique person does for others is important, it is better to say that his presence among them is important, rather than his presence among them. It is important (the reason he made others struggle to survive is because they realized that although they were reduced to survival machines most of the time, there was still someone who maintained their dignity as a human being). Like canned jokes, we also have canned dignity here. In the concentration camp, the other (unique person) has reserved my dignity for me in my place, or, more precisely, I pass the other Retaining my dignity: I may be reduced to a situation where I am struggling miserably for survival, but the thought that there is still someone there, he maintains his dignity, which is enough for me to continue to maintain the minimum contact with mankind. Usually, when this one-of-a-kind person is subdued, or revealed to be nothing more than a fiction, the rest of the prisoners lose the will to live and become walking corpses – it is absurd that the driving force for their struggle for a ray of life depends on them. One of the exceptions is maintained-that is, there is a person who does not lose dignity in this state, then when this exception disappears, the struggle for survival itself loses its power. Of course, this means that the unique person is not considered unique because of his "real" qualities (from this level, there may have been more individuals like him, or maybe he is not at all. It is really not subdued, rather than a fiction, he is just playing that role): his exclusive role is just a transfer, that is, his position is constructed (or presupposed) by others.
In "The Matrix", on the contrary, this unique person can see that our daily reality is not real, but a virtual world that is coded, so he becomes a person who can get away from it and can manipulate and surpass the virtual The rules of the world (for example, flying in the air can stop bullets...). The vital function of this unique person is that he can virtualize reality: reality is a man-made structure whose rules can be interrupted, or at least rewritten-so there is a completely delusional concept here, namely this The one-of-a-kind person can resist reality ("I can walk through that thick wall if I really decide to do it", that is, the failure of most of us to do this is attributed to the failure of the subject's desire). However, at this point, the film did not go deep enough: In an unforgettable scene, in the waiting room of the prophet who decides whether the nun is a unique person, Neo sees a child using his willpower. Bend the spoon. This surprised Neo. It made him realize that the way to do this is not the key. It is not to convince myself that I can bend the spoon, but to convince myself that there is no spoon at all... but , What am I? Shouldn't the film go deep into that realm and accept the Buddhist proposition: I, myself, this subject does not exist at all?
In order to further elaborate on the virtual in The Matrix, we should distinguish between technical unreality and fantasy falsity: time travel is (roughly) impossible, but the fantasy scene about it is "real" because of these The scene solved the stalemate of desire. Therefore, the problem with "The Matrix" is not the scientific tricks of its special effects: the crossing between reality and virtuality through the phone is very meaningful, because all we need is a seam/a hole for us Can escape (perhaps, a better idea is the toilet: this place where all excrement disappears after we flush the toilet, the extremely sublime that was originally above the primitive, pre-ontological chaos, has become a disappearing object, Isn’t this a powerful metaphor? Although we sensibly know what excrement becomes later, the myth of imagination still persists – excrement is not needed in our daily life, it is a superfluous thing, and Lacan is so The claim is correct: when an animal has doubts about how to deal with its excreta, the excretion and retribution at that moment becomes a superfluous product that bothers it, and we change from an animal to a human at that moment. The truth is therefore not from The extremely disgusting substance reappearing in the toilet is the hole itself, the gap that serves as a channel to another ontological sequence, that is, the opening of the topology, or the reentry of our real space that “bends” our reality. Perception/imagination of excrement disappears into another dimension, which is not part of our daily reality). The problem with "The Matrix" is its huge contradiction about hallucinations, in Morpheus (the African-American leader of the resistance group, who believes that Neo is a unique person) trying to explain to the still confused Neo It came out more clearly when it was Matrix-he took it for granted that Matrix was linked to a fault in the structure of the universe:
this is the feeling you will experience throughout your life. I feel something is wrong in this world. You don't know what the problem is, but knowing it is there is like having a fragment in your mind, driving you crazy. /.../ There is Matrix everywhere, it surrounds us all the time, even here, in this room. /.../ It is the world that blinds your eyes and keeps you from seeing the truth. Neo: What is the truth? Morpheus: The truth is that you are a slave, Neo. You, like everyone else, were born enslaved...you were locked up in a prison where you cannot smell, taste, and touch. This is the prison of your mind.
Here, the film encounters its ultimate inconsistency: the experience of the lack / conflicts / obstacle is supposed to be following what
proved false, that is living the reality that we are kind of virtual - but in the end of the film, Smith, Matrix's on behalf of
managers, but it gives a completely different, more Freudian explanation:
you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? There, no one suffered pain
suffering, everyone is very happy? But that was a disaster. No one will accept this kind of procedure. The entire outcome / human as
battery / failed. Some people think that we do not have the ability to design such a programming language that portrays the perfect world to you. But I
believe we have as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and unfortunate reality. The perfect world is a dream that your inferior mind can't believe. So this is why Matrix was redesigned to be this: the pinnacle of your civilization.
The imperfections of our living world have therefore become a symbol of its virtuality and its reality at the same time. One can forcefully claim that the agent Smith (let’s not forget, he is not a person like everyone else, but Matrix-the direct virtual incarnation of the other-itself) plays the role of the deconstruction of the world in the movie Role: His experience is to experience obstacles that cannot be surpassed, allowing us (human beings) to see certain things as the absolute state of reality-and reality ultimately becomes resistance to obstacles.
Malebranch in Hollywood
The further contradiction is about death: why is a person “really” dead when a person just dies in the virtual reality controlled by Matrix? "The Matrix" provides such a foolish answer: "Nio: If you are killed in Matrix, you die here (that is, not only in virtual reality, but also in real life. (Dead)? Morpheus: The body cannot survive without thinking." The logic of this answer is that your "real" body can only maintain vitality (maintain function) in connection with your thoughts. This thinking also refers to your immersion The thinking world in it: So, when you are in virtual reality and killed there, this death also affects your real body... The obvious opposite answer (you only really die if you are killed in reality ) Is too superficial. The question is: Is the subject completely trapped in the virtual reality controlled by Matrix, or does he know, or at least doubt the truth of the matter? If the answer is yes, then simply returning to Adam’s expression of distance before the Fall will make us immortal in virtual reality. Therefore, Neo, who has been liberated from virtual reality, should be able to fight against the agent Smith. Survive in the game, because the struggle took place inside the virtual reality controlled by Matrix (similarly, he can also stop the bullet from flying, and he should be able to make the gunshot wound that hurt his body unreal). This brings us back to Malebranche's contingency theory: Compared to the God who supports the world in the spirit of Berkeley, the Ultimate Matrix is the God of Malebranche's contingencyists.
Malebranut’s contingency theory is undoubtedly the best argument put forward by this philosopher that can be used to explain virtual reality. Malebranche, a disciple of Descartes, abandoned Descartes’ absurd reference to the pineal gland of the brain. Descartes said this to explain the existence of matter and spirit, that is, the physical and Why is there coordination and consistency between the souls; but if there is no connection between the two, not just whether a soul can act on the body for a reason, or vice versa, then how can we explain the coordination and consistency between the two? ? Because the network of these two reasons (the network of ideas in my mind and the network of physical interconnection) is completely independent, the only explanation is that there is a third party, the real entity (God), which is here The two are constantly coordinating and maintaining continuity on the surface: when I think of raising my hand in my mind, my hand is really raised, and the idea of raising my hand is not direct but accidental. "The realization that my mind fell directly on the idea of raising my hand, God initiated another material and cause chain reaction, which caused my hand to be effectively raised. If we replace "God" with the other, the symbolic sequence, we can see the close connection between the theory of chance and Lacan's position: Lacan opposed Aristotle with "Television", 11 he believed that the flesh The connection with the soul is never direct, because the other always builds itself between the two. therefore Incidental theory is essentially synonymous with "significant despotism". It is synonymous with the crack that separates the network of ideas from the network of physical (real). It is synonymous with the fact that it is the big other that solves the problem. The coordination between the two networks is consistent, so when my body takes a bite of an apple, my soul experiences pleasure. The same crack was also targeted by the ancient Aztec monks: he organized human sacrifices to ensure that the sun rises again: here, sacrifices act as a request to God to maintain the coordination between the following two One is that there must be a sacrificed body, and the other is a series of interconnected symbolic events. The sacrifices of Aztec monks may seem "irrational," but its underlying premise is much better than our banal intuition that the consistency between body and soul is direct. In other words, When I take a bite of an apple, my pleasure is "natural", because this feeling comes directly from the apple: the otherness between reality and our spiritual experience of reality loses its role as an intermediary between reality and our spiritual experience of reality. Up. Isn't it the same situation when we fall into virtual reality? In virtual space, when I raise my hand to push an object, the object does move – of course, my illusion is that the movement of my hand directly caused the displacement of the object, that is to say, in my deep immersion In (in virtual reality), I overestimated this complex mechanical device coordinated with programs, and also overestimated the role of God in ensuring the coordination of the two in the theory of chance. 12
It is a well-known fact that the "close door" button in many elevators is completely a dysfunctional comfort product. The button is placed there purely to give the impression that they have participated in and pity the speed of the elevator to some extent-when we press this button, the elevator doors are closed completely at the same time, then we I have just pressed the buttons on a few floors and haven't pressed the "close door" button a second time to "speed up" this process. This extreme proof of fictitious participation is also an appropriate metaphor for each of us participating in the "postmodern" political process. This is the purest meaning of incidental theory: According to Malebranche’s theory, we are always pressing such buttons. It is God’s non-stop activity that makes them and the subsequent events (the elevator doors closed). Maintained coordination, but we think that this incident happened because we pressed the button...
How Cybernet will affect our lives: This does not depend on the technology itself, but on its social naming method. Immersion in cyberspace can strengthen our physical experience (new sensations, a new body composed of more organs) , New sexual experience...), but this also opens up the possibility that the person who manipulated the machine that allowed the cyberspace to run actually stole our own (virtual) body and deprived it Our ability to control it, so just like man and "himself", man and his body are no longer related. What one faces here is the ambiguity of the concept of mediatization: 13 The original definition of this concept is that a subject is deprived of his right to make decisions directly and quickly; the master of political annexation is Napoleon, who was Sent to defeat monarchs who symbolize power, and those monarchs no longer occupy positions where they can exercise their power. On a more general level, one can say that a "submissive" monarch is the definition of a constitutional monarchy: in a constitutional monarchy, the power of the monarch is only a formal symbolic gesture of "nodding", just to express relevant The symbols of decrees are therefore given the function of expression, and the content of these decrees is defined by the elected governing body. Nowadays, although important corrections have been made, is the continuous computerization of our daily lives not in the same situation? In this process of continuous computerization, the subject has become more and more "subsidiary." Under the false disguise of power growth, instead of being deprived of power without being noticed? When our body becomes attached (captured by the network of electronic media), it is also exposed to the threat of complete "proletarianization": the subject is potentially reduced to just a pure $, because even myself personally The experience of being can also be stolen, manipulated, and controlled by mechanical others. One can once again see how the position of the computer, which is exactly the same as God’s position in Malebranche’s cousinism, gave us a completely virtualized prospect: because the computer coordinated my mind and The relationship between the movements (in virtual reality) of my limbs (in virtual reality) can be easily imagined by a person. If a computer loses its temperance, it will act like an evil devil and disrupt my mind. Coordination with my own experience in my body – when the signal to raise my hand in consciousness is delayed or even eliminated in (virtual) reality, as the most basic of "my own" body The experience has been eroded... It seems that Cyberspace therefore powerfully displays the delusional illusion elaborated by the German judge Schreber. Freud analyzed his collection of essays:
The basic fantasy staged
in the last scene of the movie, Mourinho announced a final contradiction about the ambiguous state of human liberation. As a result of Neo’s intervention, “system failure” appeared in Matrix. At the same time, Neo, as the savior, addressed those who are still trapped in Matrix. He taught them how to free themselves from the constraints of Matrix – they can break the laws of nature. , Can bend metal, can fly in the air... But the problem is that all these "miracles" are only possible when we are still in the virtual reality controlled by Matrix, and they can only distort or change its rules. : Our "reality" state is still the slave of Matrix, and we have only gained some extra power to change the rules of our thinking prison-so how about getting out of Martix together and entering the "real reality"? "True reality" is that we are tragic creatures living on the surface of the destroyed earth.
From Adorno’s point of view, one should claim that these contradictions 15 are the real moments of the film: they identify the confrontation that we have experienced in recent capitalist society, and the confrontation of concepts involving basic ontology. , Identifies a pair of conceptual confrontations involving basic ontology, such as reality and pain (reality disrupts the rule of the happiness principle), freedom and system (freedom is only possible in a system that hinders its full deployment). However, the ultimate power of the film is placed on a completely different level. Many years ago, a series of films adapted from science fiction, such as "Zardoz" (Zardoz), "Logan's Run" (Logan's Run) predicted today's modern plight: a group of isolated groups in isolation They live a sterile life in the region, and they yearn for the experience of the real world where matter can decay. Before postmodernism, utopia was an effort to break away from the reality of historical time and enter a state of a timeless other. In digital memory, postmodernism superimposes the "end of history" on the past that is not completely unconstrained. At this time, we regard living in a utopia unaffected by time as a daily ideology. As a result, Utopia has become a desire for the truth of history itself, for memory, and for traces of the real past, as an attempt to escape the closed doom and retrieve the smell and decay of the original reality. "The Matrix" finally reversed this inversion, combining utopia and dystopia: the reality in which we live, the utopia created by Matrix for us that is not affected by time, is also a kind of passivity that we can effectively succumb to. The place of state, where we become a living battery that provides energy to Matrix.
Therefore, the unique impact of this movie on us does not lie in its central theory (that is, the reality we experience is generated by the "Matrix", the artificial virtual reality directly connected to the supercomputer in each of us) , But the important imagination that exists in it, that is, millions of human beings are living in the birthplace full of water, suffering from Yuzhan plant music? Try to keep everything normal in order to provide energy (electricity) to the Matrix. So when (some) people wake up from the sinking of virtual reality controlled by Matrix, this awakening is not to comprehend that they have to openly enter the huge space of external reality, but first to realize the terribleness of this closure. In this closure, each of us is just an organ like a fetus, immersed in the amniotic fluid before birth... This absolute passivity is a self-proclaimed fantasy that maintains our conscious experience as an active and self-positioned subject – It is an absolutely absurd fantasy that proposes that we are the ultimate means of sustaining the Other (Matrix), who suck energy from our existence as a battery of life. There is a real trace of survival in this proposition: Why does Matrix need human energy? The purest affirmative answer is, of course, the most meaningless answer: Matrix can easily find another more reliable source of energy. The coordination of this energy with virtual reality does not require extremely complicated arrangements (why does Matrix not Each individual falls into his/her own artificial world that is only me? Why complicate things and coordinate procedures so that the entire human race lives in the same virtual world?). The only unanimous answer is: Martix survives on man-made sweat energy-this goes back to Lacan's basic theory, that the big Other itself is very different from the machine that is regarded as an unknown person and requires the constant flow of sweat energy. This is how we should turn to the state of things that the movie provides us: the scene provided by the movie in which we understand our true state is the opposite of it, and it is the basic illusion that maintains our existence.
The direct connection between sexual perversion and cyberspace is a cliché today. From a standard point of view, the scene of sexual perversion demonstrates "negative castration": sexual perversion can be seen as a resistance against the theme of "sex and death", as well as the threat of mortality and the incidental distinction between the sexes. The forced acceptance of resistance: Abnormal behavior plays the role of a world in which, like in a cartoon, one can escape any disaster; adult sex has become a childish game; Will not be forced to accept death or be forced to choose one's gender between the two sexes. In this way, the world of sexual perversion is a world of purely symbolic sequence, a world of signifier games that is not hindered by human limited reality and listens to its free development. In the above formulation, our experience of cyberspace seems to fit perfectly into the world of sexual perversion: Isn’t Cybernet also a world that is not hindered by true inertia and is bound only by voluntary rules? Isn’t it the same with virtual reality in The Matrix? The "reality" in which we live has lost its ruthless personality, and has become a domain of dictatorial rules (imposed by Matrix). A person can violate this rule as long as the will is strong enough... Only, according to Jikang's theory What this authoritative concept does not take into account is the unique relationship between the other and the inverted energy sweat. what does this mean?
In Le prix du progres (Le prix du progres), there is a chapter on "Dialectics of Enlightenment." Adorno and Horkheimer cited the 19th-century French physiologist Pierre Flourand and the use of chloroform anesthesia for medical anesthesia Debate between: Florent claimed that it can be proved that anesthesia is only effective on our nerve center, which is responsible for memory. In short, when we were "slaughtered" alive on the operating table, we could feel the extreme pain, but after a while, when we woke up, we no longer remember the pain... To Adorno and Horkheimer In terms of this, this is of course a perfect metaphor for the destiny of reason based on the repression of nature itself: his body, a part of the subject, completely felt the pain, but only because of suppression, the subject did not remember. This contains the perfect revenge of nature against us for controlling it: we unknowingly become our own biggest victims, butchering the living ourselves... Nor can we regard this as a perfect fantasy of mutual abuse. script? Seen as a fantasy script of the other scene where we paid the price for our active involvement in the world? There is no active free agent who is not supported by this fantasy, and no active free agent does not live in this other scene manipulated by the other. 16 A sadomasochist voluntarily assumed this pain as a necessity for existence.
Perhaps, following the above statement, the relationship between Hitler and his niece Gilly Robert can also be used to explain the troubles of Hitler's biographer. In 1931, Gilly Robert was found dead in Hitler's apartment in Munich. . It seems that this announcement of Hitler’s sexual perversion would provide evidence of “hidden variability”, lack of privacy, and illusions to explain his public personality – this is Otto Strasser's report. Plot: "... Hitler took off her clothes/At that time/He liked to lie on his back. Then, she had to straddle his face so that he could observe her closely, which made him very excited. . When the excitement reached its climax, he asked her to urinate on his face, which gave him pleasure.” 17 The crux of the problem here is that Hitler’s extremely masochistic role in this episode has become a destructive one that pushed him into destruction. Fantastical evidence of the public’s fanatical political activity-there is no doubt that Gilly feels desperate and disgusting with these rituals.
The above is the insight of The Matrix: it juxtaposes the two inverted sides – on the one hand, it submits reality to a virtual kingdom controlled by the dictatorship that can be suspended; on the other hand, it is controlled by this freedom. The truth of the concealment is to submit the subject to an absolutely instrumentalized state of being.
1. If someone compares the original script (which can be found on the Internet) with the movie itself, you can see that the director [Wachowski brothers (Wachowski brothers), who participated in the creation of the script] is quite clever and removes a lot of it too directly The pseudo-intellectual things, such as the following changes: "Look at them, those machines. Don't think about what they are doing, why they do it. The computer tells them what to do, and then they do it." Evil banality." These pretentious words ignore the key to the fact: the people trapped in the virtual world of Matrix are in a completely different, almost diametrically opposite position than the executioners of the massacre. Another clever move of the director is to delete those that are too obvious. This formulation involves some Eastern methods, namely empty thinking as a way to escape the control of the Matrix: "You must learn to release your energy, you must learn Release everything. You must empty yourself to free your thoughts."
2. The Rorschach test is also known as the Rorschach test. The basic principle is: a person’s personality characteristics can be shown in a person’s visual perception. Based on this inference, Swiss psychiatrist Rorschach made a large number of ra
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