The two greatest science fiction movies of the 20th century are Invasion
of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Matrix (1999). Both are
seminal cinematic efforts that portray big ideological truths about the
dangers of modernity and tyranny, and they do so with relentless hammer blows
of frightful eeriness.
The Pod People
Invasion of the Body Snatchers involves an extraterrestrial
invasion in which mysterious plant spores have settled onto earth and then
hatch into sinister leafy pods that migrate to the back porches, basements
and yards of the citizens of the fictional town of Santa Mira, California.
The pods then proceed to assume the identity of numerous residents of the
town, taking over their consciousness and basic personas. Insidiously these
residents are transformed into robotic humans who then spread more pods to
their neighbors’ houses to try and take over the town itself.
Each resident appears the same as he or she was before being transformed
by one of the pods, but their minds become uncritical and zombie-like. Each
resident becomes a “creature” rather than a “person,” identical in surface
characteristics to their previous human identity, but creepy and malevolent
in their perceptions and actions. They adopt the role of deceptive
proselytizers for their unnamed cause lurking in the background – that of the
recruitment of their neighbors and ultimately the transformation of the
entire town into pod people.
The two stars of the movie are Kevin McCarthy as the local doctor, Miles
Bennell, and the ravishing Dana Wynter as his girl friend, Becky Driscoll.
They are rightly horrified by the eerie transformations of their town, and
the suspenseful story unfolds around their efforts to figure out what is
actually taking place and why it is taking place – and, of course, avoid
being transformed themselves.
The taut script by Daniel Manwaring is brilliantly terrifying. Director,
Don Siegel, fashions a classic sci-fi tale that pushes everyone to the edge
of their seats throughout. The film is shot in black and white, which gives
it a noirish and more disquieting look appropriate for spooky genres. Kevin
McCarthy and Dana Wynter perform their roles with riveting appeal as they
lure the audience into the story’s mystery. They gradually come to understand
the nature of the pods and leave the town to save themselves from being
transformed.
Those citizens already transformed pursue them so as to keep them from
warning other towns. During the chase Wynter is transformed into a pod
person, but McCarthy escapes. Near the end we see McCarthy coming upon one of
the main highways leading in and out of Santa Mira where he sees a series of trucks
loaded with nefarious pods going out of the town to the rest of America. So
even though he has managed to escape, America is thrust into dire peril from
ever-growing numbers of pods coming to their towns. Can Dr. Bennell warn the
country in time? Will they listen to him?
The Matrix
Out of today’s nihilistic Hollywood and two renegade movie creators, Lana
and Lilly Wachowski, comes the other sci-fi classic of our age. The Matrix
descends upon one’s mind like a super-chic dynamo of cyber punk creativity.
It bends backward and forward simultaneously. Its characters climb walls like
Spiderman, dodge bullets like Superman, leap from tall buildings and survive.
They violate the laws of physics and dazzle the viewer with Hong Kong martial
arts spectacle fights.
Stylistically the movie is not my cup of tea, but is nevertheless
brilliant and brazenly informative in its attempt to portray the
deceptiveness of modern social-political reality. Its theme is that the
reality of life today is not what we perceive it to be. It is unequivocally
false, for we have been bamboozled by powerful forces amongst us into
believing that what we are living is TRUE and what we are experiencing is
FREEDOM when in actuality our lives are nothing of the kind.
Most reviewers either miss this real essence of the film or purposely
ignore it to spew forth the usual pretentious tripe of conformists
transcribing what they hope will be perceived by their audience as a
sophisticated avant garde grasp of the art world. The film is about slavery
of the human soul and body by transcendent rulers of the modern world. It
alludes to a whole host of history’s great mythic and spiritual philosophical
themes, but basically is a provocative and fearless film about modernity and
slavery.
The Matrix’s story line is as follows: by the start of the 23rd
century in the aftermath of a nuclear world war between “sentient machines”
(AI) and mankind, humans are defeated and subsequently enslaved in a virtual
reality (the Matrix) so that the machines can feed off of them. Humans are
harvested for their bio-electricity, which allows the machines to live
transcendently. The Matrix is thought to be reality by the human slaves, but
they live in illusion. One such slave, however, named “Neo” and played by
Keanu Reeves, is perceptive enough to know something is wrong with what is
being portrayed to him as reality. But he can’t quite connect the dots to
truly understand.
From this setting enters Morpheus, played by Lawrence Fishburne, along
with Trinity played by Carrie-Anne Moss. They are unharvested humans who live
outside the Matrix and lead a rebel band of survivors from the great war
against the Machines to try and take back the world from the monstrosity of
harvesting – to restore the world of freedom and sanity, which prevailed
centuries before them.
They operate out of a hideaway called Zion, and are intent on recruiting
Neo as the Saviour who will lead them to a restoration of real life. They
follow an Oracle who has told them that Neo is “The One,” i.e., the Saviour
who will lead them to victory. Thus they go into the Matrix to recruit Neo
and explain to him what he suspects, but hasn’t been able to totally figure
out yet. They manage to rescue him from the Matrix while attempting to
convince him that his true destiny is to become the leader of the real
humanity that survived the world war so as to rekindle sanity and freedom.
The story is comprised of non-stop fighting that takes place between
Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo and the Machines’ Agents (i.e., Machines that assume
human form) as our heroes attempt to escape from the Matrix to the real world
and a protective Zion. It is a tour de force of endless skirmishes that
literally overwhelm the viewer with scintillating optics and surreal scenery.
In fact the Wachowskis thrust us into a story of razzle-dazzle fisticuffs,
self-maneuvering bullets, stupendous somersaults, and inconceivable
wall-climbing that threatens finally to stultify the viewer.
And numerous viewers, I’m sure, do become stultified with such razzle-dazzle
carnage. But if the moviegoer will endure the Wachowskis’ cinematic
idiosyncrasies and love of maverick filmmaking, he will be treated to a
powerful allegory defining the horrendous falsity of our modern political
system and culture.
The Matrix is modern sci-fi at a highly seminal level. It is one of
those rebel works of art that rises above the insipid mediocrity that a
collectivist Hollywood pours out to the movie houses of our country. Yes, The
Matrix is “over the top” imagery and sometimes irritatingly incoherent.
But this writer believes it sends a monumental message to the modern world.
What it tells us is that the reality we perceive today is not genuine – in
fact it is grotesquely false. We are being deceived by forces of tyranny in
all the arenas of existence. This false reality has been orchestrated by our
professors in the universities and our politicians in the Washington swamp.
Aided by a deceitful punditry in the media, these controllers play the role
of the Machines in The Matrix. They are hell-bent to harvest vacuous
men and women who will do the bidding of the Orwellian thuggery that runs
Washington and its institutions of regimentation.
The Wachowskis are products of today’s corrupt Hollywood and Big Brother’s
schools, so it is almost certain that they don’t truly grasp the essence of
the tyranny creeping over us. But like Neo in the film, even though they
might not be able to connect the actual dots of what is politically happening
today, they know something very undesirable is taking place in America. And
they portray their intuitive visions in a spectacle of artistic rebellion
that slams up against an ugly statist establishment like Tennyson’s Light
Brigade charged into Crimea’s Valley of Death 160 years ago.
Orwell, Huxley and Modernity
From these two films we conclude what our anguished brains have been
shouting to us for decades – far too many Americans have become “pod people”
because they are caught up in the bells and whistles of their smart phones,
the silly antics of the Kardashians, the horrid dependence of state welfare,
the gruesome rigidity of modern liberalism, and the excruciating blandness of
Brave New World.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, written in 1932, foretold
ominously where modern society was headed in its tale of futuristic tyranny.
In the 1955 edition, Huxley wrote in the Foreword:
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the
all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control
a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love
their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in
present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper
editors and schoolteachers.” [emphasis added]
The final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has now come
true. The trucks that left Santa Mira loaded with pods have permeated our
country and have created a citizenry of cognitive zombies that “love their
servitude.” They are slaves to political correctness in the cultural realm,
special privileges in the political realm, and Keynesian fake money in the
economic realm.
We send 30,000 lobbyists to Washington every year like vermin to the grist
mill to petition for the conveyance of special privileges to the myriad
factions of zombies that the lobbyists represent. The fundamental cornerstone
of our country – “equality of rights under the law” – is scorned by our
professors, our pundits, and our politicians.
Can we as Americans stop this descent into the Orwellian rabbit hole?
Perhaps. But it will require that we gain a perspective that one does not see
today in a corrupted Washington and a dismal school system. It will require
that we discover a Morpheus, Trinity and Neo among us to construct a true
revolution to dramatically alter the ruling paradigm of political thought and
take back America from the professorial Machines that now teach hideous
ideologies of servitude to our youth.
If collectivism has come to our world via intellectual fallacies
laid down over the decades since 1913, then historical wisdom says that
freedom can be brought back to our world via intellectual truth put
forth in the upcoming decades. What has been destroyed can be rebuilt. What
has been forgotten can be rediscovered. The values of rationality and
integrity can be reinstilled. Life is not set in stone! Men and women
are not automatons by nature. If they have become “pod people” via a corrupt
and sinister academy, then we must rebuild our academies. America was meant
not just for the 19th century, but for all of time. She is the eternal ideal.
And we can recapture her resplendency if we have the will to do so.
The question is do we still have that will? Are CNN, the New York Times
and corporate America the exemplars of legitimacy and honor handed down by
our Founders? Or are they subversive thought criminals thrust upon us by
deranged philosophy and the historical helter-skelter of Karl Marx? Are we
true Americans today, or are we pseudo patriots desirous only of being taken
care of throughout a zombie life of slavish complicity to the Godzilla of
Washington? If there is a Morpheus, Trinity and Neo out there, come quickly
if you dare. Show yourself; time is short. Lunacy prevails. Tyranny swells.
