Overly Complicated Matrix of Race Issues

To start, I can see being able to use Digitizing Race for my class project. Though I have some disagreement with how Nakamura constructs her argument, the overall aim is sound. In the spirit of my disagreement, I am going to pick at problems I have with section three for this reading response.

I simply do not agree with the over-aching perspective of how blackness in the Matrix movies is discussed by Nakamura. Perhaps I am misinterpreting her intent. To this, I can concede. However, I do think her argument of non-white people being relegated to peripheral and manual labor roles is quite the opposite of the intent of the director/writers of the film.

First, I want to put forward a couple of facts about one of the directors and the actor playing the focus character I believe have an important bearing on the intent of the movie and nullifies Nakamura’s intended positioning in her evocation of race in the Matrix movies. To start with, Laurence Wachowski, the older of the two-brother director team, leads an “alternative lifestyle”. He is a member of the BSMD community, as a submissive, and known to be an androgynous dresser. What this means in terms of Nakamura’s argument is Laurence has a sympathetic perspective. He lives his personal life as an outsider to “acceptable society” or the norm of white culture. I would even argue, to a degree, his Polish ancestor also would place him outside conventional white culture.

I bring this up because these factors would have contributed to his writing and directing aesthetic. Evidence of this can be seen throughout the movie series in its use of the idea of being inside and outside spaces of “being”. It is a core theme of the series. Characters are inside or outside the matrix. In these states, the main characters look inside the matrix from a minority but privileged stance. They see the reality of existence and culture inside the matrix. They have an outsiders clarity of vision of what goes on in the matrix. This is not unlike the clarity minorities have when looking to the inside of white privilege.

Another fact I put forward is Nakamura’s statement that Neo is white. Though not explicitly mentioned it is an active aspect to the argument revolving around the Matrix movies. This is especially so when she discusses the imparting or passing on of Morpheous’ “black mojo”. Though I may, my self, be in a minority of not seeing Keanu Reeves as white I still think it is a valid perspective. Reeves, to my eye, is not Caucasian. I have always seen him as being of mixed Pacific Islander decent, actually of mixed decent. Reeves father is half  Hawaiian and half Chinese.

In addition to Neo not being white, I would also like to point out that Neo is a focus character but not necessarily the main character. It is true Neo gets a larger share of screen time but the roles of all other characters are just as important as Neo’s. I would like to put forward the idea that the cast is not constructed of main and supporting roles, it is an ensemble cast.

Having said that I turn my postulations to Nakamura’s statement that the non-white cast are support to a white agenda or are relegated to manual labor roles. The scene she uses to exemplify this is the scene where the Nebakanezer is guided into the docking bay at Zion. She says that the black man in the periphery of that scene is just that, relegated to support of the white woman using the gestural interface that controls the gates to that docking bay.

Though this is somewhat true, it is not a reality. That docking bay is designed with five fortified and reinforced doors. In that scene there is a birds-eye view of the people in the control construct showing the viewer that their are five controllers, one for each door. These positions in the operations of Zion are among the most important. They are the gate-keepers of the safety of the freed human population. The black man Nakamura points out, though he does not speak, is shown to be an important and essential element of Zion society.  He is a watcher over one of the only five entry points to Zion. He is a key defender and protector.

She also wraps into this particular part of section three the idea that the control room is a place of privilege citing the fact that the virtual room is white and clean thus representing white as a place of power and that being outside that space, in the dirty wolf of non gestural computing is a place of subjugation. In the subtext of the movie this is not true.

The white space of the control construct is white, is clean, is pure because it is technology created initially by The Machines. The lack of anything other than the control interface is representational of a near monastic observance of denial of temptation, the temptation of the matrix. I argue that the spartan nature of this visual space acknowledges the “white maleness” of the matrix and is an effort to show the stark reality of what the matrix is as a machine (white male) generated environment verses the living or live nature of “the real” where in every one else around and in Zion exists.

I go further and declare that the actual privileged space is outside computer constructs of any kind. Link, as a pilot and “operator” uses physical analogue interfaces to look into the matrix rather than be in the matrix. In my mind this is the actual place of privilege. Though it is rendered as a cobbled together and even rundown patchwork of scavenged parts it is real, it is reality, it is true existence. It is a place a small minority of humans have escaped to. It is the place, theoretically, all humans would want to be.

Any human that has been freed from the matrix can access any computer construct through their data-jack. Only a small number of people actually do. I would not parse this as being a privilege. It is a necessity for freeing other humans. It is a danger that freed humans probably do not want to be put in the face of. They are free of that space of enslavement. Those who do use that technology are portrayed as combatants, as solders, who often give their lives in defense of humanity, in defense of diversity. If anything, I would argue anyone who enters deeply machine oriented virtual spaces or aid in the entry of those spaces are all in the service of those who do not.

Really there are many other issues with Nakamura’s argument involving the Matrix movies. I could point these out even to the extent of restructuring the entire position to actually support that argument by looking at the actual intent of the series in relation to race issues as it is presented by the writer/directors rather than trying to invert that intent two times over to achieve a goal. I feel Nakamura unnecessarily convoluted her view of the Matrix movies to support her analysis of The Minority Report, which is spot on.