Freaks in the Matrix PDF

8 Freaks in the Matrix A...

8 Freaks in the Matrix A CONCLUSION AND AN INVITATION Image 8.1. An image of the digitized matrix from the film The Matrix offers a metaphor for the culture industry (Source: Everett Collection). WHAT IS THE MATRIX? Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. In the 1999 film The Matrix, we meet Thomas Anderson—a young, socially awkward software company employee who lives a secret life as a computer hacker named Neo. Neo deals in computer secrets the way that others might deal in drugs. In one scene we see him lured into an underground hard rock club, following the white rabbit tattoo of a woman named Dujour. Following the white rabbit, a cultural reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, marks the beginning of Neo’s adventures in and out of the matrix. (See Image 8.1.) 217 Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  218 POP CULTURE FREAKS Neo is a freak. He refuses to live out the script that has been written for his life. His boss explains this contradiction to him: You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken. This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole. Thus, if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem. The time has come to make a choice, Mr. Anderson. Either you choose to be at your desk, on time, from this day forward, or you choose to find yourself an- other job. (Wachowski and Wachowski 1999) Neo understands himself as more than just “part of a whole.” Not only that, he believes that his unique computer capabilities and the freedom of his mind give him the potential to undermine the larger whole, but he does not fully understand how or why. He is a freak because he refuses to conform to the constraints of social demands. He may look like a regular guy wearing a suit and going to work, but his ideas make him a stranger in his own world. In the film Neo ultimately chooses not to be at his desk, and that choice takes him down a bizarre and compelling path. He meets Trinity, who helps him realize that he is driven by a question: What is the matrix? He discovers that the matrix is a vast illusion that we are all living in. We think we have day-to-day, ordinary lives, but in reality our bodies are lying dormant, being used as batteries for a massive system of artificial intelligence. Neo leaves the matrix with the help of Morpheus, a leader with a vision to bring it down. Morpheus is driven by a prophecy that “the one”—the hero who can destroy the matrix and save us all—is out there. He believes that Neo is that one. Neo joins a team of people who have unplugged from the matrix and begun to rescue others. One member of this team is Cypher, who is acting as a double Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. agent in hopes of returning to a “normal” life within the matrix. The Matrix can be viewed as a metaphor for the mass media matrix and more broadly the corporate matrix that spans the globe. Humanity has created a race of nonhumans that has now seized control. This race is composed not of robots or computers, but of corporations. We created them, gave them life, and then named them persons. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitu- tion, which was passed to guarantee equal protection to blacks after the end of slavery, has been used since the late 1880s to provide equal protection to cor- porations as recognized persons. Today some of these corporate persons really Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  Freaks in the Matrix 219 have to be seen as super-persons. They encompass hundreds of companies, sit on massive holdings and assets that span a slew of industries, and reside across many national boundaries. These entities can be fined, but those fines are a drop in the bucket of the massive profits they make when they break the law. They cannot be jailed or executed. They are sometimes deemed “too big to fail.” These are diabolical and seemingly unstoppable villains. They shift speedily from side to side, dodging whatever punches or bullets we throw their way. Disappearing at the first sign of danger, they reappear out of the mists months, years, even decades later. They have endless aliases. Although they bear the strength of human intelligence and creativity, they lack the grounding of hu- man morality. They are at war with us, and they want greater control. The corporate matrix is hungry for power, and it has found the greatest source imaginable: not oil, or wind, or the sun—us. The mass media matrix is the power division of the corporate matrix. It is the mechanism by which we are plugged in and harnessed for power. The power we provide has at least two components. The first is money. Our purchases keep capital streaming into these corporations. The second component is our own distraction. By not paying attention to the massive size and frequent crimes of major corpora- tions, we give them the political breathing room to continue their quest. To harness these powers from us, the mass media matrix needs us to be plugged in. We need to watch television, go to the movies, read magazines and newspapers and novels and comic books, play video games, listen to mu- sic, and otherwise fill our lives with the ideas and stories of popular culture. We need not engage all of these outlets; one or two will suffice. Once we are plugged in we can be persuaded however the mass media matrix needs us to be. Our consent to the survival and dominance of the mass media matrix can be manufactured within us through the stories that we are told (Herman and Chomsky 1988). Once we are plugged in, we are told a very powerful story about our identities and our bodies: that we are deeply flawed, yet our flaws Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. can be overcome through the thorough and frequent application of the balm of consumption. We may buy creams and lotions, cars and homes, clothes and personal trainers. They will always make us better, but only slightly and only for a short time. We will always need to buy more in order to become less of a stranger in our own lives and communities. This problem of the self becomes the great problem of our lives, distracting us from wars, genocides, and the destruction of the earth. Some people plug themselves in willingly. They want to taste the flavors that the mass media matrix provides and to do so without any feelings of guilt. Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  220 POP CULTURE FREAKS These folks are the Cyphers of the mass media matrix, named for the character who chooses to get plugged back into the system. They watch television on cable every night, while surfing the net on their laptops. They love pop mu- sic, go to the movies on the weekend, read all the best sellers on their Kindle readers, and own all the latest gadgets and games. To them, the consumption of popular culture is the good life, and it symbolizes human triumph: the ca- pacity to surround ourselves with stories that entertain and excite us. At the opposite extreme from the Cyphers are the Locks, a reference to Commander Lock in the film, who prioritizes defending the rebel outpost of Zion over fighting the matrix and rescuing more humans from its grasp. They attempt to avoid popular culture entirely. They do not have cable television, and perhaps they do not even own a television set. They do not go to the mov- ies or listen to the radio. They generally prefer local culture, and they listen to local bands who perform in locally owned coffee shops and bars. The Locks are practicing a kind of defensive resistance, locking themselves away from commercial culture but not actively doing much to change the system. They are so small in number and so powerless to recruit others that the mass media matrix need not worry about their loss. Besides, even the Locks read books and use computers, so the matrix still has some hold on them. In between the Cyphers and the Locks is a range of characters with vary- ing relationships to the mass media matrix. There are the Trinities, who live both inside and outside the matrix. They are hopeful that commercial culture has its weaknesses and is not an all-powerful, unstoppable force. The Trinities often undermine the mass media matrix, taking its tools and twisting them around, using them against the matrix itself. They only watch certain shows, only visit the movies occasionally. They read intellectual books, including a great deal of nonfiction. But they also appreciate local culture, travel, history, and politics. They are able to wage a limited fight against the mass media ma- trix because they understand it from within. Despite their hope, Trinities do Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. not actually have a plan for destroying the matrix. They have grown accus- tomed to living part time in the world of the matrix, and they take some plea- sure in time spent with media culture. Some of us take a stronger stance and are even more hopeful than the Trinities. But we know that we are not the ones who are going to bring down the mass media matrix. We are the Morpheuses, the college professors and high school teachers and mentors who believe we may one day help some student see a new path and then make that path happen. We rely on our wit and wisdom, our books and research, to persuade the students we teach, and Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  Freaks in the Matrix 221 then we wonder who among them may prove to be the Neos who will change everything. Perhaps the young woman in the front of the room will become a media executive who will pay more attention to representations of women. Perhaps the older male student at the back will become a politician who will pass laws challenging the personhood of corporations. Perhaps the boy in the wheelchair will become a television writer who will create more interest- ing characters reflecting the true diversity of the world. Perhaps the first gen- eration college student from North Philadelphia will create a media literacy program for the kids in her neighborhood. The revolutionary power of the Neos will be measured not in firefights and explosions, but rather in partic- ipatory creation (production), revolutionary stories (content), changed lives (audience), and transformed communities (social world) (see “The Cultural Diamond: Beyond the Mass Media Matrix”). DIRTY SLIMY FREAKS Perhaps the greatest filmic window into the world of circus freaks is Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks. Browning takes his audience behind the curtains of the circus tent to see the social world of circus performers. We discover two very different social circles there. One is a world of “normals”—people who seemingly have every access to the larger social world in which the circus operates. These people are tall and white, with bodies that never encourage a lingering stare, unless it is to enjoy the beauty of an elegant trapeze artist like Cleopatra or the broad muscles of a strong man like Hercules. For these performers, the circus is largely spectacle and artifice. They could conceiv- ably walk away and take jobs in any other industry, leaving the circus lifestyle behind. The other social world is that of the freaks, the assemblage of dwarves, pin- heads, quadriplegics, bearded ladies, and human skeletons for whom many of Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. the doors of society have been shut because of the way they look, think, or act. These freaks lack the social access and the options available to the normals. Although their jobs bring them together and make them mutually dependent, the freaks and the normals do not fully mix. The freaks distrust the normals because they see in them every person who has ridiculed them. The normals distrust the freaks because they refuse to see them as fully human. To the nor- mals, the ways of the freaks are exotic and unfathomable. The normals need the freaks to exist so they can define themselves against them. As long as those people are freaks, then we are normal. Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44. Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  Freaks in the Matrix 223 The freaks maintain the social boundaries of their community very care- fully, as an act of self-preservation. But the boundaries need some degree of porousness to allow the community to grow. So would-be newcomers to the community must enter through a ritualistic process. Cleopatra experienced this when she decided to marry Hans. She was welcomed into the fold of freaks as part of the marriage ceremony. “We’ll make her one of us. A lov- ing cup! A loving cup! We accept her—one of us—gooble, gobble—we accept her—one of us—one of us.” The freaks sang a song in unison that announced her transformation into one of them. The words “gooble gobble” affirmed the freakishness of her new identity. Her terrified response—“Slimy... dirty... freaks!”—revealed that the marriage was a sham and that she was only after Hans’s money. Freaks can be seen as a metaphor for the matrix of privilege and oppression that includes the intersections of race, gender, class, disability status, and sex- uality, among other forms of identity and inequality. The matrix of privilege and oppression creates what appears to be a rigid boundary between the nor- mals and the freaks. Normals are not normal in the usual sense of the word; their behavior is no more commonplace than that of freaks. What makes them so normal is that their identities are privileged and given a taken-for-granted status. This privilege is invisible to them; they do not have to think about it. It is there before they open their eyes in the morning, so they never actually see it come into being. It is built into the structures of society. Freaks are not necessarily numerical minorities, and even when they are, it is not their number that matters. It is their access to social power, which is determined by their position within the matrix of privilege and oppression. The system makes it seem as if everyone is either a normal or a freak. But the reality is that we can be privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. This system privileges men, whites, heterosexuals, the middle class, and those without disabilities. A person may be privileged by her class position, but op- Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. pressed because of her gender. A person may be privileged by his race, but oppressed because of his disability. The categories can seem sharply drawn and impermeable, but there are pores. A genealogical history may change how you think about your race, if you discover that you have a racially different ancestor whom you did not an- ticipate. The racial identity of your family may change as you and other family members take romantic partners, conceive children, or adopt children who are racially different from you. Growing numbers of people are changing their gender every year. Many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people come out to their Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  224 POP CULTURE FREAKS families and friends, and themselves, after puberty, which means the social understanding of their sexualities has to change. A person without disabilities may become disabled through disease or accident at any point in the life cycle. New technologies may allow people who identify as disabled to find them- selves no longer disabled. Class position can change as people experience mo- bility, both up and down. But people do not move across identities casually or easily. The notion of the coming out story is perhaps the most salient indica- tor that identity transformation is difficult and requires some level of ritual to mark the change. The matrix of privilege and oppression makes many people feel like freaks within their own society and strangers within their own communities. For some, this freak status is inscribed on their bodies and easily visible to all. These are the Schlitzes of the freak show, who play themselves in the movies. They wear the freak badge proudly, but they have never had much access to privilege. For other freaks, the thing that makes them a freak is not so visi- ble, but they choose to make it known to the world. These are the Josephine Josephs. Josephine Joseph claimed to be a hermaphrodite. This word really describes whole species that have no sex division. In humans, it is associated with a few conditions that can be related to chromosomes, genes, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics. But none of those conditions results in a line down the center of the body separating a male side from a female side. That line was drawn by Josephine Joseph to be a visible manifestation of her freak side. Some people become freaks because they want to escape the oppressive- ness of the normal and privileged world. These are the Bird Girls, who have no disability but perform as freaks anyway because doing so provides a com- munity in which they feel at home. Finally there are Venuses, who are unable to deconstruct their own privilege but nevertheless choose to ally with the freaks. They see the inequality caused by the matrix of privilege and oppres- Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. sion, and they work to remedy as much oppression as they can. On the privilege end of the spectrum, we have Cleopatras and Phrosos. Cleopatras manipulate the system of inequality and actively seek to benefit from it. Phrosos are good people, like Phroso the clown in Freaks, who simply do not see their own privilege. It truly is invisible to them. They are nice to op- pressed groups, befriending them and joking with them, but they do nothing to actually undermine the system of inequality. Every person with privilege has some capacity to identify with and even become a freak. The question is: What kind of freak are you? Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  Freaks in the Matrix 225 FREAKS LIKE US Freaks are unsettling by definition. Any person whose appearance or behav- ior unsettles us is likely to be labeled a freak, whether we say it out loud or not. As Simmel says, “The stranger is an element of the group itself... an element whose membership within the group involves being both outside it and confronting it” (2010, 303). Neo is a stranger and a freak in the humdrum work world of the opening to The Matrix, because his participation in the secret underworld of computer hacking takes him outside the group, even as his rebelliousness places him in confrontation with that group. The group is all those corporate drones who show up on time and do as they are told, never questioning the world around them. Hans and the other circus freaks are strangers, not to each other, but to the larger social world in which they move and operate. The circus transforms these freaks into wanderers, and the touring of the circus delivers them into the lives of people who otherwise might never see anyone like them. In Simmel’s essay, the true stranger is not the wanderer who appears today and leaves tomorrow, but rather the one who appears today and stays around. That stranger becomes an ongoing presence in our lives, reminding us of his strangeness, but also reminding us that we might be the strange ones in the larger world. Following Simmel’s logic, circus freaks are not true strangers in the towns they travel through, but they are true strangers to the normals in the circus who play no role in the freak show. The normals are confronted daily with the strangeness of the freaks, and the guarded social boundaries that the freaks maintain also serve to perpetuate their strangeness. But as Simmel points out, strangers are an element of the group. They are not exterior to the group, but rather deliver “outsiderness” into the group boundaries. They force the group to define itself in relationship to a perception of what is beyond the social boundaries. The normal is a normal, because she is not a freak. This Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. begs the question, do normals decide who the freaks are, or do freaks decide who the normals are? This brings me to a more recent theorist, Judith Butler. Butler’s writings about gender and performance use the notion of drag to reveal that gender is always a kind of performance. The fact that men can theatrically present themselves to the world as women reveals that women are also theatrically performing womanness or femininity and that their behaviors are not intrinsic to their physical being as women. Similarly, men are not inherently or a priori masculine. Maleness is a performance that is equally delivered by masculine Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  226 POP CULTURE FREAKS and feminine men. Butler’s point extends beyond the bounds of gender. Any aspect of our identity for which we have constituted a normal/freak divide is in actuality a set of “theatrically produced effects that posture as grounds, ori- gins, the normative measure of the real” (Butler 1991, 103). When you peel back the layers of normal society, you discover a lot of freaks. The question shifts from “what makes some people freaks?” to “what makes some people normal?” In a society that privileges men, all women are freaks regardless of whether they adhere to defined scripts for women’s lives. In a society that privileges whites, all nonwhite people are freaks, whose cul- tures are exoticized and whose bodies are fetishized. In a society that privi- leges heterosexuality, all gays, lesbians, and bisexual people are freaks, whose private sexual desires are politicized and publicly debated. In a society that privileges fixed identities and trusts doctors to determine those identities, all trans people are freaks for daring to define their gender from within their own hearts, minds, and bodies. In a society that privileges the middle class, all poor people are freaks, with bad grammar, values, and taste. Even rich people are treated as freaks in this matrix, as evidenced by the ridiculous behavior of “real” housewives on TV and the fascination with the “lifestyles of the rich and famous.” In a society that privileges very specific kinds of bodies, disabled people are freaks, fat people are freaks, old people are freaks—even “average” people are freaks! In a society that privileges church attendance, but not too much church attendance, both atheists and zealots are freaks, whose irratio- nality is crippling public discourse. At the end of the day, we do not have many real normals left. We may all feel a little normal, because we all experience at least a little privilege, but how many are truly normal? All the cheerleaders and football players have joined the glee club. What I am suggesting here is that we are all freaks within the massive ma- trix of popular culture. We become freaks first when we are told we are by the Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. external machinery of commercial culture. If we are lucky, we become freaks again when we embrace our inner freak. Invitations to embrace our inner freak permeate the very culture that uses the label freak as a way to marginal- ize us and persuade us to buy its goods and services: On the television show Heroes, a character named Zach—an outcast in his high school who is frequently ridiculed for his presumed sexuality—helps Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  Freaks in the Matrix 227 his friend Claire accept that she is gifted with the superpower to heal her- self: “You’ve gotta embrace your inner freak. Because the only thing you’ll regret is denying who you really are” (Kring 2006). A lyric from a song by P!nk: “So raise your glass if you are wrong, in all the right ways, all my underdogs. We will never be, never be anything but loud and nitty gritty, dirty little freaks!” (P!nk 2010). In February 2013 AMC premiered a new reality show called Freakshow, which follows the lives of the performers in the Venice Beach Freak- show. In episode 1 former music producer Todd Ray tries to build his freak show business by recruiting a giant and a bearded lady. The giant is George Bell, who at seven foot eight was declared the tallest man in the United States by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2007. Bell has spent his life trying to be normal and expresses some discomfort with joining a freak show. Ray explains to him that the freak show is about re- claiming the word “freak” and making something positive out of it. In 1967 The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded the song “If 6 Was 9,” about a world turned upside down—a world in which he would still be true to his unique self: “White-collar conservatives flashing down the street / Pointing their plastic finger at me. / They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die, / But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high... HIGH!” The 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song “Almost Cut My Hair Today” tells the story of a man choosing not to cut his hair in order to avoid being normal: It was gettin’ kinda long, / I could-a said it was in my way, / But I didn’t and I wonder why. / I want to let my freak flag fly. Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. The 2010 song “Take It Off ” by Ke$ha (what kind of a freak has a dollar sign in her name?) describes a special hangout for freaky people that seems to be a mixture of dance floor and sex club (the video is set in a water- less motel pool): “There’s a place downtown, / Where the freaks all come around. / It’s a hole in the wall. / It’s a dirty free for all” (Ke$ha 2010b). This song is meant to be an anthem for those who feel marginalized by main- stream culture, even as Ke$ha’s music is a product of that mainstream. Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.  228 POP CULTURE FREAKS From pinheads to nerds; from rednecks to losers; from cyborgs to guerrilla girls: freaks are storming in from the margins. The question of how identity influences popular culture is open to ongoing analysis and subject to new an- swers as audiences find new ways of making meaning and press for new forms of participatory culture. Reader, let your freak flags fly! Copyright © 2016. Routledge. All rights reserved. Kidd, D. (2016). Pop culture freaks : Identity, mass media, and society. Routledge. Created from csus on 2024-07-08 00:49:44.