LeiLani Nishimi (2008). The Matrix Trilogy, Keanu Reeves, and Multiraciality at the End of Time. In Beltrán, M., & Fojas, C., eds. Mixed race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press

Elizabeth Scherman

COM 597
LeiLani Nishimi (2008). The Matrix Trilogy, Keanu Reeves, and Multiraciality at the End of Time. In Beltrán, M., & Fojas, C., eds. Mixed race Hollywood. New York: New York University Press.

“Science fiction does not show us the future. Rather, it projects contemporary anxieties onto alien or fantastic worlds” (Nishimi, 2008, p. 292)
Key terms:

Hybridity

Mulitraciality

Passing

Metaphor/visual metaphor

Technology/man against machine

Cyborg

Liminality

Utopia, dystopia

“Mixed race” on different levels in the Matrix trilogy; may be seen as “multiple and conflicting portrayals” (p. 191)

I. The actor who portrays Neo, Keanu Reeves, as himself multiracial; as a “visual metaphor” of hybridity (p. 290).

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  Not everyone does read him this way, or chooses to; many audiences did not; he may then have been read as the white savior (p.296).
  
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  However, the invitation and possibility stands and may allow the film to “[speak] much more powerfully to those who do [read Reeves as multiracial].” Even without recognizing Reeves himself as multiracial, the plot line provides him with multiracial “parents” (Morpheus and Trinity).
  
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  Producer intent – or lack thereof – does not negate various or opposing readings of a text
  

II. Multiracial citizens of Zion vs. the white male (Cyborg) Matrix agents – what meanings do we ascribe to the people of Zion?

III. Human and machine (may overlap the above category) Neo is in a “liminal space” (p. 294) between the two worlds and is able to cross boundaries as no one else can.

Questions:

How do the multiple possibilities of reading hybridity or multiracialism into The Matrix trilogy enhance or complicate one another? Put another way, would the film speak as powerfully to the concept of “traveling between different worlds” if there were not these multiple layers? (Does the story, for instance, incorporate elements of intersectionality that add or detract from a particular interpretation?)
In your own research, to what extent are all readings of a text (or event) equally valid? To what extent does consideration of audience reception (for example, as discussed in Bobo) influence your understanding of a text?
Suggested readings:
Nakamura, L. (2005) The multiplication of difference in post-millenial cyberpunk film: the visual culture of race in the Matrix Trilogy. In Gillis, S., ed. The Matrix trilogy: Cyberpunk reloaded. New York: Wallflower Press.
Nishimi, L. (2005). Guilty pleasures: Keanu Reeves, Superman, and racial outing. In Davé, S., Nishime, L., & Oren, T. G., eds. East Main Street: Asian American popular culture. New York: New York University Press.

A wonderful companion piece/prequel to NIshimi’s Matrix Trilogy essay, “Guilty Pleasures” analyzes the character of Superman, particularly as it is seen in the television series “Smallville,” and, informed by queer studies, challenges us to “out” cinema and screen characters or texts regardless of whether others see the same representations, as claiming or reclaiming such texts can “form and inform our reading of even the most familiar of stories.” (p. 274).
Nishimi, L. (2005). Mulatto Cyborg: Imagining a multiracial future. Cinema Journal 44, (2), 34-39.

Abstract: Applying the literature of passing to cyborg cinema makes visible the politics of cyborg representations and illuminates contemporary conceptions of mixed-race subjectivity and interpolations of mixed-race bodies. The passing narrative also reveals the constitutive role of melancholy and nostalgia both in creating cyborg cinema and in undermining its subversive potential.

“While cyborgs are part of our everyday reality (users of artificial hearts, virtual-reality visors, and cell phones), they also exist in the realm of the imaginary. They reside in the liminal, in-between spaces that survive at the borders and frontiers of the social order. They subvert the dream of purity and offer instead a future of mutual contamination.”
Marchetti, Gina (1993) Romance and the “Yellow Peril:” Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Marchetti describes her book as “dissect[ing] Hollywood’s Asia by examining the cinematic depiction of interracial sexuality … the way in which narratives featuring Asian-Caucasion sexual liaisons work ideologically to uphold and sometimes subvert culturally accepted notions of nation, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation” (p.1). Marchetti really did her homework here; her analysis of narrative motifs (vs. characters only) is based on a broad understanding and integration both of historical context and of cinema history in particular. Common narratives discussed include the Rape Fantasy and the Threat of Captivity. She looks at 17 mainstream films and TV movies across genres to deconstruct the “mythic image of Asia that empower the West” (6).

Sanchez, T. D. (2006). Race and the Matrix Movie Trilogy. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona. http://etd.library.arizona.edu/etd/GetFileServlet?file=file:///data1/pdf/etd/azu%5Fetd%5F1563%5F1%5Fm.pdf&

Sanchez describes her dissertation project: “Using a close textual and contextual analysis, I trace themes of gender and race in the Matrix trilogy, arguing for the presence of a parallel, embedded filmic narrative, one that neatly aligns with African-American critical traditions affirming subjugated ideologies, knowledges, communities and forms. Decoding the films through the lenses of race, womanist, film studies and cultural studies theories, I explore this signified, covert storyline through phenotypes, casting choices, plot twists, and extra filmic events.
Springer, C. “Playing it cool in the Matrix” (2005) in Gillis, S., ed. The Matrix trilogy: Cyberpunk reloaded. New York: Wallflower Press.