Ah, Zion

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Friend asked me what I thought about Will Smith being offered the Keanu Reeves role in "The Matrix". He turned it down for "Wild Wild West." Wow. Talk about bad choices. But he asked how I thought "Matrix" might have been different. You know, I have to answer that question differently now than I would have before. Initially, I figure "Matrix" could have played very similarly...but Trinity would have been Hispanic or black, and Morpheus would have been white. There still could have been the kiss, and the happy ending. The movie would have had a similar cultural impact. Oh, and the martial arts sequences would have been better: Smith is just more athletic than Reeves. But you know what? After watching the second and third movies (and have you EVER seen a movie series go downhill faster?) I realized that the Wachowski brothers were playing a strange, dangerous game.

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Did you notice that Zion, the city of "real humans" is totally multicultural/multiracial, while the Matrix, the synthetic construct, is almost totally white? I mean, there is a brief scene in "Chinatown" that features some Asians, but basically the Matrix has the racial makeup of a 1950's movie. Even the crew of Morpheus' ship is brown, and I never really noticed it while watching the original film. So what in the world were they trying to say?

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And if they had gotten Will Smith, would they have DARED to keep the rest of the casting the same? With almost all the white characters either machines, synthetic, traitors or dead? Good lord, what were they up to?

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By the time we saw Zion, and they had the big dance scene, trust me, white boys in the audience were grumbling. I was there, and I heard them. So if the Wachowskis were trying to make some kind of point about how we're living in a synthetic media creation with little connection to the "real world" of multicolored people, they kept it under control in the first film, but something went very wrong, and nobody reigned them in.

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Or...they just went crazy. I have a sense that there was a lot of cocaine around that shoot, and look at all the weight Larry Fishburne put on during production. And of an action film, yet. Almost as bad as Steven Seagal, that THAT weight gain is a pretty obvious mark of an emotionally damaged human being. In Seagal's case, I'd bet it relates to a serious case of "imposter syndrome"--knowing that his entire Hollywood mythology was based on a lie. Self-sabotage as bad as Meg Ryan humping Russel Crowe. But what was going on on the "Matrix" set?

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I think these guys are a little nuts. I think that they went "off the reservation" and literally had trouble relating their ideas and concepts to the outside culture, began to live in a self-referential and increasingly dark and ugly world...one that ultimately made little sense.

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I kind of think this is part of what happens when people try to make blacks full-spectrum human beings in film. It goes like this: blacks have numerous problems in society. The answer for "why" is on a sliding scale, ranging between the culture treating them different, and black people themselves being different. I've made no secret of where I stand on this.

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A film that depicted blacks as being too "different" would turn off an entire chunk of the American public. But what I think is NOT understood is that if you show them as being too "ordinary"--with the same hopes, dreams, and needs, it will turn off ANOTHER chunk of the public. And that this understanding is instinctive, and begins to be programmed in childhood.

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The good news is that the older generation, who was poisoned with these lies from the cradle, is dying off. I'll join them soon enough, trust me: I'm not pointing a finger and laughing, just stating the obvious. But the memes that justified the institution of slavery (it's only been about twenty years since the last time I regularly heard Southerners trying to state that "slavery was good for the slave." To this date, they still believe that the institution would have "died out naturally in thirty years." Which is interesting, considering that it hasn't died out to this day.)

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What I'm saying is that I suspect that the reasons that no non-white male has had sex in a movie that has been accepted across the board by the American public is BOTH that such films are rejected by the racially queasy, AND that they actually had to be just a little crazy to try it in the first place: that they are operating in a zone without any foundation or touch-stones to guide them, and run off the rails. Should it be a comedy? A drama? An action film? It's all been tried. It all fails. So the Wachowskis, trying something kind of radical, pretty much guaranteed that they would be out of touch with mainstream America. And while they were at it...just a little bugfuck as well.

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The key is going to be experimentation, feedback, study (for instance, we now know that an Hispanic woman won't push the buttons as hard as either a black woman or a white woman. Man, I sure as hell never predicted THAT!) Try this, try that...and eventually, someone will get across the line. Statistically, the numbers will still tend to be depressed, but it'll happen.

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Curiously, it doesn't bother me as much as once it did that black women are jumping into bed with white guys in movies. First, that's the real world. Second, it's their business-(I just resent it when black women criticise black men for smooching non-black women, when I don't hear them complain about black women with white men. I think that is rank hypocrisy, and did in the 70's when black men claimed that THEY had the right to bed white women, but black women shouldn't cross the racial line. I told them I thought they were full of shit, and I say the same thing to Sisters now: no matter what history or statistics you quote, you simply don't have the right to say it's all right for you, but not for me. I've heard every reason imaginable, and it's all crap ). But the real reason I'm not minding as much is that I see that there's a level of game going on. People of all races are attracted to people of all races. If that weren't true, you wouldn't have needed laws to keep us out of each other's bedrooms.

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If white guys want access to, say, Halle Berry, there is a limit to the number of times she can have scenes with Benjamin Bratt or Billy Bob Thornton or whatever before even the AUDIENCE starts getting uncomfortable with the obvious racial implications. And on an unconscious level, watching dark skin helps to desensitize the flinch response. And white women are gonna want theirs. Why should their guys be the only ones gettin' that chocolate love..?

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Hah hah. I trust lust in this matter. That, and the dying off of Clint Eastwood's generation. The kids coming up now pretty much wonder what the fuss is all about. Keeping my fingers crossed: By June 30, 2009, I think it's gonna happen.

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And no, I don't think it's so strange that whites would vote for Obama but still not be able to deal with Will Smith's sexuality. A president isn't just a popularity contest: it's hiring someone you believe can help YOU. Lotsa people would hire a black plumber who wouldn't want the guy dating their daughters. Plus...hell, there are just lots of us who consider Obama exceptional--so it's a "well, if they were all like him, there wouldn't be a problem!" In other words, when bigots meet an exceptional member of the group they despise, they will often make an exception: "THAT one is O.K." Oddly, doing this actually reinforces their other racial attitudes, because now they can say: "see? I'm not a bigot! I

1) listen to black music

2) like Kung-fu movies

3) Have a Jewish Lawyer

4) Am married to a woman

5) Own a copy of "YMCA"

6) Love to screw white girls

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Thus proving that I'm open-minded. I just know that there are...certain things about "that" group that most people won't admit. I'm just more HONEST than most..."

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Yawn.

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Going to Larry Niven's New Years party tonight. I'll see some of you there. Then tomorrow I'll chill, and Friday I'll get a little more work done. Then family stuff over the weekend.

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A question: is there anyone out there in the L.A. area with access to a sound studio? I need to create the core CDs for the "101" system (which, by the way, should beta-launch next week, good Lord willin' and the river don't rise). Let me know if there is anyone who can hook me up...I'm gonna keep asking until I get a "yes" from SOMEBODY!

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Happy New Year, everyone! Be safe, and let's make 2009 the best year ever!