Ben Shapiro is essentially the villain of Matrix: Resurrections
Born in 1980, I watched and understood the plot of the Star Wars trilogy on VHS tape around the age of eight. And even then, I didn’t understand the philosophy behind it until years later. I do, however remember my dad explaining George Lucas putting his Buddhist leanings into his art, particularly the idea of a universe with no creator god but still in possession of a will, light/dark sides, and the virtuous/destructive emotions attached to each. There’s a spiritual lesson to almost everything in life and he wouldn’t allow me to just enjoy movies without understanding their meaning, themes, and subtext on a deeper level. He said to me “Enjoy your movies, my son, but always know when you’re being manipulated.”
And I bring that baggage, experience, and practice to every piece of art I absorb. I’m sure it contributed to my becoming a lover and teacher of literature. My father and I are Christians of the protestant Calvinist tradition, and part of Baptist churches. I believe in absolute truth and a singular path to heaven. There are some Baptists who are so conservative they don’t even watch secular movies, listen to secular music, or read secular books. I do but am always on guard for being steered into thinking or believing a certain thing, and constantly evaluate the validity of the ideas set before me.
So Lana Wachowski is no different than George Lucas. She has a public voice and inserts her beliefs into her art. I’ve absolutely no problem with that at all, and she made a pretty good movie in the process. Problem is our society is collectively losing the ability to be nuanced and subtle. Heavy-handedness is the name of the game, baby.
So the villain of the movie; played by Neil Patrick Harris, comes so close to parroting an aphorism made famous by Ben Shapiro he might as well have looked at the camera and twirled a handlebar mustache while saying it. Ben said “Facts don’t care about your feelings” during a famous roundtable as he confronted a transgender woman about biology, and was later threatened with physical violence. He’s repeated the line so many times at speaking engagements and punditry television it’s become a wildly popular proverb among conservatives actively fighting in the culture wars, and I’m sure on more than a few T-shirts and Facebook comment threads.
Harris’ character utters it while villainously monologuing on the shortcomings and normalized sufferings of humans and the human experience, using this speech as evidence that he understands our species better than his professional predecessor; The Architect. He mentions facts vs feelings several times in his speech, condescendingly sermonizing about how we humans place so much importance on feelings that facts are sacrificed in the process. Like I said, heavy-handedness.
This new character is in charge, uses fascist muscle and measures to get his way, uses and discards humans and underlings as no more than tools in his hand, argues with a rather clever wit, and is actually a really good bad guy when compared to the aggregate of villains in film history. But for this and other reasons, he’s basically Ben Shapiro; that man being the most dastardly, most triggering, most bigoted example of conservative hate in the eyes of leftists. Shapiro also possess a clever wit and is rarely outmaneuvered rhetorically. Maybe something to do with his background as a brilliant product of Harvard law school.
Anyway, one who actually thinks as they watch movies can see these lines for the laser focused one-sided shouting down that they are, having spewed from food-hole of a villain in a movie written and directed by a transgender woman and played by a gay actor; transgender and gay people being staunch allies in the LGBTQ movement. Wachowski used to be a man, as did the other Wachowski who was not involved in this film. Brothers do everything together like make movies, ride bikes, throw stones in a river, smell each others’ hands, shoot birds with BB guns, make treehouses, and feel repulse and disgust at the genitals they were born with, right?
Harris does very few high-profile movies, and mostly in supporting roles. He’s actually kind of a punchline due to his family-friendly role as Doogie Howser, M.D. being soon after juxtaposed with his raunchy cameos in the Harold & Kumar franchise. I don’t consider him all that talented of an actor but he looks like Sir Lawrence when he’s up against Keanu Reeves. Being an actor-activist, one would find it natural he do movies with a message like this.
And you see, that’s totally fine! I can watch and participate in a thing without getting all huffy about it, or realigning my thinking for that matter. One can entertain an idea without adopting it. One can also reject the idea without acting disdainfully toward the sender of said idea. I’m a Christian and moral conservative who doesn’t even come close to approximating Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh’s acerbic natures. These folks of a worldview diametrically opposed to mine don’t argue, spit, cuss, vote, legislate, and protest because they’re horrible people. They do it because they are people with feelings who want acceptance.
And that’s how I treat them. I don’t put the “LGBTQ” in front of “people”. I just call them “people” and love them no matter what, hoping they’ll do the same for me, and understanding if they don’t. I’ll occasionally make a joke about someone taking a samurai sword to their genitals but that’s more because we humans do funny things and something that’s sacred to one is funny to another. See the jokes flung about regarding my faith if you disagree. The person with the sacred lenses on can learn to laugh along with the person wearing the funny lenses as well.
There are very few overt Christian voices in Hollywood, but I wouldn’t reject or consume more or less of that city’s output were there more or less Christianity intertwined. I enjoy art of all varieties and don’t need my faith’s dogma shining through in order to be bolstered in my beliefs. Art just is and can exist outside of my desire to see the world saved by Jesus.
I’m not here to do a review, just to point out and ruminate on the manipulation involved without totally trashing the work or the people involved. I will say this in the realm of review. It’s a really good movie which cleverly inculcates current technology to update the rules of the Matrix universe (no one’s using payphones or clunky 90’s era cellphones in this one), twists the events of the original trilogy to explain and justify the resurrections without totally discarding the heroic deaths we witnessed in the third movie or the feelings involved, and has some compelling action and performances. I particularly enjoyed the Matrix’s take on zombie swarms.
You can read up on all the fantastic philosophy, mythology, and theology pervading the original films here. I’m a sucker for a thinking man’s action movie, considering (maybe falsely) myself a thinking man. I just can’t turn off the thinking, especially when subjected to the effort to get me to think something else.
Isn’t it refreshing to be able to see movies in theaters again? I look forward to next year’s December, when we will either have many more options or be on the infinity-plus-one fifteenth day to slow the spread.
Hey there, beloved reader! Don’t stop reading yet. I enjoy writing and creating content for you. Recently, I took on the Herculean task of fixing America and wrote a book on the subject; the very literal-titled “I’ll Fix America Tonight”. There is a a link where you can conveniently add the book to your Amazon cart (if you’re flush with about $20 in cash right now) or your wish list (if around $20 in cash is a little too much right now, but hypothetically not too much in the near future). Buy it, and help end poverty (namely my poverty). Thanks for reading!
Images taken from:
https://www.vox.com/culture/22816209/the-matrix-4-resurrections-explained-sequels-red-pill-trans-neo-trinity-keanu-reeves-wachowski-lana
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/19/1013793067/outrage-as-a-business-model-how-ben-shapiro-is-using-facebook-to-build-an-empire
