{"id":94,"date":"2003-05-21T21:59:25","date_gmt":"2003-05-22T01:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=94"},"modified":"2003-05-21T21:59:25","modified_gmt":"2003-05-22T01:59:25","slug":"comic-book-metaphysics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"Comic Book Metaphysics"},"content":{"rendered":"

A comment on Electrolite<\/b><\/a> responding to a comment on MemeMachineGo<\/b><\/a> about The Matrix<\/i>: MemeMachineGo<\/b> says that the metaphysics of The Matrix<\/i> is overrated, that it cannot bear serious comparison to Philip K. Dick; Electrolite<\/b> says that to say this is to overrate Dick, who mostly uses epistemological questions “as titillation and decoration,” and that we shouldn’t take these pop entertainments too seriously. Nor should we believe in the inherent “intellectual superiority” of SF novels “to action movies and comic books.” –Now, I agree with this latter point of Electrolite’s; but I also<\/i> agree with MMG’s dis of The Matrix<\/i> (at least of the first one; I haven’t seen the new Matrix Reloaded<\/i> yet). The point is, it’s not a question of genre, but of a certain willingness to go over the top. The Matrix<\/i>‘s Gnosticism\/Baudrillardism, or whatever you want to call it, is far more interesting than, say, the cosmology of Star Wars<\/i>; but it doesn’t hold a candle to the metaphysical anguish of Dick; nor, for that matter, to the wild inventions of such comix writers as Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A comment on Electrolite<\/b><\/a> responding to a comment on MemeMachineGo<\/b><\/a> about The Matrix<\/i>: MemeMachineGo<\/b> says that the metaphysics of The Matrix<\/i> is overrated, that it cannot bear serious comparison to Philip K. Dick; Electrolite<\/b> says that to say this is to overrate Dick, who mostly uses epistemological questions “as titillation and decoration,” and that we shouldn’t take these pop entertainments too seriously. Nor should we believe in the inherent “intellectual superiority” of SF novels “to action movies and comic books.” –Now, I agree with this latter point of Electrolite’s; but I also<\/i> agree with MMG’s dis of The Matrix<\/i> (at least of the first one; I haven’t seen the new Matrix Reloaded<\/i> yet). The point is, it’s not a question of genre, but of a certain willingness to go over the top. The Matrix<\/i>‘s Gnosticism\/Baudrillardism, or whatever you want to call it, is far more interesting than, say, the cosmology of Star Wars<\/i>; but it doesn’t hold a candle to the metaphysical anguish of Dick; nor, for that matter, to the wild inventions of such comix writers as Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}