It is interesting how the discussion has bifurcated...is it not possible to recognize both The Matrix and Memento as rich intellectual ground to be mined, for different reasons. As the directors were self-consciously trying to include Gnostic themes, how is it intellectually suspicious to discuss them? Especially, as David Brottman points out in the latest issue of Film and Philosophy, when such themes have interesting links to the postmodern politics of suspicion.
As far as Memento is concerned, it is one of the best film-noirish puzzles in a long time, and its implications for notions of personal identity are fascinating (see the relatively recent Routledge book Philosophy Through Film edited by Mary Litch(sp?) for a nice chapter on it).. But a lot of folks, including such names as Herbert Dreyfuss, have taken The Matrix seriously as well. Perhaps there is a puritan guilt about enjoying an action picture so much that translates into a disapproval of wanting to read more into it. It becomes a kind of Rorschach test.
It seemed to me a step in the right direction when the Matrix site actually featured some philosophical essays. Would we want rather be excluded from such popular discussions?
All that having been said, there is some truth to the claim that philosophical writing about film needs to become more rigorous, with an academic integrity that characterizes much of the aesthetic and ideological discussions of the fine arts these days. On my part, there is also the desire to connect with artefacts that interest my students, to build cinematic bridges to the more sophisticated philosophical concepts (again, Litch's book comes to mind). Nietzsche could be right that here is one case where being too concerned with being a teacher makes me a less profound aesthetician...but maybe not.
Dan Shaw
"For beauty is the beginning of terror that we are still able to bear, and why we love it so is because it so serenely disdains to destroy us." Rilke's First Elegy
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