Heroes, Martyrs, Fools - Reality or Fiction?
Heroes, Martyrs, Fools
The Choice Between Reality and Fiction
My Paper For Digital Imagery 336 at the U of S
Despite consistent references to a dystopic lack of exposure to reality in popular science fiction, most individuals in everyday society take their existence for granted. It is seldom considered by the average person that the numbing effects of sensual entertainment could be approaching the barrier of our subjective experience of the world - or worse, that we have already passed over it. Authors in fiction and philosophic discourse have examined the question of our experiences in reality and entertainment, and the light shed upon the topic from both imagined and real persons is useful in determining truth in the question of whether or not the authentic experience, with all its flaws, should be replaced or embraced. The consensus of scholars and fictional authors seems overwhelming. Reality is better than virtual reality. Not everyone, however, has been convinced of this. The question of entertainment replacing reality has become a socially relevant discourse, with creative and intellectual contributors such as Huxley and Postman, the Wachowski brothers, Neil Gaiman, and various philosophers all forecasting a grim future for our society as we lose sight of banal reality behind vast amounts of entertainment. Despite all of the writers who have made a case for reality, a selfish, solipsistic argument can still be made against enlightenment.
Fictional heroes placed into a dystopia that distorts or redefines reality tend to be crusaders for the real, no matter the cost. In Aldous Huxley’s famous dystopian novel, Brave New World, the character of Bernard - the only truly unhappy character of the book - refuses on many occasions to take soma, the socially accepted drug without physical consequences (Huxley 45), preferring his real experience to that of a drug trip. He voices his objections to many areas of the sheltered life, wondering at motherhood (91), and at John’s experience liberated from the “free” world (107). Characters such as Morpheus and the majority of the crew on his ship are resigned to living in the real world and eating gruel instead of being plugged into The Matrix experiencing the “real” world. Most of us view these characters as the heroes - in fact, it is Neo’s transition from someone who sees cracks in the system to someone who operates within it on his own terms that creates his heroic premise rather than merely his fighting skills.
We see a different kind of character in Goliath. Gaiman’s hero subverts the normative figure by achieving his heroism within actual reality, but without being given a real choice - his actions are perhaps understandable in context but they are not born of free choice the way we view it. Artificially, he was given the desire to fly (Gaiman 5) and he tells us that when the man with the horn rim glasses gives him orders “[i]t never occurred to [him] to argue, or to disobey.” (6) In the case of Brave New World, Lenina has been brainwashed from birth to believe that soma and giving into sexual impulses will answer all of the problems of real life, and she attempts to convince Bernard of this on one of the occasions when he refuses the drug: “[I]nstead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly," she repeated and smiled, for all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes” (Huxley 76) and later, “Lenina shook her head. "Was and will make me ill," she quoted, "I take a gramme and only am." (86)
These are precisely the kind of arguments that Neil Postman has given as to why our culture is becoming further embroiled in entertainment - it simply does not occur to the public that they might view content which does not amuse them, and thus do not see beyond that content to real world events (Postman 141). Zinda struggles with this topic as well in examining Cypher’s decision to betray the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar. She brings up the concept of solipsism, the belief in the self as the only indicator of subjective experience, to discuss the question of The Matrix. In today’s world entertainment is becoming less impersonal and effectively altering your reality to be the only reality. MP3 and personal video players isolate the two most common forms of entertainment for the use of one person, computer screens are designed to be viewed by a single viewer. Reality in the world of someone with an internet addiction can be almost completely encased by what can be accessed on a flat screen with speakers.
Zynda’s question of whether we want only the experience of love and friendship or the authentic thing (6) can be answered in part by our massive adoption of digital communication - for the vast majority of us, the physical experience of contact with actual people is becoming fragmented by electronic contact. For some of us, this creates a desire for more contact with real people, but for others, arguably the majority, there is a seeming freedom to indulge in an insular introversion without desire for actual contact. Gaiman’s character answers this question in a different way when faced with a lonely death, his desire for contact makes him willing to go back into the constructed reality he knew to be false.
Interestingly in Huxley’s work, soma is extremely effective in isolating the person, rendering them incapable of processing the world and helpless, but blissfully happy. (Huxley 116) It is the contrast between isolation and group brainwashing that disturbs Bernard and Postman alike - a medium like television gives all viewers commonality in a social sense, it both isolates them and gives them something to be unified about, or to argue safely, in lieu of the old standbys like politics, religion, and science that ruled during the age of words that Postman discusses (Postman 33). When the pilot in Goliath begins a relationship with someone who experienced the disintegration of the normal world in the subway with him, it soon fails. (Gaiman 5) He decides not to tell the woman he loves what is happening until the end, fearing he will lose her (6) Only when the character lives his short life inside the world he came from, with knowledge of its inconsistency, does he find happiness in his life activities (10). He is isolated, but maintains relationships anyway.
One question that Postman puts to us is whether or not we as a society like Huxley’s are now capable of truly examining reality (Postman 51). To discuss this question through fiction, we can cite Huxley and the Wachowski Brothers’ visions of the future. When confronted with the “real” world, Lenina first calls it queer, and tells us, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it.” (Huxley 89) When Bernard asks, “Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” she replies, “I don’t know what you mean. I am free.” (Huxley 75) Consistently, Lenina refuses to engage with reality, frequently lamenting her lack of soma (95). Reality in The Matrix is expressed in Mopheus’ explanation of the Matrix reality to Neo as a “neural interactive simulation” where “real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Reducing reality to so disconnected a unit creates infinite and exciting possibilities for the freedom fighters in question - Neo’s choice can be likened to that of Achillies, but in our world, only a few would make that choice.
In Goliath, our narrator is thrilled to find that the chair in his cockpit in actual reality was built for him at first, but after the point of no return he wonders why he is saving a world he doesn’t know (Gaiman 8). When that world turns on him, he realizes weakly, “Do not adjust your set, Reality is at fault.” Postman would have been very interested in his wording here. He finds reality to be cold, but after going back into the comfort of what he knows, in the end he tells us he is “grateful” to them for the final “years” of his life (Gaiman 11).
We see that Cypher makes much the same decision when it comes to reality - and he tells us that “Ignorance is bliss.” (Zynda 5) The decision is made by finding that the subjective appearance of living inside the Matrix is a much more pleasurable way of living - more entertaining without truth. Cypher is the villain in The Matrix, but the irony of that is how many of the public would make the same decision in a heartbeat, and do so on a daily basis when they choose their daily fare. It is not so difficult to consider Cypher as equally enlightened to the other characters around him, even though he is unstable.
His decision to settle for a less mundane reality is a fully hedonistic action, but hedonism in this case becomes almost ethical - who would doom humanity to an underground life when under such tyrannical control their experience would be better? Certainly the officials of The Matrix tell us that humans would not accept a perfect world, they had to be given a world with war and death. If that were true, it would certainly be no less ethical to hold humans inside the Matrix and give many of them a positive experience than to give all humanity a “free” existence in a chaotic, barren world. Certainly many of the people in the Matrix whose lives were successful, who dined in the best restaurants and enjoyed the company of their friends and co-workers would be less likely to take the red pill than a basement-dwelling hacker with a boring office job. The world of Goliath’s computer geek is also mundane, until he is given the artifice of a pilot’s life. And when we really examine those who take the pop-culturally understood “red pill” or have it forced upon them, we see a disturbing amount of martyrdom. The pilot’s experience with actual reality is negative, but he retreats to his old experience and lives happily within the knowledge of it’s falsehood for a little while. Bernard is exiled (Huxley 177). Neo, after a great struggle, dies.
All three of the anti-hero characters discussed here: Lenina, the pilot, and Cypher, were confronted with the choice of an ugly reality versus a sweeter and more palatable solution, and made the obvious choice. The heroic choice, of course, would be to choose the ugly truth simply because it is true. It should come as no surprise that those in our society choose the “blue pill” on a daily basis, and few even understand that they consciously make that choice. Reality in our society comes with ugly truth that only a small minority of us are willing to face, and even those we would consider enlightened will take a break to absorb some entertainment as an escape from their crusades against the negative aspects of the real, however they choose to fight it. Like Lenina we are happy to be “free” to indulge in entertainment, except we reach out to our screens instead of into our pockets for the pleasant departure from reality when confronted with the horrors of the world. (Huxley 91) It remains to be seen whether the forecasts of doom from Huxley and Postman will ever be realized. Humanity has always displaced reality with entertainment. Intellectuals may only see a more sobering picture because we now see reality through the lens of dystopic fiction.
Works Cited
Gaiman, Neil. Goliath. Digital Imagery Class Reading Package, 2008.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus, 1977. 1-213.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves To Death. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. 3-163
The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, Carrie-Ann Moss. DVD. Warner Bros., 1999.
Zinda, Lyle. Was Cypher Right? Digital Imagery Class Reading Package, 2008.
----
If anyone wants the other articles, though I'm guessing most of you have seen the Matrix, I can send them to you.