Monthly Archives: January 2022

But the vicious cycle intensified. The more Garrison fought the defamation, the more the trollsspearheaded by 4chan, 8chan, and an army of extremists commanded by neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, founder of hate site The Daily Stormersmeared his reputation. In their capable hands, the then-unknown Garrison transformed into the most vicious man on the internet, with a long list of nicknames. The most popular of these was Zyklon Ben (after zyklon b, the gas used in Nazi concentration camps), but the web is still littered with threads calling him Ben "One Man Klan" Garrison or Ben "Not White? Shoot On Sight" Garrison and other bits of jingly hate speech. The trolls even got a Fox News affiliate to talk about the fictional Nazi version of Garrison by flooding the comments section during the Baltimore riots. "The meme was more successful than I was," Garrison says. "If you typed my name into Google, you'd only see posts about how I was racist, and a photoshopped picture of me in a Nazi uniform." Which is what that gallery owner saw before she cut ties with Garrison.

Garrison's employment troubles didn't end with just one gallery. According to him, the trolling campaign was so successful he spent the next five years with no income. He became obsessed with stamping out the defamation, but trolls are difficult and expensive to sue, and Garrison worried that his efforts to report those harassing him had gone too far. "I became an SJW myself," he said. "A libertarian against free speech! So I talked to my wife and we decided the best thing to do was to share the real cartoons enough to outspread the fake ones." So he busted out his sketchbook, and Garrison's wife, Tina, became his full-time social media manager.

It worked. Garrison's Twitter account has more than 80,000 followers, many rabidly pro-Trump and eager for Garrison to provide the triumphant portraits of their leader the mainstream media denies them. His cartoons constantly trend on alt-right social media platforms like Gab. Through Patreon, he's even become a modest financial success, though he's quick to point out that the platform doesn't reward his worldview as much as others'. "Pro-tranny cartoons get 15 to 20 grand a month, but conservatives, we dont get that kind of break."

Still, thanks in part to the support of alt-right figureheads like Mike Cernovich, Garrison's income continues to swell. "I commissioned a lot of work at above market rates and promoted him heavily," Cernovich says. "He's a great-hearted person who deserves to succeed. His work is both family-friendly and politically audacious. That's a hard style to pull off." Garrison has a similarly warm relationship with pro-Trump YouTube personality and alleged cult leader Stefan Molyneux, and frequently includes prominent "alt-light" figures like Infowars' Paul Joseph Watson and Yiannopoulos in his cartoons.

For a trolling victim to promote arch-troll Yiannopoulos seems illogical, but Garrison doesn't see it that way. "When Milo got shut down on Twitter, I did a cartoon about it because it's the same thing that happened to me: He lost his voice," Garrison says. That he was using his voice to stir up a racist trolling campaign against actress Leslie Jones doesn't phase Garrison, and he doesn't even see it as real trolling. "He does a little trolling, maybe, but with a twinkle in his eye," he says. "But I'd rather him stick to arguments than that flaming stuff." (That "flaming stuff" he's referring to is being openly homosexual on Real Time with Bill Maher.)

More here:

In Ben Garrison, the Alt-Right Found Its Favorite ...

KrautStyle

EducationCommentary (formerly)

December 28, 2015

Joseph Lanchester

Austrian-English

Vienna, Austria

The Mexican American Border - Manifest Destinies

Trump's Biggest Failure

Qatari AJ trivializes Islamic terrorism

Joseph created his YouTube channel on December 28, 2015, but rose to prominence during 2016 after his series of videos specifically criticizing Islam. He gained a substantial amount of viewership after MrRepzion, a fellow YouTuber mirrored his video attacking Islamic YouTuber Karim Metwalys response on the Orlando gay nightclub bar shooting. Throughout 2016, Joseph made more videos against SJWs, Islam, and other topics. He managed to gain subscribers and viewership as time went on. Joseph began building ties with other skeptics such as Sargon of Akkad, MundaneMatt, amongst others.

In 2017, Joseph managed to gain over 100,000 subscribers. Joseph began to his attention away from those mainline topics and focus on tackling the alt-right, which only attracted more controversy. He then stepped out of YouTube for a brief period of time, returning in early 2018, and by mid-2019 had stopped making anti-alt-right and commentary videos in favor of animated educational countryball videos, with the countryball video format chosen primarily because Brain4breakfast had just died recently, and he wanted to pay his respects. He still continues making animated educational videos, and has stated on his second channel that he will not return to making political commentary. [1]

On 2017 June 29 Kraut made a tweet to the Twitter account that in was in RageAfterStorm's Twitter bio[2] saying "@kippercentral you might to look into the views of one of your contributors @RageAfterStorm". 20 minutes later Kraut deleted the Tweet saying it was a stupid thing to do.

RageAfterStorm was a race-realist YouTuber who frequently made Alt-Right leaning and race realist content, and Kipper Central is a blog where unpaid contributors can write on UKIP related topics. Rage wrote for this blog as a hobby.

Shorty after the tweet was made to them they let Rage go because they didn't wanted to be associated with Rage's views. Although, they noted that others too have pointed out to them Rage's views before and they were already in the process of letting her go. It wasn't that difficult for them to find out about her views considering she had them tagged in the Twitter bio[2] of the same Twitter where she spouted her views publicly.

Weeks later on 2017 July 20th RageAfterStorm made antisemitic tweets mocking the lead vocalist of Linkin Park, Chester Bennington, after his suicide.[3][4][5] As a result she got dogpiled by a bunch of Linkin Park fans and due to this left the internet.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

Shortly after a Half-Arab white nationalist YouTuber by the name of BravingRuin (aka EdgySphinx) and his friends brought up the incident of Kraut making a tweet at the Kipper Central blog in order to generate drama (which they successfully achieved), blaming Kraut for Rage leaving the internet. Some people even accused Kraut of doxing Rage, which doesn't even makes sense considering Kraut has never published Rage's real name or address. Kraut responded to the drama on 2017 July 26 with a video titled "Artificial Outrage".

In around Mid-2017 Kraut, having reservations about an increasingly-right-accepting Skeptic community, decided to re-focus on opposing the Alt-Right. Seeking to challenge the Alt-Right's claims about breeding patterns and race realism on a more academic level, Kraut created a Discord server with the intent of connecting audience-having Skeptics with knowledgeable academics to discredit Alt-Right assertions. Quite a few moderately prominent Skeptics got involved with the server. Kraut would make several videos sourced from this server, but some were riddled with translation errors and some poorly-chosen metaphors, most infamously "Pregnant Trout".

By the end of 2017 the Alt-Right had found out about the server and managed to place a spy into it, trying to dig up dirt on Kraut. Around this same time Kraut, while researching an Alt-Right youtuber by the name of Coach Red Pill found his real name (Gonzalo Lira) as a signature at the end of his videos and subsequently discovered serious accusations of fraud made by Australian economist Steve Keen towards him.[12] Kraut revealed this information to his friends on the Discord server and was looking to try and bring this information to popular "point-and-laugh" YouTuber Mister "Jim" Metokur.

Coach Red Pill's eventual response to this was to try to frame Kraut for rape.[13]

But before Kraut really had a chance to act on this information, things blew up. Several Alt-Righters (most prominently the earlier mentioned Half-Arab white nationalist EdgySphinx/Braving Ruin) accused Kraut of running a doxxing operation on the server. Several opportunistic YouTubers (Metokur, Tonkasaw, Andy Warski) jumped on this scandal as a way to promote themselves and where joined by more Alt-Right leaning "Skeptics" (most prominently Aydin Paladin - who was eventually caught flat-out making things up[14]). Kraut alternated between denying everything and trying to blame the top mod of the server Zeph Aurelion (Who was trying to blame Kraut). The rest of the Skeptics involved with the server where reluctant to speak in Kraut's defense, still being somewhat embarrassed by the "Pregnant Trout" debacle and the simple fact that Kraut could be very hard to work with.

Eventually, by early 2018, Kraut and several of his most prominent defenders had their families doxxed and harassed and several quit the internet for a time or gave up on the Skeptic community in general. This also sparked off the brief Genre known as "Internet Blood Sports".

It should be noted that none of the accusations of Doxxing going on on the server where ever proven, and most of the accusers where either discredited (Coach Red Pill, Braving Ruin, Andy Warski) withdrew their accusations (Tokasaw, Aydin Paladin - who claimed Kraut was falsely accusing her of accusing him of doxxing her) or just flat-out admitted that they didn't particularly care what was true (Metokur).

Kraut would eventually return to YouTube by the end of 2018, released a few videos asserting his innocence, and settled into making content about history and geopolitics (For example multi-hour multi-part documentaries on the histories of nations, such as Turkey). To date he retains a justified hatred for the Alt-Right, is still somewhat wary of leftists, and has cut ties with the shattered Skeptic community and he's yet to forgive them for failing to apply a sufficient degree of skepticism to the claims against him and sees many of them as grifters now.

As of June 2021, Kraut drastically changed his video-style after becoming disillusioned with the Political Commentary community.[15] He now no longer makes political commentary videos, and instead makes videos discussing the histories of countries, and famously made two three-part series on Turkey and Mexico, which took him one and a half year to complete. Joseph claims that he, along with two others, are building a new community separate from the Political Commentary community, as a way to avoid the Culture War.[16]

Link:

Kraut | Wikitubia | Fandom

A dinner party at Marina Abramovis TriBeCa apartment caused a satanic panic over the weekend, after a leaked email forwarded from the artist to Hillary Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta made the rounds on a number of conservative news sites.

Last June, the artist sent an email invitation to Johns brother Tony Podesta, a lobbyist and long-time collector of Abramovis work, to a gathering in honor of significant donors to a kickstarter campaign.

Thosewho pledged over $10,000 in support of theMarina Abramovi Institute were invited to Spirit Cooking with Marina Abramovi, anevent whose description advertised A dinner night with Marina during which she will teach you and other backers at this level how to cook a series of traditional soups, which you will all enjoy together. The night will end with the making of a golden ball, a recipe given to Marina in a Tibetan monastery.

Spirit Cooking, Abramovi told Artnews on Friday, was just a funny name for a normal dinner with about 10 guests, including Tony Podesta. His Clinton-affiliated brother, however, did not make an appearanceand neither did blood, semen, nor breast milk as suggested by alt-right conspiracy theorists.

The title, which right-wing media has read as asex cult or abizarre occult ritual, refers to a series of performances from the 1990s, in which Abramovi used pigs blood to write phrases like Fresh morning urine sprinkle over nightmare dreams, or with a sharp knife cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand eat the pain, on the walls of museums. In 1996, she also created an aphrodisiac cookbook of the same name.

A YouTube video of the performance taking place at the Zerynthia Associazione per Larte Contemporanea in Paliano, Italy was hit with a slew of confused commenters over the weekend. Conspiracy theorist and media analyst Mark Dice wrote, illuminati psychos. Podesta and Hillary, what else do you expect?

Defending herself, Abramovi maintains the truth about her work, which deals more with an aesthetically-provocative spirituality than with satan-worshipping cults, can be found in her memoirs.

Im outraged, because this is taken completely out of my context, she said. Anybody who wants can read my memoirs and find out that [my work] is far away from Satanism.

Continued here:

Marina Abramovi Dinner Party Mistaken for Satanic Ritual ...

Conspiracy theories about the U.S. Capitol insurrection continue to flood private messaging groups, social networks and even major news outlets one year later.

Why it matters: The lasting echo chamber of misinformation shows the long-term impact the event will have on future elections.

The big picture: The Capitol siege was a central part of the right-wing narrative around the "Big Lie" the collection of falsehoods alleging the 2020 election was stolen through voting fraud. The "Big Lie"is now being used to rally conservatives ahead of the 2022 midterms.

Driving the news:Although many individuals and groups werekicked off mainstream platformsin the wake of the Capitol siege which Holt says helped prevent any major follow-up events right-wing extremists have found plenty of alternative options for convening online.

How it works: Bad actors and conspiracy theorists seed falsehoods on private messaging apps or conservative social apps. That misinformation is tested and iterated before making it to bigger web platforms.

Be smart: Far-right and conspiratorial positions are increasingly being wedged into "culture war" debates, often echoed by Fox News, other conservative outlets and members of Congress which pushes them into the mainstream.

The bottom line: Theres such division within this country politically and ideologically that people do not want to consume information that does not come from their life and their worldview, said Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washingtons Information School.

Read the original:

New wave of Jan. 6 conspiracy theories - Axios

The secretary of state might be a running dog of Oregons political establishment, but her argument against Kristofs candidacy seems entirely rational. The residency requirements for candidacy are not clear-cut, as Portlands alt-weekly Willamette Week notes: A candidate for governor must be a resident of three years standing, though resident isnt defined. But as the Oregonian reported, Kristof voted in New York state in the 2020 general election, he maintained his New York drivers license through December 2020, and he paid New York income taxes beyond November 2019. These lapses and choices converged, the secretary of state decided, to make Kristof a nonresident for the purposes of his candidacy. Kristof might call himself a native bird, but unless a judge overrules her, Fagan is the relevant taxonomist here.

The most disturbing part about Kristofs MAGA response to his DQed candidacy is how off-brand his tirade is. In his New York Times columns, hes been a by-the-rules stickler, endorsing due process and rule of law at most junctures. But Kristof the politician seems to think that just because he wants to be governor and just because he grew up in Oregon and just because he still owns a farm there and just because he has deep roots in the state, he deserves a spot on the ballot. Imagine this sort of governance-by-whim by Kristof should he decide to impose a statewide emergency, which governors in Oregon and other states can declare. Do Oregonians want him to riff off the top of his head and interpret the statutes to satisfy himself or do they want a more Talmudic reading of those powers? If satisfying the residency requirements for candidacy was an audition for Kristofs fitness for office, youd have to reject him.

As Trumpian and as imperious as Kristof might seem, his case does provide ammunition against the inconsistent and often ridiculous residency requirement many public offices require. If Kristof were running for the governorship of Florida, that land of transients, he would have to prove residency for an astounding seven years! But if he decided to run for Congress or the Senate from Florida (or any other state), establishing his mere inhabitancy at election time would suffice. To run for a seat in the House of Representatives, you dont even have to live in the district you intend to represent. The patchwork of residency requirements is so tattered that a school board member in Illinois got away with serving on his board after moving to Florida.

Residency requirements for state and local offices might be stupid, but theyre constitutional. So why do they exist? The arguments vary. Kristof is sort of right when he blames residency nitpicking on the existing political establishment. In the former Confederacy, candidates who migrated from the North during Reconstruction were labeled opportunists and meddlers in the Southern way of life and maligned as carpetbaggers. But few carpetbaggers fit the venal stereotype, historian Eric Foner has noted. Most carpetbaggers were former soldiers from middle-class families who went South seeking a livelihood, not political office. They aroused hostility because they upheld the equal civil and political rights of blacks, he wrote.

Some proponents of modern residency requirements defend them as a way to prevent grasping outsiders, who dont know anything about the state or locality, from buying their way into office and squeezing local candidates out of contention. Others defend residency requirements as the best way for voters to get to know the candidates and the candidates to get to know the populace. Even if this was once true and it probably wasnt its not true today when a candidate can come up to speed on his state and its voters can get up to speed on him quickly through mass media. And if residency requirements were all that essential, the framers of the Constitution would have imposed them. But they didnt, which is why Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Clinton were allowed to tote their carpetbags into New York state and claim U.S. Senate seats. Both turned out to be pretty good representatives, disproving the maxim that outsiders are bad and insiders are good.

Like occupational licensing and other red-tape regulations, the residency requirements for public office serve mostly to protect incumbents from open competition. I previously opposed the Kristof candidacy in this column, writing that somebody who has demonstrated an ability to boss paragraphs around but possesses no political experience shouldnt be given the keys to the governors mansion. But theres also nothing magically qualifying about a candidate who has lived in a state for seven years compared with one who has lived there only seven months. Carpetbaggers and even semi-carpetbaggers like Kristof, shouldnt be excluded from running for office just because they dont satisfy an arbitrary set of prerequisites. Kristof shouldnt be allowed to run just because he wants to run, but residency provisions are a sham. Next time the office comes up on the ballot, let Oregon voters decide for themselves if they want a part-time resident and self-righteous do-gooder columnist to run the executive branch.

A simple and fair rule of thumb for political candidates would be this: Qualifying to vote should qualify you to run for office.

****** I would love the right to vote against Nick Kristof. Is there such a thing as a write-in vote against somebody? Send your ballots to [emailprotected]. My email alerts are registered to vote in all 50 states. My Twitter feed follows Nick Kristofs. My RSS feed votes several times in several elections every Election Day using Nick Kristofs name in an attempt to get him arrested for voter fraud.

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Opinion | Nick Kristof Just Destroyed His Own Brand. Hes Also Right. - POLITICO

Jan. 6, 2022, 6:34 p.m. ET

transcript

transcript

Those who stormed this Capitol, and those who instigated and incited, and those who called on them to do so, held a dagger at the throat of America. The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. Hes done so because he values power over principle. Because he sees his own interest as more important than his countrys interest, than Americas interest. On Jan. 6, we all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful. The lawlessness, the violence, the chaos. I want to acknowledge our fallen heroes of that day. U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, Metropolitan Officer Jeffrey Smith, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Billy Evans, of a later assault. Now I ask all members to rise for a moment of silence in their memory. When the violent assault was made on the Capitol, its purpose was to thwart Congresss constitutional duty to validate the electoral count and to ensure the peaceful transfer of power. But the assault, did not deter us from our duty. So when I look back at that day, that is the lasting image, that in the end, democracy prevailed, that in two weeks later, there we were under that beautiful blue sky with leaders of both parties on that inaugural stage saying that, yes, our democracy stood tall. It brushed itself off, and we move forward as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all, as we always do. [singing] God bless America, my home, sweet home.

WASHINGTON This anniversary of Jan. 6 marked a turning point for President Biden, who for much of his first year in office avoided direct confrontation with his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.

On Thursday, Mr. Biden took deliberate aim at Mr. Trump, assailing him for watching television as the attacks unfolded, spreading a lie that the 2020 election was rigged, and holding a dagger at the throat of America when he encouraged his supporters to attack the United States Capitol.

But Mr. Biden held on to one vestige from the past year: He still refused to call Mr. Trump by name.

Here are four takeaways from the day.

As president-elect in November 2020, Mr. Biden and his staff proceeded with the transition process by treating Mr. Trumps attempts to reverse the election as little more than histrionics.

The calculation made back then by Mr. Biden and his advisers was that America was simply ready to move on, but on Thursday, the president was more willing than usual to address Mr. Trumps claims, calling him a loser in the process.

Hes not just a former president. Hes a defeated former president defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election, Mr. Biden said. There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate.

His remarks set him down a more confrontational path with Mr. Trump, who holds a firm grip on his party and shows no sign of backing down from continuing to perpetrate a false narrative about the 2020 election. It is a development Mr. Biden spent his first year in office avoiding, but one that he seemed to embrace as a matter of necessity on Thursday.

On his Inauguration Day just under a year ago, Mr. Biden promised to be a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did. On Thursday, he appeared not as the peacemaker president but as a leader who had a warning for Americans who attacked the Capitol in service of Mr. Trump.

I did not seek this fight brought to this Capitol one year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either, Mr. Biden said. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation. And I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.

Mr. Biden also reserved some of his ire for elected officials. For a leader who came into office speaking poetically about the art of bipartisanship politics is the art of the possible, he said early on and about the need to heal a fractured nation, Mr. Biden suggested that he was only interested in working with Republicans who have not tied their political fortunes to the falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump.

While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else, Mr. Biden said. But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible.

The presidents remarks presented a stark choice: Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? In corners of the internet governed by Mr. Trump and his supporters, the answer seemed clear.

On a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump aide who was indicted in November for failing to comply with congressional investigators, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia deflected blame for the attack and suggested it was part of a government conspiracy.

In his own cascade of statements, Mr. Trump showed no sign that he was going to shrink from a fight. He assailed Mr. Biden for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and even the way he delivered his Thursday remarks.

He acts like hes aggrieved, Mr. Trump said in one of several statements, but were the ones who were aggrieved, and America is suffering because of it.

The Republican Party remains very much Mr. Trumps, his lies about a stolen election a litmus test that he is seeking to impose on the 2022 primaries with the candidates he backs. He is the partys most coveted endorser, its leading fund-raiser and the early front-runner in polling for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Mr. Trump has a rally scheduled in Arizona next week.

Mr. Bidens forceful condemnation of Mr. Trump was echoed by Democrats across the Capitol. Republicans were mostly absent.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, accompanied by her father, appeared to be the only elected Republican among dozens of lawmakers who gathered on the House floor on Thursday afternoon. Many Senate Republicans were out of town for the funeral of a former colleague.

Republicans were not totally silent. While calling last Jan. 6 a dark day, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said in a statement that it has been stunning to see some Washington Democrats try to exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated the chaos at the capitol, a likely reference to a Democrat-led push for voting rights legislation.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who condemned the events of the day when they happened only to reverse course soon after, accused Democrats of politicizing the anniversary: Their brazen attempts to use Jan. 6 to support radical election reform and changing the rules of the Senate to accomplish this goal will not succeed, Mr. Graham said.

But there were some voices among unelected Republicans calling for something of a reckoning over the partys support for Mr. Trump.

Karl Rove, the strategist who helped George W. Bush win the presidency twice, used his Wall Street Journal opinion column to rebuke those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupted Congress as it received the Electoral Colleges results and violently attempted to overturn the election.

More here:

At the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Day of Remembrance and Division - The New York Times

The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski siblings and released in 1999, is a film very much of its time. A postmodern confection, it gleefully blurred genres. It stole from Hong Kong action cinema, lifted themes and subject matter from the paranoid science fiction of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, and was one of the first blockbuster Hollywood films to embrace a look and style based in the digital, computer-generated screen worlds of video games.

I remember it as a lot of fun when I first saw it, but rewatching it recently I was surprised by how flabby and messy it is. Once the central idea is revealed that humans are being kept as factory farm animals, and our life essences are being mined by a machine race that keeps us stoned and believing in an alternate simulated universe called the Matrix the film quickly runs out of energy. Video games dont rely on linear narrative to succeed. That is difficult to replicate in mainstream Hollywood cinema, which is hostage to the authority of the three-act story structure. The final 40 minutes of the film are repetitive and the faux gnostic mysticism that underlies the script is often laughable.

Nevertheless, there are genuine pleasures in that first film. The art design is striking, and Laurence Fishburne is sparkling, slyly sending up the archness of his lines while never undermining the story. That artfulness is matched by Hugo Weaving as the nefarious Agent Smith. Carrie-Anne Moss is assuredly dry as Trinity. Even Keanu Reeves, who gives his usual slothful, awkward performance as Neo, the revolutionary would-be Messiah, is a delight to watch: he is astoundingly beautiful. The sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, offered nothing new visually to counteract the lumbering stolidness of the writing, and by the third film, The Matrix Revolutions in 2003, all joy had been sucked out of the franchise.

There is only one genuinely pleasurable scene in the new Matrix film, The Matrix Resurrections, and it occurs very early on. Reeves is Thomas Anderson, a video game developer who is most successful for having designed a game called The Matrix, which the company he works for wishes to relaunch. At a storyboard brainstorming session, the young creatives rehearse all the possible reasons for reviving the game, from acknowledging the economic capital accruing from nostalgia to desiring a genuinely thrilling rethinking of the concept. A cynic in the room announces that all such reboots suck, that they never work. We have been warned.

The scene is not particularly elegant, or even that funny. Nevertheless, my hopes were raised for a moment. It suggested the filmmakers were aware of the promiscuous stealing from across genres and styles that gave some verve to the original film. The opening scenes had been disappointing stultifyingly grim with the actors forced to deliver huge amounts of exposition. The gentle self-mockery of the brainstorming scene offered hope for some lightness. But with Andersons realisation that he is really Neo, and that he has been malevolently returned to the Matrix, the film returns to the dull earnestness with which it began.

We really miss Fishburne, that droll humour that underlined his playing of the gnomic Morpheus. Surprisingly, I also missed Carrie-Anne Moss. Her tetchy, Amazonian playing of Trinity in the early film was a highlight, but in Resurrections most of her screen time is taken up playing her alter-ego in the Matrix, a subdued mother named Tiffany. Moss gets to finally shed that skin but her ensuing scenes are mechanical, enervating action sequences that offer her no opportunities as a performer.

Of the younger actors, only Jonathan Groff, as this episodes version of Agent Smith, seems to be having any fun. Hes not trying to emulate Hugo Weaving. Instead, he invests his role with a preening self-satisfaction that allows for some blessed comedy. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays a rebooted version of Morpheus, and though he is physically commanding, his acting abilities are limited. He doesnt seem capable of implying the dynamic cunning of the original.

Jessica Henwick plays Bugs, the revolutionary sent into the Matrix to rescue Neo. Every gesture and every line reading are performed with a solemn piousness that bogs down the film. Shes a dead weight and after a while I found myself groaning when she appeared in a scene. I knew I wasnt going to be having any fun at all.

The blame isnt completely Henwicks. The overblown piety is also integral to the sluggish script by director Lana Wachowski, co-written with Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell.Both are very fine novelists, but on the evidence of this script they have no sense at all of cinematic language, with seemingly every alternate scene requiring the actors to stop and start declaiming points of clarification to the increasingly byzantine and ridiculous plotting.

The Matrix Resurrections takes itself seriously, much more so than the original film, and it is written and directed with a solemn purpose, as if there was really some radical subversion inherent in the story. That deliberate soberness forecloses any sense of lightness or play. I was, for example, looking forward to seeing how the filmmakers would reference the fact that taking the red pill over the blue pill, which in the original film was a sign of enlightenment, is now one of the most popular alt-right memes. Well, they avoid it all together. If I were feeling charitable, I could say they did not wish to dignify the reactionary appropriation of the theme. Having sat through the turgid two-and-a-half hours of their film, however, my goodwill is depleted. The truth is that the writers lack the talent for either comedy or irony.

Why have they decided to resurrect The Matrix almost 20 years on? It doesnt take a brainstorm to realise it is all about the money. I want to be clear here that I have no problem with that. I have spent pleasurable moments in the cinema watching Lana Wachowskis films, and I have an affectionate regard for Carrie-Anne Moss and even for the accidental actor that is Keanu Reeves. We all have rents and mortgages to pay and families to raise, and I dont begrudge any of that to the people involved.

What is galling, however, is that there is no artfulness and no humour and no flair in any part of this film. The only glimmer of craft is in the editing work by Joseph Jett Sally, including the swift interpolation of scenes and images from the original films. The use of these rapid, almost subliminal, flashbacks seem a mirror of how our consciousness functions, of how memory is triggered and assimilated. But even his work is undermined by the end, as the action sequences limp endlessly along, directed stolidly and with no imagination. The finale looks like the finale to the last Marvel film, which looks like the finale to the Marvel film before it. Even in the single moment where one might think the director would try to imbue a sense of grace, when Trinity, upending the masculinist assumption of the first film, is the one who now can fly even that shot is perfunctory, lacking in beauty. It fails to make an impact. No one has bothered to work hard on this film.

I usually sit and watch a film through right to the end. I couldnt with this one. A cover by Brass Against, of Rage Against the Machines jarring, metallic hip-hop track Wake Up, plays over the end credits, and once singer Sophia Urista started name-checking Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, I knew I had to leave. It seemed a travesty that these figures of political integrity were being used to confer dignity to such a pompous and unimaginative film. Part of me wishes that the use of the song was cynical, but Im afraid that the intention is even worse than that. I think the filmmakers were using the song because they truly believe that they are doing something radical, that the new progressive Hollywood is somehow in step with the humanist aspirations of Dr King and the militant bravery of Malcolm X. The self-delusion is dumbfounding. This is a film created for only one reason: pure, venal greed. I must have taken the red pill. It stinks as much, if not worse, than the old Hollywood.

Arts Diary

FESTIVAL Fringe World

Venues throughout Perth, January 14February 13

INSTALLATION The Dingo Project

Ngununggula, Southern Highlands, until March 6

FESTIVAL Kids Summer Festival 2022

NGV International, Melbourne, January 1523

EXHIBITION Balgo Beginnings

South Australian Museum, Adelaide, until February 6

PHOTOGRAPHY Robert Rosen: Glitterati

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, until June 19

Last Chance

VISUAL ART Jennifer Marshall

Handmark Gallery, Hobart, until January 10

THEATRE Defying Gravity

QPAC, Brisbane, until January 8

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper onJan 8, 2022 as "Matrix theory".

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Read the original post:

The Matrix Resurrections - The Saturday Paper