The Matrix Trilogy As A Western planning

I just finished watching the last two Matrix movies and I realized that there are many parallels with traditional western film stereotypical scenes. The romance between the two characters Neo (which is "One" flipped around) and Trinity is much like any other romance between a man and a woman in a western film. The gun-slinging in all three of the movies was "inexorably" western, since at least 50 shots were fired before one person would get hit, and then that shot would be the greatest aimed shot ever fired from a gun. The people of Zion were like members of a small town who were getting attacked by a hoard of outlaws, which in this trilogy's case would be the Sentinels that borrow into Zion and attack it during Revolutions. Neo was a cowboy, Morpheus was a sherrif, Trinity was the Love Affair/Gunslinger Female, and the Agents inside the system (which were also the machines in the physical world) were the outlaws. With regards to the outlaws, the Smith Program would represent one outlaw that took over a larger group of outlaws, or replicated himself inside the Matrix, to become more of a threat to the main character (Neo, the "Blondie" of the Future) than any of the other outlaws (agents) until the main conflict was no longer between anybody but Neo and Agent Smith. Lastly, the largest stereotype that has been perpetuated from many Western films was that the good guy eventually won and saved the day. I would say that he would have also gotten the girl, but that happened earlier in the trilogy at the end of the first movie.

The most eye-opening thing for me today was that I saw that the western film genre was the predecessor of the action film genre. I never noticed such strong correlations between what America expects from a good action movie and what America used to get during the time when spaghetti westerns were very common. I'm going to watch the first Matrix movie tomorrow or Saturday so that I can get a closer glimpse of the rolling newspaper scene. I have already seen one in one of the other movies. If I remember correctly, it was Reloaded where I saw Neo looking down a quiet hallway in the Matrix while looking for somebody, and in the distance at the end of the hallway/alleyway, you could see a newspaper rolling along like tumble weed.


Sources:
"Neo and Agent Smith punch". Screen shot. media.collegepublisher.com.  07 Nov. 2003. 23 Apr. 2010. < http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper854/stills/3fabe4570c2ed-97-1.jpg > 

Plan worked out

Garrett and I talked about the project in class on Wednesday and decided that we would spend the next week watching the movies, and when we have done so (by next Wednesday), then we will share notes and talk about what we could talk about during our presentation that would convince the entire class that The Matrix Trilogy is without a doubt a western film. Another idea that came up in discussions was the fact that in western movies, the hero always gets the girl. Neo is predetermined to fall in love with Trinity by the Oracle, and Trinity states this in one of the movies (I think the first or second one?). I'll have to find that while watching them, but the movies will all take 7 hours to watch, even if I'm going non-stop, one after the other. Plus, neither of us actually own these movies. I have a friend with the second and third movies, but that still leaves me with the first. Hopefully, I can find a watchable version online. If not, then I'll rent it or something.

First talks about final project

I have nothing to tell because I haven't talked to my partner yet about the project in length. I can say this much:
 1. We have decided to use all three movies so that we have access to any scene in the Matrix Trilogy that might serve our purpose.
 2. The conflict between Neo and Agent Smith are quick draw scenes, and there are a lot of them.
I'm sure that there is more to it, but I know that I don't have the time to watch all three of the movies right now, too, so any research on this will have to wait for a while. The end of the semester is always unbelievably busy, and this semester is no exception, that's for sure...

Paper #3 Topic Idea Workthrough

While in class on Monday, many of the conversational pieces piqued my interest reasonably. I want to rant on a few of them to get my thoughts straight for this paper. After each main idea that I can come up with, I'll elaborate a bit. By expanding on these thoughts a bit, I'll be able to look and see where I have the most room for growth or where I hit a dead end.

1. The idea presented at the end of Smoke Signals of forgiving your fathers and your ancestors for the things that they may have done wrong that messed up your life is very close to me personally. I really want to write about this topic so that I can relate it to my own personal experiences with my father's alcoholism, but I shouldn't write about this topic for that very reason. The paper would be too personal and I wouldn't be able to separate good factual quotes from my own personal feelings. If I did this paper, I would have to be very careful to make sure that I relate the things that I may choose to say to the movie and to Victor's Father's problems with alcohol. If I can change the wording in a way that prevents me from coming back to alcohol without changing the idea, I might be able to come up with a stronger thesis, and ultimately, a stronger paper...

2. I would love to focus on the ancestry involved in Native American Culture and then use the history that we have learned about Native Americans with writers like Zitkala Sa and compare that to the image of the ancestors that Hollywood creates with the stereotypical, "stoic" Indians. I want to really centralize around how the concept of ancestry is important, but that the real ancestors are faded and clouded by the idealized ancestors that Native American kids like Victor from Smoke Signals imagines. I would use Sherman Alexie as an example of modern day Native Americans and their problems. I would try to reference back to Zitkala Sa for direct references of what real Native American culture was like off the reservations. I would try to say that many kids, Native American or not, believe that the stereotypical Native American man that hunted buffalo with spears and wore animal skins while dancing around a fire is really what Native American culture used to be like. I don't foresee many problems with this paper, actually. It seems solid.

By the end of writing this blog, I've decided what I want to write about, examples from texts that I could use, and what my main argument would be. I'm not going to delete the first part, though because I want my original thought process to show in my final decision. I made stronger connections with something that I already thought of and created a thesis around it that would support the stronger ideas. With this kind of pre-planning, I feel confident in advance about the quality of this assignment.

Iowa Review

At this point, Alexie is really trying to be blunt about how the white man messed up his people's home, and at this point, I don't really blame him! He admitted that the United States was the greatest country in the world (doesn't matter to me at all if he thinks that or not), but he has so many problems with it. The way he was talking about the USA being a colony was revealing. Now I can see from the perspective of the Native American. We practically invaded and formed a colony, which still persists today, despite the fact that it is self-governed. By thinking about the United States being predominately Caucasian, I feel the pressure for Native Americans. We, as white people, have largely forgotten the transgressions of our past towards the Native Americans that were here before us since it is convenient for us to forget something distasteful. It must be hard to get acknowledged by the white people in the US when the large majority of them are trying to forget you and your people. For a long time as a kid, I thought that the Native Americans were killed off and that no more of them existed anymore. The fact that that mentality was allowed to persist, gone uncorrected by my supervisors for so long, should be solid proof of this idea.

They would have been sad...the movies, that is.

The Native Americans were probably the most qualified to make a great and accurate movie about Native American life. If the Native Americans were making the movies, though, then they would actually be receiving more help for the dominant problems that they face that never seem to be in the movies. Those movies would have been sad, and the subsequent "Awww, poor Indian man" that would have been groaned all across the country from movies like this being shown would be enough to get the attentions of people that could help. For that matter, why doesn't Oprah or somebody similar do something to help the Native American population when half the stuff that they waste their money on doesn't even matter to anybody but themselves? They could make a real difference if they cared; however, I believe that is the problem. Even after Native Americans started making movies that were revealing and powerful, nobody actually did much of anything.to help the Native Americans. I didn't even know that it was a stereotype to say that Native Americans were heavy drinkers until I took this class.

Alexi's "Pheonix, Arizona"

Alexi's story about life in Arizona is cold and gritty. A cruel and real tale of life at it's bleakest, but there is one point that I want to focus on. The jack rabbit killed itself to get away from Phoenix, Arizona. Desolation and death were constant in this story, but of all things, this rabbit, being the "only living thing left in Arizona, had to die. Why did Alexi describe the jackrabbit as being the only living thing left in Arizona when there are a ton of people living there? It is most likely because all of the people are dead on the inside and are just waiting to die on the outside, too. That is definitely a strong feeling that I get when reading this.