Pretty nice article. Makes me want to read that book.
A French Philosopher [Jean Baudrillard] Talks Back to Hollywood and ‘The Matrix’
This apocalyptic message owes something to the work of the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928-82), a cult figure who wrote extensively about the moral problems that result when the distinctions between the natural and synthetic began to blur through cloning, artificial intelligence and android technology. Mr. Dick foresaw a future in which synthetic beings were mass-produced to be used as soldiers, assassins, Stepford-style love slaves and synthetic families next door, manufactured to keep settlers company when humans colonize other planets.
His most widely known novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” ? made into the wildly successful film “Blade Runner” ? centered on synthetic beings that escape servitude to pass as human, only to be tracked down and “retired” by a bounty killer. Hollywood’s indifference to the moral fine points was evident by the way it changed the plot. The bounty killer in Mr. Dick’s novel returns home to a realistically problematic marriage and a flesh-and-blood wife. In the movie, he falls in love and runs away with a synthetic woman manufactured by a firm whose motto is “More human than human.” Since “Blade Runner,” erotic involvement between humans and androids has evolved into a new form of soft-core cinema porn.
The hero of “The Matrix,” played by Keanu Reeves, has the dignity to decline when offered an intimate digital encounter with a virtual blonde. This is a nice touch ? and one of many references to Mr. Baudrillard’s theories ? but not enough to keep the movie from succumbing to the techno- and cyber-chauvinism that the philosopher hammers away at in “Simulacra and Simulation.”
- Reality of Simulation Great Baudrillard site
- America, America . . . (From Paraxysm, Verso 1998 – A great collection of Interviews by Philippe Petit) interview with Baudrillard
- Buy it online at amazon