We're so used to it that we don't notice it anymore, but among all the new standards "The Matrix" has introduced is the consistent presence of powerful positive non-white, non-american, characters.

"Reloaded" continues and displays one of the most colourful and diverse casts ever filmed and it looks great. All these people of all colours obviously come from one place : earth. I loved the non-american agent smith, novo-french merovingian and the fact that Morpheus is not some sort of "gangsta'", "brutha" or "nigga", tarantinesque stereotype.

One of the diffuse fears I had growing up -- and loving S-F -- was : will there be any black people in the future ? I remember "star trek" as one of the rare diverse cast ("Mission:IMPOSSIBLE" too, in another genre).

When I first read the sprawl trilogy I loved the melting pot of characters, but these people were still only part of the "margin", the extreme limits of society. Mainstream remains white.

On the other hand "Snow Crash" gave us a crucial sex scene between an underage white girl (properly name "whitey") and the over-strange-origin (aleoutian) arch-villain.

Things change.

Just to say : The "Matrix" trilogy makes me feel good.

PS: I almost forgot, which says a lot about my navel-istic thinking : these casts remain massively sexually straight... what if Neo was gay ??? would it work ?

georgy -- { ki~2, parisian photo diary --> http://www.arobi.com/ki~2 }

The Matrix doesn't seem particularly "diverse" to me. The main characters are all either black or white. I honestly don't see how that should be impressive "diversity." Also, if anything, I thought the "all blacks are good guys in positions of power, all good guys who are simply very skilled are white, and all bad guys are invariably white (well, almost, but I won't spoil it) pretense rather annoying. Not fitting the stereotypes doesn't really mean a whole lot, because for every Tarantino token black man, you have a Spike Lee token white man, and most white guys in film are....surprise....nothing like THAT stereotype either.

I guess this is just a personal distaste for noticing and paying so much attention to race when the REAL point of race in cyberpunk is that it doesn't matter because we're more than just bodies. Focusing on race when instead we should be ignoring it feels really counter to what it should be.

As for race in other cyberpunk:

Gibson's books have people other than white Americans in power. Tessier was French, and a lot of the higher-ups in the Zaibatsus were Japanese.

Snow Crash didn't just have Raven, the Aleut, but it also had Hiro, the half-black, half-vietnamese protagonist. Plus Hiro's quasi-girlfriend was hispanic.

Bruce Sterling writes pretty diverse worlds, as well (think Schismatrix, or Distraction, or just about anything else). I don't know if he even thinks twice about using non anglo-saxon character in his books. Hell, in Distraction, anglo-saxons are an extremely oppressed minority who are almost entirely engaged in illegal pursuits.

As for "What if Neo was gay"...If that happened, we wouldn't have the second movie (fortunately) because Trinity's kiss woudn't have brought him back at the end of the first.

Aha, but Trinity could have been a man! I actually used to know a man named Trinity -- hearing it as a girl's name knocked me for a loop the first time around.

I'm operating on obsolete standards, or perhaps on the cusp of the new -- nowhere near having transcended the racist paradigm of the recent past. Which is to say that, yes, I noticed the races of the people in both matrix movies. I was actually kind of bothered by the absence of asians, native americans, adivasi indians, and australian aborigines -- and kind of put out that the "black" or "african" people have been all so light-skinned with the exception of Link. (I just remembered the three prominent asians in matrix:reloaded -- two were sentient programs, and one was a captain in Zion who only had one line -- his name was Mifune.)

But the audience's conscious perceptions of diversity will no longer be pandered to the way that they were in the eighties, where every kid's show had a token black person. My hope to see an aborigine, or adivasi indian, or Navajo or cute japanese raver girl says a lot more about me than about the makers of the film, I think. Anyone who's still looking for non-whites one by one is missing the point. The point is that in circumstances where humanity is fighting for its survival, the color of your skin and the texture of your hair lose all their significance. It just doesn't matter what race you are. And when you think about it, on a deeper level, maybe it never really did matter.

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Originally posted by ki~2:
I loved the non-american agent smith...

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It's funny you should say that because to my Antipodean ears the Australian actor Hugo Weaving who plays Agent Smith is 'doing' and AMERICAN accent...

"Mis-ter An-der-son" or "That is the sound of in-evva-ta-bility..."

Cracks me up every time.

Samuel R. Delany. Seek him out, a full colour spectrum.

had i taken more time, i would have started this thread with a shorter article.

my point is: the trilogy makes color/nationality irrelevant.

all the humans are mixed. even the cast is mixed. keanu is, lawrence fishburne is (he is black by US standards, not genetically), moss is canadian, wilson is anglo-french, belluci is italian. the oracle is mixed, as he keymaker, etc.

that's my point.

we are far from american typecasting as in, say, "strange days" or "total recall", and far from the white-to-the-teeth heinleinian cast of "starship troopers".

georgy -- { ki~2, parisian photo diary --> http://www.arobi.com/ki~2 }

if you haven't already, please have a look at the adbridged matrix script.

bear's post reminded me of it

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It's funny you should say that because to my Antipodean ears the Australian actor Hugo Weaving who plays Agent Smith is 'doing' and AMERICAN accent...

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i love the agent smith lines in the script :
> Are you ready to fight me? You seem somewhat unsyuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

georgy -- { ki~2, parisian photo diary --> http://www.arobi.com/ki~2 }

I was disappointed that Asians and other groups were not so well represented, but I do think that the strong representation of blacks counts in Reloaded's favor, rather than against. It is also a bit different for the Wachowskis to have Spike Lee-esque token white men, than it is for Spike Lee to have them.

Iirc, and if the argument I am thinking of was correct, there is no such thing as race on a genetic level. Only on a social level, and perhaps some vague geographical/historical level.

You guys are ignoring the thread at http://www.williamgibsonboard.com/groupee/forums?a=tpc&s=5006046771&f=2866012481&m=6926040523

i owe you a laugh mudman

georgy -- { ki~2, parisian photo diary --> http://www.arobi.com/ki~2 }

All I have to say is that thanks to the matrix, I can get a decent pair of mirrorshades again...That makes me happy

For this one I wanted to say that I think it's great that there is such a multicultural cast. The brothers (the Watchowski's) didn't get everybody in but they're making the effort and they'll definitely sell a few tickets so Hollywood will probably take notice and realize they can still sell tickets without racist stereotypes or a single race cast.

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I was actually kind of bothered by the absence of asians, native americans, adivasi indians, and australian aborigines -- and kind of put out that the "black" or "african" people have been all so light-skinned with the exception of Link. (I just remembered the three prominent asians in matrix:reloaded -- two were sentient programs, and one was a captain in Zion who only had one line -- his name was Mifune.)

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Uhh, thats not strictly true. There was *defintely* an Aboriginal Australian in the first movie (check out the elderly man in the foyer when Neo and Morpheus go to see the Oracle. Makes me wonder, after Seraph, what sort of 'guard' he was ), not too hard to arrange in Sydney after all. And without going through and freeze-framing every crowd scene, in both movies there was a decent amount of ethnic aesthetics represented (one of the group at Neo's door in the Matrix 1 was wearing a sari and nose-ring and I saw a lot of saris in Zion, for example). The diversity of actors really helps it have an 'alternative' feel despite being multi-million dollar movies in both cases.
And if Zion isn't diverse enough... well, they haven't saved everyone yet and it will sort itself out when they do