The Movies:
In 1999 a movie called The Matrix came out, and blew everybody’s minds (Well, everybody who hadn’t read Descartes). The response was huge—at the time some called it the greatest science fiction movie in the past 25 years. It was something of a surprise hit. Four years later, the sequels—The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions—hit the big screen, and audiences were… underwhelmed. Entertainment Weekly named Reloaded among the 25 worst sequels ever made. Reactions to Revolutions were even worse. After all the hype created by the first movie, the second and third fell completely flat.
Why did this happen? Were the movies just that bad? Well, yes and no. In my humble opinion, they were not that great. But I have seen much worse movies get much better reactions (Avatar, anyone? I mean, we do all recognize that was a terribly-written movie, right? Right?). So the question is, why such a negative reaction to these movies? The answer is: expectations. Everyone who saw the first Matrix movie had expectations about how the second and third movie would be. And they were all disappointed. They wanted the second and third movie to be like watching the first one all over again. They wanted to have their minds blown again. They wanted a repetition of that first experience. That is not what they got.
Truth be told, it was naïve of anyone to expect the second or third Matrixmovies to be like the first. It’s always naïve to expect that of a sequel, but particularly here. There were two things about The Matrix that made it impressive: (1) the “bullet-time” special effects, which no one had ever seen before, and (2) the revelation of what the Matrix is. If those are the defining features of the first Matrix movie, then we can tell right off the bat that a repetition is impossible, because neither of those experiences can be repeated. You can only have one first impression; you can never see “bullet-time” for the first time again, and you can never rediscover what the Matrix is. Once those experiences were had, they could never be erased and they could never be truly repeated. There is no second first impression; there is only a second impression.
Please notice: I am not claiming that the Wachowski brothers were trying to achieve a repetition of their first movie. They did not try to reintroduce the Matrix or “bullet-time.” The blame for their failure doesn’t lie with the movie-makers, but with the audience. See, the Matrix sequels may be objectively-bad movies, but we could never tell because everyone’s reaction to them was tainted by their expectations from the first movie. We saw the same thing with the Star Wars prequels and the fourth Indiana Jones movie—more so, because passions were stronger and expectations were higher. But you can never see A New Hope or Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time again. You can only see a new Star Wars or Indiana Jones movie, a different one, made some thirty years later. These movies were ruined before the projector started, because we expected a repetition.
The Theology:
Now, the theological implications of this observation about repetition may not be readily apparent. But this is one of the universals of human existence: we are creatures who live in hope of repetition. We look backwards at life, because the past is the only thing we know. At the same time, we must live life forwards, into the unknown future. And so we hope that the future will be like the best parts of the past—we hope that our fondest memories will be repeated in our future. Some people spend their entire lives trying to make a repetition happen, whether they want to rediscover their youth, or reenact their greatest accomplishments, or replace lost relationships. Our culture’s obsession with the “new” is really an obsession with repetition—we hope that each new thing, each new fix, each new song or movie or book or piece of technology, will restore to us whatever good feeling we lost when the last new thing became old.
Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote a lot about the idea of repetition, including a book aptly titled Repetition (He used the pseudonym “Constantin Constantius.” Get it?!). What Kierkegaard pointed out was that repetition is impossible to achieve under our own power. No matter how much we strive and struggle, we can never force a repetition. We can never make our fond memories repeat themselves simply by strength of will. In the book, Constantius tests whether repetition is possible by taking a trip to Berlin—he had taken the same trip before and enjoyed it, and he wanted to see if he could repeat the experience. Of course, he finds that things have changed in Berlin. The hotel is different, the sights are different, and the opera isn’t as good. This second trip was not as good as the first trip, so it was not a repetition.
Kierkegaard points out, however, that Constantius cannot achieve true repetition, because real repetition (that is, the repetition of something meaningful, not just seeing a good movie) is a religious category. It can only come through God. In Repetition Kierkegaard uses the example Job. The Book of Job tells the story of a man who lost everything—his wealth, his children, his health—and follows him as he deals with the emotional trials of such an experience. Throughout most of the book, Job has no hope of a repetition, of getting everything back what he lost. In fact, he doesn’t even really ask for it. He just wants answers. But at the end of the book, God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, and a repetition follows. Everything is restored to Job—his wealth, his family, his health, and most importantly, his faith—through the actions of God. True repetition, true restoration is an act of God’s providence, not of human effort.
And, of course, as Christians we have hope in the Great Repetition, the only complete repetition, in the age to come. We have hope in the god who can not only bring us repetition on Earth, but who guarantees to us that our ultimate future will be even better than the best of our past memories. “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”[1] and we know that this repetition will fulfill every longing, every desire, every need, every hope.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
[1] Rev 21:5 (NIV)
Comments
Post a Comment