Product Description
The Matrix (1999) was a true end-of-the-millennium movie, a statement of the American Zeitgeist, and a prognosis for the future of big-budget Hollywood filmmaking. Starring Keanu Reeves as Neo, a computer programmer transformed into a messianic freedom fighter, The Matrix blends science fiction with conspiracy thriller conventions and outlandish martial arts created with groundbreaking digital techniques. A box-office triumph, the film was no populist confection: its blatant allusions to highbrow contemporary philosophy added to its appeal as a mystery to be decoded. Joshua Clover undertakes the task of decoding the film. Examining The Matrix's digital effects and how they were achieved, he shows how the film represents a melding of cinema and video games (the greatest commercial threat to have faced Hollywood since the advent of television) and achieves a hybrid kind of immersive entertainment. He also unpacks the movie's references to philosophy, showing how The Matrix ultimately expresses the crisis American culture faced at the end of the 1990s.Illustrations: Illustrated ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Wicked-Awesome. Not a Surface Read of The Matrix
If you are looking for a superficial, easy-reading analysis of The Matrix, try one of the countless other books on the subject. In his analysis of The Matrix for the British Film Institute, Joshua Clover brings his wry wit and background as a pop-culture guru* to bear on the film's far reaching cultural implications.

Clover's analysis invokes the work of many postmodern luminaries, not surprisingly focusing on Baudrillard and his simulation. He drops the M-Bomb** on several occasions and trashes the franchising of our private lives. On the surface, it might seem like the intellectual analog to the 20-yard long Vegas Buffet, but to the properly initiated it's more like a fantastic Bolognese meal; a dizzying array of between five and nine courses, each a contrast to the last but all building toward the thesis, a complete experience of culinary shock and awe not to be missed.

Other reviewers are quick to dismiss this book as being "buried under so much analytic-babble that the answers are never really all that clear." The truth is, in life the clear answers are often the wrong ones. And an answer that is clear probably is not worth discussing. The part of the world that is truly interesting is not black and white and Clover's is not a black and white analysis. The difficulty that some might find in unpacking the meaning contained in his writing is the breadth of prior knowledge required to make sense of it.

If you, the reader, are not conversant in the cultural discourse of postmodern theory, including the writings of Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Guy Debord and others, you will be at pains to extract the full meaning of Clover's writing. Critical theory tends to reify its terms; simple terms are called upon to reference entire branches of prior discourse.When Clover references, "Guy Debord's 3D Glasses" it implies an entire set of discussions about their greater cultural significance. Without knowledge of this prior discourse, you might find yourself "buried under analytic babble." If you find yourself thus, don't blame Clover, get yourself a library card.

This book is a real treat, don't let the critics fool you.

* Aside from being a Professor at the University of California-Davis, Clover has also done quite a bit of writing for Rolling Stone Magazine and The Village Voice.

** The M-Bomb: every academician's best friend, Karl Marx.

Needlessly Obtuse
Film analysis being what it is, I am used to some esoteric theorizing in the genre.Although the monographs from the British Film Institute have not been immune, usually they provide sufficient insight to a movie to justify reading them.I have been able to appreciate several movies, such as The Birds, Belle De Jour, Vertigo, more than I otherwise would have because of the background and interpretation provided by BFI.

THE MATRIX, however, by Joshua Clover, simply is not up to snuff.Clover brings up some interesting issues in the book, perhaps the most interesting of which is why Edge of the Construct films (in which characters are living in a falsified reality) were so popular at the end of the Twentieth Century.But the questions are buried under so much analytic-babble that the answers are never really all that clear.

Similar problems exist with other issues raised in the book.Clover discusses The Matrix in reference to such issues as the increase in video game popularity, the symbolism of all the characters of the rebellion wearing sunglasses but only within the matrix itself (never while in the real world), and the parallels between the matrix world and current society's push to make one an ever working automaton in a corporate structure.But these issues all feel a bit artificial, as if Clover is not really analyzing the movie The Matrix as much as he is using the movie to soliloquize about his own views of the world and issues that he thinks the rest of us need to hear.

This is particularly unfortunate given the specific movie involved.The Matrix is pregnant with meaning, both philosophical and social.This book could have been - should have been - better than the average release by BFI.Instead we get enough to whet the appetite only to be denied the nutritional meal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Confusing?Most certainly....
This is the most confusing book of poetry I've ever read.I couldn't follow any of the material.However, I very much liked the sound of the poetry.If you like sound and don't care at all about logic, this could interest you.Otherwise, steer clear!

Hot Ice
There is much that is surprisingly warm in this theoried and avant aesthetically conscious amalgamation.And while it surges with elitist-hip pretensions, it grooves to a back-beat of pop and populist rhythms, with many-hued chops against a background of blue.It is a cartoon philosopher and the future of anarchism railing against the bars with a baby bottle.Worth many reads.You can definitely learn from it.

you kill me
who isn't happy to be a killing machine?,

joshua clover's meditation on small-town violence meeting today's tough issues is a profound meditation on small-town...

no matter how far we back away from ourselves this scene will not reveal itself as a movie set.

clover tails stephen wright on the going native episode, plucking observations about the state of words from the world of fin de siecle or whatever wherever with something like glee, but not glee, exactly, but without the staid proprietary stare of big time talkers in verse.

I am trying to invent a way for you to buy me back--

quote marks are so 20th c. clover's what poetry reads to itself late this afternoon.

Okay
Okay, I can't imagine who'd want to read this book, but let's hypothetically say that you do. I see used copies everywhere--no doubt because it was thrust upon the members of the Academy of American Poets, who then relegated it to their "recycle" pile. So if you're intent on getting it, visit a thrift store, where discounted copies abound.

Read it
Very Good Book.I learn English from it.No need to live in '60s, Clover brings them to you.I read for wife and she kick me out.I still have book though, makes good fire.I recommend to anyone who needs encouragement.- ... Read more

Product Description
In a tour de force of lyrical theory, Joshua Clover boldly reimagines how we understand both pop music and its social context in a vibrant exploration of a year famously described as "the end of history." Amid the historic overturnings of 1989, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, pop music also experienced striking changes. Vividly conjuring cultural sensations and events, Clover tracks the emergence of seemingly disconnected phenomena--from grunge to acid house to gangsta rap--asking if "perhaps pop had been biding its time until 1989 came along to make sense of its sensibility." His analysis deftly moves among varied artists and genres including Public Enemy, N.W.A., Dr. Dre, De La Soul, The KLF, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, U2, Jesus Jones, the Scorpions, George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and others. This elegantly written work, deliberately mirroring history as dialectical and ongoing, summons forth a new understanding of how "history had come out to meet pop as something more than a fairytale, or something less. A truth, a way of being." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"I am not smashing together the high and the low just because I can"
"1989" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Clover's book interview ran here as the cover feature on February 24, 2010. ... Read more

Product Description
The Totality for Kids is the second collection of poems by Joshua Clover, whose debut, Madonna anno domini, won the Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets. This volume takes as its subject the troubled sleep of late modernity, from the grandeur and failure of megacities to the retreats and displacements of the suburbs. The power of crowds and architecture commingles with the alienation and idleness of the observer, caught between "the brutal red dream/Of the collective" and "the parade/Of the ideal citizen." The book's action takes place in these gaps, "dead spaces beside the endlessly grieving stream." The frozen tableau of the spectacle meets its double in the sense that something is always about to happen. Political furies and erotic imaginings coalesce and escape within a welter of unmoored allusions, encounters, citations, and histories, the dreams possible within the modern's excess of signification--as if to return revolutionary possibility to the regime of information by singing it its own song. ... Read more

Product Description
Contents:FIRST TIME IN PRINTAvner Mandelman: Terror .Bernard Ng: CentrifugeESSAYSNick Jans: What They Leave BehindPhilip Levine: The Shadow of the Big MadroneFICTIONPeter Bacho: The WeddingPOETRYRae Armantrout: My ProblemJoshua Clover: Modern Language Association Annual . Stories About Mecca Normal Prayer of C. Gomez IbarraBrian Knave: LX; XCIII Jane Hirshfielcl: Meeting the Light CompletelySCRIPTClaire Chafee: from Why We Have a BodyTHE WRITERS NOTEBOOKGary Snyder ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Poetry, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2006. The length of the article is 3694 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Eight takes.(COMMENT)(The Totality for Kids)(Sinner's Welcome)(In the Middle Distance)(Fiction)(As Long As It's Big)(Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems 1985-2005)(After)(District and Circle)(Book review)
Author: Dan Chiasson
Publication: Poetry (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 188Issue: 5Page: 449(10)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Daedalus, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2004. The length of the article is 2786 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: On difficulty in contemporary American poetry.
Author: Charles Altieri
Publication: Daedalus (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 133Issue: 4Page: 113(6)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more