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Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ as a Manifestation of Christian Mythos
I wrote the following paper for a religion class after we viewed The Passion of the Christ. I had not seen the film prior to this viewing, and knew the film primarily for its emotional and violent depiction of the passion narrative. A class discussion after the viewing sparked the obligatory debate over the content of the film, with several outspoken students insisting the film was blatantly anti-Semetic, with some going so far as to suggest Christians flocked to see the film for that reason. As a Christian, these remarks angered me, and though I cannot and do not defend Mel Gibson’s personal views (or his father’s), I wrote this paper on the film as a reaction to criticism of the film, trying to look at it through the lens of “Christian mythos”.
Since its release in 2004, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ has both moved and enraged viewers in the millions, bringing to light issues of validity, accuracy, anti-Semitism, and history versus faith. Particularly troublesome for some critics is not only Gibson’s claim that he based his film on the Gospels, but also Gibson’s reliance on early 19th century German nun and “mystic” Anne Catherine Emmerich’s visions of the last days of Jesus, which, among other things, provide extra-canonical accounts of “the passion narrative” in particular. The passion narrative, or the final days of Jesus, beginning with his betrayal and condemnation and ending with his death and entombment, is the sole focus of Gibson’s film, which deviates from the passion narrative briefly in several flashbacks to scenes of Jesus’ life prior to his condemnation. Controversial as the film is, and confused personally as I am about some of the film’s tactics, I think viewing Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ through Theodore Jennings’ notions of Christian mythos provide one way in which to view Gibson’s film, a way which, illuminates some of the reasons Gibson’s film was made with graphic violence and purported inaccuracies. Gibson is reflecting on the Christian mythos in making this film. While I cannot excuse the gratuitous violence, I can seek to understand Gibson’s own statements about the film and how his two major sources, the Gospels and Emmerich’s account, are best viewed in the context of Christian mythos.
In his book, Introduction to Theology, Theodore Jennings reflects on the Christian religion, and specifically, the idea of Christian mythos. Jennings’ writes of “mythos”,
Indeed, we should know nothing whatever of him [Jesus] apart from the reports, assertions, and interpretations of his life and the significance of that life which are let to us from that community of faith which arose in response to him. The story or stories are not positivistic history but presentations of the meaning or significance of that series of events. We do not have here the transmission of facts but their symbolic transformation…It is not a denial of the viability or the veracity of such accounts. It is an assertion that the images, words, and narratives are fully and completely human. They do not drop from heaven like a stone. (Jennings, 63)
Mythos functions, as we discussed in class, as human mediated interpretations of experience. Historical events are transformed into mythos because human accounts are, simply that, human. As each human is unique, and as such, each human perceives facts, accounts, and interactions slightly differently. Jennings suggests Christian mythos is not masquerading as historical fact because, perhaps, in the context of religion, there is no such thing as fact.
This view of religion provides a different way of looking at the Gospels collectively. Paula Fredriksen, vehement opponent and critic of Gibson’s film, argues herself at length in the article, “Gospel Truths: Hollywood, History, and Christianity, that the Gospels contain many an incongruence when read in parallel. She writes of her critic comparison of Mark and John’s gospel accounts,
How do we sort through these two quite different traditions? If we want to make sense of them historically, we much see which pieces of the Gospels’ accounts cohere with others, and we must grab on to what we can learn from other sources. We also have to be aware of places where the individual stories are internally inconsistent. This can be difficult. These stories can be hard to read precisely because they are so familiar that we easily miss where their own logic breaks down. For example, in Mark, Jesus is so popular that, Thursday night, he has to be arrested by stealth so that Jerusalemites will not riot in his defense; yet by Friday dawn, Jesus is so unpopular that “the crowd” demands his death, specifically by crucifixion. Mark provides no explanation at all. (Fredriksen, 38)
Fredriksen’s observation is exactly that to which Jennings points. Fredriksen continues, “…the Gospels differ as to issues of “fact”. If we insist on measuring the Gospels with the standards of empirical science, we will get a mental cramp” (35). Using Jennings’ definition of Christian mythos, the Gospels can be viewed as stories, not fact, as they are clearly not. They are “eye-witness accounts”, which Gibson calls them, but they are not “eye witness accounts” in the sense that they all perfectly correspond and collectively support one truth. The Gospels, as long as they have existed, have contradicted one another, filled in the details differently than one another, and mirrored one another at other times. In this way they are eye-witness accounts affected by Christian mythos, the human interpretation of the sacred. As we discussed in class, the texts are the result of human imagination. Viewed in the context of Jennings, history has nothing to do with the Gospels in the sense that they cannot be relied on as “historical texts” (if anything can by Jennings’ standards). Biblical scholars struggle to place the Gospels in a logical timeline, just as they struggle to weave the accounts together in search of a coherent picture of Jesus, a struggle which will continue indefinitely. Similarly, Emmerich’s visions are just that, visions. They do not claim to be truth. They are visions of faith, and possibly, of Jennings’ “human imagination”. Emmerich’s accounts, and the Gospels themselves, therefore are products of Christian mythos and faith, stories around which a faith has risen.
Regardless of which source Gibson relies on more heavily, the film is influenced by these two sources which are themselves products of Christian mythos. This makes the film by association, and Gibson’s own religious background, a product of mythos, not fact. Just as the Gospels and Emmerich’s accounts are reflections on Christian mythos, so too is Gibson’s film, which he admits is a movie, not a documentary (Fredriksen, 32). He does not suggest it is fact. Furthermore, Fredriksen quotes Gibson saying, “His only obligation, he claims, was to make the best movie he could, exercising his right to artistic freedom of expression” (32). This freedom of expression can also be interpreted as Jennings’ mythos, a human interpretation of the sacred.
The functions of mythos as Jennings outlines them also align nicely with what, arguably, are the functions of the film, intended or otherwise. Jennings writes, “…the first function of the mythos is to represent existence in relation to the sacred…The intention of the Christian mythos is not to obscure but to illuminate existence” (Jennings, 64-65). Jennings suggests with this statement that mythos is a representation of existence in relation to the sacred. “Represent” could also mean “re-present” in this case. Gibson is in some ways “re-presenting” the Christ story in using extra-canonical sources. He is also turning to the Christ narrative very much focused on a human representation of existence in relation to the sacred in that he features a very human Jesus, one who bleeds, weeps, experiences temptation by the Devil and pain, and longs for the memories of home, his mother, and times of communion with his disciples. Kazantzakis’ Jesus longs for somewhat different things, albeit less canonically-based things, such as a family, though the presentation of both Jesus figures is distinctly human. In this way, Gibson’s Jesus is somewhat like Kazantzakis’s Jesus, though Gibson might disagree. Focusing on a Jesus of low Christology instead of a Christ of high Christology, emphasizes Jesus’ human suffering, a major part of the Christian mythos the film embodies.
How does viewing The Passion of the Christ then as a manifestation of Gibson’s mythos and the mythos of the sources influencing it quell the criticisms against it? Firstly, it proves the film is not masquerading as fact, as many critics have suggested. As Fredriksen notes, “But The Passion is not a movie based on the Gospels. And it is certainly not a movie about the historical Jesus. Gibson said that he drew on the Gospels and then filled in “details” by using the visions of…Emmerich” (Fredriksen, 32). The film is based on the Gospels insofar as the Gospels are products of Christian mythos. The film is not, however, based on the Gospels insofar as they are fact. And Gibson, again, does not claim to be making a documentary. He says he is making “a movie”, which is a story, just like his sources are in the context of Christian mythos. When Gibson calls the Gospels “rock solid” (Fredriksen, 36), he is not necessarily suggesting they are rock solid in fact, which they are not. Instead, they are “rock solid” as accounts of Christian mythos which Gibson has employed for the creation of his film.
The issue of the film being possibly anti-Semitic cannot be adequately discussed or challenged using the concept of mythos. That interpretation, I feel, is subjective (different sides of the argument all have valid concerns and opinions), and best left for another paper. However, I quote Fredriksen saying, “Gibson’s dependence on Emmerich does not itself confer her anti-Semitism on him” (33). Even one of Gibson’s greatest critics admits there is no concrete proof that. In some ways, Gibson’s actions outside of director of the film have, I think, perpetuated these notions of Gibson himself as an anti-Semite. Drunken comments and an openly anti-Semitic father do not help Gibson’s insistence that the film is not anti-Semitic. In defense of Gibson, however, though I am personally conflicted over the issue, I cite the appearance of the Devil among Romans and Jews, not just Jews in the scene where Jesus is being beaten by the Romans, as Fredriksen reports. Furthermore, Jesus was a Jew, and historically, if we are accommodating Gibson’s critics’ viewpoint, those surrounding Jesus in Jerusalem would have been, if not Roman, then Jewish. Why would the children chasing Judas out of the city not be Jewish? While the Judas scene itself is based in part on Emmerich’s visions, and therefore non-canonical (and non-authoritative to Gibson’s critics), there is nothing in the scene that suggests Jewish children are attacking a Christian Judas because Judas is a Jew as well. Nothing about that scene that vilifies Jewish children as Jesus killers. The Pharisees also disagree about the fate of Jesus instead of agreeing unanimously that Jesus should be killed. And the controversial line from the Gospel of Matthew, Gibson agreed not to subtitle, but left in the film, “His blood be upon us and upon our children!” was recorded most likely by Matthew, who was a Jew.
Blanket statements such as “Why is it so important for Christianity to insist that ‘the Jews’ killed Jesus?” (Fredriksen, 41) and creating a division of “us” and “them” between Jews and Christians ignores not only the nuanced nature of Christianity as a global religion, but also ignores the nuances of Gibson’s film, and refuses to examine the film in different lights, discarding it immediately as inaccurate, anti-Semitic gore. The context of the film is also important to remember. American Christian audiences reacted positively to the film, I feel, out of a connection with Gibson’s Christian mythos, rather than a collective hatred of the Jewish religion. The Arab world, which Fredriksen cites as a supporter of the film, in my view, supports the film because it is anti-Semitic, according to the Arab perspective. Many in the Arab world are set fundamentally and openly against Judaism, and at the very least, the Arab leaders praising the film praise it because they read anti-Judaism in everything. Who is to say these people, due to their world view, would not find Zeferelli’s and Pasolini’s films anti-Semitic as well? Fredriksen is likening a group heavily influenced by Christian (and Jewish) mythos to a group influenced only by anti-Semitic tendencies. This is irresponsible and close-minded.
Undoubtedly Gibson has read the Book and noticed the differences between the Gospels. In the vein of Christian mythos, Gibson has created a film in the spirit of the Gospels themselves, that being one of human imagination. Gibson is looking at the Passion of the Christ (of faith), not the Passion of the Jesus (of history). He is, however, also focused on the human Jesus and his suffering as well. Perhaps Gibson’s trust of Emmerich’s account is somewhat misguided, but is there anything about his usage of the account that he takes as fact? If he took every word of her account (words which may have even been those of her recorder, and not her own) to heart, he might have included her preposterous statements “that Jews killed Christian babies in order to use their blood for Jewish rituals” (Fredriksen, 33). No stranger to extra-canonical sources, Gibson did take liberties with the Christ narrative, but perhaps no more than the authors of the Gospels or Emmerich took in their own narratives. If he had truly wanted to, he could have incorporated Jews killing Jesus’ followers’ babies in the film, but that is not his aim. Gibson is tapping into a tradition of faith as fact rather than “history’ as fact. Gibson is also highlighting the tensions between religions and within religions that have existed for ages. The fact that so many interpretations have come from the movie suggests another possible aim of Gibson’s: to incite dialogue. He is presenting an almost entirely human Jesus, a concept which has been long disputed. The film has, as mentioned, evoked strong feelings from critics over anti-Semitism and historical inaccuracy. Gibson has then successfully raised the debate about the authenticity of the Gospels and other Christian documents. Are they reflections of fact or faith? How can we reconcile the discrepancies between them? Are Emmerich’s visions real? These are not new questions.
I return, finally, to the idea of Christian mythos. I look to a final function of mythos as described by Jennings, who says, “Despite the popular refrain that Christianity…discovered or specially emphasized the individual, it is no less characteristic that it also emphasizes the community…The mythos which summons to decision is also the center of the community of faith (Jennings, 65). The community of people who flocked to see this film, moved by its humanity, disturbed by its excessive violence, and inspired spiritually, were being affected by this function of Gibson’s mythos. Perhaps the Jesus of history has been lost to the Christ of faith from the very beginning. Or perhaps the historical Jesus is found within the mythos of the Gospels, and perhaps history is found within the imagination of the gospel authors, who were fundamentally human. Either way, in looking at this film through the lens of Christian mythos, the film can serve audiences well in innumerable ways.
Fredriksen, Paula, “Gospel Truths: Hollywood, History, and Christianity” from Perspectives on The Passion of the Christ: Religious Thinkers and Writers Explore the Issues Raised by the Controversial Movie. New York: Miramax Books, 2004.
Jennings, Theodore. Introduction to Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2004.
In honor of my viewing of Marie Antoinette
A paper on the Terror, Louis XVI, and the French Revolution (apologies, citations unclear).
The King: The Key To It All
Scholars have long debated the inevitability of the French Revolution’s turn to terror. Contemporary historian Timothy Tackett argues that the Terror was not inevitable, but instead that the circumstances which emerged during the Revolution, specifically Louis XVI’s attempted flight from Paris in 1791, resulted in the Terror. Alexis de Tocqueville’s assessment of the Terror suggests it was an inevitable happening, a logical escalation of Revolutionary thought, and a horrible occurrence which found its conception with the birth of the Revolution. Both of these scholars pay great attention to the new political environment, and both attempt to answer similar questions about the Revolution, including why the revolution occurred, what the king and aristocracy could have done, what the National Assembly could have done, and what could have been done differently in general to prevent the downward spiral into the Terror.
What can be drawn from various primary documents, as well as Tackett’s (and in part Tocqueville’s) work, is that King Louis XVI was the key to the Terror. The Terror was not inevitable until the King was removed from the picture. The king was, in effect, the floodgate which held back other forces, forces which ultimately caused and led to the Terror. In other words, it wasn’t just that the king’s attempted flight, as an event, was the single turning point of the Revolution, but rather that the king’s very existence before, during, and after the flight, until his death, served as a fortification against the Terror. Once his presence diminished entirely, the Terror was perfectly set up. Even his opponents would have admitted this. He was the safeguard against violent revolutionary reaction because of his role in the early Revolutionary government, the way he was perceived by the people, and his relationship to radical revolutionaries (specifically those who would unleash the Terror), among other circumstances surrounding his position as monarch of France. Finally, I attempt use Tocqueville’s own ideas, which say the Revolution was always inevitable, to support my claim that the Revolution was not always inevitable, but instead, inevitable only after a certain point.
The Revolution began out of the Enlightenment ideas of equality, freedom of speech, press, and religion, and government created by the people (Tackett, 1). The change supported by the early revolutionaries was also non-violent in nature. The philosophes of the Enlightenment, including Rousseau, never overtly suggested a violent overthrow of the existing absolutist system, but rather they used their words and ideas to suggest radical political change. Violence, aside from common uprisings and marches early in the Revolution, was not part of the philosophe agenda, nor was it part of the early government’s. And above all else, the king, the central figure and symbol of the very political system the Revolution aimed to overthrow, remained untouched, even venerated as if nothing had changed.
The most potent force working in Louis’ favor, as well as previous monarchs’, was the mystique and myth surrounding the monarchy (Tackett, 180). To the common people, the king’s personal virtue, magical healing powers, love for the people, role as “father of the people”, and his connection to idealized Bourbon monarch, Henry IV, made him a magnificent monarch (Tackett, 180). Through deception, and then through the deluded hope of the revolutionaries, Louis XVI promoted himself as the “citizen king”, a portrayal which certainly kept him in the good graces of the masses.
When the assembled Estates General called for regional electoral assemblies to submit statements of grievances, citizens from all over France “began with a passage of extravagant praise for King Louis, who had convoked the elections” (Tackett, 9). Despite the fact that radical political change had just occurred, and despite the historic nature and message of the survey, the people still wanted to praise the king. As Tackett points out,
More than half of the grievance lists opened with the statements of enthusiastic praise for the reigning monarch, and well over a third made references to his paternal virtues. Nearly as many stressed his goodness, and a fourth commented on his justice…Almost one in five specifically used the word sacred in reference to the king (Tackett, 181).
The king was, in many ways, God on Earth.
The king also remained important for the nobility, who were truly the subject of popular attack (Tackett, 175). In Abbe Sieyes’ What is the Third Estate?, written in late 1788, Sieyes points to the nobility as the culprit behind the suffering of the Third Estate, writing “…it is a great mistake to believe that France is a monarchy. With the exception of a few years under Louis XI and under Richelieu and a few moments under Louis XIV when it was plain despotism, you will believe you are reading the history a Palace aristocracy. It is not the king who reigns; it is the Court” (Baker, 159). The relationship between king and nobility is complex one, however, Sieyes is bringing out the important sentiment of the Third Estate, namely that they blamed the nobility for their suffering, not the king, who they may have even viewed as simply a figurehead. With the king remaining as part of the government, however, the nobility found the last shreds of their privilege kept alive, albeit artificially (Tackett, 165). While the king was the father of the country, he was also first noble among the nobility. As Tackett notes,
Throughout the first months of the Revolution, through the momentous events of the creation of the National Assembly, the popular uprisings in Paris against the Bastille, the suppression of noble and clerical privilege, and the dismantling of the “feudal system”, the king remained remarkably popular among almost every element of the French population (Tackett, 36).
Despite a couple of conservative, absolutist stances against change, Louis proclaimed his ultimate acceptance of the Revolution when he swore his oath to the new constitution (Tackett, 37). Tackett elaborates, “Since everyone knew that Louis was a devout man for whom such an oath must be a sacred act, there was widespread rejoicing that the Revolution had now been won and that the monarch was definitively on the side of the people, well deserving the title of “king of the French” (37). Time revealed, notably after his flight, that the king only faked support for many of the changes made in the early years of the Revolution. The populace did not know this, however, and because of the respect the king still garnered, his “support” for the changes only further legitimized the new government and new political system. Arguably, without Louis’ support for the new constitution, it would have failed.
The new constitution of 1791 outlined a constitutional monarchy. An inevitable terror might have flowed from a radical constitution which gave radical groups authority to completely do away with the monarch. The population was not prepared to hate the king, at least not yet. Louis still had such great popular favor that radicalism, especially violent radicalism, could not take hold. As far as anyone could tell, Louis was “embracing” change, and subsequently, his popularity did not wane.
The constitution itself provides many examples of the integral part of the king to society. The country is still referred to as “the kingdom” of France in this constitution (Baker, 251). It states, “The French Constitution is representative; the representatives are the legislative body and the King” (Baker, 252). The constitution even evokes the mystical feelings surrounding the king, “The person of the King is inviolable and sacred; his only title is King of the French” (Baker, 255). The king also controlled the military, but had to comply with the legislative body’s requests regarding war (Baker, 256, 258). He also had the power of “royal sanction”, which in effect, gave him the ability to temporarily suspend legislative decrees (Baker, 259). As is evident, the king’s previous powers were considerably curbed, but he was not removed entirely from dictating the course of the country. I point out all these connections to the king, not to suggest that the king still had absolute control or even a say in the new government, but rather to illuminate his persisting presence in the new government.
Ultimately, the National Assembly members knew the importance of the king to their governmental experiment’s success. Based in large part due to precedent, the French government seemed to have no support without the king. The king was a safeguard against all kinds of opposition, including popular unrest, and no one wanted complete revolution (Tackett, 109). Despite keeping the king in place, the new government was, as suggested, radical (not violent) in nature, and as such, the populace was much more susceptible to chaotic reaction. Once the king had lost support, the existing state had lost it too, and as such, the state was open to radical change. In France’s case, non-existent support for the king resulted in the overthrow of the moderates in the government and the rise of the radicals who otherwise would have been held at bay. Tackett explains, “…in the spring of 1791 Robespierre and his allies were rarely able to prevail. As one former radical put it, ‘a time for moderation has arrived’. The desire to curb popular influence in Paris and to end the Revolution was even pushing many moderates to shore up the power and prestige of the king” (Tackett, 124). He further quotes the Assembly even after the king’s return from his flight as saying, “that a constitutional monarchy was the only system capable of ‘maintaining the energy and unity necessary for the stability of a large nation and providing an insurmountable wall against the influence of factions” (Tackett, 201). The stability offered by the king’s mere presence was so very strong that the Assembly was willing to back the king in a very suspicious situation. The ultimate goal was to create a stable, new government, and the National Assembly was bound and determined to end the Revolution. This concept might seem strange to us knowing how long the Revolution eventually lasted, but at the time, ending the Revolution was also a priority of the interim government. The king was a large part of that goal, as well.
It is important to briefly note the political climate of Paris. The city and its melting pot society had been exposed to Revolution (Tackett, 90-91). Publications, salon, cafes, and debates: all of these forces acted on large groups of people in the city (Tackett, 90-91). The majority were illiterate, however, the radical thought extended well beyond a small group of people, a fact about which the king and others were mistaken (Tackett, 90-91). None of this radicalization was violent or could even begin to predict the Terror, perhaps aside from the desires and plans of fringe Jacobins. The point is that the populace was primed to turn either way, either to follow the successful constitutional monarchy, or to lash out in another way if for some reason the experiment in government failed. These newly created citizens, with their newly found voice, were unpredictable and buzzing with possibility and energy. Perhaps mass mentality can be blamed for much of the Terror. The fact remains that popular consensus continued to support the king alongside these new revolutionary ideals, and along with its newfound free thought.
When the king actually did flee from Paris with his family, and once the news first spread, people remained supportive of the king, thinking the plot to have been one of kidnapping or influence. Even upon returning to Paris (and on the trip back to Paris), people continued to shout “Long live the king!”. The mood was more of confusion than anything else, but people still seemed apt to believe the king the victim of a plot or the victim of influence (Tackett, 80). It was not until the letter Louis had left upon his flight, denouncing the Revolution, was circulated among the people that Louis’ favor was lost forever, and the Terror became inevitable. Until that point, the people were willing to believe the king was simply a good man caught in a bad circumstance. This circumstance, never inevitable, allowed for potentially violent revolutionaries to legitimize all of their conspiracy theories and complaints about the National Assembly. The radical groups, which once acted within the scope of the law, began disregarding the law, and circulating their own ideas (Tackett, 115). Primed already for the circulation of new ideas, the populace willingly listened to the radical groups, including the Jacobins. Further proof that the king was the foundation of the country was the potential external backlash. The Assembly was prepared to make a cover-up of the whole affair to save the constitutional monarchy (Tackett, 133). The reaction of the rest of the world was uncertain, but it would certainly have weighed on the minds of the Assembly members. In short, the people felt betrayed. The Assembly suddenly lost the foundation upon which they had built the new government. And the Jacobins found an opening through which to slide into a place of influence. Once the Jacobins gained access to the government, the Terror became inevitable.
Lastly, Tocqueville’s contribution to the Revolution debate cannot go unexamined. In general, Tocqueville argues the Terror was inevitable for reasons including the fact that all of Europe had the same institutions of feudalism that were breaking down, and that they would have fallen in France eventually because the people found fault with the system, that freedom existed in the Old Regime, just in a limited fashion, so an independent spirit was kept alive in the people which promoted the Revolution and Terror, and that the philosophes single handedly inserted themselves into the position of the nobility and instigated radical change, attempting to create a utopian world ultimately only achieved through violence. Tocqueville contradicts himself multiple times in his inevitability argument. Firstly, he notes France’s uniqueness while simultaneously declaring it the same at the rest of Europe (Tocqueville, 15, 205). Arguably, France was unique because of the way in which the Revolution emerged, that is, through the preservation of the monarchy amidst radical thoughts of equality and rights. Tocqueville’s argument that freedom existed under the Old Regime serves this paper well. He writes ,
Many of the prejudices, false ideas, and privileges, which were the most serious obstacles to the establishment of a healthy, well-ordered freedom had the effect of maintaining in the minds of Frenchmen a spirit of independence and encouraging them to make a stand against abuse of authority (110).
France was not an environment of violent absolutist oppression. Furthermore, Tocqueville, like Tackett, notes the love of the people for the king, “The King’s subjects felt towards him both the natural love of children for their father and the awe properly due to God alone. Their compliance with his orders , even the most arbitrary, was a matter far less of compulsion than of affection…” (119). Most importantly, however, Tocqueville’s suggestion that philosophes set up the utopian vision for the country (which led to the Terror) is at odds with the fact that a moderate National Assembly attempted moderate reform (thought still radical in its own right) before the Jacobins gained control (Tocqueville, 146). Indeed, as I have tried to show, the king was the bulwark against such radical, utopian, irrational reform. The philosophes alone were not responsible for bringing the Terror upon the country, although their role was important.
The reforms of the Revolution, due in large part to the presence of the king, were less radical than thinkers like Tocqueville would have liked to think. After the king was gone, perhaps the country spiraled into what Tocqueville called “democratic despotism” . The National Assembly was on the path to compromise though, a compromise in the form of constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately, the king did not whole heartedly want to compromise, and so the Terror became inevitable. It seems that there had to be that one figure in control, regardless of the political system. The king was that figure under the Old Regime, and upon his removal, the bloody competition for the next leader began. Robespierre took his place, and he was followed by Napoleon. Surely, however, the king’s presence would have at least held off the bloody coup that followed under Robespierre.
Soviet Leaders: Khrushchev and Brezhnev
Here’s a paper I wrote for my KGB History class. James you’ve read a draft of it, but might find the final interesting! Note: Apologies for typos and misspellings!
In their book The Sword and the Shield, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin suggest, “The relative lack of influence of the KGB on Khrushchev’s policy during the [Cuban Missile] crisis…reflected the limitations of its chairman…Nor did Khrushchev ever ask for, or receive from, the KGB any assessment of the likely American response to the placing of nuclear missile bases in Cuba.”[1] The Cuban Missile Crisis, and Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev’s mishandling of it, marked the end of his political career. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964. Khrushchev’s underutilization of the KGB existed prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In class, we briefly discussed this trend emerging out of the Khrushchev era. We also briefly examined the KGB’s re-strengthening under Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid Brezhnev. These trends prompted me to pose several deeper research questions. Why and how did the KGB have less influence during the Khrushchev era and more during the Brezhnev era? How can this difference be accounted for and how did these different relationships to the KGB influence foreign conflicts and security? My research resulted in a character study of Khrushchev and Brezhnev in conjunction with the way these two men interacted with their respective heads of the KGB. I also examine a few key representative international security conflicts under both Khrushchev and Brezhnev to flesh out how their approaches to the KGB differed.
This topic is important because it reverberates in contemporary Russia, especially with regard to current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his relationship to the FSB when he was President of Russia. Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky’s book, The Corporation, alleges Putin was put in control and controlled by the successor of the KGB, the FSB, as President. This book and the topic of my paper raise questions about the relationship of the country’s leader to state security organizations and how the two parties should balance power. As I will discuss in my paper, Khrushchev ultimately tried to take an authoritarian approach to leadership of a soviet system, alienating both the KGB and Party. Brezhnev took a more conservative approach compared to Khrushchev, including the KGB in his decisions and heeding their intelligence advice, poor as it may have been. The sharp contrast between Khrushchev and Brezhnev reveals the need for balance between the head of state and state security apparatus, something Putin himself may not have been able to achieve if the alleged FSB control over him is to be believed. In this light, this paper warns against the state security apparatus gaining too much power.
Nikita Khrushchev, like many of other young people of the era, found himself caught up in the Russian Revolution in 1917. He climbed up through the party quickly and by 1938, Stalin had appointed Khrushchev the First Deputy of the Council of the People’s Commissars and Chairman of the Central Control Commission.[2] He was a political commissar during the World War II and had become a full-fledged member of the Politburo. As part of Stalin’s inner circle, Khrushchev sparred with Lavrentiy Beria, who succeeded Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD (precursor of the KB), for Stalin’s approval. As Stalin’s health deteriorated, Khrushchev and Beria each tried to discredit one another as the party prepared for Stalin’s death and the inevitable power struggle that would ensue. As the two men competed for power and political sway, “Khrushchev had plenty of reason to fear Beria. According to Adzhubei [Khrushchev’s son-in-law], Beria’s operatives tried to raid Khrushchev’s Moscow party office in 1951, threatening an aide on duty with dire consequences if he didn’t let them ‘check the security of Khrushchev’s safe and telephone.’”[3] Khrushchev played “games within games”, dodging traps set by Beria, ones that would discredit him to Stalin.[4] Similarly, Khrushchev did his best to discredit Beria. As Stalin fell into a coma, Khrushchev began warning other Party members of Beria’s intentions to take a top police post to destroy the Party, and with this technique, Khrushchev was able to discredit Beria.[5] Beria made a bid for power after Stalin’s death and Khrushchev had him seized, declared an “enemy of the people” and shot, in true Stalinist fashion.[6] Khrushchev had been underestimated by everyone as he assumed control of the Party and state.[7]
While this description of Khrushchev’s early years and rise to power may appear as a digression from the paper topic at hand, Khrushchev’s relationship with Beria provides possible insight to Khrushchev’s eventual minimal relationships with the KGB. Much of Khrushchev’s dislike for Beria seemed to stem from Beria’s NKVD background and desire to gain control of the Party by spying on Khrushchev. When Khrushchev warned other party members about Beria, it was in the context of Beria’s bid for police control over the other party members.[8] Therefore, it is plausible that Khrushchev’s later underutilization of the KGB could stem from his early conflict with Beria and Beria’s use of characteristically NKVD techniques to discredit Khrushchev.
In 1956, Khrushchev read a secret speech against Stalin, denouncing Stalin for the atrocities that occurred under Stalin’s order, and this marked the start of his “de-Stalinization” campaign. Fellow party members attempted a coup against Khrushchev, but it failed. Khrushchev himself had allegedly played a part in the terror of the 1930s, and many felt the speech was not only irreverent, but also hypocritical. The fallout from the speech resulted in a split of the party members between a pro-Khrushchev group and an anti-Khrushchev rival group.[9] This split reveals the early dislike that emerged for Khrushchev and his alienating approach to leadership.
To illustrate the extent to which Khrushchev’s approach to leadership impacted his utilization of the KGB, I will first briefly look at the Hungarian Revolution if 1956, and then turn to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Both serve as two examples of foreign conflicts at the start and end of Khrushchev’s time in power. After Stalin’s death, Moscow allowed the pro-Stalin Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi to stay in power despite Khrushchev’s stance on Stalin as long as Rákosi kept a more reform-minded prime minister in power, namely Imre Nagy.[10] Nagy was ousted by Rákosi and Hungary fell into chaos.[11] In July 1956, Rákosi resigned after a revolt and another leader, Ernö Gerö came to power. Students demonstrated in October after the chaotic change of leadership and the movement turned into a violent clash with Hungarian police.[12] In Moscow, Presidium members weighed the option of sending troops into Budapest.[13] Khrushchev agreed to military occupation, though Khrushchev biographer William Taubman notes “the ignorance he exhibited, the primitive pressure he employed, his desperate, indecisive searching for a solution…” in the whole Hungarian crisis.[14] As preparations were made for military action, Khrushchev continued to agonize over the occupation.[15] Ultimately, Khrushchev turned to Communist China’s leader Mao Zedong during his self-doubt. Taubman suggests, “That Khrushchev needed advice from Mao confirms his crisis of confidence.”[16] Khrushchev’s reliance on Mao over his own military intelligence forces is shocking, and foreboding of his more overt rejection of the KGB in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The KGB’s sole role in the Hungarian revolution was carrying out Khrushchev’s occupation of Hungary and informing him of the revolution’s danger.[17] After ignoring the warnings of the KGB and his closest advisors, Khrushchev had the blood of around twenty thousand Hungarian and fifteen hundred Soviet causalities on his hands.[18] Taubman notes, “The Hungarian crisis had deepened his self-doubts. After the initial shock, he redoubled his efforts to consolidate his power. But his actions had a wild, self-destructive quality about them that, instead of strengthening his position, brought on the nearly successful coup against in the summer of 1957.”[19]
The Cuban Missile Crisis marks the height of Khrushchev’s authoritarian approach to leadership. While the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 illustrates Khrushchev’s own self-doubt, indecisiveness, and need to rely on other world leaders for advice rather than his own country, the Missile Crisis shows the explicit rejection of KGB intelligence. Though the quality of KGB intelligence suffered generally during the Cold War, under both Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Khrushchev bore much of the responsibility for the mishandling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On June 29, 1960, Aleksandr Shelepin, then head of the KGB, falsely informed Khrushchev of the Pentagon’s intentions to start war with the Soviet Union in the near future.[20] The intelligence was bad, but Khrushchev took it to be true and rashly issued a warning to the U.S. about the Soviet Unions rocket capabilities with out prompt from anyone else.[21] After President John F. Kennedy attempted to remove Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the failed “Bay of Pigs” incident in 1961, Castro wanted the KGB to put a base in Havana to bring the Soviet revolution to all of Latin America starting in 1962.[22] Khrushchev acted on this suggestion, ordering the construction of nuclear missile bases in Cuba, motivated by his desire to “impress Washington with Soviet nuclear might and so deter it from further (non-existent) plans for a first strike.”[23]
Once the bases construction had been ordered, he again wavered between committing to their construction and holding off on construction. With his wavering, Khrushchev revealed his indecisive approach to intelligence again.[24] Though he eventually realized an attack on Cuba was not imminent, Khrushchev panicked when Soviet air defense in Cuba shot down an American spy plane over Cuba.[25] When Khrushchev learned of Kennedy’s intention to make a national speech that day Khrushchev wrongly assumed Kennedy was announcing an invasion of Cuba and even submitted to Kennedy’s “terms” (terms which had not been announced or even created).[26] This situation reveals Khrushchev drawing conclusions at random and his delusion about what the United States had planned. While the KGB’s poor intelligence certainly contributed to Khrushchev’s confusion, the KGB did not draw connections between the American plane and Kennedy’s upcoming speech. Nor did the KGB tell Khrushchev to accept Kennedy’s imaginary terms.
Additional important components of Khrushchev’s intelligence blunders, especially in the Cuban Missile Crisis, are firstly, his personality and secondly, his KGB heads. Generally, Khrushchev was said to have had “unpredictable, explosive behavior.”[27] His colleagues described the change Khrushchev had undergone. According to Khrushchev’s close Presidium colleague Gennady Voronov,
“who was so close to Khrushchev that the 1964 plotters waited until the last minute to inform him of the planned coup, ‘Khrushchev in 1956 and Khrushchev in 1964 were very different people; in some ways they didn’t resemble each other at all. His innately democratic approach, which couldn’t but win you over when you first met him, gradually gave way to estrangement, to an attempt to close himself off in a narrow inner circle of people, some of whom indulged him in his worst tendencies,’”[28]
Taubman continues in this chapter on Khrushchev entitled “Alone at the Top”, ‘“After pushing aside the ‘antiparty group,’ former Agriculture Minister Benediktov recalled, Khrushchev ‘literally began to change before our very eyes. His democratic approach began to give way to an authoritarian manner…’ The defeat of his rivals ‘gave him freedom of action,’ said Aleksandr Shelepin. He ‘began to display arrogance, to insist on the infallibility of his own judgments, and to exaggerate successes which had been achieved.’”[29] In the early sixties, Khrushchev’s belief in more open relationship with the U.S. revealed his intelligence naiveté. American spy planes had been doing reconnaissance over the Soviet Union in 1946, despite a thawing relationship with President Dwight Eisenhower. Khrushchev was alarmed and disheartened to be told of a spy plane crossing into Soviet air space on May 1, 1960.[30] Khrushchev’s son Sergei explained his father’s downfall,
“…after almost ten years of wielding nearly absolute power, the Soviet leader had become used to obedience and adulation and had surrounded himself with yes-men and flatterers. Khrushchev thus neglected the political consensus-building that had brought him to high office and dismissed the possibility of opposition. In 1964, after perfunctory investigation, he discounted two warnings of a plot against him.”[31]
This attitude alienated not only his fellow party members, but also the KGB. Khrushchev attempted authoritarian rule where the system would not permit it. Ironically, Stalin took a similar authoritarian approach. In this way, Khrushchev is a paradoxical figure in that he worked hard to reform the country, still supposedly in the spirit of socialism, leading the country through de-Stalinization, but he became so like Stalin towards the end of his career. He never had following that Stalin did, and he did not gain power through fear in the way Stalin did, but the similarities are notable and ironic in nature.
The remaining factor in shaping Khrushchev’s relationship with the KGB was two of the heads of the KGB serving with him. Aleksandr Shelepin and Vladimir Semichastny, who were ultimately instrumental in the plot to remove Khrushchev, served for the majority of Khrushchev’s time in power, and were appointed more so that Khrushchev would have loyal men at the top with him. More notable is the way these men allowed Khrushchev to serve as his own intelligence analyst. Each day Khrushchev received paraphrased intelligence reports selected by the KGB, from which sources were removed.[32]
Khrushchev appointed Semichastny because he was Shelepin’s protégé.[33] Semichastny knew very little about intelligence and initially wanted to decline the appointment, but Khrushchev insisted on having Semichastny as his “political representative in the organization.”[34] Due to his less than successful career as KGB head and Khrushchev’s general rejection of KGB involvement, Semichastny was never invited to a single Presidium meeting during the Cuban Missile Crisis and was never to meet with Khrushchev face-to-face during the Crisis.[35] Khrushchev, however, as noted did not appoint Semichastny for the purposes of intelligence gathering. Khrushchev was open about that with Semichastny. Therefore it would be unfair to place the blame for intelligence blunders entirely on Semichastny, who by the end of Khrushchev’s career had clearly been cut out entirely.
While Khrushchev’s personality is the dominant reason I suggest for his limited reliance on the KGB, Brezhnev’s KGB head, Yuri Andropov, played a large role in rebuilding the KGB’s usefulness and image, where Semichastny had been relatively passive. For this reason, I attribute the resurgence of KGB strength during the Brezhnev era in large part to Andropov. Brezhnev took over the Party in 1964 after Khrushchev’s removal and served as the General Secretary until 1982. Jonathan Steele notes,
“In the early period after Khrushchev’s overthrow in 1964, the Kremlin leadership was a genuine collective in contrast to Stalin’s rule and the latter part of Khrushchev’s. But a jockeying for preemininence soon began, and Brezhnev showed a skillful willingness to compromise and balance off the pressures from the various interest groups within the Soviet bureaucracy…Brezhnev’s style was cautious and gradualist. He was less interested in initiating change than in arbitrating between diverse corporate views, whether they came from the army, the KGB, the supporters of heavy industry, or the cultural lobby.”[36]
Gone were the days of Khrushchev’s increasingly authoritarian approach to ruling the party. Brezhnev, though he is known often by history as a dull figure, tried to bring the country around to Socialism again, in its purest form, not as Khrushchev had approached it, in a spirit of reform. Once fully in power, Brezhnev set about leading a “bureaucratic counterreform” and he was “conservative and cautious…he strove to build consensus among Party policymakers.”[37] Brezhnev had been instrumental in the plot to remove Khrushchev and worked closely with Khrushchev’s former KGB head Shelepin and current KGB head Semichastny. Brezhnev kept Semichastny as head of the KGB until 1967 when he appointed Andropov as head of the KGB. Brezhnev’s reasoning for appointing Andropov was, “‘to bring the KGB closer to the Central Committee.’”[38] Brezhnev was clearly trying to bring the Party and the KGB back together. Furthermore, Andropov’s appointment “‘marked the completion of an evolution which had been going on since Stalin’s death: the rapprochement of Party and KGB to the point where they functioned almost as two branches of the same organization.’”[39] Prior to his appointment, Andropov had been the head of the Central Committee Department for Relations with Communist and Workers Parties of Socialist Countries after he served as the Soviet Ambassador in Hungary.[40] When appointed, he became the first senior Party official to head the KGB and the first KGB chairman since Beria to gain a seat on the Politburo, first as a non-voting member, but then as a full member in 1973. [41]Andropov’s seat on the Politburo is significant because he was the first since Beria, whom Khrushchev had removed. In essence, Khrushchev had not given any of the three KGB heads seats on the Politburo during his time in power. Combining Brezhnev’s conservative and collective approach to leadership with Andropov’s hard line stance on “would-be émigrés, nonconformist intellectuals, and dissidents”, the KGB and Party did become more like two branches of the same organization.[42]
Just as I explored two events during the Khrushchev era which exemplified Khrushchev’s approach to security, I will now turn to two major foreign conflicts Brezhnev and Andropov faced together as examples of the restrengthening of the KGB under Andropov: Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. Much like the crisis in Hungary, the Prague Spring began with the appointment of a new leader, Alexander Dubček who claimed he would adhere to the Warsaw Pact which bound Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union.[43] The problem with Dubček was his new approach to socialism, that being “socialism with a face”, a concept the hard-line conservatives Brezhnev and Andropov did not approve of.[44] Dubček instigated reforms which resulted in political liberalization. In Moscow, Brezhnev and his inner circle debated the option of invasion, just as Khrushchev had roughly a decade earlier in Hungary. In Brezhnev’s case, however, he and his inner circle listened to the alarmist KGB suggestion to invade based on intelligence of the strength of the Czechoslovak Party and threat to the Soviet Union.[45] Brezhnev tended to go along with the majority opinion, which was swayed by KGB intelligence reports overseen by Andropov.[46] In the wake of the violent invasion of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the Prague Spring, Andropov set up a new Fifth Directorate to eliminate all forms of dissent and special departments within the Directorate oversaw surveillance of “intellectuals, students, nationalists from ethnic minorities, religious believers, and Jews.”[47] Another change Andropov made was to the ban on spying in Eastern Europe put in place by Khrushchev. Khrushchev had banned spying in Eastern Europe after the Hungarian Revolution, during which Andropov was the Soviet Ambassador in Hungary and played a large role in the suppression of the 1956 revolution. In the context of Czechoslovakia, and the Prague Spring, Khrushchev’s ban on KGB espionage in the Soviet bloc was lifted. Though intelligence analysis remained poor, Andropov was gathering local intelligence and security services in the Soviet bloc where the KGB under Khrushchev had not.[48]
Turning to the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan, a similar relationship between Brezhnev and Andropov emerges. The later Cold War years marked the creation of the KGB special forces (spetznas) and the foundation of Andropov’s Alpha group in 1974.[49] In 1979, Andropov first used the forces in the murder of President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan, whom Andropov believed had plotted with the CIA to end Afghani Communism.[50] Andrew and Mitrokhin write, “As during the Czechoslovak crisis in 1968, Andropov took the lead in insisting on the enforcement of the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ which asserted Moscow’s right to prevent the defection of any member of the Soviet Bloc.”[51] They continue, “Early in December, Andropov sent Brezhnev a handwritten letter, reporting ‘alarming information [intelligence] about Amin’s secret activities, forewarning of a possible shift to the West,’ bringing with it both the end of Communist rule and a catastrophic loss of Soviet influence.”[52] Shortly thereafter, Brezhnev approved an invasion plan for Andropov and Ustinov, the defense minister.[53] The Soviet Union invaded later that month. Though the Soviet forces failed to win the Afghan War, which was to last into the Gorbachev era, the conflict demonstrates Andropov’s power as the head of the KGB and Brezhnev’s agreement with Andropov’s plans for invasion. Andropov, just as KGB heads had been under Khrushchev, passed along alarmist intelligence on numerous occasions and Brezhnev believed it along with Andropov. Andropov’s approach to intelligence is best summed up in his own words from a speech made in 1977 entitled “Faith in Communism as the Source of Inspiration for the Builders of a New World. He said, “Different measures are required when some of the so-called ‘dissidents’ commit acts infringing Soviet laws. There is a handful of such persons in this country…All of them cause harm to Soviet society…All talk about humanism in such instances is irrelevant.”[54]
Where Khrushchev agonized alone and without complete intelligence over the invasion of Hungary and in dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Andropov and Brezhnev formed a formidable pair, again heading up the Party and KGB as though the two were equal branches of one organization. Andropov may have gained more control over Brezhnev than he intended, but Brezhnev’s personality did not seem to conflict with this approach. Andropov was able to lead the KGB into several conflicts, and influence the Party at the top where Khrushchev would not have employed the KGB at all. Khrushchev’s authoritarian rule revealed a highly hypocritical leader set on holding all of the Party’s power and making state security issues himself. In the greater context of Soviet history, the KGB was to serve as a check on executive power, and Khrushchev’s treatment of the KGB reveals this need. The research questions posed at the start of this paper can be applied to all stages of Soviet History, even remaining applicable to contemporary Russian politics. Answers to them reveal surprising trends and patterns in the relationship between leaders and their state security counterparts.
[1] Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 183.
[2] William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003), 114.
[3] Ibid., 225.
[4] Ibid., 226.
[5] Ibid., 238.
[6] Ibid., 252-256.
[7] Ibid., 241.
[8] Ibid., 238.
[9] Ibid., 274-5.
[10] Ibid., 289.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., 295.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., 294.
[15] Ibid., 298.
[16] Ibid., 297.
[17] Ibid., 286.
[18] Ibid., 299.
[19] Ibid., 300.
[20] Andrew and Mitrokhin, 180.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 180, 182.
[23] Ibid., 182.
[24] Ibid., 183.
[25] Ibid., 184.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Taubman, 310.
[28] Ibid., 365.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid., 443.
[31] John M. Thompson, A Vision Unfulfilled: Russia and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century (Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1996), 413.
[32]Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis” in James G. Blight and David A Welch, eds., Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1998)„ 66
[33] Ibid.„ 65
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36]Jonathan Steele, Soviet Power: The Kremlin’s Foreign Policy-Brezhnev to Andropov (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1983), 9
[37] Thompson, 422.
[38] Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990)„ 480
[39] Andrew and Gordievsky, 480-481
[40] Ibid., 480
[41] Ibid.
[42] Steele, 13.
[43] Andrew and Gordievsky, 482
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid., 485
[46] Ibid.
[47] Ibid.,489
[48] Ibid., 481
[49] Andrew and Mitrokhin, 389
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., 390
[53] Ibid.
[54] Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, Speeches and Writings (Oxford: Pergamon Press, Ltd.: 1983), 186.
Gnosticism in the Matrix
Written for religion class exam (citations will be incoherant).
While The Matrix has many identifiable “Gnostic” themes, the 1999 Wachowski Brothers’ Film can also be read to contain Canonical elements, as well as Platonic and other philosophical elements (supplemental elements). This comes as no surprise as early Christianity was informed of the Platonic tradition, and no doubt influenced by it. Where Gnostic elements can be found, Canonical and Platonic elements can possible also be found. Gnosticism believes that the world creation is a result of a mistake made by one of the many demi-gods, Sophia, existing outside the world. The reason we struggle on earth is because the god who made the world is inferior or evil, and this demi-god exists in contrast with the Supreme Being. We are trapped in our physical bodies because of this mistaken creativity, and are essentially scattered spirit (divine) trapped on earth. Only when we find and understand true “gnosis” (knowledge) will we be liberated from the world. Gnosis comes from deeper and psychological understanding of our own divinity (“self knowledge”), which we are driven to attain because of our inner divine nature. Gnosis is revealed by a spiritual guide to “spiritual people” who are ready to receive the gnosis. Hylic, or fleshly, people cannot fully understand their divinity. Finding revelation takes you back up through the layers of the universe with struggle until you become fully spirit. In the Gospel of Truth, we see a very violent image of the struggle for revelation, as people fight to escape “ignorance” (Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, 49-50). The Gnostic elements of The Matrix appear first in the way the earth has fallen into the control of machines, which have created “the matrix”, a computer simulation of the world that all humans are wired into, trapped in an illusion, while in reality, being harvested by the machines for machine fuel. The machine’s matrix is the embodiment of the evil (Gnostic) world created by mistake. Humans created machines, perhaps in a “god-like” fashion, which ultimately led to the machines taking over and trapping humans in their physical forms. The machine’s takeover was a mistake, much like the creation of the world by the Gnostic demi-god. A small race of real humans, somehow awakened (like understanding “gnosis” and awakening into our own self knowledge) from their ignorance in the matrix, begin the search for “the One”, so the whole world can be freed from the matrix. Neo (named Thomas Anderson in the matrix, relating to the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic gospel) becomes the spiritual guide once he realizes his own “powers” (power in the movie is synonymous with divinity in Gnosticism) and is able to fight and defeat machines in the matrix. Importantly, the matrix is all in the mind, and the movie itself is deeply psychological, a connection to Gnosticism’s gnosis of our inner divinity. All of the humans in the matrix are simply flesh, trapped in their bodies until Neo can, hopefully, bring them all into an understanding of reality (gnosis). The violence of the film reflects the Gnostic struggle to move towards knowledge. Once Neo has gained knowledge of his power (divinity), he has no need for human weapons. In this way, violence helps us, the viewers, track Neo’s understanding of his own power (divinity/level of gnosis). Finally, like the Gnostic view that the world is all evil and contains illusion of beauty (not real beauty), the matrix provides this illusion to all the people existing within it. Cypher, Neo’s betrayer, desires this ignorant illusion when he collaborates with the machines. Although taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound in the matrix are all an illusion, Cypher wishes to return to ignorance simply because it’s easier and he enjoys the taste of a good steak (even if the steak doesn’t exist or have real taste). To him, “Ignorance is bliss”. Of course, The Matrix is not entirely Gnostic. The film can be read in the context of Plato as well. Much like Plato’s allegory of the Cave, Neo comes into the light of the real world (knowledge) when he is taken out of the matrix by Morpheus and the other real humans. Much like Gnosticism, Platonism thinks we have fallen from a higher state of non-matter into a state of matter, just as the real humans transcend the purely fleshy humans in the matrix in a non-fleshly realm of understanding about reality. Second century A.D. philosopher Plotinus also had a similar hierarchy of mind over matter, though his concept of the struggle to reach the level of understanding and transcend the flesh is all on the psychic level, where as the Matrix shows both the physical and psychological (mental) struggle to attain power (self knowledge of divinity) Neo experiences. The Matrix also provides us with supplemental Canonical allusions. Neo exists as the Christ figure (with elements of Kazantzakis’s struggling, doubting Jesus). Morpheus is very much a John the Baptist figure, preparing the way, and believing unconditionally in Neo as the One. Trinity’s name suggests the holy trinity of the Canonical tradition, and also serves as a believer or Magdalene figure. Neo’s love for the world (like Christ’s love for the world), as embodied in his love for Trinity, enables him to die and come back to life to save the human race. Cypher is the Judas figure, betraying Neo to the machine agents. The film also contains many references to biblical places and people, such as Zion, which is both the place where real humans have survived and the Holy City in Jerusalem. Finally, I think works can be seen as Gnostic when they have Gnostic elements. This is because gnosis is found where you search for it. If seeing Gnosticism in a work brings you to question your own possible divinity, which The Matrix does, the work can be considered Gnostic.
An extended hiatus…
Looks like we’ve taken one. Now that I’ve graduated, I should be posting on my personal blog more often as my schedule is a little more relaxed for the time being. James, however, had one week off this summer in between the end of school and my graduation, after which he began 6 weeks of training and 3.5 weeks of an internship in D.C. Hopefully, we’ll get back on the bandwagon with this blog!
Almost…
there. Thanksgiving break 2008. Also, in class yesterday, I had a realization that I’ve been thinking we aren’t that far into the new millenium, but we are almost a decade in!
Also, I asked James what he thought about this article, and we haven’t discussed it yet, so I thought the blog would be a good place to post our discussion since we’ve been less than active on it lately.
