SARA POOLEY (photography) writes:
I was looking out the bus window at rows of identical high-rise housing. The repetition of shapes and the way they rose against the gray, smoggy sky reminded me of the scenes in The Matrix where human beings are literally being grown in columns of pods.
These buildings are all around the city, mingling with debris and new construction. Gigantic cranes bend over buildings like the machines in the movie do as they pick pods off of the human-cultivating towers. These cranes are appropriately symbolic of the people who have been displaced to make way for these enormous new developments.
New projects go up by way of government order, and the people have no say in what happens to their homes. They are not free to really do anything about it here. In fact, they are not free to think for themselves at all.
The government censors all the information they possibly can before it reaches China. We cannot even access Wikipedia here. Like the motionless bodies The Matrix feeds off of, the citizens of China have a reality constructed for them. They know only what they are programmed and allowed to know. They do not have the basic right of information.
Some people are painfully aware of this fact, as characters like Morpheus or Trinity were aware of their construct, while other people seem to have no concern about this issue whatsoever. I suppose when you have to worry about where you're going to get the money for your next meal you don't have time to think about the fact that your government is ruling not only your providence, but your mind as well. It is clear that not everybody is ready to take the red pill, but I guess I always thought that I would at least like to have the choice.
I think about the things we take for granted back in the States and wonder if sometimes it seems our lack of appreciation will help our own government put similar constraints on us some day. And I wonder if the majority of people would notice because some people here do not seem to care.
Sara Pooley is a photography/art history major.
