We humans are the first species with the ability to perform directed genetic engineering on our ecology and ourselves. We create our own evolutionary successors while making a simple act of consumption. Corporations compete to patent plant, animal, and human genomes. And with every new technology, there is an accompanying storyline (and ideology) to legitimate its production, distribution, and consumption. This storyline is part of spectacle, the industry of media culture (film, television, and radio as well as the theatrics of Disneyland and Las Vegas). Spectacles such as the utopian dreams of Tomorrowland (in Disney theme parks) and Paris, Paris (a Las Vegas casino and resort hotel) are totalizing self-portraits of power that mask the fragmentation and the human conditions of production as well as the ecological consequences of over-consumption. An apocalyptic example of spectacles of production, consumption, and distribution is the movie "The Matrix" where only a few awoke from the dream of virtual consumption and cyber-image to gaze the face of economic power and the eco-societal disaster. Do we already inhabit "The Matrix" with our images, heroes, work and consumption habits patterned by corporate-media we no longer control?

The technology and corporate changes we view in popular culture films include information technology (Enemy of the State), nanotechnology (Johnny Mnemonic), biotech genetic reengineering (Jurassic Park), virtual technology (eXistenZ), high-speed transportation systems (Star Trek) and the science fiction of time/space travel (Gateway). The story line of progress as our future legitimates the emergence of associated corporate governance, consumption and work life patterns.

These science fiction genres are not only spectacles of particular forms of production and consumption, they are manifesting themselves even now in new forms of hybrid organization forms that Best and Kellner (1999b) and I (1999) call "inter-spectacular." Inter-spectacle refers to the sense that multiple spectacle genres crisscross, inscribing a future in which biotech and virtuality take over without even the Luddite resistance of the industrial revolution. The spectacle storylines and images of popular culture proscribe a philosophy of progressive life and work that makes the inter-spectacle organization forms seem "common sense." This is an effective camouflage against potential resistors making it almost invisible and inappropriate to resist.

Semiotician Julia Kristeva (1986: 36) argues that each text has an intertextual "trajectory" of both "historical" and "social coordinates." Just as the science fiction movie, future Organization Theory (hereafter OT) image and its corporate imitation constitute a reciprocally influenced intertextual trajectory. But, here the weave is constituted by many spectacle themes into an "inter-spectacle network." An inter-spectacle is a network of spectacles that constitute an "intertextual system." In terms of her work with novels, Kristeva notes "it is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another" (1986: 36-38). Inter-spectacle is an intertextual system written on a global stage. It is a perspective that has been under-applied to OT.

Disney, the resort casinos of Las Vegas, Monsanto, and Nike (among many others) increasingly constructs carnivalesque theatrical stages that enroll customers in inter-spectacular interpretations of corporately narrated identity. My thesis is that several spectacle sign systems are interlaced into one corporate inter-spectacle. There is a crowd of authors, actors and readers engaged in scenes of dynamic inter-spectacle production, distribution, and consumption. The result is a smooth transition to global power with only infrequent protests like we saw in the Seattle World Trade Organization demonstrations. And this protest itself was a composite of so many interests groups from labor and ecology. Inter-spectacle and networks of fragmented protest groups as the paradigmatic "Matrix" theater of global enterprise.

Before we can properly explore inter-spectacle, some basic spectacle theory is warranted. I will then work out the theory of "inter-spectacle" and show how it differs from other spectacle genres. In the case of the "The Matrix," there are several spectacles in the inter-text that for me constitute examples of the inter-spectacle ranging from biotech and virtuality to new forms of organizational community as well as new relationships to our global and cosmos ecology. Finally, I will draw some implications of inter-spectacle science fiction genres for organization theory. Specifically, I want to explore one question: do films such as The Matrix represent an interconnection between future organizational life spectacles and their science fiction equivalents?

Spectacle and Inter-Spectacle Theory

Guy Debord (1967) defines spectacle in many ways. Here we will focus on spectacle as simply "the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue. It is the self-portrait of power" (#24, Debord, 1967). I assume each science fiction movie is a possible future portrait of power. And, "in all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life" (Debord, 1967: #6). Horkheimer and Adorno (1972) argue that the kind of spectacle film I shall analyze is inherently dialectical. And some science fiction is a narrative in the service of mass culture control (Horkheimer & Adorno (1972: 121):

Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The Truth [is] that they are just businesses made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.

The media spectacle (including films) gives technology (and science) a rationale for domination itself in the culture industry (p. 121). "Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in" since "not to conform means to be rendered powerless, economically and therefore spiritually--to be 'self-employed' " (p. 132-133). In a comment that speaks to Debord's theory of the spectacle, Horkheimer and Adorno (1972: 136) argue, "the social power which the spectators worship shows itself more effectively in the omnipresence of the stereotype imposed by technical skill than in the stale ideologies for which the ephemeral contents stand in." Below I will make the case, following Horkheimer and Adorno, that the film Matrix is not only inter-spectacle, it is dialectic of science and myth.

We imitate the future portraits of power in the technology of our daily work and consumptive life styles. Debord attempted to extend Marx's focus on production (labor process theory) to consumption (fetish of over-consumption) theories of capitalism. Baudrillard built upon Debord's concept of spectacle and consumption to more radically theorize spectacle as the measure of authentic reality. And Best and Kellner (1997) also point to Debord’s theory of spectacle as an archetype of critical postmodern theory. Debord posits two types of spectacle, concentrated and diffuse, that each makes an important contribution to organization theory, which I intend to explore in this text.

Concentrated Spectacle - "The concentrated spectacle" says Debord, "belongs essentially to bureaucratic capitalism" (#64). The concentrated spectacle is where both production and consumption are constructed in a totalizing self-portrait of power that masks its fragmentation. An apocalyptic example is the movie 1984 and a more comic illustration is Sleeper. Spectacle "concentrates all gazing and all consciousness" on particular cultural heroes that are legitimating of production and consumption practices (#3). Baudrillard (1992) describes the romantic sci-fi plot of Walt Disney: are refrigerated Disney suspended in liquid nitrogen reanimates after deep-freeze to the utopia of Future World in Epcott Center.

The concentrated form of the bureaucratic spectacle translates to: what is good for society (short-term employment) is what is officially and bureaucratically good for corporate power (i.e. downsizing and globalization). The gaze is concentrated onto the spectacle role models, those surrogate spectators constructed to channel our identification. These can be human-celebrities like Madonna, Spike Lee, or Bill Clinton, or corporate-celebrities like McDonalds, Nike, Monsanto, and Microsoft.

Despite their lack of study of the inter-spectacle world of organizations, I see several spectacles currently being inter-woven into what will soon be commonplace MBA education. The MBA is encouraged to join e-commerce, virtual team projects, and embrace the new heroic forms of organization, the biotech and the virtual e-commerce firm. The inter-spectacle is already manifest in the MBA curriculum. Wall Street Journal and Wired Magazine announce the coming of the inter-spectacle form. What MBA student (or professor) resists inter-spectacle?

The American Dream is constructed and concentrated in the Business College with the CEO as hero (Bill Gates, Henry Ford & Michael Eisner), such that we can gaze and learn how to feel and behave towards others like heroic CEOs (what is your value added to my corporate wealth?). The utility of the concentrated spectacle to its producers is to keep "spec-actors" (Augusto Boal's term for actors in the spectacle) from seeing how activities A, B, and C are connected to X, Y, and Z (e.g. how CEO pay is connected to keeping employees in part-time, no benefit, minimum wage employment). As workers are separated through division of labor from viewing the totality of "the concentration of the production process … unity and communication become the exclusive attribute of the system’s management" (#26).

In sum, the concentrated spectacle masks the material conditions of production and consumption from various disassociated stakeholders. Student consumers, for example, are protesting on college campuses demanding that administrations force vendors selling clothing on campus, to disclose who is making the garments. But most consumers do not know who to confront to find out if the garment they are purchasing was made in an overseas or an inner-city sweatshop. For many ignorance is bliss.

Diffuse Spectacle – The diffuse spectacle is one of fragmentation and specialization in the global economy, global marketplace, and global division of labor. In the diffuse spectacle it is difficult to know who made what product and under what labor conditions. It is as if concentrated spectacle reverses to hidden background and all the messiness of fragmentation is now foreground. The "diffuse spectacle" says Debord, "accompanies the abundance of commodities, the undisturbed development of modern capitalism" as it reaches into every nook and cranny (#64). Late modern capitalism combines the massification of concentrated spectacle markets and production with the diffuse spectacle of fragmentation to penetrate and colonize differentiated tastes and life styles. Firat and Dholakia (1998: 160) speak of this diffuse political economy as our global "theaters of consumption." They contend we live in fragmented "life mode communities" constructed into "enclaves" that keep us physically separate from each other in what I will call "tribal" communities.

In the postmodern condition people are navigating between and experimenting with multiple tribal communities to experience alternative life modes. Some are accountants and lawyers during the week and transform into temporary weekend warriors, Harley riders in heavy leather, or break from work here and there to go gender bending with alternative persona in chat rooms, and some are ballroom dancing in the evening in disguises in the clubs in Japan. Other life mode changes are more permanent as people redesign their body to look like celebrities such as Elvis, Barbie or pierce and tattoo the body to be part of some trendy tribal community. Cyberpunk novelist William Gibson’s book, Neuromancer depicts a future world where cosmetic surgery will be not only affordable but also socially compulsory. Cindy Jackson, meanwhile, has had thirty surgical procedures in order to achieve what she claims is the Western ideal of beauty, a living approximation of Barbie doll. Sacrificing natural to become the cultural icon of enlightened progress is the chief task of speculative production (Baudrillard, 1994). And the capitalist system of production and consumption is responding to the tribal life modes by allowing formerly passive spectator-consumers to become commodified designer-choices about life modes.

The new marketing challenge is more in the temporary than permanent life mode production, accommodating temporary players, who want to experience, but not permanently inhabit a life mode. The diffuse spectacle is also colonizing the alternative life mode communities, privatizing every time and space, including mainstream and non-mainstream alternatives. Resistance points to predatory capitalism become commodified into eco-tourism and other temporary adventures. This means that the diffuse spectacle is no less hegemonic than the concentrated apparatus of power, and perhaps more so. But, as the diffuse spectacle engages in more flexible productions of theater, it also produces new life modes, disaggregating its former concentrated spectacles, into new modes that can be easily commodified. Yet even beneath the façade of diffuse consumption choices, there are material roots and the usual suspects are assembled in remote lands to sell out the production of the locals. And if look critically, the spec-actors with the most dynamic involvement in self-designed role-playing are an elite consumer, far removed from the mass of passive spectators ensconced in more concentrated spectacle production and consumption. In its development "irreconcilable claims crowd" the global stage as various products simultaneously evoke spectacle as an apologetic for their respective life mode projects, each claiming their product will make the individual, society, and planet happy.

Both concentrated and diffuse spectacle has an impact on our biotic world. "The spectacle of automobiles demands a perfect transport network which destroys old cities, while the spectacle of the city itself requires museum-areas" (#65). Postmodernists contend that the spectacle is made to appear more real than reality itself (Best & Kellner, 1997). And this legitimates despoiling the ecosystem by making happiness only attainable through accumulating more and more spectacles. I view organizations as concentrated/diffuse spectacles, not just evolutions of nature, not subjects of the laws of nature, but disrupters of nature through spectacle and part of the co-evolution of changes in technology, community, and ecology. Reality is now a designer theory, a spectacle, instead of a fact of linear evolution. We are beginning to design our body and mind; we are already designing our environment so any pretension to "natural" is illusory.

OT says Best and Kellner (1999a: 17) continues to endorse biological fallacy (i.e. environment as uncertainty, organic adaptiveness, & turbulence), when our complexity, chaos and cybercapitalism theorists "wrongly dissolve the boundaries between natural and social systems." Our preference is to look at the co-evolutionary reconstruction of "nature" into spectacle. "The theorization of society and the economy through biological metaphors such as self-organization is exceedingly risky, for one can easily lose sight of the enormous differences between biological and social systems (p. 14)"

Sci Fi Films and OT - The four ideal-type films in Table One are Biotech, Eco, Consumption, and Tribal spectacles. I have organized the four spectacle genres of late capitalism along two dualistic dimensions: fragmentation/ standardization, and individual/community. Additional tables will move beyond the dualities.

These transformations of late global capitalism are beginning to interpenetrate one another in strange ways changes (fragmentation of technology, population, and habitat).

Biotech Spectacle – This spectacle is considered by Rifkin (1998) to be the launch of the Biotech Century, the Second Genesis of designer evolution. If we can play around with plants and animals, why not produce "super humans" in this biotech century? With each wave of technology invention, its mechanical and social engineers are legitimated to reengineer organizations and society based upon the latest idealized image mechanistic science.

The movies in Table One - raise bio ethics issues that in all likelihood will face our society in the next decade with predictable consequences in employment patterns, families, and global economy. In Twins Arnold Schwartzenegger and Danny Devito are cloned from genius sperm donors, but the twins end up with different physical, mental, and moral qualities. The Twins set out to find out the biological donors and to confront their genetic reengineer who has played God with their genes and upbringing. In Gattica, an infant has escaped the DNA reengineering protocol and now has to compete in a world of genetically engineered super humans. The hero confronts a society of DNA profile surveillance that disciplines a caste-society of DNA-spliced haves and DNA have-nots. Employment in professional occupations and out-world travel is restricted to DNA-superior humans. Others clean restrooms and wait on tables. Our anti-hero uses synthetic fingerprints, contacts, and body scrubs to pass for a genetically perfected being. In Twilight of the Gods, a mother learns, from her Genome project-engineer husband, that there is a ninety-percent probability that their son will be born gay. They now have the moral dilemma of having to choose to keep or to abort the fetus. The husband prefers to abort the fetus, and the mother eventually decides to give it birth. The couple separates and the husband moves out. In Sleeper and Boys from Brazil, more political issues of the Biotech century are explored. These movies explore the idea of cloning Hitler or other fascist-leaders form clone samples. The main character in Sleeper (Woody Allen) is thawed from cryogenics after 200 years in the freezer. They execute this control by a whole new process of reprogramming people's brain through high-tech technology. As a result, there only remains a new society where people are controlled, manipulated, and assimilated into the mainstream by the political interests of their governors who used (and took advantage of) technology as their main weapon. In the mean time, the leader of this government is killed in an explosion, but scientists are also able to turn him back to live by the process of cloning. And along the plot of this futuristic film, we can also see -as expected- the underground resistance army fighting back against the merciless government (In the next table, we shall explore some of the cross plots that make Sleeper and other movies Inter-spectacles).

This next step forward for mechanistic science the reengineering of all life as complex machines is being marketed as a scientific and practical way to improve efficiency and reverse trends in ecological decay and world starvation. Instead of bland homogeneity the Biotech promise is one of untold variety through cloning and crossing genes of different species to yield new seeds, plants, animals, and super humans. In the last decade the campaign is to adopt the biotech metaphor. With Biotech inventions, animals and plants became engineered machines of production and lucrative objects of consumption. In short, the proponents of Biotech distort its imagery through the theatrics of spectacle to make it appear as some sort of blessing from heaven.

Eco Spectacle - Population changes are transforming the natural habitat. The Eco-habitat is fragmenting with more highways, development, and deforestation, resulting in a decline in natural resources, increased global warming, less ozone layer, less air and water quality, less rainforests, more desertification, and spreading disease. There are a number of recent natural disaster movies in which Mother Nature threatens to get even with the human race. The disasters are larger than life disasters that can only be averted by a handful of daring people doing spectacle-things. Armageddon and Deep Impact threaten all human life on the planet. These are apocalyptic visions of natural destruction. For Example, Armageddon's plot is simple enough to define, as Eco Spectacle because it's premise is that a giant meteor is headed straight for the earth and when it hits, it will destroy the entire planet. Besides, Eco Spectacle, Armageddon has some subplots and that some could be classified as Tribal Spectacle (see below). For example, the movie has subplots that deal with different cultures and social classes having to come together to save the planet from this deadly meteor. Have you heard of all those racist web sites that promote ethnic cleansing? There are also examples of cyber-tribal spectacles that go beyond movies per se. We will look at inter-spectacle in movie genres in the next table.

Consumption Spectacle - Consumption in Americana is a way of life that is rapidly colonizing the planet. Marx said:

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties (Marx, 1867: 71).

Marx argued that in the world of commodity production, there is a "Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities" (p. 72). Did you hear about web sites that actually auction models' genes? The Fetish spectacle of consumption transmutes human-subject into human object, many histories into one object-history, while endowing socially-produced-object into subjective-natural-living being. Consumers do not see the social or historical character of production ("material relations between persons" p. 73) and are therefore easily persuaded that commodities have metaphysical powers. Material commodities, not social relations, bring us happiness. Best and Kellner (1997: 86) summarize the temple of consumption:

With cable and satellite TV, the spectacle is now so ubiquitous and accessible that one need not even rise from the reclining chair to shop; only a telephone and credit card is required to purchase a vast array of products from TV home-shopping networks … creating new malls in cyberspace…"

Consumption spectacles combine the construction of a fetishism with a new story (a grand narrative substituting for history) that can be consumed by individual spectators in ways that mask the social character of the production and the material conditions of the consumption process. In the movie, "The Game," actors use special effects to make Michael Douglas believe he must kill in order to survive. The Game turns out to be a prank played by his brother as a birthday present. The move, the "13^th Floor" is a sci fi thriller about using virtual reality so rich clients can possess the bodies of anyone they please. In the "eXistenZ" the spectacle is able to make virtual reality video game comes to life. Again the Game becomes more real than real. We are given two choices: this is a virtual reality role playing fantasy or the fantasy has turned real and the players keep playing the Game after their plug is pulled.

In each of these movies, we get a rare glimpse of the spectacle of production and consumption. We observe the spectacle of production interacting with consumption from the perspective of virtual game players. And we observe the class struggle of haves and have-nots. As Marx (1867: 80) puts it we get a rare glimpse behind the "mystical veil."

Tribal Spectacle - There is accelerating bifurcation of societies into have-the-resources to survive, and have-nothing. Star Wars, Star Trek and Contact standardize man’s quest to leave the planet in search of the inter-global community and interstellar civics, a United Nations of the worlds, and a war of the worlds. Star Wars reveals a biomechanical world where Luke and his father Darth Vader are part human and part machine. It is also a world in which the rights of humans and the rights of machines (R2D2 and C3P0) have to be negotiated. In the old Star Trek movies man teletransports, rematerializes, in a new cyber spectacle. We also see a new tribal civics among warring and peaceful worlds. The U.S. Starship Enterprise is on a peacekeeping mission among the galaxies. This is analogous to the U.S. role in safeguarding worldwide transnational production from any outside-tribal harm. The social commentary establishes a link to tribal spectacles - such as Star Trek - which reset current issues and moral dilemmas (e.g. cold war proxy conflicts, nuclear proliferation, race relations, exploitation of indigenous peoples) years into the future, after we have presumably gained the knowledge and understanding to resolve our most divisive social conflicts. In the new Star Treks (Next Generation, Babylon 5, etc.) we see more attempts to envision the civics of societies that are part robot and part human. The movie Contact, presents a tamer spectacle in which, like Star Trek, more advanced worlds look after the nurture and development of less developed worlds, but without the resource extraction and slave-labor economy viewed in Star Wars. My students watched Contact and said it was "spectacle trying to be festival." One felt Jodie's character in the movie inspire people to have a greater vision and while Palmer stands as a reminder that one must not abandon ones faith in this technological world. Another saw the tribal face of the movie is clearly shown, when we see that the whole mission has international impact. As repeated many times in the movie "If we are alone here, then its an awful lot of waste of space". I am made to understand that we as human beings should be involved in this "festival" of finding the truth. The religious, moral issues raised by the so called "opinion leaders" of the public cast an opposition to this "greater" issue of searching for the truth.

These four ideal-type spectacles are not independent of one another. And indeed, they form hybrid types (See Table Two). Table One dimensions need some explanation.

Fragmentation/Standardization - Late global capitalism interlaces both fragmentation and standardization. Fragmentation according to Bauman (1995) and many others is the defining characteristic of postmodernity while for Kelly (1994, 1998) fragmentation is but one of the new economic rules of global capitalism. Best and Kellner's (1999a) critique of Kelly's book is he does not look at the dark side of the spectacle of production and consumption. In movies such as Armageddon and Deep Impact the ecosystem has its revenge on human systems of technology, Biotech, eco, consumption and tribal ethics and catastrophes however are frequent themes in the science fiction movies of Table One. Fragmentation/standardization is also closely associated with the diffuse spectacle, since the consumer experiences "only a succession of fragments of this commodity happiness, fragments in which the quality attributed to the whole is obviously missing every time" (#65). In the Game, 13^th Floor and eXistenZ, the happiness of consumption turns nightmarish. Fragmentation is also a part of current organizational life, the counterpart to global capitalism’s attempt to standardize production and consumption behavior while retaining market share in firms like McDonalds and Disney. In spectacle theory, late capitalism is a move from flexible production to flexible consumption. Making the fragment appear to be the totality masks choice making. The "McMenu" is fragmenting regionally and internationally with more Cajun "McRibs" choices in New Orleans and leaner "McSalad" options for California. McDonalds is sold everywhere, but the burger itself is modified, even allowed in India to be vegetarian, in order to reach every fragmented life space on the planet. The Disney theme park is a standard item, but varies significantly between the U.S., France, and Japan. Part of the totality is convincing producers, consumers, and investors that life circumstances are improving for the masses, and those not improving are victimizing their own progress. Products from standard science fiction movies such as Star Wars and Star Trek turn the characters into commodity symbols to adorn lunch boxes and T-shirts. The tribal characters also mark the popular culture's views on diversity and spirituality, "may the force be with you."

Individual/Community - The second dimension (individual – community) recognizes that organizations, societies, families, networks cultures are made up of individuals as well as communities. In Star Wars, various life forms compete and cooperate in inter-planetary and inter-tribal commerce. Individualism is focused on the me-generation of consumption-equals-happiness, where transformations of the body through the latest in surgical technology brings instant joy. Community here is defined as both human-tribal and more diverse biotic multi-species ecosystem communities ("Eco" and "Tribal"). Some movie spectacles celebrate individuals without communities, others absorb individual identities into a whole array of tribal identities. Both the diffuse and the concentrated spectacle forms sell us "the image of the society happily unified by consumption" but the object made celebrity in the spectacle "becomes vulgar as soon as it is taken home by its consumer" (#69, 70). The Biotech films raise serious issues about the ethics of genetic reengineering. In particular, Gattica explores the ethics of using DNA profiling to determine patterns of employment and individual rights.

However, the typology of Table One quickly breaks down when we look at science fiction movies that fall between the proposed ideal types. Beyond diffuse and concentrated spectacle genres of the ideal types along two dimensions lies science fiction movies, lies the recent inter-spectacle movies, of which The Matrix is one we shall soon explore.

Inter-Spectacle Theory

Inter-spectacle is a nexus of multiple spectacle genres, as depicted in Table Two. What I see happening is the rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) interaction of the four ideal type spectacles (Biotech, Eco, Consumption & Tribal) in the Sci Fi movies envisioning the future of global capitalism. There are simple two-way interactions such as between Biotech and Eco, Biotech and Consumption, etc. And there are inter-spectacles of more than two dimensions. There are for example, science fiction movies at the center of Table Two, such as Bladrerunner, Fifth Element, Jurassic Park, and The Matrix that for me are particularly inter-spectacle, capturing the interpenetration of each of the surrounding spectacles. Bladerunner, for example, is a Biotech spectacle, an Eco spectacle, a theater of consumption and production, as well as a network of warring corporate tribes and shantytown communities. In the Fifth Element Bruce Willis drives his taxi in a Bladrerunner that is a Biotech and Eco-disaster, world, but also one that is about to be annihilated in interstellar catastrophe. In Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum lectures about chaos effects of attempts to plan and control DNA, as Biotech engineered dinosaurs figure out ways to procreate and threaten the planet with Eco catastrophe. In The Matrix, there is the eco spectacle of biotechnology destroying the natural environment, imprisoning humans in virtual reality so that they can be used to power the computers, and tribes at war with agents of artificial intelligence. This is the movie I will now focus upon.

The Matrix as Inter-Spectacle - I will briefly review the storyline of Matrix and then explore inter-spectacle implications for organization theory. "The Matrix" is the action-packed spectacle of cybertech, biotech virtuality mixed with the parable of the Second Coming, Zen koan, and an apocalypse yarn. This inter-spectacle was written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano and Hugo Weaving. And there is gravity-free virtual-reality kung fu, choreographed by Hong Kong artist Woo-Ping Yuen.

Matrix is inter-spectacle, crossing Virtual Reality and Cyberpunk Theater with Eco Apocalypse and Tribal warfare set in the year 2199. The film is a pastiche of many genres, including Hong Kong-style, Kung Fu. Cast members reportedly trained for six months with a Hong Kong Kung Fu master. And Th Matrix is an interpretation of our modern-day world of organizations "in which ominous silhouettes and claustrophobic paranoia are around every corner" (Leong, 1999: 1). The labyrinthine plot parallels Burrell's (1999) book Pandemonium. Both invite us to descend into the dark side of postmodern organization life, to see beyond the glamorous promise of the control of chaos and the so-called "empowered" choices among fragmented complexity. I will briefly touch upon the plot and characterizations of this sci-fi movie before moving to organizational implications.

Matrix begins with Trinity played by Carrie-Anne Moss, the first voice we hear in the movie; she is a leather and vinyl-clad woman doing super-human mid-air-suspension-kick-cop-in-jaw sequences. Keanu Reeves plays Thomas Anderson, a cubicle-office worker, software engineer for Metacortex, a distinguished software company by day and at night the hacker, Neo who is desperately seeking the truth about something he's heard of in rumors: "What is the Matrix?" Neo believes he is living a normal life in 1999, but begins to question, what is real and what is not as he follows clues left for him?

Trinity: 'Wake up, Neo... The Matrix has you... Follow the white rabbit... Knock, knock, Neo.'

Neo begins to follow the (Alice And Wonderland - little white rabbit) clues left by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) into an underworld where he uncovers the truth about The Matrix. Neo hacks his way through "cyberspace for traces of a shadowy character called Morpheus, who in turn is somehow involved with a mysterious construct or theory or whangdoodle called the Matrix" (O'Hehir, 1999: 1). Morpheus, as played by Laurence Fishburne turns out to be a cyber-guru and tribal leader who allows Neo to see another reality, a dark and eco-catastrophic postmodern reality where virtual and biotech science have invented cyber-machines that have doomed both human and non-human ecology. A resistance group (led by guru, Morpheus) recruits Neo believing him to be the "chosen one" (a reference to the mythic, Second Coming). The resistance group is trying to wreck the Matrix computer hardware in order to emancipate the deluded, dreaming human race. Neo is an unaware savior.

The film is loaded with overt references to Carroll’s "Through the Looking Glass." Reality isn’t what it’s cut out to be. "Neo is falling down the rabbit hole, and like Alice he has a choice, a blue pill to take him home, a red will take him to the truth" (Kayn, 1999: 1). Matrix follows the theme of Lewis Carroll's Alice and Wonderland, through the looking glass, where Morpheus like the Caterpillar offers Neo two pills. "'One will return him to his drone existence, while the other will open his mind to the Matrix so he can learn what the hell is going on" (O;Hehir, 1999: 1). Neo pops the pill and discovers his own so-called life is computer-generated and enhanced illusion; he and most everyone else has a (as in Neuromacer and Johnny Mnemonic) direct plug in his head, connecting him and most everyone else to the virtual reality of the Matrix (In eXistenZ the plug is at the base of the spinal cord). "What is real and what is a dream?" As Morpheus explains: "The Matrix is everything, it is all around us. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to shield you from the truth." Parallels to Marx and Debord here are too obvious to state.

Computer artificial intelligence has taken over your human body, kept it in suspended animation, pumping in nutrients to keep you alive so you can generate electricity for the Matrix from your body chemistry. And keeping you happy and compliant by feeding you thoughts about actually living. Computer artificial intelligence has created an extensive earthly facade that dominates the "real" world and makes humans the slave race, serving as living batteries to the machine. The hardware of the Matrix universe is powered by humans-batteries for its bioelectric energy.

The postmodern reality of the Eco disaster and the Cyber appropriate of reality is too intolerable for human consumption, so suspension in artificial virtual reality is a way to anesticize the human race. In order to keep people unaware of their slave-status, artificial intelligence constructed the Matrix, a virtual representation of late 19^th century Earth. Why all the fin d’siecle deception? The virtual machines want to spare the humans the nightmare of a post-apocalyptic world in which much of the ecology has been destroyed by biowarfare.

The Sentient Agents also play out the tribal war genre and seek Neo and the others who have escaped their virtual cages. The Sentient Agents are led by the Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). Sentient Agents are intelligent programs within the Matrix that act to reinforce the artificial intelligence control of earth's populous. Neo joins with a few souls who have been awoken by an underground group seeking to liberate humanity from 'the Matrix', a vast virtual reality system which up until now, he had thought was 'the real world'. The Matrix is a reality ruled by virtual-intelligent computers where humans are bred to provide cheap and efficient power to the its circuitry.

'It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to hide the truth ... a prison for your mind.'

The Matrix would remain mired in the dark side of the force, were it not for its mythical and religious subthemes. Andy and Larry Wachowski, who made this film, borrowed from two incompatible religious traditions: Buddhism — in particular Zen Buddhism, and Christianity (Rivera, 1999). Neo is the savior. Morpheus speaks to Neo like the Zen master to his apprentice, and answering with koans such as, "I can only show you the door, you must walk through," and "when the time comes, you won’t need to dodge the bullet." And, the visit to someone called the "Oracle." Buddhism, which teaches that "salvation comes through the insight that human experience, including suffering, is illusory (Rivera, 1999). There is also Ahimsa reference, in that suffering is the product of our attachments to these illusions, including the illusory idea of freedom (Rivera, 19991). These are the worldviews that make the movie fashionable and intelligible to its spectators.

The Buddhist theme does not provide sufficient appeal to the western audience who prefers heroes that take control of their realities. Enter Christianity, and the Oracle, foretelling a Second Coming, someone to lead the slaves out of their bondage. Neo may be the one, the messiah who will defeat the evil machines. Morpheus is convinced that Neo is "the one." The resistance movement hides in a place they call "Zion."

For me, this theme is a derivative of several other movies. As one reviewer put it:

"The Matrix" shamelessly plunders the sci-fi archives, filching plot elements from old "Twilight Zone" episodes, "The Terminator", the books of William Gibson, among others. Furthermore, the Wachowski brothers have also thrown in some overused Christian motifs, Lewis Carroll references, and bits of existentialist philosophy for good measure. Furthermore, they cast Keanu Reeves in the lead, not known for his great thespian skills and who hasn't been in a good movie in the past few years since "Speed". All in all, it looked like "Johnny Mnemonic" all over again (Leong, 1999: 1)

Matrix is also in the genre of several more films about virtual reality, namely David Cronenberg's "eXistenZ, " Centropolis,' and "The Thirteenth Floor." There are also parallels to HAL, the computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, murdering the spaceship crew until astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) disconnects it. In this genre of science fiction, artificial intelligence has evolved and become so powerful that shutting the machines down is no longer an option.

Rivera (1999) points out that "this plot detail comes straight from another Warner Bros. film: Alex Proyas’ underrated masterpiece "Dark City." The producers are Joel "Die Hard" Silver and co-producer: Andrew "Dark City" Mason. In Dark City, Andy and Larry Wachowski create a plausible and intelligent scenario where Neo's perception of his reality is challenged until he slowly realizes the truth In these films, the stuff of which human consciousness is made, our perceptions and our memories, isn’t to be trusted. They’ve been manipulated in order to control us" (Rivera, 1999: 1). But, is it future or here and now?

Dialectics of Myth and Science - Matrix also speaks to the Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972). The Matrix storyline attempts to transcend the duality of thesis (mythic knowledge) and anti-thesis (enlightenment of science), and in the synthesis (Neo's Second Coming) science reverts to mythic. As Horkheimer and Adorno (1972: xvi) put it "myth is already enlightenment and enlightenment reverts to mythology." And "Enlightenment intends to secure itself against the return of the mythic" through mathematics, abstract formal logic, systematics, and demythologization (p. 25-27). Ironically, it is a process that returns science to a mythic it never seems to transcend. And for Horkheimer and Adorno (1972: 87), the result is the extreme forms of terror-to-control the masses advocated by Hobbes and Machiavelli.

In the dialectic of myth and enlightenment, science seeks to master nature and to submit everything natural to the autocratic logic of science. "Yet the fully enlightened earth" as in the Matrix movie, "radiates disaster triumphant" (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972: 3). In Matrix, science in the form of AI-conspiracy has taken control of an earth parched by human technology and seeks, if necessary the extermination of the pestilence, human. Science as Matrix, presents itself is both progress and salvation. But to do so must disenchant the humans, ironically, by suspending them a mythic world of (mythic) virtuality. But as Horkheimer and Adorno (1972: 4) foretold "the only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive." Science is fighting spiritual-myth with virtual myth. Fear is everywhere (i.e. Matrix-agents fear the rebels will lift the yoke of carefully regulated virtual-illusion to expose totalitarian control by the battery-machine). Ironically, Matrix believes human species are not prepared to live with chaotic existence, the apocalypse of post-nuclear disaster.

There is another interesting irony in Matrix. The rebel tribe must disenchant both Artificial Intelligence agents and cyber-slaves of the virtual-real world of the Matrix and reveal it to be mythic-illusion. And to do so they must master both science and spiritual myth (discipline of Kung Fu, Rebirth, and Second Coming as well as Ai science and weapons of destruction). On his own mythic journey, Neo commits self-sacrifice in order to be born again as a savior to the slaves and a destroyer of the Matrix. Neo will sacrifice his life to save Morpheus. And this sacrifice in Horkheimer and Adorno's (1972: 10) terms "marks a step toward discursive logic." That is, the duality of science and mythic (discourse narrative) is transcended in the moment of sacrifice, and science gets defeated by magic and rebel-science (e.g. Neo bends his body to the bullets as he controls time itself slowing the bullets and even healing the virtual wounds to his body). In the concluding scene Neo (as mythic) embodies science (the AI agent of the Matrix), literally diving headfirst into the agent's body. In this way, Neo transcends the duality (in theory) by not distancing himself from the scientific object (the Matrix). But there is more to it.

Neo and the rebels are brining enlightenment to the slaves and AI-agents of the Matrix. Yet to do so, one could ask if the rebels to don’t become their very antithesis? As Horkheimer and Adorno (1972: 16) "Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical." The Matrix has attempted to move human civilization away from the chaos of its own barbarism (to self and planet) by cocooning all humans in the utopia of a virtuality machine (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972: 17). Matrix is "an instrument of rational administration" by the enlightened AI, but ironically, "they steer society toward barbarism" in the war of man to escape the imprisonment of the computing machine (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972: 20). As the rebels free other cyber-slaves and take vengeance against the AI-agents, do they become the new sovereigns?

In sum, Matrix can be read as the dialectic of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. In the end the rebels reassert spiritual domination over science. Will the rebels, turned sovereigns, use science to control humanity? As Matrix demonstrates, most of humanity is content to live within the virtual walls of spectacle, preferring the illusion of steak to the "real" taste of mush. The mix of Zen, Kung Fu, fundamentalism, and New Age spiritualism is not an integrated film-message. The movie does not reject science, it re-masters it and sets it along slightly different path. The final message is that it is by freeing our mind from spectacle that we attain freedom. Ironically, to free the mind, the rebels use virtual teaching machines and simulated combat arenas to learn to fight terror with terror. And they use new Age spiritualism, taking us along Neo's journey of self-discovery, revealing to us spectators that if we believe in ourselves, all is possible. Leaving us to sort out the ultimate irony: in the virtual machine we were interconnected to the one, and to resist that prison we are handed a new form of enlightenment, all are connected to one in the body of the spirit. Yet, do we not move from the prison of the utopia of the perfect virtual machine to another that seeks after our mind?

Organizational Implications of Matrix and Inter-Spectacle

If life imitates art, then it can be said that Organization Theory (OT) imitates the spectacle images of popular media culture. And popular culture, most notably science fiction movies imitate the presumed future of organization turned spectacle. I think OT is already conversant with the spectacle futuristic science fiction images of basic spectacle genres Biotechnology (Jurassic Park), Cybernetics (13^th Floor), and Ecological Apocalypse/robotics (Blade Runner). While the apocalyptic plots have not happened in full regalia in our time, what has been implemented is the technology that makes them possible is in its infancy. Various science fiction films portray the theatrics of significant changes in technology (Metropolis), population (Soylent Green), and our (un) natural habitat (Mad Max) in tragic and satirical visions of late global capitalism and organizational life.

There is some speculative evidence that organizational life is rapidly imitating the artistry of science fiction. To the average spectator, this is just Hollywood science fiction, right?

Wrong, says Kevin Warwick, a professor at the department of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England -- the British equivalent of the M.I.T. Media Lab -- who has spent his career working on robotics, creating machine intelligence and, most controversially, building human-computer implants for use in his own body (Brown, 1999:1).

On April 20, 1998, Professor Warwick, inspired by Michael Crichton's book "The Terminal Man" had a glass capsule about 23 millimeters long and 3 millimeters wide containing an electromagnetic coil and a silicon chip inserted in his arm (Geek, 1999; Brown, 1999). The media calls him, Professor Cyborg, since his chip is in contact with a computer making lights turn on and off when he enters and exits room and gives him a spoken, running tally of the mail in his email box. As in the movie Bladerunner, Warwick keeps electronic pets, a "seven dwarves" troupe of little wheeled robots with white faces and ultrasonic eyes who have been teaching themselves both individual and group behavior. "Our senses are restricted, they suit us as humans, but machines have the capabilities of sensing the world in ultrasonics, ultraviolet, infrared, X-ray, gamma ray," Warwick explains (Brown, 1999: 3). And, as in the book "Neuromancer," by William Gibson, Warwick foresees a day when computer users can jack in and visualize the computer reality in their head.

It would seem that computer and biotech will alter the way organizations and our bodies exist in our lifetime. Bladerunner, eXistenZ, and Matrix are "cyberpunk" visions of our organizational present (Newquist, 1999: 1). Matrix creates a dark, depressing and apocalyptic universe.

Inter-spectacle science fiction movies also speak to an awakening of the consumer and spec-actor to the iron cage of spectacle existence.

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack.

And you may find yourself in another part of the world.

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile.

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife.

And you may ask yourself—Well ...How did I get here?

- Talking Heads "Once In A Lifetime"

 

Tables One and Two introduced some basic types of spectacles so that we might look more closely at inter-spectacle behavior of organizations, doing global theater on the global stage. Table Three drops the movies to look at contemporary organizational life spectacles on our planet. My point is quite simple and quite radical. I think that organizations do not evolve and are quite artificial spectacles made to appear as natural and evolutionary. Corporations browse the centers of genetic diversity, helping themselves to a rich largess of genetic treasures, only to sell back the same in a slightly engineered and patented form, and at a hefty price – all for products that have been freely shared and traded among farmers and villagers for all of human history (Rifkin, 1998: 52).

Monsanto Corporation and other transnational corporations are rapidly patenting biotic materials to control seed production and to make agriculture dependent upon genetically engineered fertilizers and pesticides. Monsanto sells us that world hunger will end, or that industrial pollution will end, so we do not examine too closely the downside of cybertech, biotech, and robotech production and consumption. In the near future, it will become extremely difficult to differentiate between virtual reality and reality, or between natural human and animal and genetically engineered species.

OT is what Best and Kellner (1999a: 8) a "quest to erase fundamental differences between humans, technology, and nature." Our texts need to be rewritten and quickly. The use of organic-metaphors like "evolution," "hive", "swarm," and "self-organizing" do not help to create a spectacle of spectacles, an inter- spectacle biotech, eco-tech, bio-eco, bio-robo, and consumption spectacles in our books and teaching. In the new spectacles and inter-spectacles, we give MBAs a cosmology that scripts their role in biomimicry, while setting up cyber universities to make the transition seamless and non-self-reflexive.

Rifkin (1998) argues each new era of technology development invents a cosmology that makes that reality into common sense. What I am calling for in OT is a questioning of the new cosmology from an inter-spectacle perspective.

There is some ground for this critique. Best and Kellner (1999a: 10), for example, point out, the fragmented, networked, soft-capitalism economy is the new metaphor(s) "appropriate for the present age, where all people, businesses, and nations are interlocked into a massive hive-like system of technology, economics, and communication." Spectacle dramatizes the new metaphors of OT by making chaos, fragmentation, chaos, and the postmodern a logic that does not have to be questioned. Putting these simple metaphors of OT into an inter-spectacle context allows for a critique of their political economy and ethic ambitions.

To me Matrix is a metaphor for our unquestioned assumptions about organizational and consumptive life modes. OT is a type of Pleasantville theory, an uncritical acceptance of metaphor as reality, as the story of reality. It is not making clear the differences between "organizing" in the natural world and "organizing" in the socio-economic and technical world (Best & Kellner, 1999a: 14). As OT adopts uncritically the language of socio-economic and technical, Matrix points out the need to look at what happens when spirit (and ethics) is divorced from organization science. As Horkheimer and Adorno (1972: 92) point out, this does not mean that modern science is without ethics, only that when science as enlightenment shouts out mythic, to improve the validity of knowledge, it becomes the oppressive order seeks to transcend. For example, the way in which organization science celebrates the ethics of the free competitive market without sufficient reflection on the social and ecological implications of biotechnology and virtuality machines.

Conclusions

The main point is that by equating organic-nature with organic-organization studies and technology as progress through industrial science, we do not see humans as agents of change in on going inter-spectacle conditions of late capitalism.

To summarize, there is a rhizomatics of spectacle that is not being well addressed in organization theory. The spectacles are interpenetrating as we have explored in our survey of science fiction movies with blatant organization themes. What is at issue here is not the separate molar spectacles of Biotech, Eco, Consumption, of Net-Tribe in Table One. Rather, what is curious is how these intersect to form bio-eco, cyber-eco, etc. It is inter-spectacle in Table Two and translates into the context of new organization theories in contexts presented in Table Three.

There are intertextual links between the beleaguered office worker Neo, and Tony Perkins in Orson Welles' film of Kafka's, "The Trial." But, it also can be read as a statement about Marxist theory, people living the deluded dream life produced by spectacle and inter-spectacle. The virtual illusion keeps people from rebelling against the machines that really run the show. Matrix is an artificial intelligence with control over his life, making the population believe they are still in the year 1999, instead of 2199. Beyond spectacle and inter-spectacle, the Situationist International movement of the 1960s and 1970s called for a basic understanding of the individual in community and the fragmented life under mass production and consumption. Spectacle continues to haunt us in late capitalism and is reflected in the non-critical orientation to organization theory.

The challenge for OT is to peer beneath the inter-spectacle veil of promised utopia to fashion democratic and ecological ethics. The interface of critical theory (e.g. Horkheimer & Adorno) and postmodern theory (e.g. Debord) makes this veil more obvious. There are several reasons why OT does not peer beneath the veil, so obvious in Matrix (Boje, 2000). First, much of what is taken as cases and examples in OT is lifted from the spectacle and public relations materials of corporate writers (consultants, CEOs, publicists, and apologists). Second, universities in general, and business colleges, in particular, are entering into more financial relations with industry. Third, accreditation bodies of the Academy and the State are demanding that university knowledge be made more relevant to corporate careers and otherwise benefit industry. Fourth, there is a revival of naïve spirituality and even Social Darwinist epistemology in the business school that would make Nietzsche and Marx turn in their graves. Each of these developments makes it difficult to sustain a critical look beneath the veil of the Matrix.

References

Baudrillard, Jean (1992) Hystericizing the Millennium. Originally published in French as part of Jean Baudrillard, L'Illusion de la fin: ou La greve des evenements (Paris: Galilee). Translation by Charles Dudas, York University.

Baudrillard, Jean (1994) 'Plastic surgery for the other.' In Jean Baudrillard and Marc Guillaume, Figures de l'alterite. Paris: Descartes et Cie. Translated by Francois Debrix. Francois Debrix is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Theory and International Relations at Purdue University.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents, Washington Square, NY: NY University Press.

Best, Steven and Kellner, Douglas (1997) The Postmodern Turn, NY/London: The Guilford Press.

(1999a) '(Information) Road Rules: Kevin Kelly Wires into the New Age Economy.' To appear in Organization and Environment'

(1999b) 'Debord, cybersituations, and the interactive spectacle," Forthcoming in Substance.

Boje, David M (2000) Spectacle and Festival of Organization: Managing Ahimsa Production and Consumption. Book to be published by Hampton Press (CA).

Burrell, Gibson (1998) Pandemonium : Towards a Retro-Organization Theory, London: Sage.

Debord, Guy (1967) La Société du Spectacle, Paris, France: Editions Buchet-Chastel. Note it was reprinted in 1971 by Champ Libre (Paris). The first English translation was published by Black & Red in 1970. It was revised in 1977, incorporating numerous improvements suggested by friends and critics of the first translation. By convention, numbers refer to paragraphs in the 1967 version.

Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Trans. By Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Firat, Fuat A. and Nikhilesh Dholakia (1998) Consuming People: from Political economy to Theaters of Consumption, London/NY: Routledge.

Horkheimer, Max & Adorno, Theodor W. (1972) Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming from Dialektick der Aufklarung (1944). NY: Herder and Herder.

Kelly, Kevin (1998) New Rules for the New Economy, NY: Viking.

Kristeva, Julia (1986) 'Word, dialogue, and the novel.' In T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva Reader, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 35-61.

Rifkin, Jeremy (1998) The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World, NY: Tarcher/Putnam.