Whoah. I just saw the maligned film The Matrix, which is not maligned for being bad film, since it's actually a good piece of cyber-goth science fiction. It's not maligned for Keanu's acting, which is better than usual with the exception of one "whoah" and the line, "I know kung fu" which were delivered Bill and Ted style. Aside from The River's Edge, this is some of Keanu's best work.

The Matrix is taking heat for having characters dressed as goths shoot a whole lot of people. I guess the black trenchcoat is an unfortunate coincidence, but it looked cool and gave the character Neo (Reeves) room to hide lots of guns. Besides, most of the costumes were left over from The Crow and that saves big money.

For the next few months, at least, we'll have "post-Columbine" criticism, and it's only going to get more annoying. Never mind that The Matrix makes it clear that the humans killing people are in a pretty righteous war to free humanity from enslavement, never mind that they're really just shooting up a giant virtual reality (and the audience is pretty clear on that point, never mind that many of the scenes were parodies of those violent video games I've been hearing so much about, and never mind that I'd rather see a sci-fi thriller than watch David Spade kidnap some chick's dog -- for the next few months I have to hear angry people screaming about "movies like The Matrix."

Now, I know this screaming isn't going to change anything. Hollywood ill be Hollywood and moviegoers will buy tickets and we all know, deep down, that very few people confuse fantasy with reality to the Columbine point, and for the most part, violence in movies is a good psychic release for repressed violence in society.

No Elizabethan ever killed a king just because they saw Hamlet or went on a murder spree after seeing Macbeth or Richard III. but they did like their bloody spectacle on stage (I mean, they liked Titus Andronicus, for heaven's sake!) and the Romans had Seneca, and the Greeks listened to epic poems like the Odyssey.

Actually, the end scene of The Odyssey, when our hero Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and a servant lock all the suitors in their house, steal their weapons and then slaughter them all over the course of a long, bloody chapter is much like the Columbine massacre, and we know kids read The Odyssey in high school. So maybe we should be worried about ancient Greek culture corrupting the minds of our youth? Odysseus lets only one man survive -- a lyric poet who he sends into public to warn any man who might want to put the moves of Odysseus' wife next time he leaves, that they'll eventually be killed.

In class they call Odysseus a hero, not some guy standing on a table shooting unarmed suitors with a bow and arrow. So why worry about The Matrix? I say worry about the classics.

Worry about Crime and Punishment, hell let's ban Russian literature.

Worry about The Stranger. Hell, let's ban French literature.

The new post-Columbine data says that Hollywood movies show drug use and cigarette smoking in a light which makes the drug Czar angry. They don't show consequences of drug use, he says. But what he means is that they don't show the consequences he wants to see -- people getting arrested, ruining their lives as addicts, dying in car wrecks, or just keeling over for no reason at all. Show any other consequence like "having a good time" gets the drug Czar starts whining.

I, for one, am disturbed by Catcher in the Rye, where an underaged Holden Caulfield drinks without consequence, and hires a hooker with minor consequence. Ban it.

Also, I want big-mouthed Tipper Gore to come over and inspect my CD collection so we can purge it of smutty stuff.

Michael Maiello's smut removal machine is available 24 hours a day.