Scripture and sex: semiotics, simulacrum, synesthesia, Sapir-- skubala or shekinah?

People sometimes ask me if all the violence in "The Matrix" doesn't bother me.

Part of my answer is "What violence?"....because I tend to translate it all to spiritual warfare (which is appropriate on one level and problematic on another).

No one has yet asked me if the steamy sex scene  between Neo and Trinity in the second Matrix film bothers me.

  So thanks for asking.

Part of my answer would be "it does"  (and it was a cheap grab for ratings).
But again I tend to see it as also  a spiritual representation (Neo=Jesus or EveyChristian  and Trinity  as Trinity, Holy Spirit  or church).



But if Bell's definition of sexuality is at all close, then  everything is sexuality....especially spirituality.



Of course, everything is also inevitably semiotics.

In a great book about semiotics (that strangely doesn't mention Leonard Sweet, who  literally wrote the book on evangelism and semiotics), Crystal Downing , in a section called "Sex and the Simulacrum," writes:

the change in sexual signs has been noted...in one college textbook: 'sexual desire is no longer a response to a person whom we meet and  know face-to-face.  Rather, sexual desire is stimulated by images promulgated by the media, and we strive to remake our bodies to fit these images." People have this substituted imaged for reality, submitting themselves to what cultural critic Baudrillard calls 'simulacra': copies of reality for which no original exists...Ironically, our culture's obsession with the body often leads to a denial of the body, offering simulacra instead. -p. 276

T-Bone Burnett  (or at least his image) might suggest that
                    all sex is image to image.

All sex is semiotic simulacra..virtually virtual..really

It doesn't take much trainspotting to catch the simulacra references in The Matrix:

.

The Matrix makes many connections to Simulacra and Simulation. Neo, is seen with a copy of Simulacra and Simulation at the beginning of the story. He

uses the hollowed book as a hiding place for cash and his important computer files, however, Neo's hollowed copy of the book has the chapter "On Nihilism" in the middle, not at the end of the book, where it is in reality.  uses the hollowed book as a hiding place for cash and his important computer files, however, Neo's hollowed copy of the book has the chapter "On Nihilism" in the middle, not at the end of the book, where it is in reality. Morpheus refers to the real world outside the Matrix as the "desert of the real", a reference to Baudrillard's work. In the original script, Morpheus specifically referred to Baudrillard's boo link

  Ironically, the Matrix's use of Baudrillard may be an "copy of which the original no longer exists." The same article notes

 however, in an interview, Baudrillard said "The Matrix" has nothing to do with his work. 




If everything is creative analogy, 
         and everything is sexuality, 
                                       then there will of course be a 
                          sex and synesthesia (which itself is all about  creative analogy) connection.

Downing on the tendency to  semiotcally gnostisize sex and the body

Marcion, the second century bishop..went so far as to denounce the incarnation calling it a 'disgrace to God' because the human body is 'stuffed with excrement'

Huh? Skubala  disqualifies incarnation?  That itself is skubala!

Let's instead consider things holistically and pursue the sexuality and SHEKINAH .interface.



And the fact that language about sexuality is semiotic and  sign-ificant:

Western culture today seems obssesed with the body, especially the sexualized body.  The popularity  of 'sexting' has   lead to a new kind of crime, "sextortion"...-Downing

New words create  new realities (Sapir-Whorf).

Since new words can create new  crime, and new crime words..

..can't they also   creative creative language and creative inkingdomedness?

Where does this all lead: obsexxion?

Or to Jesus,

  Pepsi, Sex, Elevation...& Mission Trips That Are Actually Missional

..and asking ourselves why we can't at least ask  'banned" questions?

Most readers here will be familiar with Len Hjalmarson's important blog:

..if the new earth is really a restoration and renewal — a new paradise — this time a garden city –

a place of peace, fulfillment and new creation –
a restoration of paradise and innocence (in the best sense) –

How could it be all this apart from new creation in humans and animals? In other words – is there no sexual union in the kingdom? No children? No new people, just we resurrected or restored ones?  -sex and the kingdom