-A review of the Matrix series films by Hans Issakson
For quite a time it has been considered evident that the world is not – in all respects – what it appears to be at first sight. Theologians, prophets, philosophers and scholars since thousands of years have earned their living by delivering alternative explanations to what it essentially is instead. If you succeed in selling, or reselling, your explanation you will gain a certain control over the buyer's soul and body.
If you wish to engage in such philosophical activities - please, take my advice: Do not take any half measures, be as radical as possible! Doing so is wise from the marketing point of view, but also if you want your mind-goods to be durable. As an example, Plato’s 2400-year-old image of Humanity (except for himself, of course) sitting fettered in a cave, staring into the wall, and watching the shadows of the real world outside dancing upon it has proved very sustainable. An even more radical denial of a reality outside his head, propagated by the Irish 18th century bishop Berkeley still constitutes a firm ground, and a last resort, for our most modern postmodernist thinkers, as they try to deconstruct all our strivings towards a rational interpretation of the world. You could not, however, detect anything in the biographies of these thinkers to suggest that their views of Reality had in any respect affected their way of living and working in it. This is opposed to the behaviour of certain Middle Age heretic sects. About a thousand years ago on the European continent the Cathars, for instance, fought and died in great number for a similar conviction. They considered the material world a mirage, created by Satan. According to the Cathars, only Jesus of Nazareth had pointed to a way out of this evil dream world.
Applying a purely philosophical approach, it is certainly impossible to refute such doctrines of reality as these presented above. On the other hand – there is not much to do with them in other respects either. Except using them whenever you wish to discredit science and common sense, assigning to these an explanative value comparable to that of myth and religion. For some reason, however, there seems to exist a constant demand for such doctrines, so we guess that we may not have seen the last version yet. Still, the world does not always seem to be what it appears to be. In saying this we are not only referring to trivial physical facts, like: it’s not the sun that keeps rolling each day from the east to the west, but the Earth that keeps rotating the other way around; apples do not fall “downwards” but towards the centre of the nearest celestial body etc. Such truths, while uncontroversial from a political point of view – in these days – tend to be generally accepted, although they stand in conflict with our intuition.
Not so regarding truths about Human Society. Many of us still believe that in our daily work we are producing goods, utilities like food, refrigerators, clothes pegs, scooters or antipersonnel mines. In fact, as we now and then experience the hard way, on the whole this is a delusion – above all we produce profit for capital owners, and we get the sack if we fail to produce a sufficient (i.e., maximal) amount of it, regardless of the material need for scooters, food, clothes pegs etc in the world.
Furthermore, a majority of people still believe themselves now and then electing political representatives to perform certain social and economical changes they would like to see performed. Instead, invariably, they entrust people with power, whose main task seems to be to ensure that nothing changes, that we all continue to shut up, and to produce profitably.
We may even dislike this state of affairs. We may clench our fists back home in our kitchen, we may cherish critical intellectuals and read French philosophers. If you have bothered to read this far it is even highly probable that you yourself harbour oppositional feeling towards the System.
In feeling so you belong to quite a vast and partly illustrious society. In the entertainment industry of the USA a great deal of current useful myths are produced and reproduced in popular editions. Most of its more important products – from Madonna’s latest album to movies like The Truman Show, Wag the Dog, Minority Report, Dark City and Mulholland Drive etc. as a matter of fact contain some sort of questioning of the dominating world view. Maybe so in order to gain credibility? Maybe as a kind of political vaccination – “better to give people cow pox than to watch them catching smallpox”?
The French (sic!) semiologist and sociologist Jean Baudrillard for more than a quarter of a century has been writing about the crucial part played by the media, especially the electronic ones, in the creation of a parallel, virtual, simulated reality in service of The System, i.e. the political power. He named it simulacra – a “reality” cleared of any trait that might jeopardise the system.
Anyone who have read the news bills about stomach ailments of documentary soap opera celebrities, and about the possible boyfriends of a Swedish princess on an ordinary day, when a thousand workers in our country get the sack, the big powers prepare new wars, and forty thousand people starve to death will get an idea of what simulacra means. People who grew up with such media, with a joystick in one hand, a mobile telephone in one ear and a Mp3-player in the other in general find it easier to name ten soap opera stars, action movie heroes, TV-chefs or rock musicians than they would find it naming ten political leaders, scientists, not to mention influential ten representatives of Monopoly Capital. Simulated reality has invaded and occupied our minds. It has become even more real than reality itself (according to the madman Baudrillard it has even become the only reality). And here we are speaking about everyday peaceful conditions – not mentioning the systematic media lying or spin doctor activities in the ever more frequent periods of war.
In spite of all this – or rather, because of all this – a certain measure of self-reflecting criticism of the System seems to be mandatory for any simulation of reality expecting to gain some public confidence.
Thus, on the desk of the hero, Neo, in the first part of the Matrix movie trilogy by the Warchowski brothers, there is a copy of Baudrillard’s book Simulacra et Simulation. That is, Neo is only using the cover of the volume as a stash for his illegal data floppies. However, it seems obvious that the Warchowski brothers have browsed through that book now and then.
The plot of the Matrix movies may be a bit tricky to grasp – however it ought to be pretty well-known by now for those interested:
The year is 2199 or so. We are still on the Earth. At the beginning of the third millennium the ever more intelligent computers have struck a massive blow against Humanity and conquered the Earth, laying it in ruins. (Screenwriters always seem to be very impressed by the mental capacity of computers, although such machines, in contrast to monkeys or two years old humans, still are incapable of distinguishing apples from pears).
In spite of their immense intelligence the conquerors have not been able to detect any decent source of energy, so they have been forced to keep us humans for that purpose. Each individual is said to lie in a sort of cocoon (or incubator), plugged into the System, producing and providing biochemical energy for The Matrix – a giant (decimal??) data program. For the individuals to reconcile with their fate the Matrix has provided each one of them with a simulated image of reality as perceived in 1999, except that all big problems and controversies have been erased from it. In the virtual reality people go to work, marry and (be)get children as if nothing had happened. That is, just like we do here and now, scary thought.
A handful of dissidents, headed by the philosophically minded and dynamic Morpheus (read: John the Baptist) have escaped from the virtual existence to live in the Real (??) Reality. According to the movie that reality allows them to fly, walk in the ceiling using their will-power (and probably some strings), and to consult with soothsayers. If you want to move you just send a working copy of yourself over your Panasonic® telephone. Of course Reality contains some handsome ladies, for instance Trinity as a smashing and kicking Mary of Magdala in rubber tights. The Real People inhabit the subterranean city of Zion (!) and move around by means of the giant hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar (!!).
However, the inhabitants of Zion do not seem to have much more fun than the cocoon people in the first part of the film trilogy. In the second part, Matrix Reloaded, you get more sex and hullabaloo – possibly due to complaints from the audience. Food is lousy in Zion – everything has a taste of chicken. No wonder they got their own Judas Iskariot in the shape of Cypher, maybe also because Trinity stubbornly had refused to give in to him, awaiting The One.
Thus, the dissident group has been waiting for its Messiah – The One who would have the force to unplug the remainder of Humanity, liberating it from the Matrix slavery. No surprise this One is Neo. He’s got the calling and the force, because he is a Hacker. Given the choice by Morpheus he volunteered as a saviour of Humanity by swallowing the red pill which enabled him to see through the virtual veils, abandoning his comfortable state in the bosom of the Matrix. For he was written at a time – do you still remember it? – before all the bursting financial balloons, when the IT-business was the only and great hope for Capitalism.
In the computer age the lonely, slim and pale-faced, under-aged hacker has replaced the tanned, physically fit lonely cowboy as the Partisan of the good guys. Like another modern, fledged youngster, Harry Potter, however, he is in need of a certain amount of computerized training before taking off. His first training flight was a blatant failure, reminding us of the virgin trip of the Swedish jet-fighter JAS.
Neo has to confront the Agents, i.e., the computer geared android emissaries of Matrix, wearing sunglasses, grey suits, equipped with an unlimited amount of lives and a ditto capability of reproducing themselves without sex (copy, cut, paste you know). The remainder of the human beings, who in reality usually are known as the force propelling historical events forwards, remain plugged in, dozing in their cocoon dormitories. It is suggested that they have been programmed to prefer their virtual life in the Matrix – they may even resist if someone would try to liberate them – that is – they behave quite as predicted by Baudrillard.
We are supposed breathlessly to follow their liberation through three movies – the third one, Matrix Revolutions (!?) will arrive this autumn. The means used for the liberation, however, are somewhat more conventional than you would expect considering the technological level and the promising plot. (Can you imagine Superman as an enthusiastic participator in a saloon fist fight?). Above all, force is used for the purpose, because in the Action World negotiations seem to be considered as suspect as the are by the White House. If force proves inadequate you’ll just use still more force. Above all some sort of kung-fu is used, and sometimes some kind of astonishingly obsolete handguns. Only in exceptional cases, guns firing nasty rays, or other weapons, not sanctioned by the UN, are used.
Humour and irony seem to be prohibited out there in Zion. Unless you would prefer to regard the whole series as a parody over the action-, martial arts and SF-genres, of course – this interpretation seems very reasonable, especially after the almost unbelievable enmeshing of the intrigue and the time perspectives in the second part. This second part (Matrix Reloaded) in no real follow up, but mostly a retrospective introduction to the final scene. It is a flashback taking place in the head of Trinity as she is falling down from the 40th floor against an almost secure dea-rescue. Here we even get a hint that the whole gang of dissidents around Neo, Trinity and Marcellus in Reality (whatever that means) is part of the System, maybe as a bug in the Matrix program or as a kind of entertainment for its creator.
That would be a consistent development. If you would take the Matrix movies seriously (dreadful thought!) they would indeed also be part of the system. At least this is what Baudrillard himself suggest, when interviewed about his position as an inspirator of the trilogy. But maybe he’s just sulking for not being rewarded sufficiently in cash. The Matrix movies have been characterised as a successful combination of Speculation and Spectacle. Speculation in double respects – first of all, of course, they wanted our money and they got it. But also philosophical speculation, where the interesting thoughts, alas, are several thousand years old. The new ones are mostly garbage, deliberately made incomprehensible as a cover-up. In the first part this fact often will pass without notice, as the audience never gets the time to reflect over the contents.
The unusual success of the movies may be due to the capability of the Warchawski brothers to pour old philosophical wine into new vessels, interpreting the sentiments of claustrophobia as well as alienation, hopefully present even in to-day’s – or, rather, yesterday’s – young, computerized, mobile phone dependent, black wearing generation. This they’ve done in the shape of a cinematic spectacle, attractive to young movie goers, including high kicks, air flights defying most natural laws, special effects and explosions en masse – that is – things that just too often in this movie genre have been introduced to be a substitute for content instead of interpreting it. We who chose to swallow the red pill in the 20th century already may not be very impressed – but The Matrix was evidently not meant for us.
If the world and the society are what they seem to be to us, that would perfectly explain why Hollywood and other ideological workshops make such immense efforts to make people believe something else.