Keywords: The Matrix, Andy and Larry Wachowski, cybernetics, technology, science fiction, matrix, keanu reeves, computer hacker, thomas anderson, neo, morpheus  

The Matrix is a postmodern cyber-thriller directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. The film stars Keanu Reeves as the computer hacker Thomas Anderson who uses the alias Neo. He encounters the cyber-terrorist Morpheus, who reveals that the ‘real’ world is a computer simulation designed to conceal the fact that humanity has been enslaved by sentient machines. Neo awakes in the estimated year 2199 and discovers that the real world is a decayed, derelict wasteland with biomechanical machines farming human beings for energy.

The film has been the subject of much critical analysis.  In her essay ‘Psycho-cybernetics in Films of the 1990s’, Claudia Springer writes:

During the 1980s and early 1990s, steely hard muscular cyborgs were a science-fiction film mainstay. In films, rampaging muscle-bound cyborgs were replaced by slim young men and women jacked into cyberspace, inspired by 'console cowboys' in cyberpunk fiction of the 1980s. Cybernetically enhanced existence shifted in films from pumped-up physiques to expanded minds in films that critics labeled cyber-thrillers.

The Matrix dramatizes many of the themes associated with postmodernity. In particular, it draws on the ideas of the postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whose classic text Simulacra and Simulation is depicted in the film. Baudrillard writes:

The matrix remains binary. It will never again be a matter of duel or open competitive struggle, but of couples and simultaneous opposition. From the smallest disjunctive unity (question/answer practice) up to the great alternating systems that control the economy, politics, world co-existence, the matrix does not change: it is always the 0/1 binary scansion that is affirmed as the metastable or homeostatic form of the current system. This is the nucleus of all simulation processes which dominate us.

Key questions

? How does the film distinguish the real world from the virtual world of the Matrix – physical restriction/freedom, cinematography, colour-grading etc.

? The film abounds with references to literary works such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – can you identify these references?

? The film also refers to Biblical and mythological sources – for example, what is the significance of the names Morpheus and Nebuchadnezzar?

Reading

? Baudrillard, J. Simulacra and Simulation.

? Bukatman, S. ‘Who Programs You? The Science Fiction of the Spectacle’ in Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema.

? Featherstone, M. (ed.) (1995) Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk.

? Springer, C. ‘Psycho-cybernetics in Films of the 1990s’ Kuhn, A. (1999) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science fiction cinema.

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