The Matrix Part 2

***WARNING THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE MATRIX, THE MATRIX RELOADED, AND THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS***

When I wrote up part 1 of my interpretation of The Matrix I originally intended to only do two parts, one for the first movie and one for the sequels.  Upon watching all of the movies again I realized that my initial estimates of two parts was far too short to analyze all the symbolism in these movies.  I will do my best to keep from dragging these out but I have a lot of material to cover because these are very dense, symbolic movies.  I also intend to separate the themes into categories to help keep myself on track and make things easier to read

Systems of Control

What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. (Holds up battery)

The final conclusion Morpheus draws to explain to Neo the what and why of the Matrix is that it controls us so we can be harvested for energy.  However, the explanation of the Matrix given in the movies does not fully explain everything that happens.  In all of the movies it is clear that people jack in to the Matrix via a long spike inserted into the plug at the base of the skull; it is safe to assume this spike works by sending and receiving electrical signals to and from the human brain thus acting as a redirection.  Our brain sends movement signals to the body which are received by the spike and transmit to the Matrix to which the Matrix responds by sending the appropriate response signals back to the brain.

A system like this makes sense in a lot of ways but there are a few problems: first, and most important, is the fact that if you die in the Matrix then you die in real life.  Morpheus explains this by saying, "the body cannot live without the mind"  and thus if you die in the Matrix your mind dies and then your body with it.  But the brain does not die when your five senses tell you you're dying, the brain dies when it is deprived of oxygenated blood.  For now though lets assume that Morpheus is right in his conclusion, that still doesn't explain what actually happens in the movie.  The first time we see bodily damage from the Matrix is when Neo is in the jump program and manages to face plant into a road, this busts open his lip and he bleeds a little bit, when he wakes up from the Matrix his lip is bleeding.  That isn't possible with Morpheus' explanation; the mind can't simply will a person's lip to split open like that.  Some might say "what if he bit his lip at the impact?"  To which I would respond, "except that later on we see Mouse get shot multiple times and this not only causes him to convulse but it causes him to cough up massive amounts of blood."

There are also other things that throw the idea of jacking in to the Matrix out the window: for example in The Matrix Reloaded, Neo manages to destroy sentinels just by thinking about it, the same way he would in the Matrix, and he does this again in The Matrix Revolutions, taking on the entire defense of the machine city.  He also goes into a coma and is connected to a sort of limbo between the Matrix and the real world, which doesn't make any sense.  How can he be jacked in to the Matrix in any form without the metal spike?  And we know it's connected to the Matrix because Neo talks to programs on their way to see the Marovingian, an extremely old and powerful program within the Matrix.  Plus, when Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph come to rescue Neo they take him from the limbo back into the Matrix itself and then he jacks out of it having inexplicably gone from comatose to physically jacked in at some point. The movies explain this by claiming that Neo touched "the source" which allowed his powers as The One to extend beyond the Matrix, but we are never told what the source is or why it exists.

The only adequate explanation of this is that the humans never actually leave the Matrix.  What they refer to as the Matrix is a virtual world and what they consider the real world is another part of the same virtual world.  Many video games deal with parallel realities and it would be no problem to create two separate worlds.  This theory also fits very nicely with the explanation we are given by the Architect when he meets Neo.

The Architect tells Neo that the original Matrix was designed to be a perfect world and that every human would be happy, however no human truly accepted the program and thus had to be unplugged and killed, which is a waste of energy for the machines.  He then explains that while later versions of the Matrix were designed to more closely resemble the imperfections of the real world as it used to exist, the final method of getting people to accept the program was to give them a choice between the Matrix and the real world at a nearly unconscious level.  Unfortunately, while this is the most successful method of making people accept the program of the Matrix it is also inherently flawed as a very small percentage of people will still not accept the program.  The Architect refers to these people as anomalies and states that the emergence of an anomaly among the crop of humans is the emergence of The One; Neo is the anomaly that did not accept the program.  However, this is not an adequate explanation either because several people never accept the program completely which is how they come to find the resistance who have been unplugged and escape the Matrix themselves.

Where the theory of dual virtual realities comes in is that the choice changes.  Instead of choosing between the Matrix and the real world, the people are choosing between the two virtual worlds.  This explains why people can reject the Matrix naturally without being The One, and what makes The One so special is that he rejects both worlds.  Even though his dual rejection of reality is on an unconscious level, the choice was on an unconscious level as well and thus Neo gains the ability to control things in both worlds as The One without knowing why.  This dual virtual reality theory also ties back to both the speech given by the Merovingian and the themes of the first movie.

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

The Merovingian directly tells Neo that some choices are useless, such as choosing the Matrix or choosing the real world because either way they are still under control by the machines.  Everything starts to make more sense when we realize that there are two virtual worlds and nobody ever actually escapes.  People are given a choice of accepting the Matrix or finding their way to the real world, but either way the outcome is essentially the same.  Nearly everyone accepts one world or the other and thus the system of control that is the Matrix becomes a perfect balancing act.  A balanced equation.

In part 3 I'll talk about the idea of a balanced equation between the two worlds and within the Matrix itself.

Thoughts and Ramblings on "The Matrix" Part 1

****WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST HAS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE MATRIX, THE MATRIX RELOADED, AND THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS****

For those who don't know (and if you don't know you shouldn't be reading this) The Matrix was a 1999 science fiction film written and directed by the Wachowski brothers and starring Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss.  The film was a hit and managed to earn close to $500 million at the box office due to its extremely well choreographed action scenes, ingenious new camera techniques for filming said action scenes, and mind-bending story about mistrust and the internet that came out right as the internet was exploding.  Today the film is fondly remembered and considered one of the best science fiction films ever made.  The sequels to The Matrix are not as fondly remembered.

One of the key elements of The Matrix that helped it make it's lasting impression is just how well it predicted the future; not necessarily on the surface level but on a more symbolic one.

"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

Within the movie this represents the computer system feeding your brain information so that you believe you are in a place you're not, doing something you're not.  However, within a real-world context this is a reference to the media: nobody can be everywhere in the world at once, it isn't possible.  So when we want to get our fix of news we turn to either the internet or the television and news stations that report what's happening in the world.  But, what if everyone told you a lie, if every source you looked up told a story that never happened you would believe it was true, and why not?  The news has never lied to you before, at least not to your knowledge, but that's the point: nobody can be everywhere, nobody can know everything, and if all your sources of information lied to you, you would have no way of knowing if it's true or not.  But, The Matrix takes this one step further:

"It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. … That you are a slave, Neo.  Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."

Morpheus is referring to how humans are being used as batteries for the machines, but in real life it is a representation of the way society is set up.  News outlets constantly feed you lies, people with money make decisions, and you have no ability to impact the world.  Morpheus says it blatantly: "You are a slave."  Think about that.  In the movie people aren't used for labor, they're used for energy.  On just the surface plot he could have said "That you are a battery," but he didn't.  The word slave was specifically chosen for its connotations and definition.  Regular citizens in a society are slaves, we're simply here to keep the machine of progress running.  We're the worker bees, and despite what we're led to believe, individually we have no influence over the world as long as we follow the path laid out before us.  Movies entertain us, the media lies and keeps us scared, advertisers sell us things, and we work day in and day out.  The system of our society is entirely set up to keep us blinded from the fact that we're just workers and will never be the queen bee.  As evidence of this just look at the distribution of wealth in the United States.  When the top one percent of the population controls forty percent of the wealth in the nation, do the individual workers have any ability to influence the world?

Within all of this a savior rises up among us: Neo, the one, the new man.  The Jesus allegory is not subtle, in fact one of the other main characters is named Trinity, obviously representative of the holy trinity, and we even have a Judas to betray our savior.  Look closely at the way the characters are portrayed outside of the Matrix: they wear ratty clothes, they eat gruel, they sleep in bunks, and generally live in poverty.  But they are free, they may live in poverty but no longer do they have worries about who controls what.  If there's a conflict in Africa the news would be all over it, people would watch it continuously, those who had "unplugged" themselves would say "that's in Africa, there's nothing I can do, so why worry about it?"  The answer is to simply reject the Matrix, or ignore the news.  Who cares if there's a conflict in Africa?  Who cares if the president had sex with someone?  Who cares about a man in another country doing something we think is wrong?  When you start to notice all of the lies being fed by the news, the advertisers, and the government you realize the best way to fight it is to ignore it.  Don't buy that new car, don't donate $200 to that shady "non-profit" organization, and don't waste your time worrying about the government because nothing you can do will affect it.  By rejecting the influence of the system you become free in a sense.

Of course the system is still there, and you can take a look at all of the people who are still stuck in it:

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

Consider the kind of people who actively participate in this system: the idealists, the addicts, the people controlled by fear, even people who have strong opinions but don't choose a political party.  We're given choices to vote on gun rights, abortion rights, gay marriage laws: all things that seem important and indeed are to those who fall into those categories, but consider how little it actually affects the government or society as a whole.  We are so distracted by choosing on these small freedoms that we are blind to the fact that we are still slaves.  The small choices in our everyday lives keep us stuck on the track of the good worker bee while the system tells us how we feel.  The only way we can truly be happy and free is to live for ourselves and those we love.  Completely disconnecting ourselves from the world and living a simple life free of all the lies and crap that we've been fed.  Focus on what makes us happy, not what makes us feel superior, and live a simple, fulfilling life.

The Matrix is an intense visual and philosophical trip, even on its surface narrative that played on the fear and paranoia of the internet just as it was exploding.  Then the Wachowski brothers made sequels.  The sequels to The Matrix were both a big departure and a direct continuation of the original.  Most people don't consider them as good as the original movie, and I agree, but they aren't as bad as some people claim either.  The movies use a familiar framework and explore new ideas based around the world the Wachowski's created.  And, I'll explore those ideas in Part 2.


Special notice should be made to Rob Ager (www.collativelearning.com) for his analysis of the symbols and themes in The Matrix.