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The Matrix: a disturbing post-modern puzzle
Futures 33 (2001) 209–211 www.elsevier.com/locate/futures
Film The Matrix: a disturbing post-modern puzzle The Matrix was made in Sydney for about US$100 million. Both the movie itself, and its DVD spin-off, were instant commercial successes. The blend of SF, action movie, kung fu, homage to Japanese manga films and to various comic sources evidently proved compelling to a large audience. Rumours of a sequel abound. So what is ‘The Matrix’ and why has it been such a success? The second question is easier to answer than the first. Its success, I think, rests on the blend of sources, coupled with innovative visual effects that set new industry standards. Few who have seen the film will quickly forget moments such as the early fight scene in which Trinity, the female lead, leaps into a slow-motion martial arts pose of extreme elegance while the ‘camera’ (actually a complex array of cameras) circles this dream-like action through a full 360 degrees. Few will forget the helicopter crash into the side of a glass-walled building (a sequence that took months to plan and shoot) or the slow-motion fight sequences during which the seemingly invulnerable protagonists turn impossible cartwheels amid a hail of bullets. The SF scenes, too, although brief, are intense and detailed. In other words this is a dramatically, and visually, powerful film. It was crafted from sources that are seldom assembled so effectively. Another factor in its success is that the film is not easily resolved, categorised, digested — and therefore forgotten. It presents the viewer with a many-layered puzzle that implicitly and explicitly draws us into a compelling interpretative embrace. Many, perhaps most, people would, I suspect, still be thinking about ‘what it means’ long after the brilliance of the special effects had faded. This, undoubtedly, is one of the reasons for the strong sell-through on DVD and video. So what frameworks of meaning are suggested in The Matrix? Well, I can think of three. No doubt many more are possible. Perhaps the most obvious is the straight SF movie. Here is a future world in which machines have overwhelmed and enslaved the human race. The environment is ruined. People exist in vats in a machine-mediated limbo world. The matrix provides a veil of illusion that the machines have created in order to keep homo sapiens as some sort of biological resource. This, in fact, is one of the weakest propositions underlying the film. I cannot imagine any kind of machine future in which the former would either want or need to maintain its fleshy predecessors, be it in vats or otherwise, let alone see them as a necessary resource. Such fictions should never be taken literally. They were always more about our fears of machine domination, technological dystopias, than they were credible scenarios of such diminished states. Still, the sequences depicting an enormous human vat farm, Neo’s (the male lead played by PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 3 2 8 7 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 6 6 - 5
210
Film / Futures 33 (2001) 209–211
Kianu Reeves) emergence from the vat, the pursuit of Morpheus’ vessel though underground tunnels by octopus-like scavengers — these and many other scenes are depicted with enormous flair and attention to detail. The directors have certainly brought a compelling and original vision to the film, and it shows. As a SF movie, The Matrix raises the same kind of questions that have been explored in literary SF for several decades. What is reality? Is this the ‘real’ world, or is there a more ‘real’ one somehow underlying it? Do machines constitute a real threat to the future of humanity? Could they, in some sense, ‘take over’? Could we become their servants? Certainly the young sons of a colleague of mine were asking just such questions on the way home from the film, and that is no bad thing. Maybe these questions should be asked more often by adults too. A second way to ‘see’ The Matrix is as a homage to, and comment upon, action movies, and inspired by some of the sources mentioned above. Parts of it are indeed very similar to others, particularly the Schwartzenegger action/SF crossover, Terminator Two (which became a kind of ‘default future’ for very many young people around the world). Scenes in The Matrix during which a cascade of bullets fall from the sky, or a platoon of soldiers unwisely attempt to pin down the two lead characters in a marble-lined atrium, are obvious genre stereotypes. But it is also an action film with a number of differences that together create a tension between this and such stereotypes. In what other such movie did the heroine use a mobile phone to call up a ten second ‘brain dump’ on how to fly a military helicopter — and then jump aboard and just do it? Here it is obvious that The Matrix pushes the envelope of genre expectations and provides the viewer with those striking moments of surprise and delight as expectations are disturbed or transcended. And, speaking of transcendence, there are remarkable moments of meditative calm in the film which, besides giving some relief from intense action sequences, disrupt the conventional pace and ‘feel’ of standard action movies. What is disturbing in this context is that the film contains hints, large hints, of some sort of inner life — hardly a feature of action movies! Neo, the male lead, is portrayed as ‘the One’, a messiah-like figure who eventually gains the power to stop bullets, fly, and break the illusion of the Matrix. Such powers differ from those possessed by the usual one-dimensional action hero. A third (and by no means mutually exclusive) way to interpret The Matrix is to see it as an only partially successful post-modern fable; a sequence of sometimes coherent, sometimes incoherent, images, themes, storylines etc. For me this is the most persuasive reading of the film. The latter is a self-aware metafiction that offers multiple readings and interpretations that are impossible to separate from the viewer’s own perceptions, interests and understandings. This becomes clearer as the viewer becomes more familiar with the structure of the film. On a second and third viewing one becomes increasingly aware of the film as a constructed spectacle in which the viewer is carried uncritically along, literally entrained, in a sequence of compelling and dramatic images, words, sound, music. But the more I actually reflected on the film, the less coherent it became. For example, there are unresolved paradoxes about the reality/unreality interface that simply do not surface on a first viewing. If the human race were actually living in a vast and shared illusion, why would an empire of machines maintain it? Such advanced technologies would have little need for
Film / Futures 33 (2001) 209–211
211
people. Why would machine agents have any credible role for that illusion? If, as a ‘real’ person, you somehow emerged from the illusion and were living in the ‘real’ dystopian world, would not your existence be compromised beyond all hope of recovery? And why would anyone be flying what looks a lot like a space ship through the sewers and tunnels of an earlier civilisation? Would not the machine empire have infinitely more powerful means of subverting such break-outs than human-like androids or bio-octopi equipped with laser mouthpieces? The notion that there could be anywhere called Zion, the last human city on earth (or rather under it) is scarcely credible given the overwhelming power of the machines and the supposed universality of the matrix. These plot assumptions simply do not hang together at all well. Hence the universe of The Matrix is incoherent. The film succeeds admirably as an emotionally powerful experience of movie making and movie going. It is evident from ‘The Making of the Matrix’ (the TV promo broadcast in Australia during late 1999) that the cast and crew had a ball. But the product of their effort does not hang together in terms of propositions and reality claims about people, machines and the relations between them in this, the ‘real’ world. As such it is a compelling exercise in unreality or, in short, an elegant, but troubling, illusion. It may best be understood as a product of the circulation of fragments of popular culture moving out of their original contexts, through the minds and the very impressive technical capacities of the makers, and from there back into the popular realm again. No doubt it will inspire a sequel of itself and spin-offs in various media (look out for the TV series in due course). Fragments of The Matrix will emerge and re-emerge in further post-modern fictions of the early 21st century. But what The Matrix ‘means’ cannot be neatly confined to any one interpretative box. Richard A. Slaughter Australian Foresight Institute, Swinburne University, John Street Hawthorne, Vic. 3122, Australia E-mail address: [email protected]
Film The Matrix: a disturbing post-modern puzzle The Matrix was made in Sydney for about US$100 million. Both the movie itself, and its DVD spin-off, were instant commercial successes. The blend of SF, action movie, kung fu, homage to Japanese manga films and to various comic sources evidently proved compelling to a large audience. Rumours of a sequel abound. So what is ‘The Matrix’ and why has it been such a success? The second question is easier to answer than the first. Its success, I think, rests on the blend of sources, coupled with innovative visual effects that set new industry standards. Few who have seen the film will quickly forget moments such as the early fight scene in which Trinity, the female lead, leaps into a slow-motion martial arts pose of extreme elegance while the ‘camera’ (actually a complex array of cameras) circles this dream-like action through a full 360 degrees. Few will forget the helicopter crash into the side of a glass-walled building (a sequence that took months to plan and shoot) or the slow-motion fight sequences during which the seemingly invulnerable protagonists turn impossible cartwheels amid a hail of bullets. The SF scenes, too, although brief, are intense and detailed. In other words this is a dramatically, and visually, powerful film. It was crafted from sources that are seldom assembled so effectively. Another factor in its success is that the film is not easily resolved, categorised, digested — and therefore forgotten. It presents the viewer with a many-layered puzzle that implicitly and explicitly draws us into a compelling interpretative embrace. Many, perhaps most, people would, I suspect, still be thinking about ‘what it means’ long after the brilliance of the special effects had faded. This, undoubtedly, is one of the reasons for the strong sell-through on DVD and video. So what frameworks of meaning are suggested in The Matrix? Well, I can think of three. No doubt many more are possible. Perhaps the most obvious is the straight SF movie. Here is a future world in which machines have overwhelmed and enslaved the human race. The environment is ruined. People exist in vats in a machine-mediated limbo world. The matrix provides a veil of illusion that the machines have created in order to keep homo sapiens as some sort of biological resource. This, in fact, is one of the weakest propositions underlying the film. I cannot imagine any kind of machine future in which the former would either want or need to maintain its fleshy predecessors, be it in vats or otherwise, let alone see them as a necessary resource. Such fictions should never be taken literally. They were always more about our fears of machine domination, technological dystopias, than they were credible scenarios of such diminished states. Still, the sequences depicting an enormous human vat farm, Neo’s (the male lead played by PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 3 2 8 7 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 6 6 - 5
210
Film / Futures 33 (2001) 209–211
Kianu Reeves) emergence from the vat, the pursuit of Morpheus’ vessel though underground tunnels by octopus-like scavengers — these and many other scenes are depicted with enormous flair and attention to detail. The directors have certainly brought a compelling and original vision to the film, and it shows. As a SF movie, The Matrix raises the same kind of questions that have been explored in literary SF for several decades. What is reality? Is this the ‘real’ world, or is there a more ‘real’ one somehow underlying it? Do machines constitute a real threat to the future of humanity? Could they, in some sense, ‘take over’? Could we become their servants? Certainly the young sons of a colleague of mine were asking just such questions on the way home from the film, and that is no bad thing. Maybe these questions should be asked more often by adults too. A second way to ‘see’ The Matrix is as a homage to, and comment upon, action movies, and inspired by some of the sources mentioned above. Parts of it are indeed very similar to others, particularly the Schwartzenegger action/SF crossover, Terminator Two (which became a kind of ‘default future’ for very many young people around the world). Scenes in The Matrix during which a cascade of bullets fall from the sky, or a platoon of soldiers unwisely attempt to pin down the two lead characters in a marble-lined atrium, are obvious genre stereotypes. But it is also an action film with a number of differences that together create a tension between this and such stereotypes. In what other such movie did the heroine use a mobile phone to call up a ten second ‘brain dump’ on how to fly a military helicopter — and then jump aboard and just do it? Here it is obvious that The Matrix pushes the envelope of genre expectations and provides the viewer with those striking moments of surprise and delight as expectations are disturbed or transcended. And, speaking of transcendence, there are remarkable moments of meditative calm in the film which, besides giving some relief from intense action sequences, disrupt the conventional pace and ‘feel’ of standard action movies. What is disturbing in this context is that the film contains hints, large hints, of some sort of inner life — hardly a feature of action movies! Neo, the male lead, is portrayed as ‘the One’, a messiah-like figure who eventually gains the power to stop bullets, fly, and break the illusion of the Matrix. Such powers differ from those possessed by the usual one-dimensional action hero. A third (and by no means mutually exclusive) way to interpret The Matrix is to see it as an only partially successful post-modern fable; a sequence of sometimes coherent, sometimes incoherent, images, themes, storylines etc. For me this is the most persuasive reading of the film. The latter is a self-aware metafiction that offers multiple readings and interpretations that are impossible to separate from the viewer’s own perceptions, interests and understandings. This becomes clearer as the viewer becomes more familiar with the structure of the film. On a second and third viewing one becomes increasingly aware of the film as a constructed spectacle in which the viewer is carried uncritically along, literally entrained, in a sequence of compelling and dramatic images, words, sound, music. But the more I actually reflected on the film, the less coherent it became. For example, there are unresolved paradoxes about the reality/unreality interface that simply do not surface on a first viewing. If the human race were actually living in a vast and shared illusion, why would an empire of machines maintain it? Such advanced technologies would have little need for
Film / Futures 33 (2001) 209–211
211
people. Why would machine agents have any credible role for that illusion? If, as a ‘real’ person, you somehow emerged from the illusion and were living in the ‘real’ dystopian world, would not your existence be compromised beyond all hope of recovery? And why would anyone be flying what looks a lot like a space ship through the sewers and tunnels of an earlier civilisation? Would not the machine empire have infinitely more powerful means of subverting such break-outs than human-like androids or bio-octopi equipped with laser mouthpieces? The notion that there could be anywhere called Zion, the last human city on earth (or rather under it) is scarcely credible given the overwhelming power of the machines and the supposed universality of the matrix. These plot assumptions simply do not hang together at all well. Hence the universe of The Matrix is incoherent. The film succeeds admirably as an emotionally powerful experience of movie making and movie going. It is evident from ‘The Making of the Matrix’ (the TV promo broadcast in Australia during late 1999) that the cast and crew had a ball. But the product of their effort does not hang together in terms of propositions and reality claims about people, machines and the relations between them in this, the ‘real’ world. As such it is a compelling exercise in unreality or, in short, an elegant, but troubling, illusion. It may best be understood as a product of the circulation of fragments of popular culture moving out of their original contexts, through the minds and the very impressive technical capacities of the makers, and from there back into the popular realm again. No doubt it will inspire a sequel of itself and spin-offs in various media (look out for the TV series in due course). Fragments of The Matrix will emerge and re-emerge in further post-modern fictions of the early 21st century. But what The Matrix ‘means’ cannot be neatly confined to any one interpretative box. Richard A. Slaughter Australian Foresight Institute, Swinburne University, John Street Hawthorne, Vic. 3122, Australia E-mail address: [email protected]