Matrix
Posted on September 24, 2002 @ 08:08 in Research
I watched the Matrix last night, for the first time since I saw it in the cinema. For quite a few people the Matrix is their only experience with, broadly phrased, cyberpunk, or indeed cyberspace. They don't know Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson or even Blade Runner. It's interesting then to see how the Matrix constructs the virtual, the real and technology.
Although on the face of it the virtual and the real seem dichotomous in the Matrix, the matter is somewhat more complex, starting with the fact that dying in the Matrix also means dying in Reality (we'll return to dying and not really dying in a moment). The movie starts in what we later learn to be the Matrix, a 'false world' controlled, let's say, by an artificially intelligent entity (plural?) that has enslaved humankind. Neo is coaxed to leave the Matrix behind and ends up in Reality: a vessel traversing the bowels of enormous ruined cities.
Next Morpheus takes Neo into a Construct to prepare him for future travels into the Matrix. This Construct, just like the Matrix, is a cyberspace, a virtual reality. The main difference between the two is that the Construct is under human control, whereas the Matrix is under the control of the evil entity/program. One of the first things Morpheus does in the Construct, is to show Neo how the world really looks like after a (nuclear?) war between the humans and the artificial intelligence(s) they created. Inside the Construct Neo and Morpheus find themselves in a postapocalyptic setting and Morpheus calls it "the desert of the real", referring to Baudrillard's use (coining?) of that phrase. So interestingly enough, the presentation of the most real reality takes place inside the Construct. Neo doesn't appear to doubt Morpheus' use of the Construct to present this reality and the claim that this is what is beyond the Reality of the vessel called Nebuchadnezzar. What follows is a series of 'jumps' between Reality and the Matrix, whereby Neo progressively learns to 'decode' the system that animates the Matrix.
The status of the Matrix and the Construct are at times compromised though. Other characters in the Matrix, such as the Oracle and the Potentials in the waiting room, seem to have some sort of knowledge of a reality or even Reality beyond the Matrix. This knowledge however is framed as mystical or religious inside the Matrix, rendering it powerless in the rationalist Western late 20th century. This framing of the knowledge however gains credibility in the frame of Reality, where allusions are made to the last stronghold of humankind, deep in the Earth's crust, called Zion. Again, interestingly, the Matrix's artificial intelligence(s) mainly in the form of Agent Smith are after the computer access codes that will give them access to this Zion. This seems to imply that they/it know where Zion is, but that begs the question why they cannot destroy it, or alternatively, they/it don't know where it is, but supposedly there is some sort of guarded online connection between Zion and the Matrix, which begs the question if Zion resides in Reality or in the Matrix.
Further compromise of Reality and the Matrix lies in their interconnection. Neo bleeds in Reality when hurt both in the Construct and in the Matrix. Neo asks at some point, "If you're killed in the Matrix, you die here?" and Morpheus replies, "The body cannot live without the mind." No mention is made of the (im)possibility of dying in Reality and living on in the Matrix. This seems precluded by the same logic that governs the inverse relation and Cypher kills several of the crew members by unplugging them while they're in the Matrix. The separation of mind and body means death, but at the same time it is the very separation of the body that stays behind in Reality and the mind that wanders the Matrix in the guise of a body that remarkably resembles the Real body that makes the whole notion of the Matrix, of virtual reality possible. The separation of body and mind is rather paradoxical, at once possible and impossible.
Or maybe that's my own simplified notion creeping in here: it could be argued that even when the mind wanders the Matrix, the center of experience is still firmly lodged in the actual body, in that body's brain. Morpheus seems to imply as much when Neo asks, "Right now we're inside a computer program?"
Morpheus: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plugs in your arms and head are gone. Your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self. Neo: This...this isn't real? Morpheus: 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. This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world, Neo. This is the world as it exists today... Welcome.. to the desert.. of the real.
The situation remains sketchy at best. A connection between mind and body is posited and the death of one leads to the death of the other, but it remains unclear if this happens exactly because body and mind are one and the same or because severing the tether of technology that makes it possibly for the mind to stray far from the physical body actually prevents the mind from returning to its body.
Another aspect of the movie (which personally troubles me most) that complicates all this, is the fact that Technology in the form of the Matrix/Artificial Intelligence/Agent Smith is portrayed as having robbed humankind of its humanity. Mere humans are, once again, in the hands of a saviour who possesses superhuman powers, but who appears to remain even more human than other humans. It might be said that Neo's neural reflexes are not so much superhuman, as that they are the magnified essence of what it means to be human. Neo's special ability is not so much that he possesses these powers, in theory it seems everybody could have them, but that he is the one who can unlock them by performing the essence of being human. This is underscored when Agent Jones, whose bullets manage to graze Neo, remarks: "Only human."
Performing the essence of being human centers around belief and much of the story revolves around Neo accepting the state of the world, the fact that he is a human in that world and finally believing in himself. This very secular belief in oneself and in being human is contrasted by the much discussed religious imagery of the movie. Near the end of the movie Neo actually dies in the Matrix and consequently in Reality when Agent Smith shoots him, but he is resurrected by Trinity professing her love for him in Reality and telling him that he can't be dead because the profecy of the Oracle said that she would fall in love with the One.
Trinity: So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be, because I love you. You hear me? I love you... Now get up.
It seems that there is one thing even stronger than the belief in oneself and in being human and that appears to be love. Neo gets up in the Matrix, having attained a form of enlightenment and now is able to see the "code", the construction of the Matrix for what it is, which grants him (almost?) total control over the construct that is the Matrix, defeats Agent Smith and then returns to Reality to find himself in Trinity's embrace and they kiss.
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I have been trying to find out what the plural word for matrix the movie not the mathimatics matrix or matrices but if they are both the same spelling then I nevermined
Posted by john on June 20, 2003 @ 17:35
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