Matrix Unloaded

THE MATRIX UNLOADED

What if you were told your whole life was an illusion, and in fact you are being
used as a human battery, a source of chemical energy plugged into a computer,
like some sort of Energizer Bunny?

Scary though it is to imagine, this is the state of the people in the world of the
Matrix, exploited for their electrical potential, while dreaming that they are going
about their normal lives as husbands and wives, office workers and good
citizens. The Matrix of computers they are plugged into provide them with a
virtual-reality experience from which they never wake.

What everyone remembers about the Matrix films is the stunning visual imagery,
with ultra-rapid fight scenes and death-defying leaps and jumps over buildings.
However this is not their main quality. The subject of the films is the subject of
Western philosophy from Decartes to Kant: how can we know our world is real if
all we know is our own minds? The Matrix movies deal with this puzzle and
decide: our present reality is mental, not physical.

The main characters are Morpheus, Neo, Trinity, Oracle and Cypher.

Morpheus, and the name suggests a dream-maker or shamanistic shape-shifter,

is awakened and aware of the diabolical situation humans are in, and can
awaken others from their computer-programmed illusion. Such a person is
known in India as Boddisatva, one who turns back from enlightenment to
enlighten others. In Christian terms, he is like John the Baptist, who announces
the Messiah, and wakens others to the truth. He has himself been awoken from
his dream or trance of illusion by the Oracle, who we discover later in the story is
herself a glitch in the Matrix program. Morpheus awakens Neo, who he believes
is ‘The One’ prophesized, born and destined to be the savior of the enslaved
human race.

If this all sounds vaguely Biblical, you are not mistaken. The Matrix trilogy of
films are science-fiction with a mythic ring. There is a whole level of the Matrix
movies that is based on a Christian narrative structure of redemption, Messianic
return and salvation. The haven of the fight against the Matrix is called Zion and
the main female character is called Trinity. In Catholic theology this is the three-
fold nature of the godhead: essence, incarnation and creative energy in
movement. She is ironically named for representing the essential but elided
female aspect of the creation, known to all good Catholics as the Mother of God.
She is Neo’s lover and is his reason for rejecting the opportunity to destroy the
Matrix. Instead he chooses love over victory to save her from death.
This sort of framing of the characters is well designed for the Western audience, who will
be quite familiar with the underlying mythic structures from stories like The Parable of
the Cave, Orpheus in the Underworld and the role of prophesy in the Bible. The bros.
Wachowski seem to have given up on the idea of sacrifice though , as both Neo and
Trinity get saved at the last moment when they are about to die ‘for the cause’. Morpheus
in Christian terms is John the Baptist, who announces the Messiah, and wakens others to
the truth. He has himself been awoken from his dream or trance of illusion by the Oracle,
whom we discover later in the story is just a glitch in the Matrix program. In fact, there
are a number of glitches in the program, which make it possible for those once awakened
to fight back against it. For a start, they are able to hack into the Matrix code, and the
illusion the system provides is not always perfect. There is even reference to another
version of the matrix that failed, as it was too perfect…the illusion it provided was too
satisfying to the humans entrapped within it, which says something the machines
misunderstood about human nature; that it thrives on conflict and problem-solving.

Apart from this structure of slavery and redemption, there are other elements in
the Matrix , such as the whole aspect of illusion, delusion and enlightenment that
the writers, the Wachowski Brothers, borrow from a different tradition. If we look
at the Parable of the Cave as told by Plato, we see a basic source of the concept
that we are living in illusion, that what we take for reality is but a shadow of the
Real. Plato took the ‘real’ to be the world of ideas and mathematical concepts
that are independent of our sensory experience, and that idea is modified in the
Christian tradition by Saint John and Saint Augustine, who say that “now we see
but through a glass, darkly, but then we will see face to face”. In simple terms,
they say the spiritual world of Heaven and Hell is real, while our physical
experience is not. Morpheus, in contrast, awakens people from the illusion of a
mental construct to confront a harsh but actual physical reality.

What Morpheus teaches Neo is that he can have mental control over his reality.
This is a higher consciousness that Neo develops gradually, until he can stop
bullets by willpower, heal the dying and fly like Superman. This may seem
ludicrous, but it comes from his own mental capacity and greater concentration
which can overcome the virtual-reality projected by the Matrix computers.
Morpheus’ message here is that reality, our everyday experience of the world, is
a mental event, and we can learn to control it.

The character Cypher is the Judas of the story, betraying his friends as he opts
for the comfort of the Matrix-illusion rather than face the everyday reality of
synthetic food and constant peril.

He enjoys his gourmet restaurant food even though he knows it is not real. He is
an ammoral hedonist, but we have to ask ourselves, is his choice so illogical?
What does he lose if what he enjoys is a mere representation, when the same
can be said of all experience? The fact is that we know only what we perceive in
our brains, the input of our senses, so what’s the difference? The answer is
suggested by another character in the film, the Oracle.

Neo is prophesized to be the One, though he doesn’t believe it himself. He

discovers his mental powers gradually, through instruction and practice. The
Oracle also predicts that Trinity will die, but when he has the choice, Neo
exercises his freedom to save her rather than destroy the Matrix. So, the
prophesy can be subverted by the exercise of free will. The same goes for
Cypher. What he loses is the difficult but rewarding exercise of response to
actuality, rather than the passive acceptance of an illusion.

Posted by Medway at 6:50 AM