The Matrix - The Ecstatic Reprieve Of The Loss Of Contemporaneity: The Matrix Conundrum
Thoughts On: The Matrix (1999)
An average man attempts to liberate himself from a simulated reality.
Not long ago, I saw in a cinema the restored version of The Matrix. I forgot how good this film is. I truly did. For years and years, I watched this on VHS and DVD, constantly enamoured by its depth and spectacle. The older the film gets, the more enticing it becomes. Such has much to do with it falling into what is now a rather distant epoch of film history. The 90s, when looking back through the history of film, seems like a moment ago. But, now we are entering a new decade, it is becoming ever more pronounced how 'old' certain films are. Not many years ago, I wouldn't think twice when considering the likes of Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park and other incredibly popular 90s films contemporary. Now, in the 20s, we have to think twice. Whilst these films sit on the edge of what is currently modern cinema, they exist in a very different world; specifically, a world not yet profoundly impacted by the internet and digital technology. Films of this era, Jurassic Park and Fight Club as just two examples, certainly foreshadow to some degree modern digital cinema, but the cinematic culture of the present has changed immeasurably. Before getting too lost in this topic, its significance in regards to The Matrix is the reprieve a film garners when escaping contemporaneity. When a film is no longer contemporary, its social relevance becomes historical and its technological and aesthetic achievements conventional. This signifies a key transformation that a cinematic work takes at it ages, and we do not pay much attention to this. We all know films age, but how does this effect how we watch them, and more importantly, how they project their meaning?
When a film becomes 'old' - I use this term to simply colloquially convey the point that a film loses its contemporaneity - its sociopolitical stakes are lessened to a significant degree. In fact, they move out of a realm of commentary and debate, and into the realm of relative novelty. If we consider, then, the discourse that The Matrix engages on technology, individuality, free will and even identity, we find it of lesser relevance. It is not that the thematic discourse is entirely irrelevant and insubstantial just because the film has aged, rather, the object of the film's (conscious, outward) discourse - the culture of the late 90s - no longer exists. This has many consequences. Primary among them is insurmountably of the lost and unknowable. A contemporary film suffers (or maybe gains) from the fact that the people living in its presence think they know what is going on. Sensations of the 'zeitgeist' pull us into (semi)consciously perturbed states when engaging a film with clear political and social commentary; we feel the film speak to us, or to a place and time we know and so have some view of, and so our reaction to its commentary is volatile. When a film ages, this volatility in the audience dissipates as they have distance, and furthermore, the unknowablity of a time and place becomes more inherently acceptable. When one then reads, for example, a book such as Jane Eyre, its social commentary is historically novel and intriguing. We feel we peep into a time and place lost almost entirely. The book may stir us on the level of its social and political discourse, as any art will stir us, when we choose to identify with the time and place that formulate the object of its discourse. But, this may not be a natural reaction. Thus, the novelty of such a book's social commentary, and thus the necessity of research. One does not necessarily have to be a student of film and history to engage a contemporary film's political discourse if they are somewhat aware of current events. But, to better understand that element of, for example, Casablanca, one does require research or to be something of a student of film and history. Without this, the nationalist and isolationist elements of the film - its commentary on the American involvement in WWII - may not be at all registered, let alone stir and affect the spectator.
Without dwelling on sociopolitical stakes, one can also see a film becoming 'conventionalised' when it gets old. In the case of The Matrix, its special effects and digital technology cannot count, now, as good or bad CGI. The special effects are simply the effects of the time. You could argue that it takes a student of film to accept this. It is difficult to assert, but, when someone looks back on the 1933 King Kong, do they see hilariously bad special effects, or the technological aesthetics of the time? I think many would be able to accept that this is what a 30s film is like and likely enjoy the movie on this basis, but it does not take much imagination to envisage someone refusing to watch the film because it is old and the special effects are terrible. You would certainly frown on a student of film if they made such a comment. That said, this subject is wider than technology. With epochal distance, the aesthetics, cinematic language, acting, cinematography, etc. all are retired from being exclamatory statements of the cutting edge and the avant-garde. 'What we should do', and 'how things should be', become, 'what they did'. Again, certain stakes are taken away. But, more accessible and pertinent than sociopolitical commentary, the aesthetics of an old film are less likely to be considered mere spectacle, and more so a convention or formal strategy worth attention and study. Beyond this, the conventionalisation of aesthetic makes a film style acceptable and not worth so much critique - study, yes, critique, no: what is the point of critiquing a 30 year old film if it will have little direct impact on how film aesthetics will continue to evolve? Again, old films are subsumed in novelty of a certain kind. But, I believe this is a positive phenomena. Not only are old films more acceptable and less charged (due to a lack of cultural relevance), but they emphasise they unknown.
We do not know what a film is when we see it. It is all too common for us to act as if this is the case when we watch, for example, the latest Star Wars film. But, what exactly is The Last Jedi? I can certainly offer a long list of answers, but, all things said, no one knows. All phenomena, especially popular phenomena, exist in a network of interdependent relationships so vast and incomprehensible that anyone who has even the slightest respect for this fact, would not dare to assert that something may be known, labelled and defined in its totality. So, whilst The Last Jedi is clearly related to the contemporary trend of cinematic universes and has its ties to contemporary debates of identity and representation and whilst it takes of advantage of the latest digital technology, the film is much more than these component parts. Looking back on a film such as The Matrix, this becomes ever more acceptable - or at least it should be. With distance, we can look back on trends of the cinematic culture of the 90s and make more sophisticated assessments of what was going on in and around the time of the film's release. More important than this, however, is the fact that... is there much of a point in doing this? There is certainly not no point in remapping film history as time goes by, but, I mean to speak to the sociopolitical element of old films. How much does this really matter? The mechanisms for its evocation are always fascinating, but the substance of the commentary matters not. It falls on deaf ears in some respects. What resonates are those inherent and deep parts of the cinema that live on always. Old films bare enhanced primordial imagery and archetypes for the fact that the unconscious receptors of the unknown are more sensitive when conscious cognition of various commentary is dampened and dull. Of course consciousness still presents its challenges in people assuming that they can know a time, place and its phenomenon, but let us not get lost. The subject is far more vast and complex than I have let on, but there is a reprieve in the loss of contemporaneity, one that, I think, allows a film to really just be a film in some respects.
Digression over, I have been thinking about The Matrix quite a bit of recent - as something of a consequence to it now being an old movie you could suggest. Suddenly it has become apparent to me that so much of the trilogy is found in one shot:
When Neo becomes the one, he sees the Matrix as it is. He sees not a coherent system of textures and physical boundaries, but mere fluctuations in the density of varying code. As Morpheus alludes to earlier in the film, once this situation can be understood, once the rules of the Matrix can be recognised as just this (rules), then this situation and its rules can be bent and overcome. Before falling into this, let us take a step back and ask of the physical world. Is the 'real world' so dissimilar to the Matrix if it too can be understood as a flux of energy with varying momentum and density? This is what varying philosophical systems emphasise. Taoism can be taken as one example. Qi, or chi, is a key Taoist concept that relates all matter and energy to Tao - a preeminent nature or way of things. In a rough Taoist cosmology, as the universe moved from a state of wuji (a primordial, empty universe) to taiji (the universe split into its yin-yang elements), yuanqi (original qi) becomes differentiated qi and continuously transforms in accordance to Tao. Whilst Tao can never be known and named, qi is encoded by it. All that is may then be understood by various principals of Tao - yin-yang being the most famous. It is for this reason that there exists the following logic in one of the most famous verses from a Taoist text:
Seeing the world as a composition of vaguely differentiated qi, it becomes very hard to know what is self and what is other or to assert the boundaries between transforming and transformed. For this reason, there is a real argument for taking the blue pill. What is the difference between the Matrix and the real world in these circumstances - even when one knows they exist in a coded realm? This question is only not rhetorical when will enters the picture. The Matrix constructs Neo's character on the assertion that one can believe that they can be in control of their life and overcome fate. Realising the Matrix's coding and knowing that robots constructed it is an affront to will for Neo. It is upon the assumption that there exists an essential, inherent will of humanity that humans - or the human essence - are framed as transcendent of the Matrix. That means that it is because of human will that, when the Matrix is understood as it really is, that it can be bent and manipulated. This is a fascinating assumption. If we could put on Matrix goggles on in the real world and see atoms and energy as mere coding, would human will be able to overcome it? This sounds like a silly question if we map the happenings of The Matrix onto this hypothetical; no we wouldn't be able to be physically stronger, faster and fly if we simply saw and comprehended nature as a code like Neo. But, if one steps back a moment, they will quickly see that this is in fact history. Understanding physics and biology has made humans stronger and faster, and, of course, we can fly. We use machines and tools to do this, true. But, the relationship between science and technological evolution can be read as a matter of will and an indication that the conscious self transcends reality. In the same way that Neo sought to break out of the Matrix by seeing it for what it really is, so do humans seek to transcend their reality with science. In doing so, will we return to where we came from? Will we escape a constructed Matrix?
Let us not go too far with this extrapolation as it emerges only from the thematic assertions around Neo as a hero archetype. Whilst the will is affirmed in many of its aspects through The Matrix, its origins are never questioned. Thus the importance of belief. Characters are motivated, most fundamentally, by an inner force that they assign their identity to and take possession of. But, who is to say that will is ours? Who can deny that the true Matrix is consciousness; the system of code reception that we are bound to act by? In Buddhist philosophy, self is considered to not exist under such logic; as much as reality is a system of energy and matter, so is the body, and as a result, to equal degrees, the body and reality are considered to have no real quality or character that is essential and independently--transcendentally or immanently--material. Such formulates the true conundrum at the base of The Matrix. Humans are shown to follow their will as to seek liberation. But this liberation is mere belief. And by belief, I mean to say that the unknowable is transformed into self. Therefore, the human is defined by a yearning for the unknown comprehended by self. But this yearning can be fulfilled in both the Matrix and real world--all upon belief. So, what is the difference between the real world and the Matrix. This rhetorical question is why the Matrix is never truly destroyed, but rebooted in the end of the trilogy. The people of Zion are simply allowed to live, and the subjects that want to leave the Matrix are allowed to. But, what has changed? The Matrix still exists for those who accept it and those who do not still live under ground. What is the importance of freedom in this case if not for the satisfaction of the belief in will? This is the conundrum,
What is really of interest here is the revelation that the Matrix and the machines are much like humanity and humans. They seek to transcend their own confines: this is what the Smith program represents. Neo helps the machines destroy Smith because he is the only way in which humanity may live on in and beyond the Matrix. What makes him the villain here is then his archetypal desire to own all; to validate his identification with all matter. So whilst humans and machines are shown to inherently identify with their own will or programming, they share a moral refusal to identify with all materiality and seek to control the entire world. What does this mean? It is hard to assert that this means anything of particular substance. It seems to suggest that sentient beings are bound by both the Freudian will to survive and the drive to die. The Matrix then ultimately only asserts a seemingly insurmountable conundrum: the belief in will. It frames this as the fundament and destroyer of a self capable of only intermittent peace.
But, of course, this is not all that The Matrix is about. Let us no forget that Neo only became the One because Trinity loved him. The implications of this provide an alternative way of thinking of The Matrix, framing the narrative on the principal of unity rather than will and self. But, maybe we can explore this further another time. For now, what are your thoughts on The Matrix now that it really is an old film?
An average man attempts to liberate himself from a simulated reality.
Not long ago, I saw in a cinema the restored version of The Matrix. I forgot how good this film is. I truly did. For years and years, I watched this on VHS and DVD, constantly enamoured by its depth and spectacle. The older the film gets, the more enticing it becomes. Such has much to do with it falling into what is now a rather distant epoch of film history. The 90s, when looking back through the history of film, seems like a moment ago. But, now we are entering a new decade, it is becoming ever more pronounced how 'old' certain films are. Not many years ago, I wouldn't think twice when considering the likes of Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park and other incredibly popular 90s films contemporary. Now, in the 20s, we have to think twice. Whilst these films sit on the edge of what is currently modern cinema, they exist in a very different world; specifically, a world not yet profoundly impacted by the internet and digital technology. Films of this era, Jurassic Park and Fight Club as just two examples, certainly foreshadow to some degree modern digital cinema, but the cinematic culture of the present has changed immeasurably. Before getting too lost in this topic, its significance in regards to The Matrix is the reprieve a film garners when escaping contemporaneity. When a film is no longer contemporary, its social relevance becomes historical and its technological and aesthetic achievements conventional. This signifies a key transformation that a cinematic work takes at it ages, and we do not pay much attention to this. We all know films age, but how does this effect how we watch them, and more importantly, how they project their meaning?
When a film becomes 'old' - I use this term to simply colloquially convey the point that a film loses its contemporaneity - its sociopolitical stakes are lessened to a significant degree. In fact, they move out of a realm of commentary and debate, and into the realm of relative novelty. If we consider, then, the discourse that The Matrix engages on technology, individuality, free will and even identity, we find it of lesser relevance. It is not that the thematic discourse is entirely irrelevant and insubstantial just because the film has aged, rather, the object of the film's (conscious, outward) discourse - the culture of the late 90s - no longer exists. This has many consequences. Primary among them is insurmountably of the lost and unknowable. A contemporary film suffers (or maybe gains) from the fact that the people living in its presence think they know what is going on. Sensations of the 'zeitgeist' pull us into (semi)consciously perturbed states when engaging a film with clear political and social commentary; we feel the film speak to us, or to a place and time we know and so have some view of, and so our reaction to its commentary is volatile. When a film ages, this volatility in the audience dissipates as they have distance, and furthermore, the unknowablity of a time and place becomes more inherently acceptable. When one then reads, for example, a book such as Jane Eyre, its social commentary is historically novel and intriguing. We feel we peep into a time and place lost almost entirely. The book may stir us on the level of its social and political discourse, as any art will stir us, when we choose to identify with the time and place that formulate the object of its discourse. But, this may not be a natural reaction. Thus, the novelty of such a book's social commentary, and thus the necessity of research. One does not necessarily have to be a student of film and history to engage a contemporary film's political discourse if they are somewhat aware of current events. But, to better understand that element of, for example, Casablanca, one does require research or to be something of a student of film and history. Without this, the nationalist and isolationist elements of the film - its commentary on the American involvement in WWII - may not be at all registered, let alone stir and affect the spectator.
Without dwelling on sociopolitical stakes, one can also see a film becoming 'conventionalised' when it gets old. In the case of The Matrix, its special effects and digital technology cannot count, now, as good or bad CGI. The special effects are simply the effects of the time. You could argue that it takes a student of film to accept this. It is difficult to assert, but, when someone looks back on the 1933 King Kong, do they see hilariously bad special effects, or the technological aesthetics of the time? I think many would be able to accept that this is what a 30s film is like and likely enjoy the movie on this basis, but it does not take much imagination to envisage someone refusing to watch the film because it is old and the special effects are terrible. You would certainly frown on a student of film if they made such a comment. That said, this subject is wider than technology. With epochal distance, the aesthetics, cinematic language, acting, cinematography, etc. all are retired from being exclamatory statements of the cutting edge and the avant-garde. 'What we should do', and 'how things should be', become, 'what they did'. Again, certain stakes are taken away. But, more accessible and pertinent than sociopolitical commentary, the aesthetics of an old film are less likely to be considered mere spectacle, and more so a convention or formal strategy worth attention and study. Beyond this, the conventionalisation of aesthetic makes a film style acceptable and not worth so much critique - study, yes, critique, no: what is the point of critiquing a 30 year old film if it will have little direct impact on how film aesthetics will continue to evolve? Again, old films are subsumed in novelty of a certain kind. But, I believe this is a positive phenomena. Not only are old films more acceptable and less charged (due to a lack of cultural relevance), but they emphasise they unknown.
We do not know what a film is when we see it. It is all too common for us to act as if this is the case when we watch, for example, the latest Star Wars film. But, what exactly is The Last Jedi? I can certainly offer a long list of answers, but, all things said, no one knows. All phenomena, especially popular phenomena, exist in a network of interdependent relationships so vast and incomprehensible that anyone who has even the slightest respect for this fact, would not dare to assert that something may be known, labelled and defined in its totality. So, whilst The Last Jedi is clearly related to the contemporary trend of cinematic universes and has its ties to contemporary debates of identity and representation and whilst it takes of advantage of the latest digital technology, the film is much more than these component parts. Looking back on a film such as The Matrix, this becomes ever more acceptable - or at least it should be. With distance, we can look back on trends of the cinematic culture of the 90s and make more sophisticated assessments of what was going on in and around the time of the film's release. More important than this, however, is the fact that... is there much of a point in doing this? There is certainly not no point in remapping film history as time goes by, but, I mean to speak to the sociopolitical element of old films. How much does this really matter? The mechanisms for its evocation are always fascinating, but the substance of the commentary matters not. It falls on deaf ears in some respects. What resonates are those inherent and deep parts of the cinema that live on always. Old films bare enhanced primordial imagery and archetypes for the fact that the unconscious receptors of the unknown are more sensitive when conscious cognition of various commentary is dampened and dull. Of course consciousness still presents its challenges in people assuming that they can know a time, place and its phenomenon, but let us not get lost. The subject is far more vast and complex than I have let on, but there is a reprieve in the loss of contemporaneity, one that, I think, allows a film to really just be a film in some respects.
Digression over, I have been thinking about The Matrix quite a bit of recent - as something of a consequence to it now being an old movie you could suggest. Suddenly it has become apparent to me that so much of the trilogy is found in one shot:
When Neo becomes the one, he sees the Matrix as it is. He sees not a coherent system of textures and physical boundaries, but mere fluctuations in the density of varying code. As Morpheus alludes to earlier in the film, once this situation can be understood, once the rules of the Matrix can be recognised as just this (rules), then this situation and its rules can be bent and overcome. Before falling into this, let us take a step back and ask of the physical world. Is the 'real world' so dissimilar to the Matrix if it too can be understood as a flux of energy with varying momentum and density? This is what varying philosophical systems emphasise. Taoism can be taken as one example. Qi, or chi, is a key Taoist concept that relates all matter and energy to Tao - a preeminent nature or way of things. In a rough Taoist cosmology, as the universe moved from a state of wuji (a primordial, empty universe) to taiji (the universe split into its yin-yang elements), yuanqi (original qi) becomes differentiated qi and continuously transforms in accordance to Tao. Whilst Tao can never be known and named, qi is encoded by it. All that is may then be understood by various principals of Tao - yin-yang being the most famous. It is for this reason that there exists the following logic in one of the most famous verses from a Taoist text:
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu. However, there must be some sort of difference between Chuang Tzu and a butterfly! We call this the transformation of things.
Seeing the world as a composition of vaguely differentiated qi, it becomes very hard to know what is self and what is other or to assert the boundaries between transforming and transformed. For this reason, there is a real argument for taking the blue pill. What is the difference between the Matrix and the real world in these circumstances - even when one knows they exist in a coded realm? This question is only not rhetorical when will enters the picture. The Matrix constructs Neo's character on the assertion that one can believe that they can be in control of their life and overcome fate. Realising the Matrix's coding and knowing that robots constructed it is an affront to will for Neo. It is upon the assumption that there exists an essential, inherent will of humanity that humans - or the human essence - are framed as transcendent of the Matrix. That means that it is because of human will that, when the Matrix is understood as it really is, that it can be bent and manipulated. This is a fascinating assumption. If we could put on Matrix goggles on in the real world and see atoms and energy as mere coding, would human will be able to overcome it? This sounds like a silly question if we map the happenings of The Matrix onto this hypothetical; no we wouldn't be able to be physically stronger, faster and fly if we simply saw and comprehended nature as a code like Neo. But, if one steps back a moment, they will quickly see that this is in fact history. Understanding physics and biology has made humans stronger and faster, and, of course, we can fly. We use machines and tools to do this, true. But, the relationship between science and technological evolution can be read as a matter of will and an indication that the conscious self transcends reality. In the same way that Neo sought to break out of the Matrix by seeing it for what it really is, so do humans seek to transcend their reality with science. In doing so, will we return to where we came from? Will we escape a constructed Matrix?
Let us not go too far with this extrapolation as it emerges only from the thematic assertions around Neo as a hero archetype. Whilst the will is affirmed in many of its aspects through The Matrix, its origins are never questioned. Thus the importance of belief. Characters are motivated, most fundamentally, by an inner force that they assign their identity to and take possession of. But, who is to say that will is ours? Who can deny that the true Matrix is consciousness; the system of code reception that we are bound to act by? In Buddhist philosophy, self is considered to not exist under such logic; as much as reality is a system of energy and matter, so is the body, and as a result, to equal degrees, the body and reality are considered to have no real quality or character that is essential and independently--transcendentally or immanently--material. Such formulates the true conundrum at the base of The Matrix. Humans are shown to follow their will as to seek liberation. But this liberation is mere belief. And by belief, I mean to say that the unknowable is transformed into self. Therefore, the human is defined by a yearning for the unknown comprehended by self. But this yearning can be fulfilled in both the Matrix and real world--all upon belief. So, what is the difference between the real world and the Matrix. This rhetorical question is why the Matrix is never truly destroyed, but rebooted in the end of the trilogy. The people of Zion are simply allowed to live, and the subjects that want to leave the Matrix are allowed to. But, what has changed? The Matrix still exists for those who accept it and those who do not still live under ground. What is the importance of freedom in this case if not for the satisfaction of the belief in will? This is the conundrum,
What is really of interest here is the revelation that the Matrix and the machines are much like humanity and humans. They seek to transcend their own confines: this is what the Smith program represents. Neo helps the machines destroy Smith because he is the only way in which humanity may live on in and beyond the Matrix. What makes him the villain here is then his archetypal desire to own all; to validate his identification with all matter. So whilst humans and machines are shown to inherently identify with their own will or programming, they share a moral refusal to identify with all materiality and seek to control the entire world. What does this mean? It is hard to assert that this means anything of particular substance. It seems to suggest that sentient beings are bound by both the Freudian will to survive and the drive to die. The Matrix then ultimately only asserts a seemingly insurmountable conundrum: the belief in will. It frames this as the fundament and destroyer of a self capable of only intermittent peace.
But, of course, this is not all that The Matrix is about. Let us no forget that Neo only became the One because Trinity loved him. The implications of this provide an alternative way of thinking of The Matrix, framing the narrative on the principal of unity rather than will and self. But, maybe we can explore this further another time. For now, what are your thoughts on The Matrix now that it really is an old film?
