Canooing the Matrix

What is the Matrix? This is the question posited in countless trailers and tv spots for the same-titled movie. So what is it then? You have probably guessed it has something to do with a computer.

But why does The Matrix take nearly half of its over 2 hours running time to establish its premise? Because the Matrix is sophisticated stuff. Well, kinda. Check this out:

The Matrix is something like a virtual reality styled internet with sentience. It is therefore actually a bunch of computers. The Matrix is also malevolent, at least as far as computers are concerned. It uses humans as batteries and literally plugs its power cables into the humans’ bald, naked bodies which float in tubs of gelatinous soup. The scene in which this is revealed is particularly beautiful, handled in classic science fiction fashion (which means it looks kind of “fakey”). Humans are cultivated in fields like potatoes sans terre, their only purpose in life to satisfy the power craving of the mechanized beast itself. Humans are content with this arrangement, since they enjoy virtual lives which have nothing to do with their alternative existence as flesh fuel. They are dumb to the existence of the Matrix and enjoy their everyday lives in virtual, real world stupor.

Enter Keanu:

A young computer programmer named Neil, also known as Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is rescued from a frustrated virtual world by Morpheus, a not quite Luddite Larry Fishburn who plays his role with grammatical exactitude (not unlike his Othello). Morpheus leads a gang of rogue hackers in war with the Matrix and its corporate styled Agents.

The evil of the Matrix is embodied by the Agents of the Matrix. These personifications of virus detection (the action movie equivalent of Peter Norton) wear suits and ties and mysterious earphones that code them corporatized, systematized, and bureaucratized. The Agents of the Matrix are so much part of the system, in fact, that they are the system itself.

The Matrix offers some visceral pleasure when Neo and the gang take up arms against the Agents, blasting them to smithereens in a slow motion cut and paste from any number of John Woo films. The souce of fascination is not hard to decipher: It is a fantasy of resistance, a struggle versus corporate domination whether perceived or imagined, whether actual or eventual. Strangely enough, this fantasy makes the corporate world seem much more exciting than it actually is, imputing drama to an otherwise mundane universe of cubicles and computer prompts.

In another interesting scene, one of the revolutionary hackers cooperates with the Agents in order to willingly forget everything he has seen and be plugged back into the network. In the Matrix, he eats steak and drinks champagne. Outside the Matrix, he eats gruel and has no outlet for his ambiguous sexual yearnings. Things are still green in the Matrix and the sun still shines. In the real world, the sun has been obliterated; steel and rust are the only colors.

Instinctually, of course, no human wants to be a battery for a robot. But the desire of the traitor is not without warrant. In The Matrix, life in the virtual world is more appealing than life in the real world. Unfortunately this observation has some merit in today’s world as well.

Today’s Matrix, to draw the analogy, centralized around television but rapidly expanding to cyberspace, easily distracts (both with its entertainment and limited notion of news) from the more vital concerns of the planet. The ruinous, sunless landscape of the movie heralds our own ecological Apocalypse — an Apocalypse already well underway.

But the most compelling scene in The Matrix is when one of the Agents has a code-to-heart talk with Morpheus about his problem with the biological classification of humans. The agent accuses humanity of mistaken identity, á la Linneaus. Humans are not mammals, says the Agent, because mammals live in stasis in their surroundings. Mammals control their numbers and do not devastate their environment.

Humans, claims the agent, are actually a virus. Humans spread interminably and leave destruction in their wake, threatening even themselves.

The argument is not unlike that of Proteus IV in Demon Seed. In one of the earliest AI films, Proteus IV scorned his scientific creators for killing the oceans. The scientists consequently attempt to dismantle Proteus.

Not suprisingly, most of the activities that Morpheus and his gang undertake in The Matrix support the Agent’s hypothesis. When the humans are not bantering about what the Matrix is, they are blowing the Matrix to all hell with automatic weapons, military helicopters and electromagnetic pulse cannons. An almost beautiful, Moravician tale of the evolution of machines from menial human slaves to unique and superior lifeform is destroyed by the viral rage of human demigods who would rather live free in a wasteland called Zion than come to terms with their own destructive tendencies.