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Philosophy, Reality and The Matrix
securitas writes "The NYT discusses The Matrix as a reflection of American society, the 'war on terror', political allegory and the impact of The Matrix on contemporary philosophy. NPR provides streaming audio conversations with Matrix thinkers, including Jake Horsley, author of 'Matrix Warrior: Being the One'; Prof. Frances Flannery Dailey on violence in the Matrix; and Prof. Greg Garrett, co-author of 'The Gospels Reloaded' and why he doesn't like the kind of hero that Neo has become. Finally, the CSM follows up its The Gospel According to Neo with an online chat transcript with Josh Burek, the author of the essay."
As if that's not enough Matrix Philosophy, Here's more
and Still more. And just a warning, clicking on any of those links might spoil the movie for you.
Here is the link :)
I am a mini oracle & here is my prediction for the future: At some point I bet NYtimes will start testing the referrer and block sites other than google. Then we will counter by copy pasting the link.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
I wonder, is the Matrix replacing Star Wars as our great "moderm" myth? There were many of the same religiously themed comparisons of the Star Wars saga during it's heyday, and we appear to be seeing much more with the Matrix. Could it be that the Matrix taps into the current generations sense of "myth" better than Star Wars did for my generation?
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Yes? And you now have people around the world answering census questions on religion with "Jedi." What I want to know is how many are registering at "Sith." Those people could be dangerous.
there are lots of people that hold the contrary opinion. i dont' consider a movie to be really really good unless i leave the theater thinking about the movie and think about it all the way home. plus if books were just for thinking, there wouldn't be romance novels or dirk pitt.
M-HM! Don't you try that brainwashing stuff on me you AGENT, I know what's real!
trms
Repeat after me, "The Matrix is a plot device, There is no deep philisophical meaning."
Bullocks.
EVERY great story, from Shakesphere to Comic Books, is great because it says something. The Matrix has as much a "philisophical meaning" as anything else that's ever been written--that is to say, the authors mean it to say something, and they pull it off with a fair bit of success.
Just because you're biased against movies doesn't mean that the Matrix isn't "deep." The fact that professional philosiphers can discuss the Matrix with a straight face should be enough to wipe away any prejudice against movies.
Well, it's an extremely influential, trendsetting movie in terms of costume, style, camera angles, effects and fight choreography. But I agree with you that this obsessing over its philosophical underpinnings is embarassing.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
How either of these two films can become the basis for a pseudo-religious metaphor is beyond me. Surely there is more substance in movies like "28 Days Later", or even "City of God". (Like: life sucks, get used to it.)
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Tolkein was often quoted as hating anyone who tried to attach meaning that wasn't there to literary works. He'd have hated the level of allegory his books supposedly represent these days.
Reminds me of grade school English class, where we'd write a story/poem, and then the class tried to analyze it. I'd often as not just write some mundane piece about people walking down the street, and the class would proceed, with the teacher's help, to show how I REALLY was talking about the progress one takes through life, and a bunch of utter bullshit. I always had a laugh when the teacher would ask what I meant by a particular passage, and I'd just look at him/her and say "Um, they went for a walk. Nothing more, nothing less".
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The Matrix and its philosophical connotations I like to compare to candy or junk food. It tastes good and its fun to eat but its not really filling and too much of it makes you sick.
Real philosophy is boring, arduous, difficult to read and difficult to understand. The Matrix cuts down philosophy in small tasty bites easy to digest and easy to understand. Yet you shouldn't take the Matrix seriously. You have to understand its just a movie and really its there to entertain you. Its not there to show you that reality is an illusion therefore you should quit your job and try to jump off buildings.
There is nothing wrong with suspending yourself from reality and enjoying some good tasty philosophical junk food. But it's dangerous to never come back from that suspension.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Coming from someone (Josh Burek) who has serious theological training and years of analysis of christian theology, it is far more accurate than most of the articles, interviews, books and posts about the movies. Unlike christianity, eastern religions believe in cycles and doesn't take a bipolar perspective. christian religions believe the world and life is linear, which leads to the idea that things are either good or bad, right or wrong. Eastern religions take the perspective the line between everything is slippery. Opposing forces are always pushing back and forth to maintain a balance. Violence is a necessary part of the cycle; therefore there's no problem that Neo loves to fight and shoot guns. In bhuddism, truth is not a constant state, like heaven. Truth or enlightenment is seeing the greater picture. The greater picture doesn't necessarily mean not fighting.
I agree with you... The Matrix is just a plot device, but you can take any movie and use it as a basis for explaining real philosophical points.
I read the Philosophy of Star Trek awhile back and the author didn't make any claims that the writers intended to put deep meaning into the episodes but he did use Kirk's actions in some episode, for example, as a good starting point to delve into the basics of, say, existentialism.
I doubt that the Wachowski's didn't realize that they were throwing in philosophy into the script. I read an article where Hugo Weaving had to ask the brothers what German Philosophers he had to read to understand certain segments of the script , but those slight allusions to real philosophical constructs is a good starting point for professors to base their lessons on.
What better way to get kids into religion than saying "You see, Jesus was the One, much like Neo in the Matrix?"
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Can't a good, fairly well-written action movie just be a good, fairly well-written action movie?
Yes, but The Matrix isn't just a good, fairly well-written action movie. It's a great, very well-written movie with meaning and action.
This isn't like we're turning The Terminator into a religion--the meanings everyone is finding in The Matrix were put there on purpose.
Lucas is actively rejecting the mystical nature of the original Star Wars. The last two movies barely talk about the theology and the philosophy of The Force. Why is the light side of the force better than the dark side? Why are anything the people in the story doing right or wrong? Instead he concentrated on wall to wall action.
Instead The Matrix appears to actively looks at issues and still includes a lot of action. What is wrong with having humans in the Matrix? Why is having a false reality presented bad no matter how comfortable it is?
At this point I'll watch and think about The Matrix movies far more than Star Wars.
Think about it: In the Matrix Reloaded, GNU/Smith touches anyone else, and they become GNU/Smiths. He is just as viral as the GPL!
And it's not like they only get a GNU/Smith arm in their othervise normal bodies, they turn completely GNU/Smith.
This happens because the act of talking a walk itself has symbolic meaning. Even if you didn't take a walk to escape something, relax, find yourself, or whatever else, you might have just taken it because you enjoy a walk. There is still meaning there, and the meaning other people attach to it in the poem would be the same they would attach to it if they saw you walking down the street.
Anything that imitates life has levels of meaning, even someone refusing to write poetry and just handing in a blank piece of paper.
Yes, and it worked pretty well, too. Until Spaceballs came out, that is.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
The Matrix Web site has a number of papers written by philosophers, theologians, scientists and others. Of those I've read so far, the one I find most interesting is The Brave New World of the Matrix which draws upon Husserlian phenomenology to discuss the philopsophy of AI. It sounds boring but it's not. If you like that you might want to go on to read some Martin Heidegger.
Unbelieveable to me is that a commercial enterprise (Warner Brothers) is making thinking and philosophy cool again through one of its franchises. I never thought I'd hear about Husserl and Heidegger after I graduated, least of all on a Hollywood-produced movie by the likes of Joel Silver.
"Just because you're biased against movies doesn't mean that the Matrix isn't "deep.""
Just because someone doesn't think that the matrix is deep doesn't mean they're biased. You're another one of those people who seem to think that only they know what is good and whats not and anyone who likes a different movie/music/book than you somehow lacks something as a human being. That's pretty unfortunate.
"The fact that professional philosiphers can discuss the Matrix with a straight face should be enough to wipe away any prejudice against movies."
Professional philosophers? That's real bright. Beleive me, these people have nothing up on anyone else. The fact that they do this for a living should clue you into something. People who get paid to think of what life might mean... That's pretty rich. And even a used cars salesman are going to tell you that a 1984 Chevy Celebrity will "bring you the ladies" if he's able to make a buck doing it, with a straight face none-the-less.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Jeez, sounds like you're having an even worse weekend than I am. Lighten up, man.
I agree that the philosophical aspects of The Matrix are overblown. Unlike most of the reviewers who cite the debt owed to Philip K Dick and "visionary" authors, I have actually read Dick (and Stephenson, but no Gibson yet), and I am totally unimpressed with the plot twists and ponderous questions posed by the movies. Any one of Dick's novels is a far weirder mindfuck than the Wachkowskis could hope to pull off. And the whole hacker analogy was covered in "Snow Crash" (and, I'm told, in most of Gibson's books).
However, I still loved the movies (but the first is far superior to the second). The Wachkowskis understand what George Lucas so superbly realized in Star Wars (and then forget around 1982): if you're going to make a derivative pastiche, do it well. The concepts in either set of movies are not revolutionary or particularly insightful - what distinguishes them is how well the mess holds together, and how well the finished product works. Heck, even a lot of the action is derivative if you've seen enough Jet Li or John Woo flicks, but they did a swell directing job too.
I know it makes you seem l33t to bash these movies, just like it's cool to be the voice of reason on Slashdot and interject random comments about how crapulent Linux is and how Microsoft really has its shit together. However, you need to understand that quite a few of us enjoyed the movies in spite of their flaws, and that even if they're ripoffs with a phony layer of pseudo-philosophy, we still liked seeing these ideas committed to film with such style and intensity. Finally, The Matrix did not seem at all trendy when it came out - rather, it set the trend for a lot of less-talented filmmakers.
By the way, I'm very curious about how you think The Matrix was "offensive", unless you're one of those types who think video games were to blame for Columbine.
I'm really tired of people, in a flash of teenager-esque omnipotence, dismissing something they don't understand as worthless.
Mod me troll if you want, I'm not christian in any shape or form, but to marginalize a belief system is pretty ignorant. If you think the bible is 'confused' or 'hallucinogenic' (the bible causes hallucinations? wouldn't that make it really powerful and meaningful?), you really should quit your amateur theology now before you stumble upon anything outside western culture.
Oh well there goes my karma...
All the people who were born in zion do not adhere to any type of steriotype at all. The programs, both exile and proper, are perfect steriotypes (Little asian man, Kung fu master, coarse old black lady, pompous rich white man, etc.)
Just an interesting point on how much imagination the machines have.
It's an offensive, violent movie, which the producers try to legitimize by jumping on the bandwagon of religion.
Actually, my view on this matter is very different. For me, Matrix is a philosophical hands down. The reason as top why there is such an ammount of action in the movies is the fact that it draws people to it. Matrix is a movie that makes (some, more intellectual) people really think about what is happening. I mean... The end of Matrix: Reloaded makes me really compelled to seeing the third movie.
Philosophy exists in the Matrix movies, it does however not exist a "Matrix philosophy" in the movies.
The movies are in short a mix of different religions, philosophies, Alice in Wonderland and modern action. I also feel strangely attracted to the number '5' in the movies (Binary 0101 - Trinity hacks computer, Highway, IIRC Neo's room number - the fifth reincarnation of Zion etc.).
Notice that no religious expert supports the viewpoints of the usual windbags toting the defense that the matrix trilogy are thinking man's movies or something. Nothing but a trendy violence-filled, mindless movie. Entertainment for mindless masses.
Actually, the Matrix was basis for discussion in our religion class... Not that our teacher might be considered a religious expert, but hey at least it generated couple of pages of interesting notes.
It's interesting to me that people hold the Matrix up to such high standards. Regardless of whether you find the philosophy within the Matrix intriguing or dull, one has to recognize that it has indeed caused a lot of discussion - something very few action movies can do.
There is no doubt that the movie was influenced heavily by religious and philosohpical ideologies. And whether offerred as merely a plot device or something more, it has led to numerous papers, forum discussions, and newspaper articles - all free advertising for the movie.
So it's either the brilliant mix of theology and philosophy into a cutting-edge action movie or a great marketing ploy.
Or both.
Some artists and psychoanalysts would question if you really have the control to make anything meaningless, no matter how hard you try. Any subject you choose to write about, or create from, no matter how 'random' may still be subject to choice and control by your subconcious. If you wanted to pick a random idea to write about, you're mind doesn't just say "Ok! rand() idea coming up!"
Even if you can't discern it yourself conciously, you very likely chose it for a reason. If you closed your eyes, and decided to write about the first thing you saw when you opened them, you still wouldn't be any 'better' off. What you see may be random to a degree, but not what is significant to you about it. Your focus could be caught by the color of what you see, it's texture, or shape. Thanks to the human mind, almost anything you choose to focus on no matter how trivial or mundane is pregnant with infinite possibilities with very real meaning. This is because the meaning is not truly in the object of your focus - the subject of your creative endevour or otherwise. The meaning is in you. It's you, your mind, concious and unconcious, and it's thinking and feeling many many different things wether you realize it or not.
Read Corporate Mofo's take and be corrected.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
If you want an intelligent discussion of philosophy, read a book you lazy fucks.
That statement at the end proved to me that you are simply a trendy counterculturalist who can't stand the fact that some action movies may also have some meaningful references behind them that people enjoy. Because they're popular in our culture, you can't let yourself into these films because you'd feel like a vulnerable conformist, so you must play the part of the snobby philosophist who feels threatened that people are talking about the purposely placed philosophical references in some popular films. "Ugh! It's not a book, it's an action movie! My whole worldview is threatened!"
It's sad in a way that you are so insecure. If you really didn't care about the movies, you wouldn't care about people liking them either.
Everybody knows it's an action movie with people in leather. It's also fun to discuss the intended philosophical meanings and implications behind many of the scenes, philosophical meanings that experts in the field are discussing with a straight face--in BOOKS.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Tha article is marginally about Matrix Reloaded. Frank Rich's main focus is on media control of American culture and information. He compares the hype of the film to the media coverage of the war. The consolidation of control of our information sources, and the lack of competition between media moguls is his primary concern. The current situation is bad enough, but in a few weeks the FCC will probably remove even more restrictions allowing even greater consolidation.
The most interesting thing about the article (IMHO) was Barry Diller's comment that most execs don't care about the films their studios make. They are distanced from the creative side of the film and only care about the profits and marketing possibilities. I hadn't considered that much, but it's interesting to note how far we've come from the days when David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock battled daily over "Rebecca".
The Matrix Reloaded took in $135 million in four days, and 230 million people voted for the finals of American Idol. That is the state of American culture today....draw your own conclusions.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
...will be disappointed.
Rather than a high-level and deep Science Fiction story, this series is going to be proven in the end to be a collection of cool concepts all rolled into a great package. That should *not*, however, be confused with deep Science Fiction.
Let me tell you what would be cool. We find out at the end that the entire movie was nothing but a simulation run by humans (or computers perhaps) designed to find/create/improve AI. That would be cool. But what this ending would do is alienate the large majority of viewers, and frankly, I think it's too high-level for the brothers to do. It would fill all the holes and make it rock (to me and other geeks), but it would make the whole thing suck for those who aren't into Sci-Fi heavily.
What they *are* going to do is go along the line of Smith being the Devil (makes a choice, falls from above, tries to take over), and Neo being the Christ and God figures to varying degrees, and they will battle it out. They are *not* in a second Matrix. Neo stopped the sentinels because he is part machine now - he simply gave them commands somehow. He is going to become one with the machine I think, and he is going to be working to unite man and machine again, while Smith tries to tear it all down.
So, what we are left with (if it goes the way I have described) is a series of major plot holes - problems that serious Science Fiction people cannot ignore:
-The human/battery/enerty thing (humans can live for years with a mostly dead brain in real life and support a body just fine - why the elaborate Matrix just to keep the mind going when it is unecessary?) Answer: You can't have the movie otherwise.
-Their take on future prediction (what are they asking us to believe - that there are supernatural powers as well? Is this Fantasy or Sci-Fi?)
-Notice that only the proper amount of force is ever applied in a situation. In the freeway scene, were they trying to kill anyone? How can an agent be stationary relative to Trinity and empty a clip and not hit her once? Why not make everyone in the vicinity into agents and ram the shit out of them? Why not take over an F-14 and rock them with some Hellfire missiles? Answer: Either the whole conflict was fake on purpose, or the whole thing was fake on accident. Either way though, there wasn't really any effort to kill anyone on the freeway otherwise they would have been dead. So the question is just whether that is a planned part of the movie or a stellar fuckup. I think b. You can't generally have good action without these perfect balances of good-guys vs. bad-guys, but in Science Fiction, *SCIENCE* should dictate some things. If a computer was trying to kill them folks on the freeway, and they had the resources that they have demonstrated all through the first and second movies (or *should* have given the situation), they would dead mofos. There wouldn't be these little applications of force here and there when it is convenient - it would be an overwhelming and deadly ammount of "fuck you up" applied with extreme predjudice. That is what a comptuer would do. (ever played SC on the high level AI? Computers know how to add and combine force to kill stuff - the fact that they don't do so in the Matrix requires some explanation)
-Another thing, the speech by the Architech - they have GOT to be kidding. The entire conversation could have taken place in around a fourth of the time. Why use all the big words and draw it out? Answer: To make it seem very deep - hiding from the average viewer the fact that the whole story is full of contradictions. The duped walk away saying, "That was deep." The geeks walk away saying, "What a load of shit."
So, all that being said, the Matrix is still awesome no matter how it turns out. Ideally I'd be completely wrong and the brothers would suprise me and bust out with something totally cool that makes sense. Unfortunately, that isn't likely, but either way, I'll be in Atlanta at an IMAX theater at the first showing.
In short, make no mistake, the Matrix is an AWESOME movie series - just don't make it into something it isn't.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Thank you for this important contribution. Many of us would have previously been unaware that all Arab states were totalitarian, or indeed that Arab states and Muslim states were synonymous. And regarding the universal intolerance of other religions, one dreads to think what might have happened if it had become known that Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister was actually a Christian!
Heaven forbid that we should descend to the level of making sweeping remarks about cultures we know little about! And is it too much to ask that Slashdot not limit the plaudits we can confer on such incisive comments to merely 'insightful'? Surely a new category of 'revelatory' is justified, nay, demanded, for postings such as these?
You're quite correct in that there are some Christian tennants, but the majority are buddhist. Moreover, what is mildly Christian is far more Jewish:
The messiah to the Jews was a military leader who was prophesized to return and restore the military Kingom of Israel. They were pretty sure, in the time of Jesus, that this would be someone from the line of David (hence the use of Joseph to attribute this to Jesus). One of the primary reasons most Jews at the time denied that Jesus was the messiah was because he was far from a military leader: he advocated peace and acceptance, which was quite contrary to the Jewish model of a messiah.
The One seems more to be a Boddhisatva. In The Buddhism of the Great Vehicle, there is the belief that some people realize that they're about to achieve Enlightenment, but instead of fully crossing over themself, they remain here in The Great Illusion so as to facilitate the Enlightment of others. These are Boddhisatvas, basically "helping buddhas".
"Stumble before you crawl"
I can't tell if he's biased against movies, but I agree that the Matrix isn't particularly deep--it's a good excuse to put Anime action on the screen, wear cool clothes and whip out Philosophy 101 phrases.
Professors are discussing it because it is popular, not because it has brought any new insights to anyone--the same folks discuss the meaning of Star Wars and The Force when that broke big.
Movies are a tremendous medium, and I very much enjoyed the first Matrix movie, but at the end of the day I think it is much more a well-executed plot device and setting than anything that shines real light on our reality.
That's fine with me...so far as I'm concerned, i wish RELOADED had stayed further away from bad, stagey speeches and stuck with action and mystery.
I'm sure some of it is on the money, but that doesn't obviate the larger problems--we don't care about the people in a real way, the writing is super clunky, the acting is pretty poor... ...but to the guy at Mofo, it's all because the "unenlightened" don't realize the subtle brilliance.
Okay, so your problems aren't the philosophy, but instead the movie's presentation. I thought your argument was about the philosophical underpinnings? Turns out you just don't like the movie period. It all makes sense now.
Like I said, there are people who just hate to like popular films. Some website points out the obvious philosophical references in the movie, and now you mock him for ignoring the "larger problems," of which you never mentioned or seemed to have a problem with in the first place. I love misinformed bias because it is so easy to point out.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
An arch is also a way of keeping the ceiling from falling on your head.
-Dave
I will go see almost any piece of junk that Hollywood puts out. However, I was very pleasantly suprized when I saw "The Matrix". I had expected something like "Tron", but when Neo took the red pill and was delivered into the "real world". I thought "Holy cow, the writers must have read Stanislaw Lem's "The Futurological Congresses!". So I went for the eye candy buy stayed for the homages to Lem and Gibson.
IMHO the Matrix movies are not serious discussions of the nature of reality and free will. That would be too didactic. However, I think that the movies use the existance of those philisophical questions to acheive the suspension of disbelief needed for good story telling. That is why I put the Matrix movies a cut above most action movies which depend on unexplained, unmovtivated, miraculous events so they can get to the chase scene as quickly as possible (the above mentioned Tron being a heinous example).