SRP 435: F. Fajardo-Acosta

The Matrix (1999)

Notes and Study Questions

Task: You will be asked to think about and discuss the significance of the images, situations, and characters of the 1999 film, The Matrix. Taking the idea of the Matrix as a METAPHOR, you will try to answer the question: What is the Matrix? Very important to your answer will be your ability to relate the film’s concerns to those of the authors discussed in our course.

Basic situation:

Futuristic nightmare where the machines have taken over, enslaving human beings and forcing them to act as energy sources. Living human bodies are kept in the cells of a gigantic structure where wires extract their heat and bioelectricity. Meanwhile, a computer system called the Matrix controls the minds of the captives, leading them to believe that they lead “normal lives” in a virtual reality setting reminiscent of urban life in America toward the end of the twentieth-century.

Notice the difference between the Machine(s) and the Matrix which is one of its tools for controlling and exploiting humanity. What is the machine a metaphor for? What does it symbolize? What is the Matrix? What is the significance of the computer-driven, virtual reality world created by the Matrix? What are the implications of the alternative views of that world as sensory images/sounds, etc and as streams of numbers on a computer screen? What do the numbers suggest? What do they stand for?

Is there special meaning to the code names of the protagonists: Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, Cipher, etc?

What about the special, seeming superpowers of characters like Neo and Trinity? What is the meaning of their ability to leap across buildings, evade bullets and so on? How are those powers acquired? What do they symbolize or suggest?

What about the “agents”? Why are they patterned after FBI-type of government officials? What is their function? What do they represent? What about their special powers? Their ability to enter into and possess the bodies of others?

What’s the significance of the words that appear on Neo’s computer screen: “Wake up, Neo. The matrix has you. Follow the White Rabbit …” What’s suggested by those words? Why the Alice in Wonderland references?

Why does Neo live in Apt. 101?

What is suggested by Neo hiding his bootleg computer programs in a hollow copy of Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation, specifically the chapter “On Nihilism”?

Why is the significance of comments to the effect that sometimes it is difficult to determine whether one is awake or dreaming?

Why does his customer call Neo “my savior, … my personal Jesus Christ”? Is that idea/imagery pursued elsewhere in the film? Where? Why? To what effect?

Why the references to drugs, like mescaline? How about the virtual reality software that Neo sells? Is that like a drug too?

Why are there people dancing in cages at the nightclub where Neo meets Trinity?

Is it significant that Trinity is famous as the computer hacker that cracked the IRS database?

Why does Trinity warn Neo, “you are in danger … they’re watching you, Neo”?

What is the significance of the sermon and warning delivered to Neo by his boss at the software company where he works? What specifically does he tell him? What details of his work environment are interesting?

What is the meaning of the two names of the main protagonist: “Thomas A. Anderson” and “Neo”

What about Neo’s interrogation by the FBI agents? What do they tell him? What do they want?

Why doe the agents consider Morpheus “the most dangerous man alive”?

What’s the meaning of Neo’s inability to speak (his mouth disappears) while under interrogation? How about the electronic bug implanted in his body?

Why does Morpheus ask Neo whether he believes in fate? What about Neo’s answer? Is he in control of his own life? What has assumed the effective character of fate in his life? Is he aware of the existence of such powers controlling his life?

What about Morpheus’s statement: “… you know something’s wrong with the world. The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can see it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the wool that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth… the truth that you are a slave, Neo.”

What is the significance of the choice between the red pill and the blue pill?

Why the references to the Wizard of Oz? “Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, ‘cause Kansas is going bye-bye”

What about the visions in the mirror that Neo has after taking the red pill? Why does his arm and his entire body become mirror-like after he touches the mirror? What is the significance of what he experiences?

What does Neo get to see and realize after taking the pill? What is the situation of his body in the real world? How does he gain control of and understanding of his real conditions of existence? What is the real world? Why is he told “you have been living in a dream world, Neo”?

When Neo asks, “what is this place?” Morpheus suggests to him that it is not what but when that really matters. Why? Why is time so important? What year is it? Why is it that the protagonists have difficulty ascertaining the precise time (Neo believes it’s 1999 but Morpheus tells him it’s actually closer to 2199)? What has happened to the world in the interval between 1999 and 2199? Why is the obliviousness to time an important motif? Is it significant that the gap is about 200 years? What does Morpheus explain to Neo regarding historical events, the current state of the world, of humanity, of the machines?

Is it interesting that human beings are no longer born to human mothers but are instead grown and harvested by the machines on “endless fields”? How about the idea that the dead are liquefied and fed to the living?

What about Morpheus’s hovercraft ship, the Nebuchadnezzar (Made in the USA, Year 2069, Mark III, No. 11, etc.)?

How do Morpheus and his crew endeavor to subvert the Matrix? Why are they so interested in involving Neo?

What about the role of the Oracle and the prophecies about the coming of “the One” as a savior of humanity?

While teaching Neo about the Matrix, Morpheus points out that “inside the Matrix … [there are] businessmen, lawyers, teachers, carpenters, … [they are] part of the system … our enemy … not ready to be freed … [and] so dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.” What are the implications of those comments?

How about the figure of the traitor, Cipher (real name Mr. Reagan)? How do the machines persuade him to betray Morpheus? Is the meal he eats while talking to the agent significant? Why does he say “ignorance is bliss”? What does he ask in exchange for his services? Is it interesting that he wants to be rich, important, perhaps an actor?

What is the significance of the speech of the agent to the tied-up and drugged-up Morpheus? What does the agent say? How does he explain the kind of world that the machines selected as most appropriate to the control of human beings? Why does the agent suggest people respond best to a world of suffering and pain?

What are the philosophies of the real, of perception, and of the imaginary explored by the film? How is the illusion-making machine to be confronted? What is the role of the mind in such a process? What does that suggest regarding the symbolic meaning of the battle against the machine? Where/how is the bullet-dodging and the assault on the Matrix taking place? What does that imply? What is the meaning of the “resurrection” and sudden empowerment of Neo when confronting the agents? Why is it that he is then able to see the “code,” the numbers, instead of the illusions created by that code? How about the ease with which he then enters the body of one of the agents and destroys him? What kinds of miracles are these? Is Neo’s commando-type mission into the Matrix an allegory or an actual suggestion that armed resistance is the solution to the human problems represented by the Machines and the Matrix? If this is a film about the powers of the mind/spirit, what are the reasons why the film employs the rhetoric and imagery of violent, armed assault (with “lots of guns”)?

What is the significance of the film’s ending with the phone call to the film’s viewer?

Are there limitations, contradictions, or other problems of the film regarding its addressing or characterization of the problems it seeks to expose? How about the action/adventure, high-violence genre chosen as the vehicle for its messages? How about entanglements with the commercial world and consumer culture? As with other films which are critical of our culture, what sorts of compromises had to be made in order to reach a mass audience and access to the mass market? Do such compromises undermine or otherwise work against the underlying messages?

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