[DyslexicAtheist]

I stopped reading after the first paragraphs because it felt like the author is at best a lazy writer and at worst an intellectual imposter.

I loved The Matrix. It was a great flick. It wasn't art though and somebody using this lame reference today makes me question their expertise on the subject. The Matrix used ideas from Baudrillard & Borges. Both are cornerstones in post-modern literature while the Matrix is just an action flick rehashing the ideas from Plato's cave. The director hoped it would rub off on them so that they can shrowd themselves in philosophical wisdom. Everyone on the set was given a copy of Simulacra by the director to read. (this is often quoted along with Neo's own copy in the film and makes me question who actually read the book and how many of them read it enough times to understand it)

Baudrillard who was asked about what he thought about the film said it was merely another copy of Plato's cave allegory and it made no effort to actually touch the core-ideas of the book.

>> Neo has been revived and looks down the hall at the agents and sees the reality of the Matrix: that it is numbers. ....

When somebody uses The Matrix in a blog post >20 years later I can't help but wonder why they chose it. Something tells me they have a poor understanding of the world. It's like somebody referencing a Mickey Mouse comic to talk about ducks. It means your audience are probably fools (and by extension the author). How can they be taken serious when they don't understand even their own self-chosen references/allegory.

[smogcutter]

I think the silly Matrix analogy is really telling.

Forget about Plato’s cave and Baudrillard for second, The Matrix is about that stuff the way tic tac toe is about drawing circles and x’s.

The Matrix is about ego. It’s about the fantasy that one day soon your unique magical gifts will finally be recognized. To the untrained eye you might appear to be another TPS report filing schmuck, but deep down you’ve always been a hero. Any day now your circumstances are going to change, and then your real life will begin.

This is not a path that generally leads to happiness or creative accomplishment, and I think its traces are pretty plain in TFA.

[smogcutter]

Okay now I’ve got Matrix on the brain. Going to self-indulgently reply to myself instead of just editing my first post bc this is totally off topic and I just want to spitball about The Matrix.

I think a lot of my problems with The Matrix are rooted in how it (mal-)adapts Campbell’s hero’s journey.

Here’s the basic outline of the hero’s journey:

- There’s a mundane (“real”, we’ll come back to that) world and a magical world. A problem in the magical world threatens the mundane world. (Sauron is rising in the east, Grendel is lurking in the forest, etc)

- A hero is identified in the mundane world who has the power to navigate both. (Luke is both a farm boy and a jedi. Neo is a programmer and the chosen one)

- The hero enters the magical world and resolves the problem.

- The hero (usually) returns to the mundane world, bringing power from the magical world. Even if the hero doesn’t return, the mundane world is brought to a new equilibrium. This is the real point of the story: the hero’s journey isn’t about the magical world, it’s about healing the mundane world.

The twist in The Matrix is that the mundane world turns out to be an illusion. But that’s a trick: the “real” world, unplugged from the matrix, is in a story sense magical. It’s a fantastical sci-fi world, just as far down the rabbit hole as the matrix itself.

So the last, most important step in the hero’s journey falls apart. You can’t heal the mundane world if it doesn’t exist. This helps move the focus of the story back to the first stages, the ego-fulfillment part where the hero is identified. Everyone remembers the red pill and “I know kung-fu”; not so much the incoherent sequels.

We’re actually circling back around to Baudrillard here, but I think maybe not in the way the Wachowskis intended.

I think you could also probably read Total Recall as an anti-Matrix. If The Matrix is about the allure of imagining yourself to be innately a hero, Total Recall is about the danger.

[DyslexicAtheist]

thanks for posting the followup. I'm very glad you took the time to write it. it's magical HN exists and such discourse is possible. it's a shame this gem will not get the eyeballs it deserves. I urge you to bookmark it as a reminder to use it on a fresh post one day when the topic comes up and it doesn't get lost.

[prox]

My idea as well. The Matrix has a lot of allegories in it, and you can shoehorn a lot of your own ideas onto it. I would say the Matrix is great starting point to get you interested in philosophy though.

[matwood]

The Matrix is an interesting movie and I bet got a lot of people interested in learning more. The problem as you note is that the author in this case is 70 or so years old and doesn't seem to have moved beyond the reference.

[the_af]

> I loved The Matrix. It was a great flick. It wasn't art though

Why not? What would it need to become "art"? Maybe if it had less action, would that be enough?