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There is something inherently naïve [[about ]] taking the “philosophical” underpinning of <i>The [[Matrix]]</i> series seriously and discussing its implications. The Wachowski brothers, who wrote and directed the [[films]], are not [[philosophers]], but just two guys who flirt with and exploit, in an often confused way, some “postmodern” and New Age notions in the service of [[science ]] [[fiction]]. But <i>[[The Matrix]]</i> is one of those films that function as a kind of Rorschach [[test]], setting in motion the universalized [[process ]] of [[recognition]], like the proverbial painting of God that seems always to stare directly at you from wherever you look at it—practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it.<br><br>

My [[Lacanian ]] friends are telling me that the authors must have read [[Lacan]]. The Frankfurt [[School ]] partisans see in <i>The Matrix</i> the extrapolated embodiment of <i>Kulturindustrie</i>, directly taking over, colonizing our inner [[life ]] itself, using us as the source of [[energy]]. New Agers see how our [[world ]] is just a mirage generated by a [[global ]] [[Mind ]] embodied in the World Wide Web. Or the series is a baroque illustration of Plato’s cave, in which ordinary [[humans ]] are prisoners, tied firmly to their seats and compelled to watch the shadowy performance of (what they falsely consider to be) reality—in short, the [[position ]] of the [[cinema ]] spectators themselves.<br><br>

This [[search ]] for the [[philosophical ]] [[content ]] of <i>The Matrix</i> is therefore a [[lure]], a trap to be avoided. Such readings that [[project ]] into the [[film ]] refined philosophical or [[psychoanalytic ]] [[conceptual ]] distinctions are effectively much inferior to a naïve immersion that I witnessed when I saw <i>The Matrix</i> at a local theater in [[Slovenia]]. I had the unique opportunity to sit close to a man in his late twenties who was so engrossed in the film that he repeatedly disturbed [[other ]] spectators with loud exclamations like: “My God, wow, so there is no [[reality]]! So we are all puppets!”<br><br>

However, what is interesting is to read <i>The Matrix</i> movies not as containing a consistent philosophical [[discourse]], but as rendering, in their very inconsistencies, the [[antagonisms ]] of our [[ideological ]] and [[social ]] predicament. What, then, is the Matrix? Simply what Lacan called the “big “[[big Other]],” the [[virtual ]] [[symbolic ]] [[order]], the network that [[structures ]] reality for us. [[The big Other ]] pulls the strings; the [[subject ]] doesn’t [[speak]], the subject “is spoken” by [[the symbolic ]] [[structure]]. This big Other is the [[name ]] for the social Substance, for all that on account of which the subject never fully dominates the effects of his [[acts]]; his [[activity ]] is always something else than what he aimed at or anticipated. And the inconsistencies of the film’s [[narrative ]] perfectly [[mirror ]] the difficulties of our breaking out of the constraints of the social Substance.<br><br>

When Morpheus tries to explain to the still perplexed Neo what the Matrix is, he [[links ]] it to a failure in the structure of the [[universe]]: “What you [[know ]] you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there is something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is. But it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad.” Yet toward the end of the first film, Smith, the [[agent ]] of the Matrix, gives a different, much more [[Freudian ]] explanation: “Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect [[human ]] world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. … As a [[species]], human beings define their reality through [[suffering ]] and misery.”<br><br>

The imperfection of our world is thus at the same [[time ]] the [[sign ]] of its virtuality <i>and</i> the sign of its reality. Linked to this [[inconsistency ]] is the ambiguous status of the liberation of humanity announced by Neo in the last [[scene ]] of the first film. As the result of Neo’s [[intervention]], there is a “system “[[system]] failure” in the Matrix. At the same time, Neo addresses [[people ]] still caught in it as the Savior who will teach [[them ]] how to liberate themselves from the constraints of the Matrix; they will be able to break its [[physical ]] laws, bend metals, fly in the air. But the problem is that all these “miracles” are possible only if we remain within the virtual reality sustained by the Matrix and merely bend or [[change ]] its rules; our “real” status is still that of the [[slaves]]. We are, as it were, merely gaining additional [[power ]] to change our [[mental ]] prison rules. So what about exiting from the Matrix altogether and entering the “real “[[real]] reality” in which we are miserable [[creatures ]] [[living ]] on the destroyed earth’s surface? Is the solution a [[postmodern ]] strategy of “resistance“[[resistance]],” of endlessly “subverting” or “displacing” the power system, or a more radical attempt at annihilating it?<br><br>

[[Recall ]] [[another ]] memorable scene in <i>The Matrix</i>, in which Neo has to choose between the red and the blue pill. His [[choice ]] is that between [[Truth ]] and [[Pleasure]]: either the [[traumatic ]] awakening into reality, or persisting in the [[illusion ]] regulated by the Matrix. Neo chooses Truth—in contrast to the most despicable [[character ]] in the movie, the informer-agent among the rebels, who picks up with his fork a juicy red bit of a steak and says: “You know, I know this steak doesn’t [[exist]]. I know the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? [[Ignorance ]] is bliss.” He follows the pleasure [[principle]], which tells him that it is preferable to stay within the illusion, even if one [[knows ]] it’s only an illusion.<br><br>

Yet this choice is not quite so simple. What, exactly, does Neo offer to humanity at the film’s end? Not a direct awakening into the “desert of the real,” but a free-[[floating ]] between the [[multitude ]] of virtual universes: Instead of [[being ]] simply enslaved by the Matrix, one can liberate oneself by way of learning to change the rules of our universe and learn to fly freely or violate other physical laws. The choice is not between bitter truth and pleasurable illusion, but rather between the two modes of illusion. The traitor is bound to the illusion of our “reality,” dominated and manipulated by the Matrix, while Neo offers to humanity the [[experience ]] of the universe as a playground in which we can play a multitude of [[games]], freely passing from one to another, reshaping the rules that fix our experience of reality.<br><br>

In an Adornian way, these inconsistencies are the film’s [[moment ]] of truth: They [[signal ]] the antagonisms of our late-[[capitalist ]] social experience, antagonisms concerning basic couplings like reality and [[pain ]] (reality as that which disturbs the reign of the [[pleasure principle]]), and [[freedom ]] and system (freedom is only possible within a system that hinders its [[full ]] deployment). But the ultimate strength of the film is on a different level. The unique impact of the film resides not so much in its central [[thesis ]] (what we experience as reality is an artificial virtual reality generated by the Matrix, the mega-computer directly attached to all our minds), but in its central [[image ]] of the millions of human beings leading a claustrophobic life in water-filled cradles, kept alive in order to generate electricity. So when (some of) the people “awaken” from their imprisonment, this awakening is not the opening into the wide [[space ]] of the [[external ]] reality, but first the horrible realization of this enclosure, where each of us is effectively just a fetus-like organism, immersed in prenatal fluid.<br><br>

This utter [[passivity ]] is the [[fantasy ]] that sustains our [[conscious ]] experience as [[active]], [[self]]-positing subjects—it is the ultimate [[perverse ]] fantasy, the [[notion ]] that we are ultimately instruments of the Matrix’s—the big Other’s—<i>[[jouissance]]</i>, sucked of our life-substance like batteries. This brings us to the [[true ]] [[libidinal ]] enigma: <i>Why</i> does the Matrix [[need ]] human energy? The purely energetic solution is, of course, meaningless: The Matrix could have easily found another more reliable source of energy, which would have not demanded the extremely [[complex ]] arrangement of virtual reality coordinated for millions of human units. The only consistent answer is that the Matrix feeds on human <i>jouissance</i>. And so we are back at the fundamental Lacanian thesis that the big Other itself, far from being an anonymous [[machine]], [[needs ]] the constant influx of <i>jouissance</i> of those who come to define it, even constitute it.<br><br>

<i>The Matrix Reloaded</i> proposes—or, rather, plays with—a series of ways to overcome the inconsistencies of its prequel. But in doing so, it gets entangled in new inconsistencies of its own. The film’s end is open and undecided not only narratively, but also with [[regard ]] to its underlying [[vision ]] of the universe. The basic tone is that of additional complications and suspicions that render problematic the simple and clear [[ideology ]] of liberation from the Matrix that underpins the first film.<br><br>

The communally ecstatic [[ritual ]] of the people in the underground city of Zion cannot but recall a fundamentalist [[religious ]] gathering. Doubts are also cast upon the two key prophetic [[figures]]. Are Morpheus’ visions true, or is he a [[paranoiac ]] madman ruthlessly imposing his [[hallucinations]]? Neo doesn’t know if he can trust the Oracle, a [[woman ]] who foresees the [[future]]: Is she also manipulating Neo with her prophecies? Is she a [[representative ]] of the “good” aspect of the Matrix, in contrast to Agent Smith, who turns into an [[excess ]] of the Matrix, a virus run amok, trying to avoid being deleted by multiplying itself? And what about the cryptic pronouncements of the Architect of the Matrix, its software writer, its God? He informs Neo that he is actually living in the sixth upgraded version of the Matrix: In each, a savior [[figure ]] has arisen, but his attempt to liberate humanity ended in a large-scale catastrophe. Is Neo’s rebellion, far from being a unique [[event]], just part of a larger cycle of the [[disturbance ]] and restitution of the Order?<br><br>

By the end of <i>The Matrix Reloaded</i>, everything is cast in [[doubt]]: The question is not only whether any revolutions against the Matrix can accomplish what they [[claim ]] or whether they have to end in an orgy of [[destruction]], but whether they are not taken into account, planned even, by the Matrix itself. Are even those who are liberated from the Matrix free to make a choice at all? Is the solution to nonetheless risk the outright rebellion, or to resign oneself to play the local games of “resistance” while remaining within the Matrix, or even engage in collaboration with the “good” forces in the Matrix? This is where <i>The Matrix Reloaded</i> ends: in a failure of “cognitive mapping” that perfectly mirrors the sad predicament of today’s [[left ]] and its [[struggle ]] against the System.<br><br>

A supplementary twist is provided by the very end of the movie, when Neo magically stops the bad squidlike machines attacking the humans by merely raising his hand. How was he able to accomplish this in the “desert of the real,” <i>not</i> within the Matrix where, of course, he can do wonders? Does this unexplained inconsistency indicate that “all there is is generated by the Matrix,” that there is <i>no</i> ultimate reality? Although such a postmodern temptation—the easy way out of [[ontological ]] confusion—is to be rejected, there is a correct insight in this complication of the simple and straight [[division ]] between the “real reality” and the Matrix-generated universe. Even if the struggle takes [[place ]] in the “real reality,” the key fight is to be won in the Matrix, which is why the human rebels re-enter its virtual universe.<br><br>

To put it in [[terms ]] of the [[good ]] old [[Marxist ]] couple infrastructure/superstructure: One should take into account the irreducible [[duality ]] of, on the one hand, the “objective” [[material ]] socio-[[economic ]] [[processes ]] taking place in reality as well as, on the other hand, the politico-ideological process proper. What if the [[domain ]] of [[politics ]] is inherently “sterile,” a theater of shadows, but nonetheless crucial in transforming reality? So, although [[economy ]] is the real site and politics a theater of shadows, the main fight is to be fought in politics and ideology. <br><br>

Consider, for example, the disintegration of [[Communist ]] power in Eastern [[Europe ]] in the last years of the ’80s. Although the main event was the actual [[loss ]] of [[state ]] power by the Communists, the crucial break occurred at a different level—in those [[magic ]] moments when, although formally Communists were still in power, people all of a sudden lost their [[fear ]] and no longer took the state’s [[threats ]] seriously. So even if “real” battles with the police continued, everyone somehow knew that the “game” was over. The title <i>The Matrix Reloaded</i> is thus quite appropriate: If part one was dominated by the impetus to exit the Matrix, to liberate oneself from its hold, part two makes it clear that the battle has to be won <i>within</i> the Matrix, that one has to [[return ]] to it.<br><br>

The filmmakers have thus dramatically raised the stakes of the Matrix series, confronting us with all the complications and confusions of the politics of liberation. And they have put themselves in a profoundly difficult spot: They now confront an almost [[impossible ]] task. If the forthcoming part [[three]], <i>The Matrix Revolutions</i>, is to succeed with anything like a happy ending, it will have to produce [[nothing ]] less than the appropriate answer to the dilemmas of revolutionary politics today, a blueprint for the [[political ]] act the left is desperately [[looking ]] for.   ==Source==* [[Ideology Reloaded]]. June 6, 2003.