College Essay on the Film The Matrix
Take the setting for example. Centered within a metropolis, the matrix is representative of the world as the audience knows it. Through this world the audience is treated to visuals of citizens dressed in conforming business attire, walking the sidewalks in droves. No one sticks out in particular. Each person is just another face in the crowd. The real world setting in the film is quite different. It is a desolate place that surely most people would not want to live in, yet this is the world that the resistance strives to awaken the rest of society into. Why? Only in the real world can an individual experience truth and make choices that define their being.
Morpheus explains to Neo, “The matrix is control.” Essentially, the matrix takes all aspects of people’s individuality by stealing the right to free will and blinding those who would access the truth with a simulated, though pointless, reality. The resistance characters are individuals. Probably hackers prior to awakening from the matrix (note each is known by a handle instead of given names). The resistance characters are hackers still, trying to dissemble the ultimate program. Glorified via wardrobe choices, the resistance characters are privileged with having style. While the other characters are stripped of individuality through a uniform appearance, thus serving more as a backdrop than any key element to plot. Occupations are represented over individuals. Police, security guards, SWAT team members, businessmen, and the agents are all reoccurring buzzwords, but these automatons have no names and consequently no identities. That is with exception of Mr. Smith, but note his first name is strategically omitted leaving him with one of the most common last names in history.
The agents, diplomats of the matrix, are models of conformity: uniform in speech, appearance, and behavior. Morpheus solidifies this idea when he tells Agent Smith, “[Agents] all look the same to me.” It is to be expected, as the agents behavior is limited to that of the creators of the matrix. Resembling insects, the machines are reminiscent of a colony controlled by a single hive mind, artificial intelligence.
On the other side of the spectrum is Neo, the arch-typical individual. The scene in which Neo is before his boss masterfully summarizes his character. He has “a problem with authority” and he believes he is “special and that the rules do not apply to him.”
Neo’s boss attempts to subdue him by reiterating the mantra of workplace hierarchy, “Every single employee understands they are part of a whole… thus, if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem.”
Reluctant to theological notions of prophecy, Neo protests that he doesn’t believe in fate. He reasons, “I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my own life.” He has a hard time affiliating himself with or trusting others. Take for instance when his customers come to his apartment. Despite his obvious recognition of the group and the friendly banter, Neo is reluctant to open the door. He stands alone in the crowded dance club until Trinity approaches him. His distrustful nature is seen again in his hesitance to trust Morpheus’s advice on how to escape the agents seeking him out at the office and yet again before he is cleansed of the probe.
Neo is gradually sculpted into the model individual. In the beginning of the film, he seems to be oblivious to his importance. Evidence of this is shown before he climbs out onto the scaffold, and he says to himself, “Why is this happening to me. I’m nobody. I didn’t do anything”. Again when he doubts himself after both Trinity and Morpheus repeatedly tell him that he is “the One”.
Neo, indeed, is “the One”. He is the only one who is empowered with self realization to bring down the entire system. Despite the fact that he may posses some of the mannerisms, even Neo isn’t a true individual until Morpheus frees him of the matrix. Beason illuminates, “Obviously, Neo is actually enslaved without knowing it when he first encounters Morpheus. Other than the rebels from Zion, no human being is in control of their life. The matrix, that magnificent computer generated reality supported by vast and purely operational systems, is an absolute tyrant” (Beason 3). Neo’s awakening is akin to a rebirth. Upon his rejection from the harvest, Neo resembles a newborn infant: bald, covered in fluid, barely able to see, and quickly wrapped in a blanket.
A battle of individuals versus an identity stealing collective ensues. In the end, Neo finally realizes his potential, thus changing the tide. If art imitates life, what then does this film say of our culture? Our cities and our technological capabilities, both prided staples of a “modern society,” are vast and ever-growing. In the wake of such growth, individuality is seemingly pushed to the wayside in vein of advancement. Thus, the matrix goes unopposed because the majority of its citizens do not question it’s benevolence. Beason agrees, “the mass of western civilization actually prefers simulation to reality itself. Out of this basic truth, simulacra proceeds, the endless unfolding of copies of things until there is no longer a trace of anything original or until originality is trivialized” (Beason 1).
What is posed to the audience member is the notion to try to find oneself within this world of sterile conformity. As shown through the film’s conflict, living as an individual is neither an easy nor popular choice. The awakened world is a desolate one that has little hope of improving or certainly prospering. Even within the picturesque matrix, the resistance must spend most of its time in abandoned, rundown buildings in constant fear of the agents. Morpheus is announced as a terrorist for his noble cause of trying to set people’s minds free.
Inevitably, the quest is worth it. As Trinity argues to Cypher, “Morpheus set us free… he showed us the truth.” Only in the real world could mankind experience truth, make choices, and have an identity. As our technology advances, our corporations wantonly exploit natural resources, and our populations and city limits grow with no reverence for the natural balance that surround us, one must question the alarming fact that The Matrix truly does mirror our reality.
Work Cited
Beason, Keith W. “Of Simulation and Simulacra: Baudrillard in the Matrix.”
MatrixFans.net. 10 Nov. 2002. 4 Feb. 2003.
