The Problem with The Matrix (1999): A Question of Reality

The Matrix is one of those omnipresent cultural artifacts, a film that intimately lives in our (internet) subconscious. As such, it has a weight that I think we underestimate; it's themes have a power that we are still unraveling. While I enjoy the film (the action scenes are some of the best moments ever captured on camera, and the cinematic techniques are absolutely revolutionary), I also find the film quite philosophically... how to say...? dumb? That's harsh: maybe a better description would be poorly motivated or under-analyzed. The film has themes that seem really smart, that seem to play with philosophical concepts, yet all these ideas fall flat when one really starts engaging with them, when one really dives into the philosophy that the Wachowski's were attempting to access. If you are interested in the philosophy the filmmakers were inspired by (and how that inspiration fell a little flat), check out Cuck Philosophy's excellent video on Baudrillard and The Matrix.

Yet, I am not going to talk about what the filmmakers hoped to do; I am going to talk about what we actually see in the film, what The Matrix actually says, philosophically and thematically about reality. I might start from the assumption that the themes discussed -- the differences between asleep/awake and lie/truth -- are practically hardwired into western culture; The Matrix lifted themes from ancient philosophy, and simply reskinned them with a retro-future aesthetic and some contemporary issues. These western thematic elements ought be examined, especially in the context of this film. Since the film is certainly associated with some pretty unsavory contemporary stuff -- particularly "the red pill or the blue pill" choice -- we might use The Matrix to take a closer look at the film, how the traditional philosophical conceptions of reality, peddled by the film, manifest in wholly horrific ways. While it might work to make a satisfying film out of classic philosophical and metaphorical concepts, and we can all acknowledge that the film is enjoyable, we also must consider what these ancient themes perpetuate in modern audiences; we must consider what sort of thinking these themes and philosophical ideas perpetuate.

Part 1: Binary Reality

Firstly, we might note the type of reality that this film attempts to construct. There is a simulated world, where things are normal, comfortable; there is a real world, one in which those enslaved humans actually exist, one in which the nature of reality becomes apparent, where the world can be seen for what it really is. Technically speaking, this sort of understanding of reality -- the real can be known if the illusion is washed from ones eyes -- is not a bad one: it speaks to something rather central to the human experience, the feeling that, at one point in our lives, we did not know the things we now know, that we have learned, grown and come to a more complete understanding of what we now understand as the real world. Teens all around the world have a similar sort of awakening: one day they realize that they are part of a system, part of a whole set of social contingencies that not only make them who they are (in some uncontrollable ways), but also contribute to the real world problems that the world faces. When Neo wakes up, he finds himself in a world in which robots harvest human energy; I think most people relate at some level: they wake up to find a capitalist system of exploitation at work. Is this not a retro-future metaphor for being a "cog in the machine"; is this not simply a metaphor for being part of the capitalist world, one that only cares about you as far as you can produce something? This reality isn't surprising to us, the binary created between what Morpheus calls the "desert of the real" and the the simulated dream world feels quite real.

The issue here seems to be the way in which The Matrix dichotomizes these two worlds directly and simplistically. Rather than there being some nuance as to how these two worlds interact, the film opts to describe their relationship with very simple binaries like awake/sleep or dream/reality. They are separate; there are robots that pull all of the strings and exploit the sleeping human corpse; once that human has awoken from the dream they can never go back, and are saved from this reality. When we look closer and compare to the real world (which I think the film wants us to do), we see that this doesn't really represent the reality. Being woke about the world does not mean that you are unplugged from the system. The representation the film gives us of "waking up" is analogous to an escape: Neo manages to get away from his sleeping, human battery existence, his state as a simple producer, and joins the resistance. Existence in this world is either/or: either in the matrix simulation, or awake in the real world. We might question this as an adequate metaphor for our reality.

I think, fundamentally, I find this reductive understanding of reality problematic. Is reality, the objective real world, really so simple? Can we know everything about the world? I think that this has been shown to be a faulty assumption. I think the more we learn, the more we grow, the more we realize that it is impossible to know everything; the more we learn, the more we realize that the world is far more complicated than we will ever understand fully. The teen, who begins to realize that power exists in the systems around them, is not simply awoken, in that instant, but (hopefully) rather called to keep thinking, to read philosophy and social theory, to think more about what they want to do about it. The binary realities presented in The Matrix at best, simplify the complex philosophical nature of reality, and at worst, promote a reductive view of the world which perverts peoples thinking meaningfully.

Part 2: The Red Pill

This is where I think it's important to talk about the idea of being "red-pilled". This idea has been used on a variety of internet sub-cultures, from men's rights activists, to the QAnon conspiracy. Basically, the idea seems to be that in calling yourself "red-pilled" you identify as one who has taken the pill and woken up to see reality as it really is. For men's rights activists, they wake up to find a strange hierarchy of male-female relationships, one that supports their profoundly misogynist views. For QAnon believers, they wake up to find the "Kabal" hiding behind every politician, pedophiles in pizza-shops and a great awakening coming to purge all the corrupt government officials and usher in a age of peace under the most peaceful brilliant president, Donald Trump. It's nonsense. So why do they identify with the red pill, from The Matrix, a movie about waking up in the real world (a cinematic world that seems to reflect climate change, technological warfare and capitalist exploitation, things that we will all agree are profoundly real threats to our society)? 

Well, unfortunately, I think the answer is in the simplicity of the red pill/blue pill concept, as presented in the film. If knowing reality is as easy as taking a pill, then the concept becomes a really easy way to defend any "reality" the taker of the red pill wants. Work does not have to go into actually defend "reality" when they took a pill that makes them wake up in the real world. The analogy works really well for these conspiratorial thinkers: first, it allows them to defend whatever reality they want; second, it allows them to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as sleeping "normies". Instead of having to do the labor of researching, backing up their claims with evidence, talking to people that disagree with them, thinking about their "reality" in anyway, they can simply say they are red-pilled and wake up in any reality they want. The Matrix even supports the creation of reality itself: on his return to the matrix, after taking the red pill, he learns that he can control the simulated world. In effect, this shows that the world that we feel around us is up to manipulation to our own wills. In sum, the red pill, or being "red-pilled", seems like having a license to create a reality, rather than learning anything about what we might consider the real world. (A great review about just was published around the time the film was released, that discusses exactly this control problem.)

Most interestingly is the perceived anti-authoritarian message of the film when compared with the profoundly authoritarian way in which "red-pilled" communities act. Why are "red-pilled" QAnon supporters all supporting Trump, a profoundly authoritarian president? I think it speaks to the failure of the film to recognize the authority they place within the red pill: in this universe, the red pill is the end all be all, it is reality. There is no ambiguity, no nuance to the world that the red pill reveals to its taker. Of course the "red-pilled" internet communities are so militantly authoritarian about their views: it is the only way to know reality; there is only one truth, one reality. They have to defend that truth to the end. This speaks to the an irony in the philosophy that the film peddles: it's a "fight the system" movie in which Morpheus's described reality quickly becomes the new authority, the new system and the only system. It's not about questioning the nature of reality, it's not about trying to learn more about what we think about reality. It's a film that simply says this is the new real.

The problem with The Matrix then, seems to be its simplicity. The complexity of a human understanding of reality does not seem to easily fit within the simplified universe of the film. But even more importantly, it does not give the audience any semblance of clarity on what the metaphor really represents. The nature of the allegory is so simple that it's contours fade away into whatever the viewer wants to place upon it. We can pick on conservative views all day (and certainly we should, they often wrong), but we could just as easily identify this logic within liberal circles. The idea of being "woke", while not explicitly tied to The Matrix (as far as I know), certainly works through the same logic presented above: liberal reality is the moral and authority on the way the world is and should be, I know that reality because I am a woke liberal. Reality, as presented in The Matrix, is a reality of polarization. It's about constructing the world in a way so as to avoid ambiguity. There is no learning here, no questioning of any reality. I think this is fundamentally a philosophical problem with the film's metaphorical understanding of reality.  

Conclusion: Keep Thinking

The Matrix is not a bad movie. It's just a simple one, one that leaves itself open to misinterpretation. I think that, if you watch this film and think you are red-pilled towards any reality, think you know the truth that everyone else had been hiding from you, or knows the truth that everyone else is to scared to admit... think again. Nobody wants to be blue-pilled, nobody wants to be asleep. But most people that consider themselves red-pilled are not much better. They are asleep in their own reality. Instead of worrying about what is real and what isn't, instead of worrying about pills and awake-ness... ask a question, keep thinking and learning. Reality is not a simple as being awake or asleep; reality is not as simple as taking a pill and waking up with truth at your disposal. Reality is something we construct together with those around us, something that we can question repeatedly, something that we should question repeatedly. If anything The Matrix should give us the power to think about reality, a reality which is complicated, a reality in which robots are an intimate part of our existence, a reality in which climate change is an existential threat to our lives, a reality in which warfare and AI are dangers to humanity around the globe...