The Matrix and Digital Poetics

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Andrew McWhirt er] On: 29 July 2015, At : 02: 44 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG International Journal of Jungian Studies Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ rij j 20 The Matrix Andrew C. McWhirt er a a Glasgow Caledonian Universit y Published online: 24 Jul 2014. Click for updates To cite this article: Andrew C. McWhirt er (2014) The Mat rix, Int ernat ional Journal of Jungian St udies, 6: 3, 268-274, DOI: 10. 1080/ 19409052. 2014. 939803 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 19409052. 2014. 939803 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . 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The popular science fiction (SF) film The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999) is not about technology and the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), nor is it characteristic of the empirical sciences, computing or mathematical certainty in the age of aggregates, metrics and Big Data. It is about something that cannot be objectively verified by physical sciences or mathematical formulae; that which we speak of as the unconscious and that which is also individual consciousness. In the spirit of Jung, who would always point out that no assertions are made beyond models and examples that further such an enquiry into the unknown, The Matrix functions as analogous to the complexities of the task of discussing and attempting to understand the mind. Therefore, 15 years since its release, it seems fitting not only to consider some various interpretations the film lends itself to but also to construct an identity of the work from memory before comparing that with the film’s own voice using new developments in criticism by using time codes that offer up arbitrary imagery. The film follows software engineer Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) and his online computer hacker alias, Neo, as he searches for a super-hacker Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne), who he believes will have the ability to tell him what ‘the Matrix’ is. Upon being contacted by another hacker and associate of Morpheus, known as Trinity (CarrieAnne Moss), Neo is given a red pill that places him into a hallucinogenic and seemingly semi-conscious state, only to awaken in a futuristic pod where he is kept with millions of others in a power station operated by machines, who keep humans plugged into the Matrix (the world Neo has been experiencing) in order to use their bodies as batteries. From here, Neo learns not only that he can plug back into this system remotely, as can the others who freed him, but also that he can manipulate the system with seemingly superhuman powers. Furthermore, he is told of the belief that he is ‘the One’ who, as prophesised by the Oracle (Gloria Foster), can end the 100-year war between machines and humans, the latter group consisting of a post-apocalyptic resistance organised deep underground in a city called Zion. Regardless of the obvious ‘hook’ of its 15-year anniversary and a resurgence of articles in the media, such as ‘where are they now’ character-features or reflections on innovative computer-generated imagery (CGI), what this timespan shows is how important the film has been to visual culture. Audiences are able to assert that its CGI has not dated in that time as we catch snippets of its seemingly annual appearances on TV. Most important, however, is the discourse the film generated about a wide range of interpretative methods deployed in its appreciation, from philosophy and religion to ontology, phenomenology and psychology. It is perhaps the nature of experience and the International Journal of Jungian Studies 269 Downloaded by [], [Andrew McWhirter] at 02:44 29 July 2015 mind that most obviously permeate its narrative: from companies called MetaCortex to the moment when Neo is told to buckle his seatbelt because ‘Kansas is going “bye-bye”’, and from talk of déjà vu and the body’s inability to live without the mind to Morpheus claiming that ‘Residual self-image is the digital projection of your mental self’ – and all before Facebook and Twitter profiles. What The Matrix did was not only open the doors for Hollywood to take 160-million-dollar chances on art-house SF like Inception (Nolan, 2010); it also allowed widespread fandom to create and engage with complex theoretical discourses. In short, the film showed that it was cool to be conceptual. The Matrix, the world: real and hyper-real Arriving just before the commonly held assertion of a new millennium, The Matrix was the apex of a series of films that sought to confront the very nature of reality during a decade building towards a great unknown. Although technically the third millennium did not actually begin until 1 January 2001, at least according to the British Observatory (New York Times, 1996), the hysteria around what might happen to computer clocks with Y2K, the agreeable round number ending in three zeroes for only the second time in the Gregorian calendar, or the commercial cascade of coffee mugs, T-shirts and countless other products (Gould, 2010) led many to usher in a new millennium prematurely. If numbers are contested, what chance is there of positing a single reality? The years of anticipation preceding that event witnessed Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995), Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997), The Truman Show (Weir, 1998) and eXistenZ (Cronenberg, 1999); films made by directors who at some point have had their concerns around the nature of reality permeate their respective oeuvres. Prior to The Matrix, Lana (born Lawrence, and now considered one of the first transgender Hollywood directors) and Andy Wachowski had little public profile (arguably continuing to this day, due to granting very few interviews), which undoubtedly contributes to the variety of different theoretical approaches and cultural criticism that the film readily responds to. If they told audiences exactly what it was all about, then the surrounding discourse may be significantly less. At the risk of a heterogeneous approach to theory in brief, it is still important here to cover some of those positions taken on the film. A literature review of everything written about The Matrix and its sequels would constitute a thesis in its own right. From fans’ guides to philosophical musings to theological inspections of resurrection to Christian iconography to Zionism to aesthetic appreciations and comic book spin-offs, the themes abound. There are almost a million videos on YouTube related to this film in some capacity in 2014. Subsequent instalments of the franchise, The Matrix Reloaded (Wachowski & Wachowski, 2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (Wachowski & Wachowski, 2003), have even been credited by film critic Michael Agger (2003) with foregrounding race, in particular the starring role of black people in the cast and additional cameo appearances by Princeton philosopher Cornel West. In his BFI Classic series on the film, Joshua Clover (2007) discusses how, alongside the technological advances and influences from video games, it is precisely through such highbrow intellectual positions that the film offers audiences sustained appeal. Most manifest of these are the very literal onscreen representations of the 1981 work of Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation. The particular chapter Baudrillard’s book is opened to by Neo is ‘On Nihilism’, which Agger (2003) argues is indicative of his message to deconstruct all images and sign systems that we are confronted with in contemporary society. For some, however, Baudrillard’s ideas, that it is increasingly Downloaded by [], [Andrew McWhirter] at 02:44 29 July 2015 270 Film review difficult to tell what is real and that there are many different layers of simulated reality, are merely visually represented via his famous work and little more because the film contains so many other intertextual postmodern referents (Lutzka, 2006). Gerry Coulter (2010, p. 10) shows the misrepresentation of Baudrillard’s work in the film and actually argues that the popular scholar finds the films ‘offensive’. There is heavy-handedness towards the hyper-real that Baudrillard himself acknowledges. He was contacted by the Wachowskis to be involved in the subsequent films, but made his feelings clear by saying ‘this was out of the question’ and laughing off the suggestion (Baudrillard, 2005, p. 201). His main problem with the film/s is that hyper-reality has been made concrete, in that one either belongs to the system or outside of it in Zion – it is in no way more complicated than that. Although he does typically respond to the work in his own idiosyncratic way: ‘The Matrix is the kind of film about the Matrix that the Matrix itself could have produced’ (Baudrillard, 2005, p. 202). For Baudrillard, other works around this period deal with the notion of simulation far more intricately, including Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) and Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002). In this regard, for Baudrillard at least, The Matrix resembles some of those works which surrounded its release in being a little too literal with his conceptualisations and his hypothesis, which owes its very existence to blurred lines rather than absolutes, such as the work of screenwriter Andrew Niccol on The Truman Show but in particular the even more ham-fisted work S1m0ne (Niccol, 2002) in which Al Pacino plays a director who creates a virtual-reality movie star (Rachel Roberts) who goes on to fool the world. Of course, The Matrix in its own way contributed to duping some fans into believing that the film could spawn a universe (the sequels, comic books, video games and anime) that would mimic or surpass its own initial achievements. In considering what one remembers from the film, one must also conclude that those memories may be tainted or enhanced by such heavily embedded commodities. In this way, a concept like Luke Hockley’s (2011) Third Image shows cinema in its fullest sense as co-creator beyond the screen: as viewed (the image on the screen) and the viewer (what is consciously interpreted) still work together long after meeting to create a whole series of replayed, refined or indeed refracted third images. We might find the film’s fragments channelhopping, or in holograms free with fast food or staring at us from toy shelves, or remoulded by fans and critics on many of the said YouTube videos. Remembering The Matrix For this writer, remembering The Matrix is a procession, like being taken through an old monochrome green phosphor IBM computer screen where a dark silhouetted figure stands in the centre with dynamic green code as backdrop, followed by a procession of indexical items – black boots, leather trench coats, sunglasses, and snap-open cell phones – before changing to a muted office space cross-sectioned with booths, with more colour than the monitor yet somehow less vibrant; the figure of Keanu Reeves sits in casual nondescript catalogue clothes, each time his pale white face stands out as clean cut, groomed metrosexual. This image is fleetingly muddied in the pink-gelled battery cell that Neo wakes up in; but even here, without any bodily hair, he resembles clinical androgyny. This is an image-repeat cycle of remembering The Matrix having only viewed the film in its entirety twice before, the second time in the mid-2000s. Having no interest in fashion or materialism, it is odd that these are the impressions that come to the surface more than any bullet-time SFX innovation or Kung-Fu fight scenes. Downloaded by [], [Andrew McWhirter] at 02:44 29 July 2015 International Journal of Jungian Studies 271 Perhaps part of this act of remembering is indebted to learning during early research for this article that Lena Wachowski was transgender. After watching the film again recently, the green code as the most prominent memory image is reliably accurate because it appears throughout the narrative, but most crucially at the beginning and at the end: the green phosphorous screen or text on it begins and ends the movie with the operator’s and Neo’s respective calls into the Matrix. It is significant because it is the manifestation of the Matrix itself, or more accurately how it is viewed from the ‘real’ world. While the code is reliably at the centre of remembering, other elements – such as sunglasses and styling – are not. This is because the sunglasses or black apparel and trench coat discussed as on Neo, or Trinity, only appear on those characters in the final act. This prominence afforded is perhaps an affectation of the subsequent films in which, in the Matrix, Neo and Trinity almost always wear sunglasses. It may also relate to the VHS cover image this writer owned depicting all the main characters wearing sunglasses, surrounding Neo who is the central focus complete with background code – albeit a muted greyish blue in colour. What else is striking – and reinforces the argument about this film being about the nature of consciousness – is the volume of initial cues to this effect. Within the first 10 minutes there are cultural references dealing with dreams, false paradises, systems of control and questions of reality. For instance, when Neo is told to follow the white rabbit and also the fact that he lives in ‘Room 101’ (alluding to the torture chamber in the Ministry of Love in George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where subjects are confronted with their worst nightmares). 101 is also commonly the starting-point for any knowledge or learning about to take place, i.e. Analytical Psychology 101. The movie begins in room 303 – an appropriate multiple of the number because it is occupied by Trinity, who uses it to conduct surveillance on Neo. The number 303 is also an http status code to indicate that content can be found elsewhere – a rather appropriate motif for the real world which exists beyond the Matrix. Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation is the book with a secret compartment from which Neo removes some illegal software to sell to a client: a customer who describes Neo as his ‘own personal Jesus’ before participating in a conversation with him about the uncertainty between dreams and reality. Within 30 minutes, a further two references are made to Lewis Carroll’s 1895 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland before Morpheus offers up a direct quote from Baudrillard in welcoming Neo to ‘the desert of the real’. Jungian shades Given the film’s enquiry into the nature of consciousness, where this article is appearing, and the number of connections made on the web with Jung, it would be lapse not to provide some overview here. With any basic knowledge of Jung one could draw parallels with archetypal figures and motifs, from the circular narrative beginning and ending in the spiritual ‘Heart o’the City’ hotel to a cast running order: Neo as Hero’s Journey, Trinity as Anima, Morpheus or Oracle as Wise Old Man, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) as Shadow, or the Trickster as shape-shifting agents/The Matrix system; or indeed the film itself, ‘able to traverse and straddle a number of complex and contradictory positions’ (Waddell, 2006, p. 30). After all, Susan Rowland (2005, p. 186) argues that the Trickster is more than capable of incorporating the Shadow, which means that archetypal images can have an effect on one another also: only from inside the Matrix could the Ego of Neo deliver a wry smirk directly to the audience at the end and break the fourth wall for the first time. The entire trilogy can be read as the individuation process, whereby Neo Downloaded by [], [Andrew McWhirter] at 02:44 29 July 2015 272 Film review successfully integrates the unconscious and conscious realms of the psyche but in doing so is also biblically sacrificed and accepts death. Whether he does all this from within another matrix or not is a point for debate, as he circles the Möbius strip about to once again begin his journey as Mr Anderson or someone else, croire à la reincarnation 2.0 with conscious and unconscious separate elements seeking reunification once more. It is impossible to assert whether or not the real world is actually that or another layer of the Matrix which once again ignites an imagined battle for the ‘real’ while the machines are ultimately always in control. How Jung’s Enantiodromia principle might bring (counter) balance to that particular set of events is anyone’s guess. Water and colour symbolism seem most pertinent to the film. Jung (1981, p. 18) refers to water as ‘the commonest symbol for the unconscious’, so it is no surprise to see it as rain when Neo meets Morpheus for the first time or when Neo awakens in the power plant or in the final act when the sprinkler system activates to queue the battle for control of unconscious minds. The film is graded with a green hue – the colour Jung most often associated with the sensing function, most often deployed by the Wachowskis in the one place where the senses cannot be trusted, the Matrix. We see the importance of colours again when Neo is presented with the chance to discover more than one reality in the red/blue pill scene. A compound of both colours is violet – also a colour in its own right, in the spectrum that also illustrates for Jung the mystic and paradoxical quality of the archetypes (Jung, 2006, p. 144). If red is instinct over archetype and informs Neo that he is not fully conscious, then blue is the colour of air and sky that is readily used to depict spiritual contents – in this instance, Neo’s life returning to a period of no proof of any existence beyond his own reality other than whatever faith may remain in him as he lives on as Mr Anderson. 10/40/70 and the text It seems only appropriate to conclude by allowing the film itself to speak. Fifteen years on, what might it have to say now that it may not have been able to express before the era of digital poetics, remix culture and widely available cheap tech? Nicolas Rombes (2014) proposes a new method of film appreciation for a digital era whereby the film offers up its own images rather than those selected by the critic, by using three different time codes from the film as image essays in their own right or to inspire further interpretation. Rombes describes this method of constraint as a form of freedom; and while any time Figure 1. At 10 minutes Neo is looking down while a nightclub full of fetishistic leather-wearing patrons enjoy themselves. Downloaded by [], [Andrew McWhirter] at 02:44 29 July 2015 International Journal of Jungian Studies 273 Figure 2. At 40 minutes Neo is looking at his own appearance inside a software program, where the green of his shirt is in keeping with the colour grading of the film. Figure 3. At 70 minutes the scene is once again bathed in green as Neo looks towards the leatherclad Morpheus. codes could be used, the particular ones he applies are 10, 40 and 70 minutes in order to freeze frames that are then, more often than not, displayed together sequentially. It is hoped that in doing so here with The Matrix, such image-play may spark interest for the reader to remember, revisit or re-imagine the text once more. To move beyond those TV fragments seen channel-hopping;to search one’s own memory and compare it to another viewing of a film that deserves its place among Hollywood’s very best. However, allow the writer the final comment in saying that the film does seem to corroborate the points above about the centrality of Neo (appearing in every still as ‘the One’), the fashion on others which is only latterly adopted by our protagonist; the green hue or green costume choice, and most prudently Neo’s stances evoke thoughts of consciousness: distracted, looking at the world/The Matrix; looking at himself/his body and finally; looking beyond himself or the world towards another body, all echoes of some Cartesian meditation. Notes on contributor Andrew McWhirter currently works part-time at Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Glasgow. He has written arts journalism for a number of publications and will publish the book Film Criticism in the Digital Age with I.B. Tauris in 2015. 274 Film review Downloaded by [], [Andrew McWhirter] at 02:44 29 July 2015 References Agger, M. (2003, May 18). West finds forum for philosophy in ‘Matrix’. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Milwaukee, WI: Journal Sentinel Inc. Baudrillard, J. (2005). The conspiracy of art: Manifestos, texts, interviews. Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e). Bigelow, K. (Director). (1995). Strange days. USA: Lightstorm Entertainment. Clover, J. (2007). The matrix (BFI film classics). London: British Film Institute. Coulter, G. (2010). Jean Baudrillard and cinema: The problems of technology, realism and history. Film-Philosophy, 14(2), 6–20. Cronenberg, D. (Director). (1999). eXistenZ. Canada and UK: Alliance Atlantis Communications. Gould, S. J. (2010). Questioning the millennium. London: Random House. Hockley, L. (2011). The third image: Depth psychology and the cinematic experience. In C. Hauke & L. 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