Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et Simulation in French), published in 1981, is a

philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard.

The Matrix makes many connections to Simulacra and Simulation. Neo, is seen with a copy

of Simulacra and Simulation at the beginning of the story. He uses the hollowed book as a

hiding place for cash and his important computer files, however, Neo's hollowed copy of the

book has the chapter "On Nihilism" in the middle, not at the end of the book, where it is in

reality. Morpheus refers to the real world outside the Matrix as the "desert of the real", a

reference to Baudrillard's work. In the original script, Morpheus specifically referred to

Baudrillard's book, however, in an interview, Baudrillard said "The Matrix" has nothing to do with

his work. [1]

The hacker Tiera in the comic "A Life Less Empty" is also seen to have a copy of the book

(mistitled "Simulacra and Simulations") on her shelf along with three other

titles: Memoreaze, Interfazed and Byte Me, with a copy ofHackers Bible lying on her chest of

drawers.

Simulacra and Simulation is known for discussions of images and Signs, and how they relate to

our contemporary society, wherein we have replaced reality and meaning with symbols and

signs; what we know as reality actually is a simulation of reality. The simulacra to which

Baudrillard refers are the signs of culture and communications media that create the reality we

perceive: a world saturated with imagery, infused with communications media, sound, and

commercial advertising. These simulacra of the real surpass the real world and thus become

hyperreal, a world that is more-real-than-real; presupposing and preceding the real. In this world

apathy and melancholy permeate human perception and begin eroding Nietzsche's feeling

of ressentiment.

A specific analogy that Baudrillard uses is a fable derived from the work of Jorge Luis Borges. In

it, a great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The

actual map grew and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire

crumbled, all that was left was the map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is the map that we are living

in, the simulation of reality, and it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.

The Matrix and Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulations"*

 

The Matrix makes explicit reference to the work of Baudrillard, especially the 1983 essay "Simulacra and Simulations". Baudrillard assumes the proliferation of images in advanced capitalism, with the expansion of commodities and the relentless advance of technologies of visualization and simulation. In the essay, Baudrillard describes a movement from "representation" (of something real) to "simulation" (with no secure reference to reality). This movement from representation to simulation changes the relation between sign and referent, so that we lose the connection, once presumed to exist, between sign or image and the reality to which both were thought to refer. To develop this argument Baudrillard asks us to think about situations where the simulating sign or image usurps the priority of the reality it is supposed to "serve":1: the perfect map as that which duplicates the extent and every detail of the territory of an "empire" (in a Borges parable): as the empire decays, the fragments of the map shows bits of its former grandeur 2: the patient who simulates symptoms of madness so well he/she is declared to be mad3: the infantile simulation of reality and history that is Disneyland: it secures the (comparative) "reality' of Los Angeles4: the simulation of a hostage drama turns real when a hostage dies of a heart attack and the police shoot5: the image is supposed to help believers worship God; but they come to rely upon these images so much that they become the true object of worship; therefore iconoclasts (in the Byzantine Empire) attack the images as an usurpation of the priority of the true GodHere are several key passages of Baudrillard's argument:

 

''Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation evelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. These would be the successive phases of the image:1 It is the refleciton of a basic reality.2 It masks and perverts a basic reality.3 It masks the absence of a basic reality.4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrucm. In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the represenation is of the order of sacrament. In the seond, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefice. In the third, it plays at beaing an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation. "(170)

 

 

"Thus perhaps at stake has always been the murderous capacity of images: murderers of the real; murderers of their own model as the Byzantine icons could murder the divine identity. To this murderous capacity is opposed the dialectical capacit of represenations as a visible and intelligible mediation of the real. All of Western faith and good faith was engaged in this wager on represenation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could exchange for meaning and that something could guarantee this excahnge--God, of course. But what if God himself

can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which atttest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weighteless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference. (170) 

When the simulation wins a new kind of autonomy, the territory disappears behind the map: "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory--precession of simulacra--it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the teriotry whose shreds are slowly rotting across the mapy. it is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of th Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself." (166) 

But perhaps the whole fable of map and territory is now useless. "No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept; no more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matices, memory banks and command models--and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite numbers of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. it is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the produce of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in hyperspace without atmosphere."(167)

*All quotes are from the 1983 text, Simulacra and Simulations from Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, (Ed. Mark Poster, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988) 

Questions for considering the conjuction of Baudrillard and The Matrix1: How does The Matrix develop the idea that the apparently real is nothing more than a simulation (images with no reference in the real)?2: Does the film re-instate an idea of a grounding reality behind the hyperreal simulation? or does it finally undermine any stable idea of reality? is there a third alternative?3) What is the role of film as an illusionistic medium for visualizing the opposition simulation/ reality?

The Matrix and S&S

Philosophical Influences

Many precedents exist for the idea that the real world is an illusion, and the Matrix trilogy is riddled with specific references to philosophers who have entertained this idea. Although the films are meant to stand on their own and create their own set of philosophical questions, the Wachowskis pay homage to these precedents through both obvious and subtle references. Four of the most striking philosophical precedents for the Matrix trilogy are Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, Plato’s allegory of the cave, Socrates’ visit to the Oracle of Delphi, and the work of Descartes. The films refer to all four of these at various points.Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and SimulationOne of the most overt philosophical references occurs near the beginning of The Matrix when Neo stashes his illegal software inside a hollowed-out copy of a book by French postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard entitled Simulacra and Simulation. Originally published in 1981, Baudrillard’s book argues that late-twentieth-century consumer culture is a world in which simulations or imitations of reality have become more real than reality itself, a condition he describes as the “hyper-real.” For example, walking and running are not nearly as important as they were in premodern societies, but jogging is a recreational pastime, replete with special shoes, clothes, books, and other gear. To take another example, we no longer live in communities where food is produced locally and whole grains are a necessary dietary staple, but we have health food that enables us to replicate the experience of a peasant’s diet. (Admittedly, terms such as “jogging” and “health food” show that the book is somewhat dated, but the point still holds.)Baudrillard argues that consumer culture has evolved from a state in which we are surrounded by representations or imitations of things that really exist, toward a state in which our lives are filled with simulations, objects that look as if they represent something else but have really created the reality they seem to refer to. In such a situation, the world of simulations increasingly takes on a life of its own, and reality itself erodes to the point that it becomes a desert. Morpheus introduces Neo to the real world by welcoming him to “the desert of the real,” a phrase taken from the first page of Simulacra and Simulation. Thus, the entire concept of the Matrix films can be interpreted as a criticism of the unreal consumer culture we live in, a culture that may be distracting us from the reality that we are being exploited by someone or something, just as the machines exploit the humans in the Matrix for bioelectricity.Baudrillard’s greatest philosophical influence is Karl Marx, and while the Matrix films do not refer to Marx explicitly, the fact that the inhabitants of the Matrix are exploited by means of an illusion that they all inhabit renders the films closer in spirit to Marx than to any other philosopher. Marx argued that the working class is exploited by the ruling classes, but the working class’s exploitation is only possible because it does not perceive itself as being exploited. The working class misunderstands its own position because it is confused and distracted by social messages that give workers a distorted explanation of how they fit into the world—for example, religion, school, and ideologies such as nationalism and patriotism. (According to Baudrillard, consumer culture is what misleads us.) Marx’s partner, Friedrich Engels, coined the term false consciousness to describe the working class’s ignorance. Of course, the argument that average people are ignorant of their own best interests and exploited by rulers who create and capitalize on that ignorance is still common today. The documentary films of Michael Moore, for example, have sought to demonstrate that politicians and the news media exploit Americans’ fears of violence and terrorism to distract us from our true economic and political best interests. Nevertheless, the original source of all such “false consciousness” arguments, including that of the Matrix trilogy, is Marx.Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Plato explores the idea that the real world is an illusion in the allegory of the cave in The Republic. Plato imagines a cave in which people have been kept prisoner since birth. These people are bound in such a way that they can look only straight ahead, not behind them or to the side. On the wall in front of them, they can see flickering shadows in the shape of people, trees, and animals. Because these images are all they’ve ever seen, they believe these images constitute the real world. One day, a prisoner escapes his bonds. He looks behind him and sees that what he thought was the real world is actually an elaborate set of shadows, which free people create with statues and the light from a fire. The statues, he decides, are actually the real world, not the shadows. Then he is freed from the cave altogether, and sees the actual world for the first time. He has a difficult time adjusting his eyes to the bright light of the sun, but eventually he does. Fully aware of true reality, he must return to the cave and try to teach others what he knows. The experience of this prisoner is a metaphor for the process by which rare human beings free themselves from the world of appearances and, with the help of philosophy, perceive the world truly.Neo is pulled from a kind of cave in the first Matrix film, when he sees the real world for the first time. Everything he thought was real is only an illusion—much like the shadows on the cave walls and the statues that made the shadows were only copies of things in the real world. Plato insists that those who free themselves and come to perceive reality have a duty to return and teach others, and this holds true in the Matrix films as well, as Neo takes it upon himself to save humanity from widespread ignorance and acceptance of a false reality.The Work of René Descartes

Yet another philosophical precedent for theMatrix films is the work of René Descartes, the man responsible for Cartesian coordinates and the phrase “I think, therefore I am.” In his 1641book Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes poses the question of how he can know with certainty that the world he experiences is not an illusion being forced upon him by an evil demon. He reasons since he believes in what he sees and feels while dreaming, he cannot trust his senses to tell him that he is not still dreaming. His senses cannot provide him with proof that the world even exists. He concludes that he cannot rely on his senses, and that for all he knows, he and the rest of the world might all be under the control of an evil demon.Descartes’ evil demon is vividly realized in the Matrix films as the artificial intelligence that forces a virtual reality on humans. Just as Descartes realized that the sensations in his dreams were vivid enough to convince him the dreams were real, the humans who are plugged into the Matrix have no idea that their sensations are false, created artificially instead of arising from actual experiences. Until Neo is yanked from the Matrix, he, too, has no idea that his life is a virtual reality. Like Descartes, Neo eventually knows to take nothing at face value, and to question the existence of even those things, such as chairs, that seem most real.Socrates’ Visit to the Oracle of Delphi

Ancient Greeks considered Delphi to be the center of the world and revered the wisdom of the Oracle who resided there, in the Temple of Apollo. This Oracle’s prophecies were always cryptic. When Socrates visited the Oracle, he claimed that he knew nothing, and the Oracle replied that he was the wisest man on earth. Socrates disagreed, but he eventually discovered her ironic meaning. By claiming to know nothing, Socrates truly was the wisest because all others were under the false impression that they knew more than they actually knew. The phrase “Know Thyself” was inscribed on the walls of the Oracle’s temple, suggesting that true wisdom lies in recognizing one’s own ignorance. Neo, like Socrates, is willing to admit to his own ignorance, and the Oracle in the Matrix films maintains her confidence in him and his abilities despite his often visible confusion and doubt.

The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here, even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go t work, or go to church or pay your taxes.

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

What truth?

That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage...kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.

The Matrix

Evil Demons, Saviors, and Simulacra in The Matrix  

by 

Doug Mann&

Heidi Hochenedel

Introduction

The question "what is the Matrix?" is the mantra repeated both within and without the film, in its text, sub-text, and super-text (i.e. the ads that promote it). There are least three answers to this question that dialectically interface with each other and which live and breathe in a network of simulated theoretical consciousness that thinks intensely about the modern metaphysics of culture. This movie explores the relationship between reality and simulacra, the images that dominate and permeate every aspect of our being. It is also a deeply philosophical and spiritual film that addresses what it means to be real, to have free will, to be a messiah, and to perform miracles. In this paper we shall consider the answers to the mantra and interpret the film's postmodern critique of culture by examining three philosophical and spiritual themes explored within it, in an ascending order of the extent to which each cuts closest to the hermeneutical core of the film.

Answer 1: The Matrix is a twisted version of the story of a savior come to redeem lost souls from the programmed semi-reality of the modern military-industrial -entertainment complex, but which calls into question the value of redemption and deconstructs the categories of salvation and terrorism. In this section we argue that the question we should be asking ourselves is not so much "What is the Matrix?," but "What is the cipher?" that acts as the key to the Matrix.

Answer 2: The Matrix is a re-telling of Descartes' dream of the evil demon come to trick him into believing that everything he senses and thinks is false

Answer 3: The Matrix is a story about simulacra, simulations of the real, which Jean Baudrillard describes as "that which never hides the truth, but hides the fact that there is none" (1995a, 1).

 

Part I. Redemption or Terrorism? Two Descriptions of the Hyperreal

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed (Romans 13:11).

The most obvious reading of this film is to chalk it up as being yet another Christian redemption story. Read Mercer Schuchardt writes:

It is not without coincidence that The Matrix was released on the last Easter weekend of the dying 20th Century. It is a parable of the original Judeo-Christian world-view of entrapment in a world gone wrong, with no hope of survival or salvation short of something miraculous. The Matrix is a new testament for a new millennium, a religious parable of mankind's messiah in an age that needs salvation as desperately as any ever has. (From his web page: http://www.cleave.com/)

There is much evidence in the film to support such a reading. But one can advance a radically different interpretation, that The Matrix actively deconstructs the categories of redemption and terrorism, indicating that the simulated reality of the Matrix is just or even more authentic than the post- eco-holocaust "desert of the real" to which Morpheus and his followers would subject the inhabitants of the Matrix in their redemptive crusade. This film is multifaceted and cannot be reduced to a simple dramatization of the struggle between good and evil; rather, it blurs this distinction, calling into question the foundations of our Western binary moral code.

We do not learn until well into the film that the Matrix is simply digital data that creates a dreamworld for its prisoners. Nothing in the world of the film is "real" - everything is simulation, created by artificial intelligence (AI). Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) explains this to Neo (Keanu Reeves) after he is reborn into "reality." Significantly, "Morpheus" was the god of dreams in Greek mythology. His name connotes the ability to change, which is fitting, because our Morpheus has considerable control over the dreamworld of the Matrix, being able to break many of its supposed physical laws. He explains to Neo that sometime in the late twentieth-first century there was a conflict between human beings and the artificial intelligence machines they had engineered. The humans thought they could destroy the AIs by cutting off their energy source, sunlight. A war ensued, the sun was blackened, and the earth became a wasteland. The computers survived the catastrophe by enslaving humans and using them as living batteries. In the age of the Matrix, human beings are not born; they are grown and tended by machines in huge fields of biopods. Babies are plugged into the Matrix, where they live out their lives in a simulated reality of late twentieth-century earth, the so-called "height of human civilization." Humans are a renewable resource for the AIs: even when they die, they are fed intravenously into the living. The Matrix is a simulation, but the minds that inhabit it are "real.

The Matrix is policed by "agents," AIs living a simulated reality as FBI-type lawmen. They have superhuman strength and speed, and are able to bend and break some of the rules of the Matrix's code. Although most human beings really "live" in the fields (mentally in the Matrix), there is a colony of humans in Zion, the last human city, near the earth's core, where it is still warm. The name Zion is, of course, saturated with biblical significance; it is the heavenly city where the righteous will be saved after the destruction of the world. The children of Zion represent a threat to AI and the Matrix. The agents' goal is therefore to attain the codes that allow entry into Zion's mainframe computer to destroy it. Morpheus tells Neo that early in the history of AI domination, there was a man who could change the Matrix, liberating many people from it. It has been foretold by the Oracle that another such ONE will come again to save the world (note that Neo's name is an anagram of the word "one"). Morpheus, the leader of a group resisting the Matrix's VR world, believes that Neo is this one, although we learn that he has been wrong before.

The agents have identified Neo, AKA Thomas Anderson, as "his next target." They speak of Morpheus as a terrorist, who periodically "targets" inhabitants of the Matrix to join their resistance movement. When Agent Smith (played with admirable sang froid by Hugo Weaving) interrogates Neo after he has been apprehended, he says:

Agent Smith: We know that you have been contacted by a certain individual. A man who calls himself Morpheus. Whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant to the fact that he is wanted for acts of terrorism in more countries than any other man in the world. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. (Screenplay)

Morpheus' role is both redemptive and terroristic since his project is to end life as billions now know it, to "save" them from their delusions and redeem them into the desert of the real (a wasteland worthy of Old Testament prophets' wanderings). Terrorism is the only effective way to resist the hegemony of a technologically created hyperreality. The only way to break the spell is to kill the witch, but those under her spell will suffer greatly after it is broken. Like all terrorist groups, Morpheus and his cohorts are religious fanatics, quite ready to die in suicide missions. Morpheus functions as both God and the father to the group (which anyone familiar with Freud's psychology of religion will not find too surprising). They are guided by an Oracle, and they have faith that "the One" will come again to redeem humanity from the illusory world created by the Matrix so that all will see the Way, the Truth, and the Light.

Neo is clearly a messianic figure. When his friend comes to his door early in the film to buy some illegal clips, he says: "Man, you are my lord and savior," thus foreshadowing Neo's role in this film. Like "Morpheus," the name Neo is significant. It means "young," "new" or "recent," but can also signify "new world." As already noted, it is an anagram for the word "one." Neo is the hope of the Nebuchadnezzar's motley crew for the new world, free of artificial intelligence. He is a high-tech redeemer and the new Christ.

The agents have identified Neo as a trouble-maker and a potential "target" of Morpheus. Moreover, like Morpheus, he is a terrorist (at least in the virtual sense), a hacker who is guilty of every computer crime in the book. Thus they "bug" him, presumably to monitor his contact with Morpheus. In horror film fashion reminiscent of the parasites in Cronenberg's Shivers (1975), a hybrid electronic-organic "bug" is released onto his belly and burrows its way into his body through his navel. In the next scene, Neo starts up from his bed, remembering the harrowing experience as "just a dream." But he soon discovers that he was not dreaming when Morpheus telephones him, telling him to "follow the white rabbit" (one of several Lewis Carroll references in the film). Seeing a tatoo of a white rabbit on a woman's arm, he accompanies her and her friends to a dance club, where he meets Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) for the first time. The significance of Trinity's name is so obvious that it hardly merits comment. She is part of a holy trinity composed of Morpheus the father, Neo the son, and Trinity the holy spirit. We discover later that the essential characteristics of Trinity, the holy spirit, are faith and love.

Trinity brings Neo to see Morpheus in a dank and depressing Escher-style building. He offers Neo two pills, a red pill which would allow him to see the world as it "really is," and a blue pill that would let him wake up in his bed and remember everything as a dream. Neo chooses the red pill, which turns out to be a tracer so that he can reconnect with his "real" body in the growing fields and rejoin Morpheus, Trinity and the others on their ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, a sort of submarine/hovercraft pirate ship that sails beneath the surface of the devastated real world, hacking periodically into the virtual reality of the Matrix. Significantly, Nebuchadnezzar was a biblical Babylonian king who searched for meaning in his dreams. Morpheus and his crew are searching for meaning in the dreamworld of the Matrix, in the hope of destroying it and awakening its captives. Awakening the dreamers to witness the reality of Jehovah is a quintessentially Christian project: Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light (Ephesians 5:14).

Once Neo is reconnected to his body, he is literally reborn, emerging from his biopod covered in blood and goo. This rebirth is clearly symbolic of a baptism. Since Morpheus provides the opportunity for Neo to be "born again," he may be seen as a John the Baptist, he who recognizes the ONE, and baptizes Him. Once aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo's body must be hooked up to electrodes and pierced with acupuncture needles because his real muscles have never been used and are thus severely atrophied. He asks Morpheus "why do my eyes hurt?" Morpheus replies: "because you have never used them before." This sentence is obviously metaphoric for the Christian message: Verily verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).

For the first time in his life, Neo's body is connected physically to his mind. He awakens from his dream and sees the world as it really is. Unfortunately, the kingdom of God is not a particularly pleasant place. It is a world in which the sun is blackened, the earth's surface ravaged, where people can only live near the earth's core. Life in the real world is bleak. At this point, his training begins. Neo is hooked up to a mini-Matrix operated from the ship's bridge: Tank loads combat programs onto the ship's computer, which Neo absorbs through his mind. His body is never involved in the training. He becomes proficient in Kung Fu and other martial arts. Finally he "fights" Morpheus in a simulated Zen-like gymnasium where they are both "plugged into" a computer simulation program. Neo is so impressed by the simulacrum, he cannot believe it is not real. Morpheus asks: "How can you know the difference between a dream-world and reality?" This question is crux of the entire film, hinting at Descartes' meditations, as we shall soon see.

Hyperreality, like reality, is based on rules. The purpose of Neo's training in the martial arts is to learn how to bend and break these rules in order to manipulate the Matrix and defeat the agents. Essentially he is learning to "walk on water" - i.e. to perform miracles. As with any terrorist group, soldiers must be trained to defeat the enemy, which is always "the system," taken in some sense of this word. Needless to say, miracles are pretty effective terrorist tactics not only to physically overpower the enemy, but also to win converts to the cause. Our heroes must hope that the drowning Egyptians don't learn how to walk on water too before the waves consume them.

Sometime later, Neo and Cypher (Joe Pantaliano) look at the code that flashes across the screen. Neo is incredulous that Cypher can de-cipher it. The latter explains that he can't even see the code anymore: he reads it as a blond, a brunette, or a red-head, i.e. the simulacra that the code represents. Like all other monikers in the film, "Cypher" is a meaningful name. The word "cipher" can mean "the number 0" or "a person who has little or no value." More importantly, it can mean "a system of secret writing based on a set of symbols" or "a message in such a system." Not surprisingly, Cypher's job on the ship is to read the computer code or the "secret writing." Later, we see that he is the messenger of an important truth: That the war between humans and AIs is over and that the AIs have won. This in fact can be viewed as the "cipher" of the entire film, the Wachowskis' hidden prophecy that we are inescapably committed to living out our lives in a hyperreal culture.

Cypher also plays the Judas figure in this film, betraying Morpheus (the only person with access to the codes for Zion's computer mainframe) to the agents over a meal of succulent steak (the film's equivalent of Judas' pieces of silver). He says to Agent Smith "I know this steak doesn't exist," yet revels in its taste all the same. He concludes, "Ignorance is bliss." Read Mercer Schuchardt makes some interesting observations regarding the steak scene in his web essay on The Matrix:

It is immensely significant that Cypher's deal-making meal with the agents centers around steak. First, meat is a metaphor that cyberspace inhabitants use to describe the real world: meat space is the term they use to describe the non-virtual world, a metaphor that clearly shows their preference for the virtual realm. Cypher says that even though he knows the steak isn't real, it sure seems like it. The stupidity and superficiality of choosing blissful ignorance is revealed when Cypher says that when he is reinserted into the Matrix, he wants to be rich and "somebody important, like an actor." It's a line you could almost pass over if it wasn't so clearly earmarked as the speech of a fool, justifying his foolishness. But meat is also the metaphor that

media theorist Marshall McLuhan uses to describe the tricky distinction between a medium's content and form. As he puts it, "The content of a medium is like a juicy piece of meat that the burglar throws to distract the watchdog of the mind." ...The Matrix itself is designed, like Huxley's brave new world, to oppress you not through totalitarian force, but through totalitarian pleasure. (4)

While we certainly agree with Schuchart's allusion to McLuhan, Cypher is no simple fool, no mere pawn in the AIs' game. His betrayal is particularly interesting because his motives are so rational. He is clearly extremely angry with and oppressed by Morpheus, whom he portrays as a kind of slave-driver. When Cypher and Neo share a drink together he says: "I bet you're saying to yourself, why didn't I take the blue pill? That's what I've been asking myself since I got here." Reality is extremely bleak and uncomfortable on the Nebuchadnezzar. Moreover, Cypher is no more free on the ship than he was in the Matrix. In both situations he is working to benefit others; the difference is that in the Matrix he at least has the illusion of being free and the experience of a pleasant life, while on the ship he feels oppressed. From Cypher's standpoint, there can be no point to "saving" people from the Matrix, because the Matrix is, by any measure, a much more pleasant place to live than "reality." To him Morpheus's entire project of redemption is deluded and misguided.

Moreover, the vast majority of the people in the Matrix (both in the film and, one would imagine, in the film's audience) have no desire to be "redeemed." Cypher forces the audience to ask a serious question: "If Neo is the ONE, from what is he redeeming the world? Where is the evil in the Matrix? How is it fundamentally different from the world in which we live today?" The answer

to the last question is that there is no difference. We are living in a world saturated by simulacra controlled by mega-powers beyond our ken. We think we have choices, but we don't. We think we are free, but we aren't. Our bodies are batteries that provide the energy for the work of nameless, faceless corporations. Most of us in the Western world are corporate slaves. Even if we are not entirely happy, we are for the most part unwilling to make meaningful changes in our lives. Most of us would never forsake our hyperreal world for the desert of the real. If someone like Morpheus were to come along to

"liberate" us, we would see him as an arrogant, self-righteous and fanatical terrorist, come to replace our comforts and conveniences with his unattractive version of reality, complete with a new set of dictates on how we must now live our lives (media castigate Ted Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber, had the same sort of project in mind, which he hoped to accomplish by postal terrorism). Most of us would prefer to stay asleep and blind, to not be "born again." If Morpheus's desert of the real is the kingdom of god, he can keep it. This position is not superficial, foolish, or ignorant: it is pragmatic. Any freedom that might be experienced on the Nebuchadnezzar is as illusory as the freedom one feels in the Matrix. Human beings are never free. The film makes this point perfectly clear, and as such effectively deconstructs the categories of salvation and terrorism. From Cypher's perspective, Morpheus and his crew are a group of terrorists, and he is leaving them to rejoin legitimate society.

After Neo's training, Morpheus decides that the time is right to take him to see the Oracle, an old woman who has functioned as a prophetess since the beginning of the resistance. Everyone on the ship except Tank enters the Matrix. When Neo finally meets this middle-aged, charming black woman, she tells him not to mind the vase, at which point Neo trips and knocks it over. In this scene, the Oracle plays with the concepts of free will and fate. The act of prediction influences the course of events, just as the behavior of electrons changes when they are observed using light photons. The Oracle asks Neo: "What do you think?"; Neo answers "I don't know." To this the Oracle replies "Know thyself," the inscription over the ancient Temple of Delphi wherein a more venerable oracle gave her prophecies to all and sundry. She goes on to say that being the ONE is like being in love. There's no question about it, one just knows. Since Neo does not know it (yet), he is not the One, at least according to her. She says: "You got the gift, but you're waiting for something." "So I'm not the One?" Neo asks. "Sorry kid, maybe in another life." Later that day, Neo dies and is resurrected by the faith and love of the holy spirit

(Trinity) and becomes the ONE, the miracle worker who can stop bullets, having become fully aware that the Matrix is not really "there." Ultimately the Oracle does foretell the future. He becomes the one, but in another life. As such, Neo is at once fated and free, both the One and not the One.

At this point, Cypher has betrayed the group to the agents, who are now hot on their trail. They are specifically interested in Morpheus because he has the codes to Zion's mainframe computer. Cypher asks for an exit and rejoins his body on the ship, where he subsequently shoots Tank and begins the process of unplugging the others' bodies on the ship (thus murdering them). During this process he calls Trinity, with whom he has been in love for many years, to explain his motives:

Cypher: You see the truth, the real truth is that the war is over. It's been over for a long time. And guess what? We lost! Did you hear that? We lost the war!

Trinity: What about Zion?

Cypher: Zion? Zion is a part of this delusion. More of this madness. That's why this has to be done. It has to end, now and forever.

(She suddenly sees the entire dark plan.)

Trinity: Oh my God, this is about Zion. You gave them Morpheus for the access codes to Zion.

Cypher: You see Trinity, we humans here have a place in the future. But it's not here, it's in the Matrix.

Trinity: The Matrix isn't real.

Cypher: Oh, I disagree Trinity. I think the Matrix is more real than this world. I mean, all I do is pull a plug here. But there you watch a man die. (He grabs hold of the cable in Apoc's neck, twists it and yanks it out.) You tell me which is more real. (Apoc seems to go blind for an instant, a scream caught in his throat, his hands reaching for nothing, and then falls dead. Switch screams.) Welcome to the real world, right?

Trinity: Somehow, some way, you're going to pay for this.

Cypher: Pay for it? I'm not even going to remember it. It'll be like it never happened. The tree falling in the forest. It doesn't make a sound.

Trinity: Goddamn you Cypher!

Cypher: Don't hate me Trinity, I'm just the messenger. And right now I'm going to prove that the message is true. (Screenplay)

A cipher is a "secret message," and in this passage Cypher represents himself as a messenger. We shall see in the third part of this paper that Cypher's perspective on hyperreality is quite Baudrillardesque, and is probably the final position held by Larry and Andy Wachowski. The film then is not (just) a story about good defeating evil, as Schuchardt argues; instead, it is a multi-faceted description of our own hyppereal culture; an assessment that the war has already been won by the controllers of technology; and that our concept of the real is a utopia that no longer exists.

Cypher then asks Trinity if she believes that Neo is the ONE. Trinity says that she does. Cypher laughs at this, bragging that "If he's the One, there's gonna hafta be a miracle to stop me." As it turns out, a miracle does occur, and a "resurrected" Tank kills Cypher before he is able to unplug Trinity and Neo.

When the agents finally have Morpheus in their grasp, they begin the process of "hacking into his mind" to obtain the codes. Morpheus proves surprisingly resistant to their efforts, so the agents begin playing mind games to wear him down. During an important exchange, Agent Smith explains that this Matrix is not the original one. The first Matrix attempted to simulate a garden of Eden, a perfect world, free of pain and suffering. The human minds could not accept such a world because they define their existence by suffering. As a result, a second Matrix had to be constructed. This story echos the Genesis story of original sin and the fall from grace. In this case, however, the AIs are God.

Back on the ship, Trinity and Neo realize that Morpheus is vulnerable to the agents' interrogation, and, as a result, that Zion is in danger. Tank and Trinity decide that the only thing to do is pull the plug on Morpheus to save Zion. Neo stops them, having resolved to dive back into the data pool of the Matrix to rescue Morpheus. If he is truly the One, he will be able to defeat the agents, even though all the previous prophets have failed (and thus proven themselves false). Trinity, as Neo's commanding officer, insists on coming along. They enter the Matrix and liberate Morpheus (after blasting their way through walls of security guards and swat teams). Morpheus and Trinity exit successfully in a subway phone booth, leaving Neo behind. Just as he is about to exit, he is confronted by Agent Smith, his old nemesis. Several minutes of acrobatic hand to hand combat ensue; Neo temporarily gets the upper hand, but is eventually killed. Thus Neo dies to redeem Morpheus as well as the children of Zion.

Back on the ship, Trinity has become VERY FAITHFUL. She now realizes that Neo is the One, because she has fallen head over heals in love with him, as the Oracle foretold. Although she knows that Neo is dead, her faith in him and her love, incarnated with a princess charming kiss on his real lips, are just what the doctor ordered to resurrect our hero. Once resurrected, he is invincible and able to really "see" the Matrix for what it is - streams of code. Now he can stop bullets and perform other sundry miracles. He has become a divine being, a Herculean demi-god.(1) The obvious spiritual message is that faith is love and that love is stronger than death. Faith and Love are the ultimate strength, more powerful even than Neo's new abilities to halt bullets in mid-flight.

At the end of the movie Neo makes a phone call to the audience. He says: "Are you afraid of change? I didn't come to tell you the future. I'm going to show them a world without you [the AIs, presumably], a world without boundaries and controls. A world where anything is possible." Ironically, as we shall see in the third part of this essay, the message of the film can be understood to say just the opposite of Neo's closing words. The cipher is the message spoken by Cypher. "You see, the truth, the real truth is that the war is over. It's been over for a long time. And guess what? We lost! Did you hear that - we lost the war."

Part II. Ghosts in the Machine: The Matrix as the Cartesian Evil Demon

Another way to interpret the world of The Matrix is to see it as a high-tech simulation of René Descartes' experiment with extreme doubt in his Meditations. For the philosophically uninitiated, at the start of this groundbreaking short work, Descartes proposes to doubt all of his previous opinions in order to get at a body of knowledge he knows to be absolutely true. Part of the reason for this campaign of doubt is the fact that his senses have in the past so often played him false:

Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I have sometimes found that these senses played me false, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us. (Descartes 1968, 96)

Indeed, he asks whether his entire life is no more than a dream, wondering whether, in fact, he is dreaming as he writes his first Meditation. But reality intrudes: even the sirens and satyrs of his dreamworld must be constructed from elements of real things. Also, the truths of arithmetic and geometry are true in all possible worlds. In The Matrix we see a parallel process unfolding. When Morpheus is preparing Neo for his first exit from the Matrix, he asks him:

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? (From the film)

Of course, as Descartes observed, you cannot tell the difference (assuming there is nothing with which to compare the dreamworld in terms of internal coherence, clarity, brilliance, consistency, etc., as is the case for the dreamers in the Matrix). Like Descartes, Neo doubts the reliability of his senses, a doubt reinforced by Morpheus's cryptic questions. In the same exchange, Morpheus compares Neo's waking dream to the adventures of Lewis Carroll's light-hearted heroine, Alice.

Morpheus: I imagine that, right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole, hmmm?

Neo: You could say that.

Morpheus: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. (From the film)

...which he soon does, by taking the red pill. But Neo discovers that truth is stranger than fiction as he tumbles down the rabbit hole, finding that it extends much deeper than he ever could have imagined.

The Matrix is made up of a series of code to which some fairly rigid rules apply. Its inhabitants are, for the most part, required to follow the basic laws of physics. The point of Neo's simulated trainingisto learn to bend and break these laws while in it, to defeat the AIs and ultimately to liberate the captive dreamers. Indeed, the illusion of the Matrix would be broken if the AI machines were able to change it whenever they fancied. Even when small changes are made (in one case, to surround a virtual building where our heroes are hiding out with brick walls),we see the intervention heralded by a "glitch" in the VR program, like the

skipping of a record needle: Neo witnesses two identical black cats walk by a doorway. Needlessto say, the cats announce upcoming bad luck for our protagonists and show us the "black magic" of the AIs, who can change the structure of the Matrix at will. The agents in the Matrix, however, usually follow the rough and ready rules of physics: Trinity is able to shoot one point-blank in the head and at least temporarily dispose of him. Of course, since they are pure computer code, they have the power to re-simulate themselves in other virtual bodies. They are effectively immortal until Neo gains the ability to decode and reshape the Matrix to conform to his own will. In short, even the agents cannot (usually) defy the rules of their own code, although they can always rewrite a virtual report of the results of any battle by infesting the consciousness of yet another hapless denizen of the Matrix.

Descartes, like the crew on the Nebuchadnezzar, has faith that a divine being is the author of the universe. But he asks:

...who can give me the assurance that this God has not arranged that there should be no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no figure, no magnitude, or place, and that nevertheless I should have the perception of all these things, and the persuasion that they do exist other than as I see them? (98)

To guide (or misguide) him on his way to certain knowledge, Descartes invents an evil demon, a sort of anti-God, whose diabolical goal is to deceive him about everything he has ever believed:

I shall suppose, therefore, that there is, not a true God, who is the sovereign source of truth, but some evil demon, no less cunning and deceiving than powerful, who has used all his artifice to deceive me. I will suppose that the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things that we see, are only illusions and deceptions which he uses to take me in. (100)

We find out that this demon plagues him with doubt not only about the reports of the senses, but about the established conclusions of philosophy, mathematics, and even common sense. Descartes has voluntarily put himself, via a thought experiment, into a 17th century version of virtual reality, where nothing his senses tell him is true. Mind you, he, like the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, never questions whether or not reality has an essence to which his descriptions can correspond; he takes this on absolute faith. He only worries that his descriptions do not correspond to the essence of reality. He has, in short, inserted himself into a Matrix of illusion. Descartes' fantasy, like the Matrix, supposes that reality has an essence and that his descriptions of it are completely wrong because of the deception of an evil demon. If the film shows us the Cartesian dreamworld of hyperbolic doubt, then the puppet-masters who created this world, the AI machines that constructed the Matrix to make its dwellers happy with their role as human batteries, are the evil demons who haunt Descartes' imagination.

But there is one thing of which Descartes feels he can be sure: there is something or someone being deceived. The evil demon has a plaything, although it's not immediately clear what that plaything is. After stripping away the reality of his body, external bodies, and even of certain elements of the thinking process itself, he goes on in his second Meditation to conclude that there can be no doubt that he is thinking, whether or not his thoughts accurately reflect the nature of external reality. The proposition that "I exist as a thinking thing" must be true even if the objects of my thought are fundamental misrepresentations of the way things really are. He thus provides pop philosophy one of its most popular cliches, "I think, therefore I am."

The same can be said of Neo: he obviously thinks, and therefore is. But it's not entirely clear just what "he" is, or whether the world around him is really there (however clearly and distinctly he seems to sense it). Like Descartes' oar in the water, which appears crooked although he reasons that it must be straight, Neo's world streams into his consciousness full of splinters and unauthentic fragments of data that stick in his craw. And as in Descartes' doubt experiment, there is an evil demon in Neo's world, the AI machines that established and maintain the Matrix.

When Neo takes the red pill that awakens him from his dreamworld into the less seductive reality of the post-eco-holocaust Earth, we see Descartes' doubt experiment at work writ large. But unlike Descartes, Neo has to return to the dreamworld of the evil demons, first to visit the Oracle, a Delphic-like priestess whose pronouncements are no clearer than the original conundrums of the Pythian Prophetess; later to save his mentor Morpheus, who has been caught by the Matrix's virtual Gestapo; and lastly, after his second rebirth, as a sort of Bodhisattva to the unenlightened.

In another Cartesian metaphor, the inhabitants of the Matrix walk about like the automata Descartes imagines lurking outside his window. They are literally "cloaked" in streams of data and inserted into each others' dreams.(2) We get a startling sense of this when Neo and Morpheus, after Neo's training is apparently complete, enter what appears to be the Matrix itself. Neo's gaze is distracted by the passing of a pretty woman in red (a creation of Mouse, the ship's programmer), and an agent sneaks up behind him and pulls a pistol. Morpheus pauses the program and everyone in the crowded street freezes except the two of them. In this case, other people are indeed automata, very realistic conglomerations of electrical signals sent to Neo's cortex, providing him with the illusion of other living beings.

The quest for perfection represents another Cartesian element in The Matrix. In his third Meditation, Descartes brings to the fore the classic medieval proof of god's existence, the ontological argument.

He contends that nothingness cannot be the cause of anything; that the more perfect has

greater "reality" than the less perfect, and further, that perfection cannot be the product of imperfection. There must be greater perfection and reality in the cause of the universe than its effects (for example, us). Therefore God exists, in so far as we can imagine perfection, and this perfection cannot be the product of our feeble minds. In The Matrix, we find a reference to the creation of such perfection when Agent Smith interrogates a bound and helpless Morpheus. He tells Morpheus that the initial Matrix created by the AIs gave its human prisoners a perfect life, free of pain and suffering, and how this construct was a disaster, as its prisoners rejected the illusions it created en masse. "No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost." Smith speculates that there is something about the human mind that cannot live with such perfection. We are imperfect creatures as compared to the AIs, who are, quite literally, godlike. Paradoxically, here we see the ontological argument in reverse: how could imperfect human minds have created such sublime beings? Smith apparently never considers this question, treating evolution as a haphazard process, full of fits and starts, whereby an imperfect species too much in love with corporeal reality (i.e. us) accidentally brings into being its own successors, which become masters of the planet.

In a private soliloquy to Morpheus (Smith takes out his earpiece, which we can take as symbolic of his disconnection from the Borg-like commonality of the world of the AIs), he divulges that he feels himself becoming corrupted by the simulated sensory overload of the Matrix, notably, the stench (he sniffs Morpheus's sweat to make his point):

Agent Smith: I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it. (Screenplay)

His crystalline consciousness seems to be drawn down into the corporeal realm (despite the fact he has no real body): his perfection is in danger of fragmenting. Yet he explains how the replacement of human dominance on the planet by the rule of the AIs is a necessary evolutionary step, a freeing of mind from the corruptions of the body. In Agent Smith's account of evolution, the thinking things must sever their links with this corporeal realm to move forward toward a purer transcendence.

The classical philosophical problem of freewill and fate as represented in the film also echoes Cartesian themes. When Neo goes to visit the Oracle, she tells him not to worry about breaking a vase, which Neo proceeds to do when he whirls around in confusion. Then she puts forward the riddle to Neo: "What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything." She also asks him if he believes in fate (as Morpheus asked him earlier in the film). He says no, for he doesn't like the idea of not being in control of his life.(3) Descartes, like Neo, also makes the case for freewill, saying that he is conscious of "possessing a will so ample and extended as not to be enclosed in any limits." He can will anything; but the limitations of his body and of the external world prevent him from carrying out these projects. Similarly, in the Matrix, the characters can will anything they like; but they are bound by its rules, just as we are bound by the laws of physics. But, as Trinity tells Neo while driving to the Oracle: "The Matrix cannot tell you who you are." The Cartesian rational ego may be totally deluded, but it can still construct itself as a free, unique entity. The liberation that the coming of Neo as "the One" promises, is based on this premise of metaphysical free will. Neo is at least potentially free to break the chains of the Matrix that held him prisoner for most of his life.

The last major Cartesian theme in The Matrix is that of mind/body dualism. Descartes took the position that although mind and body are composed of different substances, and that on one level we can see the mind as a sort of pilot in the ship of the body, they are closely related and form a single whole. We can see the intermingling in the mind/body relationship in phenomena like the phantom pain in non-existent legs experienced by amputees. Of course, on one level we can see the theme of mind/body dualism as the meta-theme of The Matrix. The whole concept of virtual reality is premised on Cartesian dualism: the body is shut down, while the mind is plugged into an alternative reality controlled by computer programs. More specifically, there is a sense of mind/body intermingling in a dialogue between Morpheus and Neo just prior to Neo's reinsertion into the Matrix. Neo asks, "If you are killed in the Matrix, do you die here," to which

Morpheus replies: "The body cannot live without the mind," thereby reversing Descartes' concerns about the mind being too dependent on the body (with its unreliable sensory reports, physical drives, and troublesome emotions). We see visible evidence of this dependence on the bodies of those plugged into the Matrix when suffering virtual pain or bodily abuse: shaking, bloody noses, sweat, etc. In both the Cartesian and Wachowskian universes, mind and body are separate yet closely related.

Thus The Matrix can be understood in terms of a modern version of the Cartesian dreamworld created by an evil demon, but which, paradoxically, leads to the certain knowledge that: "I think therefore I am." It pushes the mind/body problem to its theoretical limits while exploring free will and determinism in the artificial world created by the Wachowski brothers' thought experiment cum film. By any account, such weighty philosophical matters are more than what most Hollywood films ever hope to address. Nevertheless, the Wachowski brothers did not end their philosophical explorations in the seventeenth century. They plunge headlong into a cutting-edge postmodern critique of culture, consciously exploiting the ideas of cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard to illustrate an important point about the Matrix of our culture in which we find ourselves in 2000.

Part III. The Matrix as a Simulacrum of the Desert of the Real

For those who still believe in authorial intention, and that interpreting art and literature should involve assessing evidence and forming hypotheses about what the author meant to say, it can hardly be doubted that the theoretical source par excellence for The Matrix is Jean Baudrillard's theory that modern culture is a desert of the real in which hyperreal simulacra saturate and dominate human consciousness. There is much evidence in the film and screenplay to support the priority of such an interpretation. In the Construct, for instance, before Neo begins his training, Morpheus invites him to watch a 60s-era color console TV, suggesting a nostalgia for an earlier era of technology. On it we see representations of street life in our own day; then, a jarring switch to dark and devastated cities, the post-holocaust Earth. Morpheus, with great ceremony, announces this shift to Neo with the following pronouncement:

Welcome to the desert of the real.

The "desert of the real" is a classic Baudrillardesque metaphor. In this film, the Wackowskis argue along with Baudrillard that there is no longer a reality to which we can return because the map of the landscape (the simulacra) has replaced most of the original territory. All that remains of it is a barren and forsaken desert.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - the precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory... It is the real, not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself. (Baudrillard 1995a, 1)

Baudrillard uses this metaphor to suggest that what was once the real territory that the map simulated, is now a barren, lifeless desert, unclaimed by the Empire. Its domain is now the simulacra, the map, because reality either no longer exists or has become so dry and apostatized that it is of interest to almost no one. How this idea is paralleled in The Matrix is easy enough to sort out. The "Empire" is the Matrix, created by the AIs. The "real" world is of no interest to them, and they do not seek to dominate it. The hyperreal world of the Matrix is the only "territory" worth defending, which they do at all costs against the realist terrorists aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, who aim to destroy it.

Baudrillard and his work are referenced both in the film and in the original screenplay. His book of essays Simulacra and Simulation, and specifically its last essay, "On Nihilism," are featured in the film when Neo retrieves what appears to be a copy of the book, but which is a hollowed-out hiding place for illegal computer disks (and thus a book-simulacrum) that he gives to some shady-looking characters who have come to his door. Also, in the original screenplay Morpheus tells Neo in the Construct: "You have been living inside Baudrillard's vision, inside the map, not the territory. This is Chicago as it exists today." As we have seen, the idea of a map as a simulacrum of a territory that no longer exists, is taken from the first page of Baudrillard's essay, "The Precession of Simulacra,"a primary source for many of the ideas in this film. Here Baudrillard argues that the relationship between the real and their simulacra have changed over time. Once there was a reality that could be represented by copies or simulacra. Original manuscripts, paintings or sculptures had to be reproduced by hand, for example. The original object was real, and the simulacrum phony or counterfeit. Reality preceded its mapping or representation. In the second order of simulacra, that of mass production, real objects (such as toys, cars, or books) are mass produced. There is no original to which the copies can or cannot be fully "true." The original no longer precedes the copy; one copy is not more authentic than the other. We are currently living in the third order of simulacra, that of models and codes. Here the simulacra precede what they represent, becoming not only real, but more than real, or "hyperreal," because there is no reality left to map or counterfeit. Simulacra are formed from code, and bear no resemblance to any reality whatsoever. Hyperreal simulacra include images and products like Madonna, Coca Cola, and Nike that are reproduced by the millions and which are imprinted onto our consciousness via TV, film, and other forms of media. For Baudrillard, postmodernity has rejected the very notion of a "true copy," which represents something more real or authentic than itself. We are at a point in history where simulacra are more real (and having a greater impact) than the original code from which they were created.

The three orders of simulacra have emerged in four phases:

Such would be the successive phases of the image:

it is the reflection of a profound reality;

it masks and denatures a profound reality;

it masks the absence of a profound reality;

it has no relationship to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

In the first case, the image is a good appearance - representation is of the sacramental order. In the second, it is an evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence. In the third it plays at being an appearance - it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth it is no longer in the order of appearances, but of simulation. (Baudrillard 1995a, 6)

The last two phases represent the third order of simulacra, which first masks the fact that there is no reality left to simulate and whose simulations bear no resemblance to any reality whatsoever. Morpheus and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar believe that the Matrix (a metaphor for our own technological and hyperreal world) masks and denatures a profound reality, from which "the dreamers" must be redeemed.Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed (Romans 13:11). Cypher disagrees, arguing, along with Baudrillard, that there is no reality left to simulate, that the simulacra (of the Matrix) are more real than "the desert of the real,"and that there is no longer a God to distinguish between the true and the false. Baudrillard writes:

The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point. The first reflects a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates the era of simulacra and of simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance. (Baudrillard 1995a, 6)

The Matrix simulates and resurrects a reality that once existed, but all of which remains on post-eco-holocaust earth are "vestiges that persist here and there in the deserts that no longer are those of the Empire.... The desert of the real itself." According to Cyper, this desert must be abandoned in favor of the oasis of the hyperreal. Ironically, Morpheus, like Cypher, struggles with the distinction between reality and hyperreality, describing reality as a set of electrical signals interpreted by the brain. In the Construct he asks Neo:

What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you feel, what you can smell, what you taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by the brain. (From the film)

Here we catch Morpheus in a contradiction. According to him, if the mind believes it, it is real, yet he argues that the Matrix is not real, but a dream. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to die in the Matrix, or in any computer simulation program, because the body and mind are inextricably co-dependent. The unstated conclusion seems to be that life in the Matrix is not unreal but hyperreal - i.e. more real than reality. The difference between reality and hyperreality is not that one is more "authentic" than the other, rather, hyperreality is controlled by the AIs, and therefore the minds that inhabit it are not free. This is Baudrillard's chief criticism of our hyperreal culture: we are controlled by a system of binary regulation, by a code, by a Matrix. Reality, on the other hand, allows the mind to think for itself (in theory at least). One of the interesting elements of this film is that this premiss is called into question. It is very unclear that there is more freedom in "the desert of the real" than there is in the Matrix. Nevertheless, the control exercised over it by the AIs, and not its illusory nature, is what Morpheus objects to:

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage... born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. (From the film)

In the film the "desert of the real" is meant in at least two ways: in the context of Neo and Morpheus's visit to the devastated surface of the planet, the real is quite literally a "desert," dark and devoid of life. In a second sense, the fact that most human beings are plugged into the dreamworld of the Matrix suggests that they, too, live in a desert of the real, which is to say an

oasis of the hyperreal. There is also a third sense in which the film is about the desert of the real. We can map the distinction between the Matrix and the "real" world of those who have escaped from it onto a similar differentiation in our own world, in the year 2000. On the one hand, most people live in cities, depending on corporations for their livelihood and a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. They are the power supply of the industrial-military-entertainment complex. Their world is dominated by mass media and advertising from every imaginable source, especially television, computers, and other forms of technology, which permeate their lives and

determine the scope of their choices. Mass media invades their most intimate moments, accompanying them into the most secret recesses of their homes. On the other hand, there is a

small faction of people who, like the Unabomber Ted Kaczysnki, have "escaped" from this culture. They live off the land in isolation, having spurned technology. Such people remain "uninfected" by hyperreal culture, and claim to see reality as it "really" is. Their project is to awaken the slumbering masses by offering up terrorist resistance to hyperreality. Like Baudrillard, these Luddites argue that in the era of models and codes, which multiply themselves and control the world by a system of binary regulation. It seems as if there are differences and choices: Pepsi or Coke, Democrat or Republican, Nike or Addidas etc, but they are constructed by those in control of the master codes and means of production of our civilization. In this way the system reduces differences and opposition to itself, especially political opposition. It should be noted, however, that in pre-industrial societies, free of the hegemonic control exercised by modern forms of media, there are no such choices, raising the question: "Is one more free in a society undominated by media?" Cypher doesn't think so, which is why he chooses the world of succulent steak over that of thin gruel. In the Matrix, the "illusion" (if it can be called that) of freedom is so convincing that the AIs have encountered almost no resistance to it. The only way to dispute the rule exercised by a system that appears to offer unlimited freedom is by nihilistic terrorism. Neo and Trinity's rampages are in fact not just blood and guts action, the meat designed to distract the "watch dog of the mind," as Schuchardt argues. They are acts of nihilist terrorism, and the only way to combat the merchants of the hyperreal.

Nihilism is a concept inextricably associated with terrorism. It is the denial of any basis for knowledge or truth and a rejection of customary beliefs. It is also the fanatic conviction that existing institutions must be destroyed to make way for a new and more meaningful order. Morpheus and his crew, at least from the point of view of the AIs, are nihilist-terrorists, who believe that there is no basis for knowledge or values accepted by mainstream culture. Like all terrorists, they literally think that the denizens of mainstream culture (i.e. those living in the Matrix) are living in a dreamworld. It is no coincidence that Baudrillard's essay "On Nihilism" is featured in the film. Baudrillard, too, would like to be a nihilist, to resist the hegemonic order, to fight the power:

If being a nihilist, is carrying out, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left to us. (Baudrillard 1995c, 163)

However, it is no longer possible to resist the system terroristically, because the system itself is nihilistic, agreeing with those who would oppose it that there is no basis for truth or knowledge. As such, it incorporates terrorist resistance to itself, embracing it while erasing the value of human life. The more insistent the resistance, the more indifferent the system's reaction to it.

But such a sentiment is utopian. Because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there were still a radicality- as it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the terrorist still had meaning. But it is at this point where things become insoluble. Because to this active nihilism of radicality, the system opposes its own, the nihilism of neutralization. The system is itself nihilistic, in the sense that it has the power to pour everything, including what denies it, into indifference.

In this system, death itself shines by virtue of its absence...And this is the victory of the other nihilism, of the other terrorism, that of the system. (Baudrillard 1995c, 163)

This is the why Neo's victory over the Matrix, if there is such a victory, could only come about by utterly destroying it as a physical system - by annihilating the technological structure supporting the hyperreality of the Matrix.(4)

Conclusion

Baudrillard, like the Wachowskis, find the terrorist resistance to the system both noble and hopeless - even silly. This is why, in the original screenplay conclusion to the film, we see Neo flying away like Superman as a disbelieving child asks his mother whether people can really fly.

Attempts to transcend the hyperreal are puerile, a fantasy for children, worthy of comic book characters. At the same time the possibility of such a transcendence inspires us with awe and a renewed hope for the existence of something solid behind the images. Significantly, Neo can be seen as a simulacrum of Jesus Christ and Superman - nothing about him is original or true. If there were still a reality left to represent, he would have to be described as a fake, a phony, and a false prophet. From the point of view of Baudrillard's bleak nihilism, the true prophet would be Cypher, who bears the "secret message" of the film; "You see, the truth, the real truth is that the war is over. It's been over for a long time. And guess what? We lost! Did you hear that- we lost the war." Since there is no reality left to simulate, Neo is not a fake - he is as hyperreal as the hyperreality he opposes. Like Don Quixote who believes that he lives in an earlier era of knights and damsels, of honor and courtly love, Neo is both a freedom fighter and a terrorist, good and evil, noble and ridiculous. But he is not outside the system, he is embraced and engulfed by it because the reality he is fighting for no longer exists - it is a utopia, an ancient legend.

The imaginary was the alibi of the real in a world dominated by the reality principle. Today, it is the real that has become the alibi of the model, in a world controlled by the principle of simulation. And paradoxically, it is the real that has become our true utopia- but a utopia that is no longer in the realm of the possible, that can only be dreamt as one would dream of a lost object. (Baudrillard 1995b, 122-123)

In short, to fight the Matrix one has to leave the hyperreal far behind, to rigorously think oneself outside it, and then find a way to physically destroy it. Baudrillard, something of a pessimist, doesn't seem to think that this is remotely possible. Whether we take seriously Neo's closing message that "anything is possible" depends on whether we believe that the map of the hyperreal has entirely eclipsed the territory of contemporary culture. If it has, then we would be well advised to order a big juicy steak, and enjoy the ride. If not, we can, like Neo, choose to fight the power by the most effective means available, terrorism.

Raw, metaphysically bold Never followed a code Still droppin' a load Droppin' a bomb... Brain game, intellectual Vietnam Move as a team, never move alone But........ Welcome to the terrordome.

Chuck D., lyrical terrorist/Public Enemy on Fear of a Black Planet

 

Bibliography

The Matrix (1999). Written and Directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski. Warner Brothers.

Screenplay of The Matrix: http://netshopnow.hypermart.net/matrix/matrix.txt

Read Mercer Schuchardt's webpage: http://www.cleave.com/

Baudrillard, Jean (1994a). "The Precession of the Simulacra." Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Baudrillard, Jean (1994b). "Simulacra and Science Fiction." Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Baudrillard, Jean (1994c). "On Nihilism." Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Descartes, René (1968). The Meditations. In Discourse on Method and The Meditations.

Trans. F. E. Sutcliffe. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

 

Endnotes

1. In the conclusion of the original screenplay, he even ascends into heaven, superman style.

2. There is another scene in the original screenplay that makes this point clear. When Neo's friend Anthony comes to ask him to do some hacking to release his car from a Denver boot installed by the police (in the film he comes over to buy illegal clips), Neo is successful, and the cops arrive to do so. They "watch from the window as the cops silently, robotically, climb into their van," Anthony remarking, "Look at 'em. Automatons. Don't think about what they're doing or why. Computer tells 'em what to do and they do it."

3. In the fight between Smith and Neo in the subway station toward the end of the film, the theme of fate and free will arises yet again when Smith, hearing the rapidly approaching train, asks Neo if he knows what that it. Answering his own question, he says "That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death." Fortunately for him, Neo is an advocate of free will, so he leaps in the air and does a back flip off the tracks, thus exchanging his own dire fate with Smith's more palatable one.

4. Again, this is a conclusion similar to that reached by Kaczynski in his manifesto "Industrial Society and its Future."

http://home.comcast.net/~crapsonline/Library/matrix.html

by Richard Hanleyfrom WhatIsTheMatrix Website

There is nothing new under the sun. With the death of the real, or rather with its (re)surrection, hyper-reality both emerges and is already always reproducing itself. The dead are already dead; precisely more than the living which are yet alive. God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum; his own Disneyland…

To begin with it is no ''objective'' difference: the same type of demand. Formerly the discourse of crisis, negativity and crisis. It is pointless to laboriously interpret these films by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more radical political exigency.Jean Baudrillard“The Precession of Simulacra”Philosophers can get pretty excited about The Matrix. An apparent exception is Jean Baudrillard, the author of Simulacra and Simulation (henceforth, S&S), the book that appears in the movie. Numerous sources report Baudrillard saying that the movie “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings” of his work. So a natural point of inquiry has been whether or not this is true. Yeffeth (2002) contains two essays both entitled “The Matrix: Paradigm of post-modernism or intellectual poseur?”; one answering “the former” and the other “the latter,” and both apparently assuming the disjunction is exclusive.1

 In this article I will point out some further interpretations, and (eventually) argue for one of them.   

I. An analytic take on post-modernism 

But first, let me lay my cards on the table. I am no fan of either Baudrillard or post-modernism.2 I am an analytic philosopher, and my focus is entirely upon what to make of Baudrillard and his connection to The Matrix, from the analytic point of view.

I think there’s a consensus amongst analytic philosophers that post-modernism is largely self-indulgent, self-important bunk, that has rather inexplicably taken hold in many philosophy departments outside the English-speaking world, and in many non-philosophy departments inside it. The following would be a fairly typical assessment: 

Philosophy is hard enough to read, anyway, but analytic writers strive to be clear, whereas post-modernists seem to strive to be as obscure as possible. And just to make things worse, when an exponent of Po-Mo occasionally makes a reasonably clear statement, taken literally it’s either trivially true, or obviously false. So the Principle of Charity (interpret others so that what they say has the best chance of being both true and interesting) suggests that we take them non-literally. But then what is the non-literal meaning?

There’s even a joke about it. What do you get if you cross a post-modernist with a Mafioso? Someone who’ll make you an offer you can’t understand!

But mostly, it’s no laughing matter. The more egregious the offense against clarity and good sense, the more influential and celebrated its perpetrator. They are elevated to cultish, pop-star status, with an almost religious devotion to their writings. But many of the “must-read” essays in Po-Mo circles would earn even an undergraduate a poor grade in an analytic school - it’s more like the unedited guff circulating on the internet, where any nut with a theory can hold forth. What post-modernists are doing is not really philosophy at all, and they give the discipline a bad name amongst other academics, take jobs that could and should go to more sensible folks, and present dangerous falsehoods to the general public. 

I confess to some sympathy with this line, perhaps tinged with some professional jealousy. And if Baudrillard can’t be understood, then he can’t be misunderstood, either. On the other hand, though, an undergraduate in a philosophy program inhabited by post-modernists can get a perfectly decent education in logic and the history of philosophy, so it can’t be true that post-modernists are just not doing philosophy. Rather, they have a very different conception of what is possible for contemporary philosophy.

A start towards understanding their view is to consider our ordinary use of fiction. A novel (or movie, or whatever) can provoke all manner of thoughts in us, and we often ask what it means, whether or not it was realistic, and what we can learn from it. The fiction represents a (part of a) world, and part of our normal interest is in how closely it resembles the real world. But what are we really comparing the fiction to? Isn’t it the way we think the real world is? And that’s just another representation of the real world, a mental story “about” it, not the real world itself.

Analytic philosophers are well aware of this potential regression in representation, and there is an ongoing debate over what it and related considerations might show. For instance, some think that all our observations of the real world are “theory-laden,” and debate whether or not this is a bad thing. Others think we have more direct access to the real world. But the touchstone in all the analytic views on this subject is that representation - language, say - is aimed at the real world: for instance, on one very common view, names often refer to real individuals, and predicates often apply to real properties. Truth is a matter of the predicates used applying to the individuals referred to.

Post-modernists tend to have a fundamentally different view of language and other representation, a view inherited from structuralism in linguistics. Representations, they say, only ever refer or apply to other representations, so that language (and thought) is literally cut off from the real world. No matter how hard you try to refer to the non-representational, you can’t do it.

If this is correct, then whither philosophy? Well, there’s still the possibility of objective inquiry, but it’s a matter of studying the representations and the relations between them - the system of “signs.” A sign is made up of a “signifier” and a “signified”: e.g. the word “horse” is a signifier, and signifies the concept horse (and never, as we analytics would often have it, real horses.) Now this pursuit - semiotics, or semiology - has its limits, though it’s not as limited as you might think, since post-modernists tend to radically expand the domain of things that count as representations (e.g. to include all artifacts). Moreover, some even suggest that semiotics is not objective, anyway. So in post-modernist circles there is a shift toward what I would call aesthetic aspects of representation. Philosophy becomes after all an art-form, where presentation is as important (maybe more so) than representation. The point becomes to be playful, to fill one’s writings with double-meanings, puns, scare-quotes, irony, metaphors, capitalizations, and so on. For instance, in a

post-modernist’s hands, the first sentence of this paragraph might be: 

If this is “correct,” then w(h)ither Philosophy? 

Baudrillard is entirely typical in this regard:"The form of my language is almost more important than what I have to say within it. Language has to be synchronous with the fragmentary nature of reality. With its viral, fractal quality, that’s the essence of the thing! It’s not a question of ideas – there are already too many ideas!”This quote is from Philosophers, a book of photo-portraits by Steve Pyke, accompanied by each philosopher’s answer to the question:“What does philosophy mean to you?”Baudrillard did not answer the question directly, and instead asked one of his English-speaking commentators to provide a suitable quote from his writings. Look up “synchronous” and “fractal” in dictionary, and it seems clear these words are chosen for some effect other than their actual, or even metaphorical, meanings. (“Viral,” on the other hand, at least makes sense as a metaphor applied to language, as in Kripke’s metaphor of the “contagion of meaning.”)

Philosophers also contains the answer from an analytic philosopher, Sir Geoffrey Warnock, to the question, “What does philosophy mean to you?”: 

To be clear-headed rather than confused; lucid rather than obscure; rational rather than otherwise; and to be neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence. That is worth trying for. 

Post-modernists reject this sort of answer as a quaint artifact from the “modernist” past, a demand for clarity and objectivity that cannot (now) be had. We analytics, modernist throwbacks that we are, should bear this in mind when we examine Baudrillard’s writings, and particularly since we usually are reading in translation.   

II. Simulacra and Simulation 

The first chapter of S&S, “The Precession of Simulacra” begins:The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.The simulacrum is true.EcclesiastesIf once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) - as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyper-real. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.

In fact, even inverted, Borge’s fable is unusable. Only the allegory of the Empire, perhaps, remains. Because it is with this same imperialism that present-day simulators attempt to make the real, all of the real, coincide with their models of simulation. But it is no longer a question of

either maps or territories. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference, between one and the other, that constituted the charm of the abstraction. Because it is difference that constitutes the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real. This imaginary of representation, which simultaneously culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of the ideal co-extensivity of map and territory, disappears in the simulation whose operation is nuclear and genetic, no longer at all specular or discursive. It is all of metaphysics that is lost. No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept. No more imaginary co-extensivity: it is genetic miniaturization that is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized cells, from matrices, and memory banks, models of control - and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer needs to be rational, because it is no longer measures itself against either and ideal or negative instance. It is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer real the real, because no imaginary envelopes it anymore. It is a hyper-real, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.

By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials - worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself - such is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection, that no longer even gives the event of death a chance. A hyper-real henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of differences.Baudrillard apparently asserts that the post-modern condition is one of “simulation,” where reality has disappeared altogether. This historical process has been one of “precession of simulacra”: representation gives way to simulation, through the production and reproduction of images. He writes (p6):These would be the successive phases of the image:

1. it is the reflection of a profound reality2. it masks and denatures a profound reality3. it masks the absence of a profound reality4. it has no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

In the first case, the image is a good appearance - representation is of the sacramental order [i.e. not a simulacrum]. In the second, it is an evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence. In the third, it plays at being an appearance - it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearances, but of simulation. 

Note that Baudrillard is here reacting to, amongst other things, Marxist thought. Marx’s historical materialism postulated the necessity of the overthrow of the bourgouisie by the proletariat. Baudrillard claims instead that a different historical process is playing out - and the crucial factor is not the mode of production, but the mode of reproduction. 

Moreover, whereas Marx claimed that the masses suffered from false consciousness, Baudrillard writes that the masses are post-modernist, understanding that all consciousness is “false,” and hungrily consuming one “false” image after another.

The historical nature of these processes suggests that it is only in the post-modernist world - from the late twentieth century on - that truth and objectivity is impossible. (This might explain why post-modernists don’t depart radically from analytic philosophers on the topic of the history of philosophy.) In Baudrillard’s terms, it seems there once was a real world to be investigated. It used to be that our images were more or less true representations of reality, then they became false representations, then they became the false appearances of representation, then finally (in the condition of simulation) they no longer even appear to be representations.

However you take this (for instance, whether he’s saying that there’s no reality, or only that our images bear no relation to it), it’s pretty radical stuff. Of course, he might not really mean what he says. If we interpret him literally, the obvious question to ask is why we should believe a word of it. So perhaps it’s better to take him as presenting a cautionary tale of some sort - that we in some meaningful sense have lost touch with reality. But then, all the obscure prose seems just unnecessary.

In any case, there seem to be many connections between Baudrillard’s work and The Matrix, not least the question of whether or not The Matrix is a simulation of the sort envisaged. A “programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes,” even sounds like the Matrix.

The connections become more obvious when we consider Baudrillard’s update of Marx’s theory of exchange value. Symbolic exchange is the key notion for Baudrillard, and ties in with the precession of simulacra. There is an unequal symbolic exchange when one object is a mere copy of an original (say a reproduction of a Queen Anne chair). In the next order of simulacra, the exchange is equal (say, mass-produced chairs which are only copies of each other). In the current order (simulation), objects are conceived in terms of equal-exchange reproducibility (chairs, of course, were not conceived in this way), in binary computer code. Again, The Matrix looks like a simulation, conceived entirely in computer code.

Moreover, Baudrillard is very taken with the miniaturization of code by means of the binary language of the computer chip; all those ones and zeroes. A common post-modernist theme is deconstruction, very roughly the process of exposing metaphysical problems, and especially contradictions, in theoretical language. If we understand “contradiction” in a loose sense, it is the assertion of both what is true and what is false, and it is common in logic to denote truth by the numeral “1,” falsehood by the numeral “0.” So perhaps we are to think that the Matrix necessarily contains the seeds of its own de(con)struction? After all, Neo is “the One,” and the name “Cypher” has amongst its meanings, “zero.”

Finally, S&S has a short disquisition (“On Nihilism”) on the necessity for terrorism and violence, and this may provide a justification of sorts for the mayhem that occurs in the movie. Even the electricity of human bodies turns up, by analogy, in Baudrillard’s In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, but here human beings are the “ground,” absorbing the “energy” of images.

So at first blush, The Matrix is based heavily upon Baudrillard’s work, and seems relatively faithful to it. But let’s not leap to a conclusion. Post-modernists are not the only ones interested in the notion of simulation, which has some important applications in analytic philosophy. I’ll mention just two. First, we want to know when to attribute intentionality to other individuals. For instance, there’s a famous debate involving Alan Turing, John Searle and others, about the simulation of intelligence. (Searle argues against Turing’s claim that a digital computer that successfully simulates intelligence thereby counts as intelligent.) Second, global simulation of

the sort we see in THE MATRIX seems to be a logical, physical and epistemic possibility, an observation that raises a host of well-known philosophical bugbears.

On the first issue, I am in the Turing camp, holding roughly that the best explanation of the ability of a computer to simulate the linguistic output of a normal human would be that the computer is intelligent. We might say that simulated intelligence can be real intelligence.3 Can we interpret Baudrillard as saying the same thing about reality: that simulated reality is real reality? Hardly. It seems better to interpret him as saying that simulation is not simulated reality, because it doesn’t even have the appearance of reality.   

III. Misunderstandings? So it seems that Baudrillard has some grounds for his complaint noted above. The Matrix is more faithful to traditional philosophical puzzles concerning global simulation, since there seems to be a profound reality outside the Matrix, and the folks in the Matrix falsely take their simulated condition to be reality. Of course, it might turn out when the trilogy is completed that even this appearance of reality is itself a simulation, but that’s not the point. THE MATRIX still has it that humans in or out of the Matrix can conceptualize the distinction between reality and mere simulation.4

 Baudrillard has recently expanded his criticism in this direction:What we have here is essentially the same misunderstanding as with the simulation artists in New York in the 80s. These people take the hypothesis of the virtual as a fact and carry it over to visible realms. But the primary characteristic of this universe lies precisely in the inability to use categories of the real to speak about it. (Reported translation from an interview in Le Nouvel Observateur.)There is a reflexive paradox here, of course. Baudrillard’s criticism seems to presuppose that we can conceptualize and communicate the difference between mere simulation and reality - else could the movie could not give this impression - -which flatly contradicts the claim that we can’t. From an analytic point of view, this alone shows Baudrillard (when taken literally) to be as mistaken as it’s possible to be, and drives us towards non-literal interpretations.

One possibility is that the Wachowski brothers were trying to be faithful to Baudrillard, but relied on a relatively superficial reading of S&S. After all, the “desert of the real” remark is one that Baudrillard immediately disavows, because it embraces the “impossible” conceptualization. The Wachowskis are easily forgiven for such an oversight - the first two paragraphs of S&S are actually pretty clear, but from then on, Baudrillard descends into murky prose that, if I may be permitted a complaint, has taken me weeks of my life to try to sort out. Frankly, if I was making a movie instead of writing this article, I simply wouldn’t bother. 

At one point the script required Morpheus to tell Neo “You have been living inside Baulliaurd's [sic.] vision, inside the map, not the territory.” (draft dated April 8, 1996) This again ignores Baudrillard’s disavowal, and the horrid misspelling tends to undermine any claim of serious scholarship.

The wonderful sequences involving the taste of food (Cypher and steak; Mouse, Tastee Wheat and chicken) seem in one sense to support Baudrillard’s view of the post-modern condition. Steak, Tastee Wheat and chicken no longer exist. Moreover, the humans raised in the Matrix never did taste the real thing, as Switch points out, so “the taste of Tastee Wheat” in the Matrix condition might for all anyone knows be entirely invented by the machines.

But, once again, this seems more in line with analytic concerns than with Baudrillard’s, since it presupposes the conceptual line between the real and the merely simulated. Indeed, consider the real import of the chicken remark. Mouse says:"Take chicken, for example. Maybe they couldn’t figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything."The Wachowski brothers are here playfully evoking the old saw that in our world chicken tastes like everything, prompting us to wonder about the possibility of all this being a global simulation, again presupposing that we can conceptualize the difference.

The whole sequence also evokes the very analytic debate over how phenomenal content of a mental state (e.g. the subjective “what it’s like” of a certain taste), is to be specified. According to some views at least, even if the Matrix produces in a human being a mental state that plays the complete functional role of the taste of Tastee Wheat, that fact does not guarantee that the state has the appropriate phenomenal content.   

IV. Paradigm of post-modernism and intellectual poseur? 

There is a real irony in Baudrillard’s focus on simulation. When I first opened S&S and saw the epigraph attributed to Ecclesiastes, I smelled a rat, and a few minute’s investigation confirmed my suspicion that the attribution was false. Then as I read on, I presumed that Baudrillard was trying to give a concrete example of simulation. But I remain puzzled. On the one hand, it seems a remarkably poor attempt at simulation - no one even remotely familiar with Ecclesiastes would be taken in by it. But on the other hand, to judge from the plethora of Baudrillard pages on the World Wide Web, many of Baudrillard’s readers seem either to be fooled by the false attribution, or else not to care one way or the other. And maybe that’s Baudrillard’s point: that to the “masses,” Ecclesiastes is no more and no less than the author of the epigraph. More on this presently.

What makes the debate over “simulated intelligence” particularly interesting is that it’s possible in principle for a digital computer, suitably programmed, to simulate the linguistic output of a typical human being. But in practice it’s very difficult, in part because there are just so many things that might come out of a typical human being’s mouth.

There are, however, atypical linguistic outputs that are much easier to simulate. An early, eerily real-sounding program was Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist. (Rogerians take a passive approach, which mostly involves taking what the patient has just said, and turning it into a question.) Another domain of discourse which seems ripe for simulation is professional sports-talk, which seems to consist largely in repeating the same clichés over and over, with 20/20 hindsight.

Curiously, the linguistic output of post-modernists likewise seems relatively easy to simulate, with reasonably successful actual attempts by both human beings and computers. For instance, NYU physicist Alan Sokal submitted a parody of post-modernist writing entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” to the journal Social Text, only to have it published in their Spring 96 issue.5

Analytic philosophers and their sympathizers reacted with glee, of course. Once the dust had

settled a bit, most of the commentary on the Sokal affair focused, in high dudgeon, on the nature of the editors’ error. The editors admitted to not understanding a good deal of the article - the science and math parts - and to being underwhelmed by most of what they did understand - the post-modern parts. The diagnosis, then, has been that the editors inappropriately included the article on grounds unconnected to its actual content - political grounds, and particularly the fact that Sokal was an established scientist.

But perhaps the editors conceded error too readily. The fact that editors are unmoved by a view is by itself no reason not to publish it. And analytic philosophy is hardly free from political constraints - modern edited collections (and the relevant issue of Social Text was a themed collection) often contain articles chosen because they present a certain point of view, rather than on sheer philosophical merit. Moreover, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for non-technical journal to assume that an expert in science and math would take care to maintain accuracy in that respect.

But this line of defense assumes modernist standards of evaluation. Why not just reject them outright, as post-modernism would see to require? Baudrillard, for one, can embrace Sokal’s simulation positively, as analogous to his own “Ecclesiastes” effort. After all, for Baudrillard, a simulation cannot be a parody, because parody is impossible.

But post-modernists needn’t go to this extreme. The key question here is why modernists like Sokal think the success of the simulation is damaging to post-modernism. In a follow-up article,6 Sokal explains why and how he wrote the parodying article, and the implication is that he knows he wrote a parody because he intended it as such.

But (literal) post-modernists have a ready response: Sokal’s reasoning commits the intentional fallacy of supposing that a text means just what its author intended it to mean. Even analytic philosophers tend to accept that works of fiction can and do differ in meaning from that intended by the author, and the more post-modern you are, the less distinction you see between fiction and non-fiction. Indeed, post-modernists tend to reject the notion of a privileged interpretation, holding that if a text can be read a certain way, then that’s one of its many meanings. So a natural post-modernist response to Sokal is that he inadvertently produced a serious work. (One needn’t claim that it’s a good serious work.)

The same can be said of the many amusing computer simulations to be found on the World Wide Web.7 Clicking on the link just footnoted will produce a new “post-modern” essay in a matter of seconds. But the mere fact that it’s generated “randomly” doesn’t by itself settle whether or not it can be read meaningfully. Consider an accidental “work” of fiction - suppose it turned out that Of Mice and Men was, by a massive coincidence, actually produced by an army of monkeys typing away. This might diminish it in some ways, but the text could still be engaged with meaningfully.

Speaking of simulating the post-modern, it’s time for a confession: the epigraph at the head of this essay is not to be found in the works of Baudrillard. The first paragraph is my own attempted parody (for fun I included bits of the real Ecclesiastes), and the second is an excerpt from a computer simulation of Baudrillard, chosen only because it mentions films.8 Now I don’t claim either is a good simulation, but as with Baudrillard’s “Ecclesiastes” ruse, I bet they would fool a lot of people.

What should a modernist make of this? We needn’t press the point about authorial intentions applied to non-fiction. Instead, we should ask, what is the best explanation of relative ease of simulation of linguistic output? 

In the Rogerian psychotherapist and professional sports cases, it’s obvious: there is a very limited range of possible outputs. But that can’t fully explain the post-modern case. I suggest that we get the rest of the explanation by agreeing with the post-modernist. The post-modernist ought to regard simulated post-modernism as real post-modernism, and so should we.9

 But, armed with the modernist distinction between mere simulated philosophy and real philosophy, we ought to conclude that post-modernism is (in large part) a simulacrum, in Baudrillard’s sense: either it masks the absence of a profound reality, or else it has no relation to any reality whatever, and is its own pure simulacrum. Take your pick.

The irony, then, is that the most promising exemplar of Baudrillard’s literal claims about the post-modern condition is post-modernism itself! Of course, I don’t expect that to concern him. But in case any post-modernists are concerned, I propose a sort of test-in-reverse. Take a term or expression that appears frequently in post-modernist writing, say “fetishize.” Despite my efforts, I don’t know what this term means, and if Sokal and others are right, it might not mean anything at all. Here’s the test: try to simulate an analytic philosopher, and explain what the term in question means, without resorting to:

a. quotationb. paraphrase in terms equally obscurec. non-literal language

The failure of the test for a decent number of post-modern expressions would provide some evidence of post-modernists being mere simulators of philosophy - intellectual poseurs.   

V. The meaning of The Matrix To return to the question with which we began, how should we modernists interpret The Matrix? As a more or less faithful homage to Baudrillard, or as a misguided homage? Or neither? I have already argued that the philosophical issues The Matrix plays with are better interpreted as traditional, modernist, analytic ones, than as post-modernist ones. But even if I’m wrong about that, it clearly can be interpreted that way, and by post-modernist lights, that’s enough. So perhaps it’s true that The Matrix is a paradigm of post-modernism, and not an intellectual poseur, and also true that The Matrix is an intellectual poseur, and not a paradigm of post-modernism.

A third interpretation is that The Matrix is solidly modernist - not a paradigm of post-modernism, and not (at least, not in this respect) an intellectual poseur. But what then are we to make of the apparent references to Baudrillard and his work? I suggest that they are playful, ironic references. In real life, S&S is a slim volume, in the movie it is rather thick. But not because it has more content - if anything, it has less content than in real life. The last chapter, “On Nihilism” has only the first page, and the rest of the book is hollowed out, a hiding place for contraband software. And what is the purpose of the software? It is an opiate for the masses. The message is either that S&S is only good for hiding stuff in, or, at a deeper layer of subtlety, that the real S&S is a simulation, in reality only containing brain-numbing escapism. Neo really escapes - rescued from the whole business by waking up to cold, sobering, reality.

 S&S represents the post-modern condition, a condition only post-modernists themselves are trapped in, a condition where everyone is a drone or an addict (where’s that red pill when you need it?); and, as far as the rest of us are concerned, entirely expendable. Of course, this is likely not what the Wachowski brothers intended. If it were, then their reported insistence that Keanu Reeves read S&S, in preparation for the role, borders on cruelty.

To the extent that the Matrix corresponds to Baudrillard’s vision of our condition, The Matrix rejects the pessimistic notion that the real has no chance. Just as escape from the Matrix is possible, so we could escape from the post-modernist condition of simulation, even were it our present lot. And that’s nice to know. 

 

Footnotes1. Glenn Yeffeth (ed), Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix (Dallas: Benbella Books, 2003)

2. There’s no doubt that post-modernists vary in the extent to which the criticisms to follow can be leveled at them. But there’s also no doubt that Baudrillard is representative of what we analytics regard as the worst of it.

3. The language of the debate is apt to mislead here. Every simulation captures some features of the thing simulated, otherwise it would not do as a simulation. An analytic philosopher will say (a) that any simulation is as real as anything else (i.e. if it exists, it exists), (b) calling something a simulation only means that some of the features it appears to have are not really had, and (c) if the computer really is intelligent, then its intelligence is not simulated, but real. The Turing camp would say that a computer can demonstrate real intelligence by simulating a human being.

4. This seems so, even if in fact it’s simulation “all the way down”: say, if somehow there is only layer upon layer of simulations, in an infinite regress. The denizens of the Matrix still seem able to conceptualize that which is not a simulation.

5. See Sokal’s website: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/, for the article, and a large collection of responses and commentaries.

6. http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/afterword_v1a/afterword_v1a_singlefile.html

7. E.g. http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern

8. http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/c-g.writing/cgw.baudrillard.txt

9. Again, there are post-modernists and post-modernists. The reluctance to really bite the bullet over the Sokal affair suggests to me that at least a lot of American proponents are really more modernist than they like to let on.

 Simulacra and Simulation

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard is one of the major players in discussions about postmodernism. He has written an essay "Simulacra and

Simulation" which is referenced in the movie The Matrix.

Simulacra: a copy without an original. In The Matrix, there is a computer program called "the matrix" which is a simulation of the world at the end of the 20th century. That world no longer exists. The real world is a nuclear wasteland; cities are charred and empty, life on earth is only possible beneath the surface. But an exact copy exists in the form of a computer program. People are living life in a simulacra, a copy which is its own reality.

Simulation: a model of the real or the creation of the real through conceptual or "mythological" models which have no connection or origin in reality. The model becomes the determinant of our perception of reality, we end up confusing the model for reality.

In his essay, Baudrillard begins by discussing a fable written by Jorge Borges where cartographers draw a map in such detail that it ends up exactly covering the real territory of the empire. The map frays as the empire declines. The reality and the abstraction (map) decline together.

By contrast, today that pairing has disappeared. Abstractions are no longer "the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept." No longer is there simulation of a "territory, a referential being, or a substance." Instead, Baudrillard sees a "real without origin or reality" being generated "by models." This is the hyperreal. In the hyperreal, (referring again to the Borges fable), the map "precedes the territory." And this map becomes a simulacra, which "engenders the territory," such as it is.

Homes, relationships, fashion, art, music, all become dictated by their ideal models presented through the media.

VH1 recently featured "Bubblegum Babylon" which explores the manufacturing of teen music. What is paramount in bubble gum pop is not the music, but the manufacturing of the image. Britney Spears is about an image, not simply music. Nike doesn't sell sneakers, but an identity, an image that is constructed by the company.

According to Baudrillard, the boundary between the image, or simulation, and reality implodes (breaks down). This creates a world of hyperreality where the distinctions between real and unreal are blurred. Ronald Reagan becomes a simulation of politics; Britney Spears is a simulation of pop sex idol; Kurt Cobain a simulation of marginality.

The culture industry blurs the lines between facts and information, between information and entertainment, between entertainment and politics. The masses get bombarded by these images (simulations) and signs (simulacra) which encourage them to buy, vote, work, play,... but eventually they become apathetic (i.e. cynical).

The point Baudrillard is trying to make is that simulations have devoured reality, and that models have taken "precedence over things." Too much reality has resulted in saturation and explosion. Now, we are looking at an implosion -- reality and meaning are melting into a nebulous mass of self-reproducing simulation.

So there is an odd chain reaction, whereby simulations have taken over for reality, but

now generate nothing but more simulations.

This "fall" into simulations is exacerbated by the masses and media. The public prefer spectacles to reality. We would rather go to Disneyworld than to work. When we watch the news, we would rather be entertained than informed. The consequence of this preference is that reality loses its status, and that the effectiveness of simulation is greater than the potency of reality.

How real is reality TV? Survivor, The Fifth Wheel, The Real World? How are these simulations of reality?

Baudrillard uses the concepts of simulacra--a copy without an original--and simulation to display how perceptions of ‘reality’ are altered bases on cultural stigma.

“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”

Baudrillard points out very clearly how our modern culture is contrived of images and other stimulus from media sources and simulations rather than what is considered real and how it becomes what is real to us by perception. For instance, we are all familiar with various commercials and other forms of advertising that are creations, sometimes of non-real visuals and events, to promote products. We see people and places on TV that we have never been to yet we know them visually as if we had. The simulation is real to us not the real place. Another and maybe even better example would be how we relate to ancient cultures. Archeologists dig them up and create simulations of their cultures in museums that we see. We have never seen the real societies and thus the simulacra of these cultures is what becomes real to us about these cultures. Baudrillard clearly defines how various things like Disney, multi-media advertising and many other sources have replaced the stimulus of the real for us and how our media culture has become our reality.