The Matrix - What is more important? The Mind of the Body

The Matrix - Reality and Fantasy

There must be more...

Looking at the Wachawski Brothers and what they have interpreted from studying Baudrillard and alternate realities, using The Matrix: (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions. 1999. Directed by Wachowski Brothers. USA: Warner bros Ltd [DVD]).

“To deny our own impulses is to denythe very thing that makes us human” (Wachowski, 1999).

What’s more real/important? The mind or the body? The body decays but the mind can live on forever if you believe the mind exists as a soul.

   Sexual awakening is about leaving the mind and embracing the body – what makes us human.

Neo in the Matrix (No sex, all in mind, can’t trust anything) > Neo realises the real world (has sex and uses the mind to unlimited possibilities)

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    Knowledge alone doesn't define us as human but what we do with it does. That’s why we CREATE art. There is no point just thinking about it because it will stay in the mind.

“Difference between knowing the pathand walking the path” (Wachowski, 1999).

    To escape the ‘matrix’ or control you must believe you can use what you know, use the body. 

·    “and when I found him he told me Iwasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer...what is thematrix? The answer is out there Neo, and you will find it if you let it”(Wachowski, 1999).

·               “Time to make a choice Mr Anderson”(Wachowski, 1999).

Men in black with sunglasses >un-human, especially because feeling is given away most by the eyes.

·               “What good is a phone call if you’reunable to speak?” (Wachowski, 1999).

Bugged by agents: Bug through the belly button. Rebirth?

·         “You take the blue pill you believe whatever you want to believe. Youtake the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbithole goes. Remember all I am offering is the truth” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Time is alwaysagainst us” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “It means buckleyour seatbelt Dorothy cus Kansas is going Bye Bye” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Welcome to thereal world” (Wachowski, 1999).

Neo enters the matrix through a mirror which covers and suffocates him. He is then re-born, bald with wires attached to him from a pod.

·         “Wenever free a mind once it’s reached a certain age” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “I’m trying tofree your mind Neo. But I can only show you the door. You have to walk throughit...You have to let go of it all, fear, anxiety...free. your. mind”(Wachowski, 1999).

·         “They are the gate keepers. They guard all the doors. They hold all the keys. That means someone has to fight them” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “After nine yearsand you know what I realised Ignorance is bliss” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Hear that Mr Anderson (a train). That is the sound of inevitability.” (Wachowski, 1999).

The only thing certainin life is Time and loss.

·               “My name is Neo.” (Wachowski, 1999)

He chooses his ownidentity and Trinity’s kiss releases him from the spell – Love.

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The Matrix Reloaded

Commander:

I can’t help thinkwere plugged into them.

Neo:

They don’t control us. We could destroythem if we wanted.

Commander:

But what would happen to our heatetc...

Neo:

So we need them as much as they needus?

Commander:

There is so much in this world that Idon’t understand. I don’t understand how that works but I do understand WHY itdoes. I don’t understand how you do the things you do but I do believe there isa reason (Wachowski, 1999).

    

Neo becomes more and more mechanical as the trilogy continues – more invincible and less human. He also discovers that the oracle is just aprogramme. My mum is not superhuman either.

·         “Without purpose we would not exist” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Choice is an illusion. What control is is power – those who have it and those that don’t...” (Wachowski, 1999).

The Matrix bit by bit:

Leaves first reality and embraces the body

Fights himself and a kiss brings him back (wakes up from the spell)

Stuck at a Railway Station (needs direction)

Loses sight and then loses Trinity (his love)

Chooses to fight.

What does it all mean?

Death is inevitable and something we all have in common but we also have choices:

·         Choices to love

·         Choices to fight for something you believe in (power)

Being scared of the unknown is being afraid of what a person is not good at or comfortable with. But time spent overcoming these things establishes long lasting effects. Being scared of time is a refusal to acknowledge loss and being close to someone means a countdown to losing them.

Lust can be an escape from the mundane world to a purgatory without time, but something so wonderful cannot exist in this world: It exists in a dream world, in the theatre, in the movies, in art, where there is no society or other people, where it is easy and pure. Is that place more real than this one? We are led to believe it isn’t.