The Matrix

The Matrix rocks. Fullstop. Plus another fullstop. That's how good it is. No can say anything else about the movie except that it rocks. Or rOxoRs! Or Rox. Whatever; it is the best show of the last decade, maybe even in the last millenium.

Maybe I exaggerate but certainly it is undoubtedly a movie which appeals on so many levels and discusses so many things. It also helps that the heroes are cool dudes.

I totally am infatuated by Morpheus's sunnies. Freaking gravity defying shades. Awesome.


I am coolness personifed. My shades are coolio. Even the sofa is cool.

But the reaons for loving the movie goes way beyond the beautiful poetry in motion set up on the movie screen, what with the flowing fight sequences with the use of CGI. No it is the themes that the Wachowski brudders have delved into.

Lemme just rattle off a few themes of great signficance - existentialism, religion, humanism utilitarianism, relativism vs objectivism and metaphysics. Mind boggling isn't it? And this is just the first movie. (granted the other two never rose to the same dizzyingly powerful heights of the first installment)

But the one thing that has been bugging me ever since I read Mark Rowland's Everything I Know I Learned From TV, which is really a pop philp book, I keep going back to that one scene which has Cypher played by Joe Pantoliano eating steak with Agent Smith. The Judas-like character remarks as he chomps down the steak.

"You know, I know that this steak doesn't exist. I know when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, do you know what I've realised?"

"Ignorance is bliss."

Interesting isn't it? Would you be happier ignorant and just to feel happy or to actually be doing something even if it may not bring happiness?

Rowland pointed out in his book that for many of us moderns, happiness is a feeling. When for example, we buy the latest iPod, we are happy. We touch the metallic surface, gaze upon the shiny gleaming screen surface, listen to the pure quality of sound and we are happy.

Or we are happy if let's say we win the lottery. A million bloody bucks. We can use the money to buy stuff that we like or want. Fulfilling these cravings, we become happy. At least for a fleeting moment, until the next bad streak of luck hits us. Or we lose that iPod we just bought. Then feelings of anger, frustration and irritation build up and we lose our happiness.

Like Cypher, most of us want to feel happy. Ignorance, as he aptly puts it, is bliss. As long as we feel happy, we are happy. It matters little that it is all in the mind. In fact, that is the beauty of the whole Matrix project. The humans in there can feel happy. They can feel sad too but for Cypher's case, he will deal with the devil (Agent Smith) if he gets to be happy i.e a movie star. He hates the real existence of life. Dressed in crummy ugly clothes, he has to put up with Morpheus the captain of the ship, who he constantly wants to undermine. He is also unable to touch his heart's desire, Trinity, thereby adding to his frustration and feelings of unhapiness.

Of course the movie is slanted to persuade the audience to sympathise with Neo and his gang of freedom fighters. But ask yourself, would you rather be in a state of happiness all your life? What if there is a machine that can put your mind in a state of constant happiness? Or at least make it such that you always think everything goes the right way for you?

Or would you rather live the life of a normal man or woman who keeps having to face disappointments and suffering. Sure some people would say that it is the disappointments that make the moments of happiness much more sweeter. But come on, we all know that disappointments and happinesss somehow provoke much stronger feelings than happiness. And feelings of frustration linger much longer than joyous feeling.

Given the premise that happiness is a feeling, I think it would be difficult to argue against wanting to hook up to such a machine. After all, we all want happiness right?

Very few people would reject the machine and that is evident from the movie too. Most people are still enslaved by the machine and many reject the real world because they are happy slaves.

But yet we find a colony of humans who reject the notion of the happiness machine. They embrace the drudgery of real living. That I will attempt to answer in the next post.