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“The Matrix” has broken this “taboo”. Although indirectly, it touches upon problems that are key in resolving the crisis of development of contemporary technocratic anti-human civilization, leading spectators to the questions: what is the meaning of their life on Earth? Why is human culture vicious and is leading it to military or ecological suicide? do people want to continue being hostages and captives of machines created by them, especially after the creation of artificial intelligence? what are the possibilities for survival? what are true relations of humans with God, with Savior, and satan? Such subject matter, meaningful for the lives of people and all of humanity, is an extremely rare occurrence in western cinema. Maybe that’s why the film is so popular around the world, but it’s popularity is peculiar proof of the fact, that the questions mentioned above worry even those, who are not inclined to consciously discuss them in certain lexicon.
At the same time, the film is a product of western, biblical culture, and it speaks about the problem of resolving the crisis of all of humanity in this culture’s symbolic-allegorical artistic language. In the artistic languages of other other cultures (Islamic, Buddhist, Russian, Hindu, etc.), these problems and ways of resolving them would have likely been shown differently. But until these problems are not formulated in certain lexicon, excluding the possibility of ambiguous understanding of the subject matter, their resolution will be suggested to society in bypass of its conscious in a symbolic form through “the most accessible of all arts — film”. With that, the artistic composition will represent a sort-of undeclared compromise between the strive of humans to escape from bondage, and the strive of global znakhars, ruling the biblical project of enslavement of humanity, to keep everyone prisoner of its lies. This applies to “The Matrix”, the allegorical subject matter — the second semantic line — of which are alien to Western biblical civilization and undermine its basis.
The statement that “The Matrix” represents such an unconscious compromise between the strive to freedom and the strive to slave-ownership, is supported by the fact that Morpheus — fighter against the evil “Matrix” — and his followers do not discuss the viciousness of its algorithmics. However, having broken out of the “Matrix” they despise, representatives of the “Zion” system are actually constructing an alternative “matrix”, regardless of whether they understand this or not. The owner of this alternative “matrix” in the film is the Oracle, who “knows everything”. But the essence of the alternative matrix is also left out of discussion, and the life of humanity under this “matrix” are left behind the scenes in a silent, but undetermined and therefore baseless assumption, that everything will be good in the alternative “matrix”.
The fact that this part of the plot is not shown in the foreground does not mean that its vision remains outside the conscious mind of a thinking, attentive spectator. It is possible that, to support certain associations, the character names in the film were chosen in such a way, that the unconscious of the spectator would make their conscious work in a certain way, needed by the script writers and their curators.
As if justifying his name, Morpheus believes that the objective reality and images of it in the human psyche are not interco
After such a conclusion, any analysis of the film plot’s windings may be perceived as a discussion of schizophrenic and narcotic delusions of the script authors and producers-directors of the film; and the popularity of the thriller may be explained as the psychological illness of all who watched it with interest and pleasure. And even though the society of the global civilization really is morally-psychologically not quite healthy, and for some “The Matrix” — really is a screening of their schizophrenic or narcotic visions or nightmares, nevertheless in the name of continued freeing and healing of social psyche it is necessary to show the co
Two socially useful worldview affirmations may be drawn from the film. They are conveyed in an open form to the average spectator-commoner — in the general case a careless consumer of various pleasures, “bread and circuses”, — first and foremost, the American spectator-consumer:
● you are not mammals — i.e. you are not people, you are not human — you are a virus, “people are a disease, the cancer of this planet, and we (machines with intellect — in the context of the film) are the cure”;
● “SYSTEM FAILURE” — this text appears at the end of the film on a computer display.
If the former affirmation is more or less clear (the global biospherical-ecological crisis is more than obvious), then the latter requires some explanation.
As it is known to anyone who is at least a little familiar with computers, after a system has failed, in the best case the system needs to be restarted, in the worst case the operating system and applications need to be reinstalled from scratch. In other words, the text on the computer display at the end of the film is transparently implying, that the former system of global control of humanity, under the guidance of which a human-like virus-commoner is accustomed to carelessly and insatiably consuming life, after its collapse, will leave (in the near perspective) each person one-on-one with the global problems of humanity and the planet. And these problems have a systemic nature, not a local-personal one.
These two affirmations, stated directly, together represent a hint to the virus-commoner: it’s high time to start thinking about resolving problems created by his parasitism on other members of society and the biosphere of the planet.
Such thoughts may be lead in two mutually-exclusive directions:
● on what, how, and under the guard of what new “Matrix” to continue parasitizing?
● how to stop parasitizing and build an alternative system of relations between everyone and each-other, and Mother-Earth, first and foremost, as a basis for a following, universal development of each human being and humanity as a whole?
Essentially in these implications, about the necessity to answer one of the two questions, is everything positive and good that is stated directly in the film. Which one of the two questions to answer — that is one’s personal choice. Is there sense in searching for answers to these questions, or better to continue carelessly consuming life, and let everyone else search for answers? — this question is also answered by each person himself.
All other positive and good in the film is expressed allegorically and, therefore, many questions need to be answered. But before all else, it is necessary to answer the following question:
Is there something objectively existing in Nature, which is named "Matrix", that is symbolically represented by the machine system, which in the film is a prosthesis of the Biosphere for humanity and the factory of sleepy dreams about ostensibly “real life” of everybody? Or the authors of the film, in light of their schizophrenic worldview, see the world in a painfully perverted way, and the “Matrix” is not an allegory to something real, but the authors’ delirium?
The question of “What is reality?” is asked in the film, but the declared answer to it, stemming from individualism cultivated by the biblical culture, is given in the sense of “solipsism”[2]: only what you perceive is real. Lifting the statement “real is what you perceive” to the rank of a general law of life — is cultivation of one’s own schizophrenia, a campaign to substitute with a psycho’s thoughts the real life that is outside the limits of his perception.
2
Solipsism (Lat. solus - singular, and ipse — oneself): a theory, according to which exists only the human and his consciousness, and the objective world, including other people, exist only in the conscious perception of an individual. (“Philosophical dictionary”, Politizdat, 1981.).