Movie Review
The Matrix: Reloaded--An Ancient Myth Revisited

by Paul van der Bijl

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	Paul van der Bijl is New Media Manager for The Center for Bioethics and Culture.
	Post Date: August 1, 2003

One of the role of film in today's society is the same as that of the myth in ancient societies. Both seek to explain in everyday terms the meanings and mysteries of life and death. Many films in some way do this, but those such as The Matrix and its recent sequel The Matrix: Reloaded stand apart from the rest. In the Journal of Religion and Film (October 2000), James Ford states, "It is impossible to know what narratives will become the foundation myths of our culture. But epic films like The Matrix are the modern day equivalent of The Iliad-Odyssey, the epic of Gilgamesh...." I know it may seem presumptuous to give such honor to a film that has not yet stood the test of time; however, I do think The Matrix saga addresses in an important way the ancient Christian heresy known as Gnosticism.

Writing for a popular website www.killingthebuddha.com, Robin L. Zebrowski has compared the ideas presented in The Matrix to the ancient gnostic belief that "the creator of our world... is not the creator God of the great monotheistic traditions popular today. Instead, there was originally both a male and a female deity. The Mother, Sophia ("wisdom"), wanted to produce another creation, but did so on her own rather than with her partner. The resulting Demiurge was an abomination....[who became]...the creator of our world. He trapped the Spirit in matter, and mankind has been trying to escape, to get back to the true God, ever since." Such a belief system led to an emphasis on knowledge ("wisdom") over against matter, with the result that matter (and thus flesh) was regarded as evil and in need of being overcome.

Today's society, though, has no paradigm for meddling deities, and so in the movie it is a machine called "the matrix" that blinds the world and its inhabitants to true reality. Through knowledge, Neo, the protagonist, frees his mind and escapes the clutches of the machine. He begins to understand himself as the prophesied one who has been sent as a messiah to end the reign of the matrix and to free humanity from its clutches. This exploration of the relationship between man and machine is not new to film. Recent films like The Time Machine, The Terminator and AI among many others tap into the fear that began with the Industrial Revolution that the automation of machinery dehumanizes. The bigger picture here is that all societies, ancient and modern, wrestle with concepts of fate and meaning and tend to believe that there are forces unknown to them working against them making life itself an illusion. Of course the plight of all humans in The Matrix is that they are enslaved by machines unbeknownst to them. Even though the god is different--machine instead of deity--the message in the context of Gnosticism is still the same. Life is illusory, brief, and inconsequential and through special knowledge alone can be overcome.

There are obvious dangers, in the context of bioethics, in viewing our humanity as illusional and our flesh and blood as irrelevant. The danger of Gnosticism--and a theme of The Matrix--is to see life in the flesh as irrelevant and to believe that real knowledge will enable us to get beyond our trapped humanity. In The Matrix, only a few have the privilege of freeing their minds from the constraints of the machines. The rest of those caught in the matrix are deluded, irrelevant, and even dispensable. Unlike the first film, this film did not reflect at all about the matrix and it's inhabitants. The ones you do see are killed or sacrificed without thought. What is the secret knowledge that gets us beyond our trapped humanity? It is simply that the mind is more important than matter and flesh. It is what we know that is more important than who we are.

Is not ultimate knowledge in our society bound up in the power of science and technology? In fact, we are urged to harness the power of science and its knowledge as a means of getting beyond the constraints of being only human. We ought to strive to live longer (maybe forever), we ought to control our progeny by ultimately perfecting them, and we ought to eradicate the weaknesses of our humanity at all costs. In a day and age where flesh and blood are regarded as having comparatively little intrinsic value, it's not surprising that the sacrifice or exploitation of human life is increasingly being justified for the sake of the above pursuits.  CBHD