For Thomas Anderson, the protagonist in The Matrix, the problem is manifold. His storyline gives him neither a mother nor a father, and yet in his technological dystopia that he comes to learn is not science fiction but actual reality, he learns that he is in fact a baby inside a large pod, and that this system that is his true “parent.” That the matrix is meant to symbolize the feminine is evidenced by the fact that the word “matrix” itself is Latin for womb, and by the camera angle at which we first encounter the protagonist. We first see Mr. Anderson in an overhead shot asleep inside his home cubicle that has been arranged in an ovular shape. He is surrounded by his computer and his stereo, with his words, music, and images flickering by electronically around him as he sleeps, blissfully unaware of how profound this mediated reality parallels the true metaphysical nature of the world he is about to be introduced to.
The constant electronic hum of mass media and communication technologies, from music to telephone to Internet searches, indicates that in his relationship to mass media, Anderson has become infantilized. For the Matrix is a strange fulfillment of both Huxley’s and Orwell’s warnings about the nature of a government-enforced totalitarian future. As Neil Postman saw it in Amusing Ourselves to Death, it was Huxley and not Orwell who got it right: we would be enslaved by what we loved far faster and easier than by what we feared. In the world of The Matrix, the citizens are largely happy but passive consumers of the corporate-entertainment complex who do not question the nature or legitimacy of its existence. Morpheus leads a crew of “known terrorists” in fighting this system, and in killing as many agents of the system as possible. Neo is essentially a spiritual orphan in this brave new world, and his ultimate lesson is that it is he who must cut the umbilical cord to a media matrix that would forever seek to keep him infantilized in the simple creation and satisfaction of exclusively carnal desire in electronic culture. In freeing himself, he becomes the film’s savior figure, and then offers others the chance to free themselves.
What is significant is that while the agents and enemies in the film are almost all played by men (representing various forces of the law), these men are ultimately protecting a black widow’s nest of incubation. At the same time, The Matrix counterbalances this gendered enemy of a dominatrix with the all-knowing wisdom of the Oracle, a black female character whose role is to tell Neo his ultimate destiny. And while Neo’s sexuality is not questioned in the film, it is worth noting that he is played in style and manner as a very androgynous male, while his female heroine is played by an equally androgynous female. Visually, he seems to be a very feminized man while Trinity is a very masculinized woman, and the film’s sequels make it clear that the directors see that gender is as much of a choice and a cultural performance to be played as it is a sexual identity at birth. That the Wachowski brothers’ previous film was the lesbian thriller Bound, and that Andy Wachowski has been reported to be a cross-dressing sadomasochist, photographed with a dominatrix at his side, also corroborates this idea.
, fatherlessness, and gender confusion all lead to spiritual desire. Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it, “the man who knocks on the brothel door knocks for God.” In all three films the protagonists are asking questions of ultimate meaning, and looking desperately for an answer. In American Beauty, Lester Burnham says, “I’m forty-two years old and in less than a year I’ll be dead. Of course, in a way, I was dead already.” In Fight Club, Tyler Durden says of his generation: “We are history’s middle children; we’ve got no great war to fight, no Great Depression: our great war is a spiritual war; our great depression is our lives.” Jack describes his addiction to self-help groups and then to fight club in increasingly explicitly religious terms. After group therapy he says, “Every night I died and every night I was resurrected; born again.” After fight club he says, “Fight club wasn’t about winning or losing, it wasn’t about right or wrong. It wasn’t about words. Because nothing mattered . . .” the camera offers a close-up of spilled blood on the floor while Jack says, “Afterwards, we all felt saved.” Hebrews 9:22 spells this scene’s meaning out explicitly: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” In the novel, fight club originally takes place on early Sunday mornings only.
In The Matrix, Thomas Anderson ultimately chooses to overcome his doubting Thomas nature and believe he can save Morpheus, which leads him to accept that as Neo, he is The One. For American Beauty’s Ricky Fitts, a dead bird, a homeless woman who has frozen to death, and a plastic bag blowing in the wind offer him access to beauty of such a kind that he feels like he can stare into the face of God. He says he is reminded “that there’s this entire life behind things, telling him never to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, but it helps me remember. And I need to remember.” Martin Luther said almost this same thing five hundred years before: “We need to remember the gospel every day because we forget the gospel every day.”
In addition to the larger theme of men attempting to define themselves against an overfeminized system, there are other smaller—but deeper and more detailed—connections between these three films of 1999 and Pink Floyd’s The Wall of 1982. Below are some of them. If you watch the four films back to back, you’ll find others.
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