“Welcome to the desert of the real.”
The Matrix is about more than kung-fu kicks and Keanu.
Says a philsophical essay by David Weberman, “The nature of human experience has undergone and continues to undergo a transformation. The idea is that in a world without seriousness, we are cynics and disbelievers. In a world with designer drugs, our personalities have plasticity, leaving authenticity behind as nothing more than a hoax. And in a thoroughly mediatized world, we are…well, we are what? This brings us to The Matrix and to the Matrix, that is, to the film by the Wachowskis and to the network of refracted images itself which, undeniably, we are all entangled to a degree never before known and for as far as we can see. Call it truth, call it the real, call it a rabbit hole. If the film is about all of this, then it’s really about looking back at ourselves as we are now and soon to become even more so.
“The film The Matrix was released in 1999, not 1969. Because of this it easily finds resonance among its viewers. We understand it; we recognize its power - not only as futuristic science fiction, but as a commentary on who we are. It is not the first film or artwork to test these waters. But it is perhaps the most sustained (implicitly) philosophical film to address one of the central features of postmodern experience: the blurred or vanishing line between reality and simulation.”
This Sunday we break from Luke to watch a modern - or postmodern - parable and find some nuggets of spiritual insight hidden between bullet-time special effects.
In preparation, please read John 3 and ask yourself the question: What is reality?
