Author: Charles Phipps (---.aol.com)
Date: 05-07-2003 17:14
You make some very interesting points but I think personally that you are also missing some important facts that should be mentioned in your write-up.
1. The importance of Life Outside the Machine
Its important to remember that essentially a major theme is the internet and "knowledge is power". When I run Matrix games I tend to point out the fact that the person on the outside may in fact be a major loser. Parapalegics, Transexuals, complete slobs, and social idiots
Once your awakened and you have computer knowledge, you potentially can mold reality as you will-it is the ultimate geek fantasy but its important to remind players that it is just a fantasy.
Humans in the Matrix are 'worthless' it should be remembered. They are people that exist to fill a census for the machines and accomplish nothing since science is hardly advancing or society trapped in a life a century dead.
You don't have real sex until you've had it outside the Machine, you don't know people until its outside the machine, you haven't seen or tasted anything until its outside the machine
And in some ways really you can't harm the Machine unless your outside the machine since all you hurt is programs usually.
The Matrix is where you operate but Zion and your ship is where you live and interact.
2. The Matrix as racial, economic, and social rebuttal
Yes the people in the Matrix are rogues and terrorists according to the establishment. If you don't take note that no one 'real' died in the lobby scene (no bodies) it is actually true in the fact that police and military are servants of the machine.
But some strong notes are made also about racial lines in the fact that Morpheus is a strong, intelligent, well spoken, educated man, religious after a fashion man with no notable vices who is the leader of this group vs. the Pasty white man in Agent Smith.
Economic aspects are noted in the fact that the movie implies Neo's majority of spending money doesn't come from his job but his 'side work' (2 grand for a disk-whatever it was) and his position probably exists solely to provide him with respectability
One could very easily make a point about drugs.
Social points are also brought up about the responsibility of man to his machines and himself. The machines are fighting a defensive war here and with limited resources the actions of the Matrix's followers are really for an economically impossible goal.
The traitor takes honest note that life in the Matrix is preferrable in every way and the devastation makes repair unlikely.
3. The Humanity of the Machines
Something should also be brought up on an entirely different note is that there is certain questions about how different they are from us (Agent Smith is the only Agent capable of being called evil because he seems honestly "infected" by humanity enough to hate humans as well as suffer motivations like escape and revulsion)
It was not the machines who destroyed the environment after all but the human beings who hated the machines. It was man who surrendered all of his control of his life to the Machines. The Machines have no reason I can discern for creating a paradise or even pleasant civilization for humans yet they do it.
My thoughts.
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