Why The Matrix is noteworthy of being part of the science fiction genre

    The Matrix, as a concept, is less about trying to make people believe that the world around them is not real, than it is about serving as a warning for future generations about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Critics discount the importance of this movie by criticizing the overdone special effects or long drawn out fight sequences, but on the other hand wasn’t Jules Verne criticized for excessive use of scientific descriptions in his writing? Yet he had a profound impact on the science fiction genre.  Should we discount the meaning behind The Matrix because Neo is a mock superman?

            The Matrix illustrates the horrors of a world in which the machines rule, harvesting human beings for energy to run their “population”. In the philosophical discourse between Morpheus and Neo when Morpheus is explaining to Neo the reality of the world he had been living in all his life, concepts of the degradation of the human race through man’s own acts are emphasized, with Morpheus’s reference to “our” scorching of the skies to kill the Machines energy source. (“Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony”). He plays on this concept of irony, telling Neo that it was first the humans who created the Machines, and it was the humans again who made the Machines harvest them by killing off their energy source. This concept of humans doing something that leads to their own demise is a recurrent theme in science fiction.

            Science fiction writers like H. G. Wells used his writing as a medium through which he could reflect on where he thought the scientific technology of the day was heading, thereby making predictions about the possible future of human beings as a result of this technology. Jules Verne used his writing as a tool of teaching the young of the time about science, and educating them in scientific theory and phenomena. Along the same lines, I feel that the Warchowski brother’s use their movie The Matrix as a means of warning people of the dangers of artificial intelligence and the age of robots, while dazzling them with brilliant directing and story line. Their repetitive philosophical interludes emphasize this attempt to make the audience think. Having made their audience think about phenomena in the Matrix, the audience then applies it to their own existence. Consider, for example, the famous quote by Morpheus “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

    The audience is now made to question the possibility that they, too, are subject to believing what is around them is “real” through these electrical signals common to them too. The Matrix, therefore, uses the method of inquiry that science fiction uses to raise questions in the minds of its viewers, much like any other work of science fiction does.

            It is for this reason that I feel that it is important not to discount the movie as simple a Sci-Fi flick with more action and less relevance, but to consider the value in  the questions it raises about the world around us and the future of cybernetics.

BACK TO MAIN