»A MUST READ! Essays Collection on The Matrix«

I found the following link in a post submitted by Rasputan:

Yes, yes, yes! These essays are indeed must-read. Thanks for pointing them out. I just read them.

Brief worthy things to note:

1) It is helpful NOT to think of the Architect and Oracle as the opponent (that is my mistake)

2) It is important to recognize the Serpent in the Garden of Eden is not the devil, nor Satan, nor an enemy of God. Nowhere in the Book of Genesis is the serpent equted to be the devil. From the perspective of the serpent, it is doing what it is designed to do: to offer a CHOICE.

3) Try not to think of Men as good, and machines as evil.

triple-geek wrote:

Yes, yes, yes! These essays are indeed must-read. Thanks for pointing them out. I just read them.

You're welcome. I remember when I first read them.

It was like - OMG, it's all here! EVERYTHING is all right here!

Hmm... I wonder if The W. Brothers have read them?


What is the Matrix

The 2 essays (one on Reloaded and one on Revolutions) do give some good insights to things I have never read in this forum or in any other forum. I would not necessarily agree with ALL that he says.

Out of curiosity, I could not find out anything on that website who Brian is (Brian is the name of the person who wrote them), whether he is a film critic, a philosopher, or just like many of us (a "regular" person in day-time but takes on a separate identity at night in cyberspace ... hehe, sorry for the Thomas Anderson analogy).

But I am not sure I could agree that Neo repesents the Devil in Reloaded, while the same Neo represents the Savior in Matrix 1 and Revolutions. I mean, a theory, any theory, that explains the Matrix Trilogy must be *CONSISTENT*. Overall, I did like a lot of his analysis, especially the rather important point that the Architect and Oracle are not necessarily enemy to each other. (that is a rather important point in terms of our perspective of the whole trilogy).

I agree that both essays ("Reloaded Explained" and "Revolutions Explained") are both good essays. They are both very well thought out and the arguments are well presented.
However, they do not explain everything, merely cover the films from one angle i.e. the religious significance, especially as the story of genesis is concerned, and indeed, this angle is covered exceptionally well.
In an important (but to many incomprehensible) essay entitled "The Matrix, or, the Two Sides of Perversion", Slavoj Zizek makes a very valid point. He argues that one interesting feature of the matrix as a film is that a wide variety of theories can be made to fit it. Therefore, as he goes on to argue, Lacanian psychoanalyts will understand the matrix in terms of the symbolic order, Frankfurt School Critical theorists will explain it in terms of the culture industry and so on and so forth.
The upshot is that there can be many possible interpretations of the movies (such as I have begun to do on this site - by explaining Revolutions in terms of the Freudain Uncanny). These interpretations do not or should not explain everything, merely offer a different take on a fascinating concept.

While I recognise the author is a talented individual and expresses many interesting ideas, for me these ideas tend to go off into all kinds of directions. It seems to try and make the Matrix fit too tightly into too many concepts that I simply just don’t see, or rather, can see, but too loosely to tie up sufficiently. As others are saying...

Quote:

any theory, that explains the Matrix Trilogy must be *CONSISTENT*. Overall

I think the main ‘Meat’ needed to be able to achieve a satisfying understanding of the movie, has already been provided in the Matrix material that we have.

We just have to digest it.

This can take some time and be hard to both get our teeth into and eventually swallow. It can be difficult when we don’t understand something as we can find ourselves being led off into all sorts of directions as a result. While primarily searching and gaining information is good in itself, the process of discovery can be hindered by veering off into too many directions, not staying closely enough to what’s already been revealed. That is why I think it is usefully to see lots of reference to both the words and actions pertaining to the Matrix itself when discussing possible theory’s/explanations etc.