I remember that in my first year at University I wrote a piece on the movie “The Matrix” for a class called “The History of Culture”. I affirmed in the paper that the film’s narrative and characters were imbued with gnostic-christian and Buddhist doctrine, admittedly woven into the wider sci-fi structure and anime style.
Having read Nietzsche, I realize now that I was quite mistaken. Sure enough, on the surface Judeo-Christian elements abound: The “Nebuchadnezzar”, Cyphus as the Judas-figure, Resurrection themes and so on. But fundamentally, the ideology that serves as the basis for the ideas that the film promotes are thoroughly nietzschean. Neo isn’t fundamentally a Christ-figure, despite a few references here and there.
In the end, he is Nietzsche’s “Super-man”: the one who becomes aware of the myth in which we all are living and being. Myth, for Nietzsche, as an apparent proto-late-modernist, is an over-arching explanatory paradigm. The big story that helps us make sense of the little stories. Nietzsche doesn’t hate the Myth, but rather values it as a means of bring order and structure to everyday life. We’ve bought into the illusion that there is something that makes sense of the never-ending and ever-changing chaos of reality, and participate in a sort of grand play, each with his role, totally enrapt in the illusion.
The superman, on the other hand, is supra-myth, and even though he still lives and interacts within the walls of the illusion, he is conscious of its existence, which allows him ultimately to use and encounter the myth in the ways he desires, no longer bound by it’s limitations. In the Matrix, it’s physical laws; for Nietzsche, it’s the moral universe, Good and Bad, from which the Superman is freed.
Ultimately, both the Matrix and Nietzsche have got something terribly wrong. Man IS in fact, under a self-imposed and self-created illusion: the illusion of emancipation from His creator, to whom he is accountable. Man cannot escape this Illusion: the prison of sin, of his in-selfness. He is inescapably “homo incurvat us se” (see Romans 1:21-31).
It is God himself who must become the Super-man, but this is not Nietzsche’s super-man. Existing eternally as the second person of the Trinity, The Son of God, totally outside and above any and all rules that bind man (these, in fact, having their origin in Him), left this authority of position behind him, submitted himself and became man in Jesus of Nazareth. Instead of lording it over everyone, as the one in charge and as the only one with any right to, this super-man goes to the Cross, and dies in the most horrific, embarrassing and scandalous way imaginable. This super-man flys in the face of anything Nietzsche conceived of.
2000 years later, and the Cross is still madness for the World, but in reality, God’s grandest display of Wisdom. God’s victory is achieved through sacrifice and self-giving. God’s might, power and righteousness are affirmed through Christ’s meekness, humility and (apparent) weakness. God’s purposes are achieved, promises fulfilled and justice satisfied through the Death of the Super-man for those under the Illusion.
As if this wasn’t enough, the resurrection of Jesus becomes the guarantee that in Christ, by the power of the spirit, all those who have been freed are allowed to live lives of “super-men” in imitation of Christ: they are MADE aware of the illusion, and seek to live lives modeled on the cross, and so serve as instruments of God that others may “wake up” and be allowed to know, trust and serve the only true Super-man.–
That was really powerful man!
Good thoughts! I guess I’ve never thought of the Matrix in terms of Nietzsche but more in Plato. Interesting ideas of Neo being the overman.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and encouraging comments. Stick around!
God Bless
Excellent! This all reminds me very specifically of Fydor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He does essentially what you do here–though through a totally different media. If you haven’t read it, I think you would love it (it is a great story to read through Lent, which is how I first encountered it).
What makes you so sure the illusion is imposed on mankind by mankind itself? Do we only see the world the way we want it to be and thus conspire to make it so?
When the film makers of the Matrix set up the cameras used to shoot the bullet-time sequences, they encountered a problem. Each lens had it’s own unique properties which resulted in variations in color tone and warping of the images they took. The result, when played back, was a strobing effect which betrayed the individual qualities of each camera. The lenses of the human eye work very much the same way. Take a million people and have them observe the same object. No single person will see the object the same way as another person. No single person can claim to see the object as it truly is, yet no person sees it falsely. Is the illusion then not the prescription that one can truly see something as it actually exists?