"If It Tastes Like Tasty Wheat...": Excavating the Future in The Matrix
"The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction . . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyperreal." --Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations
Feeling like a total asshole after shelling out your hard-earned money to sit through not one, but two, crappy sequels to The Matrix? Shocked that the endless battle scene in Matrix Revolutions looked disturbingly like something out of Phantom Menace? Pissed off that original creations from the first film such as Cypher, Tank and Mouse have been replaced by totally bland characters like Lock, Link and Kid? Last but not least, did you find yourself sitting there like some zombie as the final credits rolled, knowing that you would never again be able to experience the originality that made the first Matrix such a great sci-fi film? The following Matrix tribute provides the perfect antidote to your Matrix Revolutions hangover. Relax, you're in a sequel-free zone . . .
"You have a problem with authority,
Mr. Anderson."
--Rhinehart
"As to conforming outwardly, and living
your own life inwardly, I have not a very
high opinion of that course."
--Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 1850
"It seems that you've been living two
lives. One life, you're Thomas A. Anderson,
program writer for a respectable software
company. You have a social security number,
pay your taxes, and you . . . help your landlady
carry out her garbage. The other life is
lived in computers, where you go by the hacker
alias 'Neo' and are guilty of virtually every
computer crime we have a law for. One of
these lives has a future, and one of them
does not."
--Agent Smith
"I would sum up my fear about the future
in one word: boring. And that's my one fear:
that everything has happened; nothing exciting
or new or interesting is ever going to happen
again . . . the future is just going to be
a vast, conforming suburb of the soul."
--J.G. Ballard, RE/Search interview,
1982
| Trinity: | "He told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did." |
| Neo: | "What is the Matrix?" |
| Trinity: | "The answer is out there, Neo. It's looking for you. And it will find you. If you want it to." |
"Only the disciplined mind can see reality,
Winston. You believe that reality is something
objective, external, existing in its own
right. You also believe that the nature of
reality is self-evident . . . But I tell
you, Winston, that reality is not external.
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere
else."
--George Orwell, 1984
| Neo: | "What truth?" |
| Morpheus: | "That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison . . . for your mind." |
"But . . . who knows - our reality may
be very much like theirs. And all this .
. . might just be an elaborate simulation
running inside a little device . . . sitting
on someone's table."
--Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987]
"If real is what you can feel, smell,
taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical
signals interpreted by your brain "
--Morpheus
"Is this a game, or is it real? . .
. What's the difference?"
--Wargames [1983]
"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that
you were so sure was real? What if you were
unable to wake from that dream. How would
you know the difference between the dream
world and the real world?"
--Morpheus
"A man that is born falls into a dream
like a man who falls into the sea. If he
tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced
people endeavour to do, he drowns."
--Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
"You believe it's the year 1999 when
in fact it's closer to 2199. I can't tell
you exactly what year it is because we honestly
don't know. There's nothing I can say that
will explain it for you, Neo. Come with me.
See for yourself."
--Morpheus
"It is living and ceasing to live that
are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."
--Andre Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism [1924]
"Sooner or later you're going to realize,
just as I did, there's a difference between
knowing the path . . . and walking it."
--Morpheus
"The journey of a thousand miles begins
with a single step."
--Lao Tzu
"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all
around us. Even now in this very room. You
can see it when you look out your window.
Or when you turn on your television. You
can feel it when you go to work. When you
go to church. When you pay your taxes. It
is the world that has been pulled over your
eyes to blind you from the truth."
--Morpheus
"I preach there are all kinds of truth,
your truth and somebody else's. But behind
all of them there is only one truth and that
there's no truth."
--Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
"As long as The Matrix exists, the human
race will never be free."
--Morpheus
"When I was institutionalized, my brain
was studied exhaustively by the guys of mental
health. I was interrogated, I was X-rayed,
I was examined thoroughly. Then, they took
everything about me and put it into a computer
where they created this model of my mind.
Yes! Using that model they managed to generate
every thought I could possibly have in the
next, say, 10 years. Which they then filtered
through a probability matrix of some kind
to-to determine everything I was gonna do
in that period. So you see, she knew I was
gonna lead the Army of the Twelve Monkeys
into the pages of history before it ever
even occurred to me. She knows everything
I'm ever gonna do before I know it myself.
How's that?"
--Twelve Monkeys [1995]
"Unfortunately, no one can be told what
The Matrix is . . . you have to see it for
yourself."
--Morpheus
"Experience is a dim lamp, which only
lights the one who bears it."
--Louis-Ferdinand Celine
"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo.
But I can only show you the door. You're
the one who has to walk through it."
--Morpheus
"But I don't want comfort. I want God,
I want poetry, I want real danger, I want
freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
--Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"You take the blue pill, the story ends
. . . you wake up in your bed and believe
whatever you want to believe. You take the
red pill, you stay in wonderland and I'll
show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
--Morpheus
"A dark wave of rubble rose against
a colorless sky, beyond its crest the bleached,
half-melted skeletons of city towers. The
rubble wave was textured like a net, rusting
steel rods twisted gracefully as fine string,
vast slabs of concrete still clinging there.
The foreground might once have been a city
square; there was a sort of stump, something
that suggested a fountain."
--William Gibson, Neuromancer [1984]
"It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy,
'cause Kansas, is goin' bye-bye."
--Cypher
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas
anymore."
--The Wizard of Oz [1939]
"Welcome to the desert . . . of the
real."
--Morpheus
"The skylines lit up at dead of night,
the air-conditioning systems cooling empty
hotels in the desert and artificial light
in the middle of the day all have something
both demented and admirable about them. The
mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and
yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to
see the lights go out as was the hunter in
his primitive night."
--Jean Baudrillard, America
| Neo: | "This . . . this isn't The Matrix?" |
| Morpheus: | "No. It's another training program designed to teach you one thing. If you are not one of us, you are one of them." |
| Neo: | "What are they?" |
| Morpheus: | "Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any software still hardwired to their system. That means that anyone we haven't unplugged is potentially an agent." |
"Only by counting could humans demonstrate
their independence of computers, and he counted
to ten. He was desperately convinced, that
one day sentient lifeforms would forget how
to do this."
--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Your appearance now is what we call
'residual self image'. It is the mental projection
of your digital self."
--Morpheus
"Active, successful natures act, not
according to the dictum, 'know thyself,'
but as if there hovered before them the commandment:
will a self and thou shalt become a self."
--Friedrich Nietzsche
"What is real? How do you define real?
If you're talking about what you can feel,
what you can smell, what you can taste and
see . . . then real is simply . . . electrical
signals interpreted by your brain."
--Morpheus
"Reality is that which, when you stop
believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Philip K. Dick
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system
is our enemy. But when you're inside, you
look around and what do you see? Businessmen,
Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters . . . the very
minds of the people we're trying to save.
But until we do, these people are still a
part of that system, and that makes them
our enemy. You have to understand, most of
these people are not ready to be unplugged.
And many of them are so . . . hopelessly
dependent on the system that they will fight
to protect it. Are you listening to me, Neo?
Or were you looking at the woman in the red
dress?"
--Morpheus
"Day by day and almost minute by minute
the past was brought up to date. In this
way every prediction made by the Party could
be shown by documentary evidence to have
been correct; nor was any item of news, or
any expression of opinion, which conflicted
with the needs of the moment, ever allowed
to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest,
scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as
often as was necessary."
--George Orwell, 1984
| Morpheus: | "We have survived by hiding from them . . . by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys, and that means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them." |
| Neo: | "Someone?" |
| Morpheus: | "I won't lie to you, Neo. Every single man or woman who has stood their ground, EVERYONE who has fought an agent has died. But where they have failed, you will succeed." |
| Neo: | "Why?" |
| Morpheus: | "I've seen an agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength is and their speed are still based in a world that is build on rules, and because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be." |
"A man is defined by his actions, not
his memories."
--Total Recall, [1990]
"Now how did the machines know what
Tasty Wheat tasted like, huh? Maybe they
got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat
tasted like actually tasted like, uh ...
oatmeal or tuna fish. That makes you wonder
about a lot of things. You take chicken for
example. Maybe they couldn't tell what to
make chicken taste like which is why chicken
tastes like everything!"
--Mouse
"Electronic aids, particularly domestic
computers, will help the inner migration,
the opting out of reality. Reality is no
longer going to be the stuff out there, but
the stuff inside your head."
--J.G. Ballard, RE/Search interview
[1984]
"Pay no attention to these hypocrites,
Neo! To deny our own impulses, is to deny
the very thing that makes us human."
--Mouse
"Man has demonstrated that he is master
of everything - except his own nature."
--Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
"But there's way too much information
to decode The Matrix. You get used to it.
I don't even see the code. All I see is Blonde,
Brunette, Redhead . . ."
--Cypher
"The best way out is always through."
--Robert Frost
"Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?"
--Cypher
"I see it all perfectly; there are two
possible situations - one can either do this
or that. My honest opinion and my friendly
advice is this: do it or do not do it - you
will regret both."
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
| Morpheus: | "What is The Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this." |
| Neo: | "No. I don't believe it. It's not possible!" |
| Morpheus: | "I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth." |
"His was a great sin who first invented
consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Inside The Matrix, they are everyone,
and they are no one."
--Morpheus
"It would destroy such life in favor
of its new matrix."
--Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan [1982]
"This is a sparring program. Similar
to the programmed reality of The Matrix.
It has the same basic rules . . . rules like
gravity. What you must learn is that these
rules are no different than the rules of
a computer system. Some of them can be bent.
Others can be broken."
--Morpheus
"The universe seems to me infinitely
strange and foreign. At such a moment I gaze
upon it with a mixture of anguish and euphoria;
separate from the universe, as though placed
at a certain distance outside it; I look
and I see pictures, creatures that move in
a kind of timeless time and spaceless space,
emitting sounds that are a kind of language
I no longer understand or ever register."
--Eugene Ionesco, Notes and Counter-Notes
| Neo: | "What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?" |
| Morpheus: | "No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to." |
"I am putting myself to the fullest
possible use, which is all I think that any
conscious entity can ever hope to do."
--2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]
| Morpheus: | "How did I beat you?" |
| Neo: | "You're too fast." |
| Morpheus: | "Do you believe that, my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place? You think that's air you're breathing now?" |
"It's hard for many people to believe
that there are extraordinary things inside
themselves, as well as others."
--Unbreakable [2000]
| Neo: | "If you're killed in the Matrix, you die here?" |
| Morpheus: | "The body cannot live without the mind." |
"We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments.
We no longer drink in the wild outer music
of the streets - we remember only."
--Henry Miller, Black Spring
"You know, I know this steak doesn't
exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth,
the Matrix is telling my brain that it is
juicy and delicious. After nine years, you
know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
--Cypher
"The images of the unconscious place
a great responsibility upon a man. Failure
to understand them, or a shirking of ethical
responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness
and imposes a painful fragmentariness on
his life."
--Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections
"Everyone please observe . . . that
the fasten seat belt and no smoking signs
have been turned on! Sit back and enjoy your
flight!"
--Tank
"Never confuse movement with action."
--Ernest Hemingway
| Spoon Boy: | "Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth." |
| Neo: | "What truth?" |
| Spoon Boy: | "There is no spoon." |
| Neo: | "There is no spoon?" |
| Spoon Boy: | "Then you will see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself." |
"Everything tends to make us believe
that there exists a certain point of the
mind at which life and death, the real and
the imagined, past and future, the communicable,
high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions."
--Andre Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism
"Morpheus believes in you, Neo. And
no one, not you, not even me can convince
him otherwise. He believes it so blindly,
that he's going to sacrifice his life, to
save yours."
--The Oracle
"A belief is like a guillotine, just
as heavy, just as light."
--Franz Kafka
"A deja vu is usually a glitch in the
Matrix. It happens when they change something."
--Trinity
"It is change, continuing change, inevitable
change, that is the dominant factor in society
today. No sensible decision can be made any
longer without taking into account not only
the world as it is, but the world as it will
be . . . our everyman must take on a science
fictional way of thinking."
--Isaac Asimov
"He lied to us, Trinity. He tricked
us. If you'd have told us the truth, we would
have told you to shove that red pill."
--Cypher
"Falsehood is invariable the child of
fear in one form or another."
--Aleister Crowley
"Free? You call this free? All I do
is what he tells me to do. If I had to choose
between that and the Matrix, I choose the
Matrix."
--Cypher
"If a man cannot choose, he ceases to
be a man."
--A Clockwork Orange [1971]
"Surprise asshole! I bet you never saw
this comin'!"
--Cypher
"Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy
of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at
all."
--Jean Genet
"Did you know that the first Matrix
was designed to be a perfect human world,
where none suffered; where everyone would
be happy. It was a disaster. No one would
accept the program. Entire crops were lost.
Some believed that we lacked the programming
language to describe your perfect world,
but I believe that as a species, human beings
define their reality through misery and suffering.
So the perfect world we dreamed, but your
primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up
from. Which is why The Matrix was redesigned
to this . . . the peak of your civilization."
--Agent Smith
"In the world I see - you are stalking
elk through the damp canyon forests around
the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear
leather clothes that will last you the rest
of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick
kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And
when you look down, you'll see tiny figures
pounding corn, laying strips of venison on
the empty car pool lane of some abandoned
superhighway."
--Fight Club [1999]
"Have you ever stood and stared at it?
Marveled at its beauty? Its genius? Billions
of people just living out their lives . .
. oblivious . . ."
--Agent Smith
"It is because the public are a mass-inert,
obtuse and passive - that they need to be
shaken up from time to time so that we can
tell from their bear-like grunts where they
are - and also where they stand. They are
pretty harmless, in spite of their numbers,
because they are fighting against intelligence."
--Alfred Jarry
"I'd like to share a revelation that
I've had during my time here. It came to
me when I tried to classify your species.
I realized that you're not actually mammals.
Every mammal on this planet instinctively
develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding
environment, but you humans do not. You move
to an area, and you multiply, and multiply,
until every natural resource is consumed.
The only way you can survive is to spread
to another area. There is another organism
on this planet that follows the same pattern.
A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer
of this planet, you are a plague, and we
are the cure."
--Agent Smith
"It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."
--Terminator 2: Judgment Day [1991]
"Like the dinosaur . . . Look out that
window. You had your time. The future is
our world, Morpheus. The future is our time."
--Agent Smith
"I admire its purity, its sense of survival;
unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions
of morality."
--Alien [1979]
"I hate this place. This zoo. This prison.
This reality, whatever you want to call it,
I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell,
if there is such a thing. I feel saturated
by it. I can taste your stink and every time
I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected
by it."
--Agent Smith
"I don't know why he saved my life.
Maybe in those last moments he loved life
more than he ever had before. Not just his
life, anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted
were the same answers the rest of us want.
Where did I come from? Where am I going?
How long have I got? All I could do was sit
there and watch him die."
--Blade Runner [1982]
| Trinity: | "Neo . . . nobody has ever done this before." |
| Neo: | "I know. That's why it's going to work." |
"There can be no understanding between
the hand and the brain unless the heart acts
as mediator."
--Metropolis, [1927]
| Tank: | "So what do you need? Besides a miracle." |
| Neo: | "Guns. Lots of guns." |
"All human actions are equivalent .
. . and . . . all are on principle doomed
to failure."
--Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
"You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is
the sound of inevitability. It is the sound
. . . of your death."
--Agent Smith
"It's funny how all living organisms
are alike. When the chips are down, when
the pressure's on, every creature on the
face of the earth is interested in one thing
and one thing only. Its own survival."
--Minority Report, [2002]
| Agent Smith: | "Goodbye, Mr. Anderson." |
| Neo: | "My name . . . is Neo!" |
"Those who believe that they are exclusively
in the right are generally those who achieve
something."
--Aldous Huxley
"I know you're out there. I can feel
you now. I know that you're afraid. You're
afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I
don't know the future. I didn't come here
to tell you how this is going to end. I came
here, to tell you how it's going to begin.
I'm going to hang up this phone and then
I'm going to show these people what you don't
want them to see. I'm going to show them
a world, without you. A world without rules
and controls, without borders or boundaries.
A world where anything is possible. Where
we go from there, is a choice I leave to
you."
--Neo
"Rest enough for the individual man-too
much, and too soon and we call it death.
But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must
go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this
little planet with its winds and ways, and
then all the laws of mind and matter that
restrain him. Then the planets about him
and at last out across immensity to the stars.
And when he has conquered all the deeps of
space and all the mysteries of time, still
he will be beginning."
--Things to Come [1936]