How many different ways can you introduce a column? That's the challenge I face every week when I welcome you guys to the newest issue of Casting Call! As a journalist, I am familiar with the importance of leads, i.e. the first line in your story or column. A strong lead can grab the reader, pique their curiosity and get them interested in reading the rest of your piece. A poor lead can put them to sleep and chase them away from your writing before it ever gets good. Believe me; a great article can indeed be killed by a poor lead.
And I guess I've been slacking with my leads in my columns. I usually just say hey! Which, you know, is cool. Because greetings are good, nothing wrong with a polite greeting. And if anyone is regularly reading my column, I imagine by now you know what you're going to find here. But any writer worth his salt knows that the search for more readers is never over, so with each column I write I must put my best foot forward!
So, in short.... hey!
If my profs could see me now they'd slap me for a lead like that.
The Matrix. What a frightening concept, eh? A complete and utter lack of control, shared by the entire human race. A species bonded in helplessness. Is it so different from our real world?
How many of us never truly take control of our own lives, our own destinies? How many of us just go with the flow, blend in to the pack, spout the popular opinion, never express ourselves? How many people reach for their dreams?
The ones that don't.... are their lives really any better than the poor slaves jacked into the Matrix?
Let's look at it this way. Do we, as human beings, really have the power to change anything in our world? Does one person help? This is an eternal argument. Look at voting. How many people don't cast their ballots because they either don't care to get informed on the process, or don't think their one measly vote means anything? How many people are disillusioned with government, and its role in ‘speaking for the people'. Does the average American citizen, native of a country pretty much regarded as the biggest power on earth, feel they alone have what it takes to change the world? We Canadians are often accused of having inferiority complexes in regards to our role (or lack thereof) in world affairs, and truly, do we as Canadians have much of a role? Do people stand up and listen when Canada speaks? If the States ever decided to make good on that manifest destiny thing, could our army ever do shit to stop them?
My point is this; you either believe that one life can make a difference, or you don't. If you don't.... you might just be another slave plugged into the system, helpless to change it. And if you do, you might just be a guy like Morpheus, resolute in his beliefs but considered either naive or dangerous by his fellow humans.
All this leads me into today's discussion. As I continue to explore the world of the Matrix, the time has come to turn the investigation upon us; the human race. What is our role in the story? How responsible were we for the war that ravaged the planet and gave it a new dominant species? What can the humans do to take back their freedom?
I related a lot of man's role in the events prior to the Matrix films in my last column. The humans, as we know, were once the dominant species, but became the architects of their own demise when they created Artificial Intelligence. Though the machines were eager to create peace and understanding with their human masters (which is strange, given that humans should be the ones to understand and strive for those concepts), the humans were too self absorbed to allow any such equality. In the inevitable war, the humans get demolished. Really. It was bad.
And so we arrive in the ‘present day', with the human race either stuck in the Matrix or clinging to survival near the earths core in Zion.
As I said before, life in the Matrix is pretty much complete and utter helplessness. Millions of human beings go about their daily lives, going to their jobs, eating, building relationships, never knowing it's all fake. It's bad enough here in our real world, where some people spend their lives in jobs they hate, marriages they don't believe in, spending nights on the sofa watching the tube and eating TV dinners. At least that is real. But is it control? Not really.
But for the poor souls in the Matrix, they only have the illusion of control. Unlike that schlub with the dead end job and passionless marriage here in our world, who at least could theoretically take charge of his life, the people in the Matrix can't. Even if they do, whatever triumphs they achieve will only be imagined.
Right?
There are certain.... exceptional individuals who, through the sheer force of their will, can break their way out of the Matrix. Through their questioning nature, they inevitably begin to feel that something is not right with the world, and where others may just sweep such feelings under the rug, they search for an answer. They ask, and don't stop asking until ‘somebody' finds them.
I will discuss Thomas Anderson (aka Neo) in my final column on the Matrix, but for now let me say that he never stopped believing that there was something wrong with the world, and his search for answers eventually led him to Morpheus, who found him and taught him the truth. Now, being the One, it was inevitable that Neo would be freed, but for people like Trinity and Morpheus himself, their search for freedom was never so assured. But once they find it, they join the resistance and begin fighting for the rest of the human race.
But as Morpheus tells Neo in the first film, they must always be wary of the humans within the Matrix. "Many of them are so inert, so helplessly dependant on the system, that they will fight to protect it." As long as they are a part of the system, they are the enemy. But one day, Morpheus dreams, it will not be so.
The legend goes that, when the Matrix was first built there was a man born inside. A man who had the power to shape the Matrix as he saw fit. He freed the first humans and taught them the truth, and thus the resistance began, and Zion, a new home for the human race, was born. As generation upon generation passed and humans that had been freed from the Matrix settled into their new home, ‘home grown' humans were born once again. Unlike their counterparts that had been ‘grown' in the fields and thrust into the Matrix, these genuine children of Zion were born in the real world (and thus, had no plugs, through which others are hard wired into the Matrix).
The problem with this is that, to the reckoning of Morpheus and the rest of Zion, Neo is only the second ‘One'. The first died, and his return was prophesised by the Oracle as the turning point in the war. But as Neo learns through his interaction with the Architect, the One is actually another part of the machine's system of control, his role to disseminate the code of the Matrix, starting it over again, and freeing more humans to start a new Zion (while the old one burns).
Neo learns that there were five Ones before him (and thus, five iterations of ‘freed' humans and Zion).
So, where once the humans thought they were making headway in their fight against the machines, they now face the crippling reality that it is all, almost, a game. That they are being toyed with, so to speak. That the One was never meant to change anything.
Again we face the question of control. Does it exist? Do humans have it? Have they ever?
There's no denying that the humans are brave in their fight for freedom, many making the ultimate sacrifice in their quest to free their fellows from the Matrix. But they're fighting an uphill battle against an incredibly powerful enemy that has so much power over them, a complete victory is almost inconceivable.
In the end, it is Neo's understanding of this fact that saves the human race. A complete victory against the machines is not possible; they are too powerful, too entrenched in their position, too pervasive. What hope do humans have?
Peace. The very thing they once refused to offer the Machines.
When Neo makes his daring trip to Machine City in the final film, he goes knowing he will not return. He goes, knowing that what he has to offer (destroying the rogue program Smith, who has become a threat not only to the humans but to the machines) will pave the way for a new future. When Neo asks the machines for peace, he takes a step that no human before him has been able to. And by destroying Smith (and dying in the process) he keeps his end of the bargain, and the machines, honourable in their way, keep theirs.
Those who no longer wish to be a part of the Matrix can go. Those who wish to stay can stay. And Zion is safe.
Why would anyone want to stay in the Matrix, you might ask? Well, it is a bit of a comfortable lie, isn't it? Maybe some people wouldn't want to let go of their lives there. As long as they have the choice, that is all that matters.
And hey, having mad kung fu skills and slick leather coats counts for something!
I have two more trips through the green code to complete before I am done with the Matrix. Next week I will focus on the REAL villain of the story, the machine so bad even other machines don't like him! Next week it's all about Agent Smith.
After that, get ready for a whopper. What could easily be three columns will become one when I provide my thorough dissection of the three hero characters of the Matrix trilogy. The wise leader Morpheus. The passionate warrior Trinity.
And of course, The One. Neo.
See you next week!
|
