The Matrix as Cultural study

Rating: 7/10 (8 May 2006)

There are a number of good reasons why The Matrix could not be a seen as a serious study of modern urban culture.
The modern city depicted in the film has two faces: one is that of gleaming office blocks, the other is made up of the ruins of an industrial past. In both cases, the city that is depicted is a vague and generic representation of post-industrial urbanism.
The new modern city portrayed is nothing more than a software program which provides an all encompassing hallucination, keeping humanity mentally 'occupied' whilst their bodies are used to power the mechanistic 'real' world.
Therefore, The Matrix is not a film about the physical dimension or actuality of a city, nor a film which can tell us anything about the future state of urban society.
It is a paranoid dream of destruction which has been seen a thousand times, for example in The Terminator, Total Recall, and Mad Max.
However, by choosing to address the modern physical city by casting the city as a program, the film highlights a range of ideas that are useful for talking about the culture of the city.
At this moment, communication networks and information exchange are widely considered to be the most important forces shaping our experience of modern urban culture. (adapted from Highmore, B., Cityscapes, 2005) orangewarm@yahoo.co.uk