The Matrix is Real, pt. 1

Movies, myths, and metaphysical maps.

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It’s absolutely criminal that The Matrix, one of the few genuinely mythic stories produced in the modern world, has been extruded into a mundane political meme.

Before we get to that, though—I use the term “mythic” a lot in my work. My idiosyncratic usage reverses the typical meaning. “Mythic,” in my mind, does not mean “less real” than a historical account or a scientific analysis.

Mythic is more real.

Mythic narratives are one level above mundane history and fiction: they tell us something persistently true about the cosmos from a mortal perspective.

Modern storytellers imagine their role as a more sophisticated version of the mythmakers in elder cultures. They try to make sense of ancient myths by the same logic: people, like them, inventing stories for entertainment, or for teaching one another about themselves. The gods and monsters in these narratives must be fictional constructs, deployed for dramatic effect, or as clever metaphors; the human protagonists and the world they occupy must be the true focus.

This is wrong.

Modern art can be very good at describing how we live right now. It captures the feeling of being a person in a particular place and time. Sometimes this is done with straight verisimilitude, and sometimes with caricature or allegory. Some artists try to capture this type of truth by projecting their narratives backwards or forwards in time, into the far future or the distant past, assuming their orientation toward the world would easily translate into any other time and place.

These types of stories are mirrors. Sometimes they’re very well-constructed mirrors: beautiful craftworks, delicately rendered. A joy to look at and a blessing for framing our reflections.

But that’s all they can do.

A real myth can’t be deliberately contrived by a single author. The worst counterfeit myths will transparently reveal the vanities of their creator, trying to cast themselves as the eternal archetype of humanity. (Looking at you, Ayn Rand.) But even the best will try—albeit subconsciously—to flatter those the maker aspires to be like, by claiming “people have always been like us.”

It’s absurd to think that that this is the same process by which the great myths were assembled, thousands of years ago.

Real myths aren’t constructed. They’re tuned.

Many hands gather the narrative parts. For the ancient myths, this took generations of telling and re-telling—an aeon-spanning evolutionary process. Even with all the components in place, a myth was not a myth until it was struck, and hummed, and found to sing like a bell in a satisfying way.

That hum, that pealing resonance—another overused term in today’s metaphysical discourse—is the recognition that a story has become something bigger than its parts.

It’s no longer a story about what happens within the world; instead, it’s a story about what makes a world possible.

Metaphysical Cartography

Properly understood, myths are less like pictures hanging in an art gallery, and more like maps, describing a territory that is both vastly ancient and immediately present.

“Indigenous” people who refused the poisoned chalice of modernity know this intuitively. The myths grudgingly passed on to the conquerors—the colonial inquisitors, the missionaries, and the scholars who followed in their wake—were scraps of treasure maps, passed dutifully from generation to generation before they were stolen.

The hubris of the modern world was in thinking these intricate cosmologies could be understood at face value, any more than a swiped physics textbook could be read by a child.

The gods and monsters of the ancient myths didn’t fit into the new maps of the modern world. They were discarded, or rationalized into a safe corner of ethnographic studies. Those troublesome spots were left blank on the new maps. Hic Sunt Dracones.

The Matrix (the real one) began with those new maps.

There was a moment when, by historical accident, a small group of imperialists discovered they had the power to define the world. Through a combination of false dichotomies, willful ignorance, and outright murder, this cohort of religious fundamentalists—who later became academic fundamentalists—drove a wedge between “real” and “imaginary.” The world was divided between “our” myths and “their” myths. True beliefs and primitive superstitions. Bloodthirsty pagan gods and refined, loving, sophisticated ones (but really just the One). Thereafter, the Liminal Realm became a militarized zone.

Instead of a polyphony of myths describing what it meant to be mortal, the new maps had space for only one. This came with the empty promise that humanity was being freed from the chains of those atavistic gods—that we could put an end to violence forever if we could all just agree to live in one world, in one universe ruled by one god. Those who were given a choice in this new scheme thought they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by accepting.

The world we have now is the result.

But the map is not the territory, and the territory is still out there.

This is why art is still worth making, even in today’s secular, materialist, willfully disenchanted culture: even under the metaphysical tyranny of the modern world, it’s possible for an artist to stumble into that ancient country. Not by setting out to make something mythic, but purely by accident.

It’s also why modern cinema is still worth studying and discussing. Even though today’s audiences are treated like cash cows, herded into one cultural abattoir after another. Even though the field of film criticism has been reduced to a shrieking treeful of virtual mockingbirds, competing with their neighbors to make their borrowed voice the loudest of the bunch.

Sometimes, rarely, our modern stories still carry a distant echo of that bell-like resonance, and preserve a faint topography of the place that the elder mythmakers were describing.

And sometimes the artists themselves don’t recognize what they’ve uncovered.

Mapping the Matrix

I believe this is what happened when the artists formerly known as Larry and Andy Wachowski made the The Matrix back in 1999.

I’ve read no commentary about what the creators intended to make during production of the film. And frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. The idea that authors should have the final verdict on what their work means is bad enough in mundane art; when looking at mythic narratives, it’s downright toxic.

Of course the creators would want to take credit for their own genius. Of course they would say that they did it all on purpose. Of course they would claim that the rib-rattling mythic resonance of their work was all due to their ideas, their beliefs, their predilections.

In the case of The Matrix, we have a particularly well-founded comparative sample to look at. After the 1999 original, two subsequent movies were made. All three occupy the same narrative universe, imagined by the same creative duo.

(The fourth film from 2021 doesn’t count within this sample, and barely counts as a movie at all. It’s a stitched-up monstrosity birthed by cutthroat studio politics and mega-budget shitposting, only released as a film for legal purposes, and one of the strongest arguments against the monotheistic concept of a universe stewarded by a just and loving God.)

Judging solely from the two artistically defensible sequels—same characters, same narrative, same creators—we can say with certainty that the original’s awesome mythic qualities were not purely the result of the Wachowskis’ creative intellects.

Of course not. That’s not how myths work.

Give the Wachowskis credit for making an incredible movie—for assembling a team that produced mind-blowing special effects, irresistible style, dynamite pacing, and genuinely iconic characters, all anchored by a pitch-perfect group of actors. (And for single-handedly rescuing Keanu Reeves’ career by creating a character that played to his strengths as an actor: a perpetually slack-jawed, accidentally handsome, “I belong in the IT Department” everydude who can also throw a punch when the situation demands. This is also a good description of the character he plays in the movie.)

But when it comes to the narrative, the tesseract of mythic archetypes and symbolism smuggled into this popcorn-chomping action blockbuster—that properly belongs to a higher power.

The Wachowskis would undoubtedly love to take credit for meticulously crafting this cosmic synechdoche, as proof of their stunning brilliance. Who wouldn’t?

Likewise, the studio backing them is more than happy (or was, before that failed cinematic abortion was released in 2021) to cash in on the claim that they have certified geniuses in their stable, and that audiences can expect more masterpieces under their banner—as if great art is like cars, or cans of soup, or any other commodity produced on demand. And the audiences themselves? They’ve been taught since primary school that great stuff is made by gifted people, and have no cause to look for anything deeper.

So we rightly celebrate a groundbreaking film like The Matrix as a cultural product, as a technical achievement, and as an inspired piece of art—but that’s where we draw the line. We don’t bother to wonder where those great ideas come from, and how enduringly true they might actually be.

We’ve kept the aesthetic appreciation and lost the awe that a true myth should instill in us. That’s a huge loss. But we can still find our way back.