Popular Culture and Epistemological Doubt_____ 11
eliminates the disturbing questioning about the nature of our reality and our
limited means to apprehend it. The characters of Cypher or Mouse implicitly
suggest the presence of a deeper epistemological debate at the core of the
narration, however—the earlier being a traitor and the latter a twitchy teenager
with a reduced life expectancy—the problematic notions that they convey
through their respective views of the Truth are stifled by the metaphysical
positioning of the main characters, namely Morpheus (the Father), Neo (the
Son), and the Oracle (the Holy Spirit), who compose a triumphing Trinity,
divine enough to defeat the Matrix, thus removing any of the doubts concerning
the validity of our conception of reality put forward by either a traitor—
Cypher—or a nerd—Mouse. The presence of a main character named “Trinity”
throughout the narration reinforces the strong religious connotations of The
Matrix's plot resolution13 and creates a semiotic correlation between one
specific element and the overall intent: not only is Trinity the first member of
the free humans to appear in the narration, thus becoming the initial agent of the
Real by opposition to the artificiality of the Matrix, but she is as well a symbolic
messenger of the Oracle for she is part of the prophecy: the Oracle has predicted
that Trinity will fall in love with “the One,” hence the latter is part of a prophecy
that comes true as a conclusion to the narrative syntagm, in the purest Epic
tradition. If the dominant theme of The Matrix is resolutely postmodern for it
implies the possibility of substituting reality by a constructed simulacra, its
treatment, on the contrary, follows a very conservative agenda that leaves no
room for ambiguity; Truth does exist, as well as the Savior, and those who seem
to doubt reality, as Mouse, or to reject it altogether, as Cypher, are duly
punished by the logics of the narration.
The Matrix, which could be considered perhaps as the epitome of
commercially successful popular postmodern Science Fiction, is highly
illustrative of the two main, often if not always, opposing forces that drive most
of the artifacts produced by popular culture: artistic purpose on the one hand and
commercial imperative on the other. Although The Matrix places an issue with
serious epistemological ramifications at the core of its narrative universe, i.e. the
concept of reality as a construct, its diegetic organization corresponds to one of
the most ancient structures of story telling. Thus, postmodern concerns are
flushed away by religiously oriented epic paradigms, more susceptible to reach a
wider audience than the disturbing aporias suggested by the theme itself, and the
film leaves the realm of Science Fiction to enter that of “techno-space opera.” Its
two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, accentuate this
generic shift by downplaying all epistemological concerns regarding the nature
of reality and the reliably of our understanding in order to favor the development
of a simple binary conflict between Good and Evil, closer to Star Wars, Lord o f
the Rings, or even to Harry Potter than to true Science Fiction.
In spite of its shortcomings, it remains undeniable that The Matrix touches
upon questions of a philosophical nature14 and therefore does no longer
correspond to the preconceived notion of a product for popular consumption,