Just watched The Matrix, but seeing as I’ve already reviewed this movie somewhere else on this blog, I’m going to limit myself to pointing out how much the whole Matrix/human batteries thing seems like something out of Marx.

You’ve got your people, right, who can be likened to either the people in Marxist theory in general, or to the proletariate, if you prefer the narrower variants of Marxism. According to Marx, people are slaves of the system, in a way, as they are locked in a structure of exploitation which springs from the base, the main part of which is the means and organisation of production. Under the system of Capitalism, people are exploited by being alienated from the products of their labour, or in more vulgar terms by the capitalists who use their labour to pocket the increased value of the manufactured good; an increase in value stemming from the fact that the worker has, well, worked with it.

The Matrix version of this is of course that most of the energy people’s bodies produces is confiscated, more or less, by the machines. In other words, the people are alienated from something they produce.

Additionally, you have the Matrix itself. It can be likened to the superstructure in Marxist theory, a major part of which is ideology. The ideology is in many ways a product of the way production is organised; its main function is to legitimise this organisation by distracting the people from their suffering or by offering them soothing lies like democracy and human rights that make the exploitation seem less harsh. In Matrix terms, the Matrix helps to cover up what is really going on in the sphere of production, thus pacifying a people that should be up in arms against the injustice and exploitation.

Not to mention, of course, what you get if you remove the “t” and the “i”. :P

Anyway, this is a great action movie, and one of the best (social) science fiction movies I know of, as it can be interpreted in several other, perhaps less controversial, ways as well. This is beyond doubt a very strong 9.0 out of 10 movie, that I constantly consider rating higher, as it doesn’t really have many flaws.