Critical Review of the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix

An example of an overt ideology articulated in The Matrix is the idea of control and free will. The premise of movie involves machines enslaving humans and harvesting human body heat for energy. In The Matrix, human bodies are held captive in an oval compartment that similarly imprisons their minds by connecting them into ‘The Matrix’. I believe that the control of humans by computers in the film serves as a metaphor for societal control and expresses the importance of individualism/free will in present day society. This metaphor serves to illustrate the dangers of a society controlled by a system of government that keeps its inhabitants oppressed without being able to think autonomously. This is sor

t of control is seen throughout the movie in the form of the sinister looking government agents with whom Neo is constantly at odds with and fighting. In the movie, individuals who have freed themselves from the Matrix face yet another system of control in the form of drones attacking Zion. The Matrix can therefore be seen as a movie about Neo’s defiance of imposed control systems.

However, a closer scrutiny of The Matrix reveals the covert perpetuation of colonialist ideology. This perpetuation of colonialist ideology is not intentional, but is rather a product of hierarchies of power and dominant culture itself. In this way, colonialist ideology is concealed unconsciously into media and likewise in The Matrix. Although one can argue that the Wachowski Brothers use a diverse cast to portray a multicultural society, traces of the inadvertent colonialist ideology still exist. The covert perpetuation of colonialist ideology is revealed in the hierarchy of cultures that The Matrix presents. There is a distinct power structure in the movie. For example, Morpheus’ status in the film gradually declines as the movie progresses, where Neo’s status is enhanced. This constructs a cultural hierarchy with whites on top and blacks at the bottom. In The Matrix, it is Morpheus who first frees Neo from the Matrix. As the film progresses, it is Neo who liberates Morpheus from the captivity of the Agents. The liberator becomes the liberated. Implicitly, the movie

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