Midterm Assignment: The Matrix

Due Friday, October 31, 2003:

• Your best possible analysis of the film in no more than 6 typed, double-spaced, 12-pt font pages.  I will not read beyond page 6 of the essay (not including Works Cited).
• You must use one or more of the theories that you have learned about in this class.  Please cite the theorists and use their terms as needed.  Show me what you know and how to put it to use.
• Research beyond the assigned course reading is not required.
• Cite textual evidence as needed but do not give plot summary for its own sake.
• Essays will be judged on the level of clarity and persuasion they attain as well as their ability to display a mastery of course materials (i.e. critical methods and terms).  You will not be judged on your knowledge of film techniques and terminology.
• Cohesion and unity in argumentation will be valued above any patchwork or piecemeal application of the theories of interpretation discussed in this class.

If you have a poor memory you may want to rent the movie so that you can review passages that you intend to use for evidence (to ensure accuracy).  There are facilities in the Instructional Resource Center (IRC 120 in DMH) for viewing videos if you prefer not to bring such a violent movie into your home.

Here are some general topics to keep in mind as you watch.  Please take notes as needed.  These are meant to guide your viewing and suggest paths that you might take in applying the critical terms and methods you have learned so far.
 

• What is the relationship between The Matrixand other narratives?  How does it use intertextual references to other narratives to make meaning?  Are there any narratives (even cultural "master" narratives) that the movie uses for its own plot and/or our understanding of it various characters?  What archetypes are utilized?  What assumptions does the film make about its viewers/readers' prior knowledge?  What other texts or references does it expect its implied "reader" to get?

• What impact does class, and/or race, gender, etc. have on the plot or on individual characters?  How are various forms of identity (or status or inequality) represented by the film?  How do they affect the relationships between the characters?

• Can this film be read allegorically?  How might one read this in terms of mimeticism.  That is, what does it say about our world?  How might one or more kinds of political criticism be applied?

• What kinds of fantasies or desires are manifested in the film and in the actions of the characters?  What has been repressed?

• How do the filmmakers shape their meaning?  A rhetorical critic might ask, for example, how do they guide our attachment to or distance from one or more of the characters?

For future reference by the curious: The text Neo stashes his contraband in is Simulacra and Simulation (English translation of a text by Jean Baudrillard, Trans. Sheila Fraser Glaser.  Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1994 ).  Baudrillard is a French philosopher famous for arguing that the abundance of signs has overtaken and obliterated reality --that which is supposedly signified.