About the Author
This website represents the culmination of my time at the University of Texas at Austin receiving my Masters in Media Studies.
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I first began to take an interest in machine-human interactions and relationships in Dr. Sharon Strover's "Communication, Technology, and Culture" class, where I was first introduced to the digital influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela was the start of my thinking about the ways that we integrate machines and technology into our daily lives. In following this line of enquiry, I found myself contemplating the way that in taking a recuperative stance toward technology, and in looking at our images of machines and tech through a queer lens, can reveal new modes of being in the world. I found myself transfixed by the ways that these creations are frequently the backdrop that allow humans a way to imagine a different world and a different self. More often than not, these imaginings take on a distinctly counter-hegemonic sensibility.
Halfway through “Communication, Technology, and Culture” (Spring 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into remote online courses. I’m writing this section on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic. Since then, I’ve completed the majority of my Masters remotely.
Baudrillard soon moves past this example, stating that present day simulations are now frequently created by “models of a real without origin or reality”: a simulacra (2). When individual simulacrum begin to pile upon each other, and distinguishing between images with an origin and simulacra becomes unnecessary, it’s a “hyperreal.” In a hyperreality the distinction between real and fake is irrelevant. The simulation no longer has to represent the authentic, the authentic either conforms to the simulation, ceases to be relevant, or simply ceases to exist. Legitimacy is now “a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself" (2). Lastly, and most pertinent to The Matrix, Baudrillard argues that this simulated truth, which has now become “The Truth” is, “produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models-and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times" (Ibid).
Simulacra, Simulation, and the Matrix
Jean Baudrillard wrote Simulacra and Simulation (1981) in order to question what society experienced as “the real.” By using a story about a map drawn to the exact size of the territory it represented, to the point where it could be perfectly laid down over the territory, Baudrillard introduces his first example of a simulation (2). Viewers know the map is an exact representation of a reality.
An example of a hyperreal is Disneyland. Simply put, it is a real place not based off of anything “real.” The simulation becomes the new reality, indistinguishable from anything other than reality. An example of a simulacrum would be stocks. These are not based in anything real or tangible, yet they govern lives globally.
Simulacra and The Matrix
As a simulated reality that no longer reflects the reality that originated it, the Matrix is a hyperreal. For the overwhelming majority of people living within the Matrix, their reality is produced from “miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks” and able to be reproduced an infinite amount of times (2). It is all they have ever known so it is real to them. The Matrix is made by programming the real, thus substituting “signs of the real for the real itself” (2). In doing so, The Matrix positions reality, a reality that is also familiar to the viewers, as conceptual. In doing so, the Wachowskis prompt the audience to think about what they perceive as real, as well as the limitations to those perceptions. When Neo escapes the Matrix, there is a line drawn separating the two realms. There is Earth; dark, burnt, and nearly uninhabitable; and the world of the Matrix, which is still real for everyone living within it—as well as audience members watching the film.
 Hyperreality and the Matrix |  Constant Discipline in The Matrix |
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 (Re)Envisioning the Panopticon |  Back to the Matrix Entrance Page |