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.
A Hyperreality made Observable
Bending realms of control to the Resistance's benefit
About thirty minutes into the Wachowski sisters’ The Matrix (1999), Neo escapes from the Matrix and discovers that he has been living in a giant networked simulation, along with the rest of the people on Earth (except for a select few), for his whole life. He had always felt that something wasn’t quite right with the world in which he was living. With the help of Morpheus and Trinity, Neo escapes the Matrix and learns what happened to the Earth outside of the simulation. He joins the resistance to fight against the machines and their control over the human race.
Within this offshoot, I first explain Jean Baudrillard’s concept of a simulacrum. I then look at the Matrix simulation and how it functions as a simulacrum. In doing so, I illustrate how the Matrix reflects Baudrillard’s hyperreal images and entities, while also expanding upon how these images and structures are bent and queered by the Resistance to ensure their survival. In recognizing that the hyperreal of the Matrix is purely a method of maintaining top-down control, Neo and the other members of the resistance look for opportunities to twist it to their benefit, to rebel against it, embodying queer methods of survival. In escaping the Matrix, Neo and the others are not only escaping from the system—they are escaping the top-down structures that discipline and govern it. What was considered “real” and “natural” is no longer true. This opens the Resistance up to a world of possibilities to mold each realm, Earth and the Matrix, into something better. Not only do they envision a better world, not governed by the machines, they envision a world governed by choice. They have the ability to act upon the Matrix—to force it into something better.
Surviving in the "In Between"
When I state “real world”, I’m not doing so in order to create a hierarchy between the two. It’s vital to remember that the simulated world in the Matrix is real in the sense that it is experienced and perceived as real by billions of people—the vast majority of which are not ready to leave the Matrix. I only use the two phrases to differentiate between the realms to avoid confusion..
In drawing from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, I expand upon how, by operating outside of the Matrix, the resistance creates a society that centers community, kinship, and survival. By operating in direct contradiction to the top-down methods of control dictated by the machines, the Resistance lives in a manner contradictory to hegemonic societal structures. By living outside of the Matrix’s rules and control, the crew aboard the Nebuchadnezzar and the people of Zion don’t concentrate on acquiring capital or sexually reproducing in their society. The status quo propagations of capitalism and reproductive sexuality are ideologies intrinsic to culture heteronormativity. The lack of either amongst the members of the Resistance speaks to a larger desire to craft a world that turns away from these, instead opening itself up to froms of living that center community, altruism, and love.
The slippage between the simulated world of the Matrix and, to borrow from Baudrillard, “The Desert of the Real,” is significant in that it prompts the audience to question the processes that naturalize the “real” in society. This can be extrapolated from the film and mapped onto audiences’ daily lives, illuminating the ways that the “real” governs daily life. In the following sections, using Simulacra and Simulation as a guide, I explore how queerness flourishes in the slippages between the Matrix and the real world.
“Slippage” refers to the way that Neo is able to move between each realm with ease. He maintains his agency regardless if he is in the Matrix or aboard the Nebuchadnezzar.
 Simulacra, Simulation, and the Matrix |
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 Constant Discipline in The Matrix |
 (Re)Envisioning the Panopticon |
 Back to the Matrix Entrance Page |