The Desert of Meaning
Does The Matrix illustrate the thesis of Simulacra and Simulation?
I constantly see references to this book, Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.
I see the title or the author’s name mentioned in passing, sometimes accompanied by praise and even reverence. I’ve heard it was the inspiration for the Matrix movies. It even has its own section on Wikipedia page for postmodernism (!), which, wait—it just sounds like pseudo-intellectual bullshit:
Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation, introduced the concept that reality or the principle of the Real is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose communicative and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies.
Simulacra and Simulation is nearly impossible to read. I was able to get through about five pages in each sitting. It is a firehose of pretentious prose with no structure, no argument, and no conclusions. As such, it defies summarization, but if this was a school assignment or something and I had to summarize it, I would say that Baudrillard is lamenting the way (as he perceives it) everything we engage with has become a mere simulacrum of the thing it’s supposed to be and how as a result every cultural experience is a simulation of the real experience. But not only that—actually the whole concept of the “real” has evaporated, and so now there is no such thing.1 “It is always a false problem to wish to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum,” he says. Not only have simulations replaced the real, the real has vanished. Only simulations remain.
So Baudrillard’s conception of a simulation is rather peculiar. We’re talking about the simulation of a reality that no longer exists. If a simulation is a simulation of something that doesn’t exist, is it a simulation at all, or is it just the thing itself? If a simulacrum could only be the image of itself, is it a simulacrum, or just the thing that it is? At what point have we just started calling things simulacra? At what point have we just decided to refuse to call things “real” to produce some sort of effect?
I must say, if The Matrix was in fact inspired by Simulacra and Simulation, it was only in the most narrow and simple (or perhaps artistic freedom type) way. It really is a conceptual departure from Baudrillard’s book. I would believe it if all it really was was that the director once heard about S & S, and how the premise of the book was that “everything is a simulation,” and that’s it. It’s really hard for me to believe that The Matrix was actually intellectually tied to S & S somehow; even if the tie is supposed to be mostly symbolic or allegorical.
The Wikipedia page for The Matrix says that Simulacra and Simulation was “required reading for most of the principal cast and crew,” but the sources for this claim are a link to a prezi site with no sources and no author, and a New York Times article that only says “some cast members were asked to read the book.” The only real hard evidence that the movie drew inspiration from S & S is that a physical copy of the book appears in the film, and there is at least one phrase used in the film that was taken directly out of S & S: “the desert of reality.”
Apparently Baudrillard himself complained about the supposed tie between his book and The Matrix. In his obituary (perhaps the most gripping obituary I have ever read), he is quoted as saying:
The most embarrassing part of the film is that the new problem posed by simulation is confused with its classical, Platonic treatment... The Matrix is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce.
The Matrix does not serve to communicate the point of S & S because although it shows a horrifying world where you could say a simulation has replaced the real, it’s a concept of simulation entirely divorced from Baudrillard. More importantly, the situation present in The Matrix only reinforces the existence of a real which can be distinguished from the simulation—which is exactly not what Baudrillard was trying to establish. Remember that the claim of S & S is not merely that we live in a simulation, but that simulations have replaced reality, and that “reality” is a simulation of itself. Meaningless.
However. Take this claim out of its context as post-structuralist socio-cultural criticism, and it reminds you of ideas like the Bayesian Brain, which describes subjective experience as a simulation of objective reality. Trippy, and compelling. What work serves to turn your awareness to such possibilities better than The Matrix? And in that sense, the film is an excellent communication of the fundamental (wholly impractical) critical thinking that Baudrillard was undertaking in his most famous work.
reddit is totally wrong as usual