Matriculated
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- This article is about the short film; for the act of enrolling as a college or university student, see Matriculation.
Image:Matriculated.jpg Matriculated is a short film set in the world of The Matrix and part of The Animatrix collection.
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[edit] Summary
The short animated film Matriculated is directed by Korean American director Peter Chung. Fans of Chung's anime Aeon Flux will notice the similarities in the quality of animation immediately, even noting the possible physical resemblance between the characters of Aeon Flux herself and Matriculated's lead female character, who is unnamed within the film but is listed on the IMDB.com film website as Alexa. It is the seventh short animated feature in the Matrix series' movie The Animatrix, released in 2003.
The title of the film is drawn from two meanings of the word "matriculate:" one denoting time spent learning at a school, the other signifying an insertion into a system or matrix.
The plot of the film deals with a group of above-ground human Rebels who lure sentinels and other hostile machines to their laboratory in order to capture them and insert them into a "matrix" of their own design, the purpose of which is to show the captured machines some traits of humanity: namely, compassion and free will. Through this, the humans hope the "matriculated" machines will develop a conscious and a moral understanding of their actions, and to make a conversion towards assisting the rebels in the fight against the machine-controlled totalitarianism which currently dominates the Earth and keeps the "bluepills" enslaved in the dream reality of the Matrix.
The film opens showing a female human, Alexa, and a small monkey in a glass jar, both of them sitting near a blue fire on the shore of the sea. Alexa looks bored and inattentive, and is told through her headset toId to "Wake up," by a man who is monitoring the two scouts via some sort of computer link-up through the monkey's brain. The fact that these are the first words of the film would seem significant, since it could be said that the primary theme of The Matrix saga is awakening. (The song playing during the credits of the original Matrix is Wake Up by the band Rage Against the Machine.) Thus alerted, Alexa attracts the attention of and lures two "runner" machines to a laboratory.
The distinction should be made here that "runners" are distinct from sentinels, which have been specifically identified as the squid-shaped robots which are the prominent hostile machines featured in the live-action Matrix films. Thus, runners should not be called simply another "type" of sentinel. A runner is depicted as a type of pluriform robot which is capable of changing from an insectoid form into one in which its lower limbs resemble tentacles and its upper ones are long, clawed arms. In its second form (which it retains for most of the rest of the film), the runner very approximately resembles the robot Johnny 5 from the film Short Circuit, though it seems unlikely that this resemblance was intentional.
As with the other artificially intelligent machines of the story-world of The Matrix, the runners are hostile towards the human race (that is, humans who are "awake" and in the real world), having a genocidal attitude towards them. This is a viewpoint of artificial intelligence which is antithetical to that presented by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (loosely: do no harm; obey; survive).
Before reaching the laboratory, one of the runners releases a homing beacon which attracts the attention of sentinels and other hostile machines, unbeknownst to the humans within the building. Inside, the two sentinels discover the monkey (still presumably hooked up to the laboratory's monitoring system) and a door with a key in front of it. It is up to the machines to open the door - this is perhaps related to Morpheus' telling Neo that he could "show him the door" but that Neo would have to "walk through it" by himself; that is, through his own will. This conscious choice is the initial step in the machines' matriculation. They enter and are attacked by a third machine.
One of the runners is destroyed, the other destroys the attacking robot. For a brief moment, the surviving runner examines the bodies of both the machines, in what could be taken as a machinistic contemplation of mortality. Just then, it is incapacitated with an EMP blast fired by Alexa.
While the injured runner is being repaired Alexa debates with the scientist repairing it about the benefits of reprogramming the machine as opposed to letting it "convert" on its own. They discuss whether the machine would react differently if it knew the simulated matrix they intend to plug it into was designed by humans. Their debate encapsulates the theme of the film:
| Alexa: "That runner's smarter than we've seen so far."
Scientist: "It's quite a catch." Alexa: "Thanks. Will it--Do you think it will convert?" Scientist: "To convert is its choice to make." Alexa: "Do you think maybe we oughta reprogram it?" Scientist: "No, we can't make slaves of them." Alexa: "Because that would be simpler." Scientist: "We won't beat the machines by making them our slaves. Better to let them join us by choice." Alexa: "Make them believe that the right choice is the one we want them to make." Scientist: "All right. Yes. Machines are tools. They're made to be used. It's their nature--" Alexa: "To be slaves." Scientist: "That's why we can show them a better world, why they convert." [This is referring to the "instructive" version of the matrix which the rebels have designed for themselves and prospective machines, which they will soon use on the runner.] Alexa: "But that world we show them isn't real." Scientist: "It doesn't matter." Alexa: "Well, I'm afraid they'll find out that we've found up the thing in our heads." Scientist: "They can't tell the difference. To an artificial mind, all reality is virtual. [See virtual reality.] How do they know that the real world isn't just another simulation? How do you?" Alexa: "I know I'm not dreaming now because I know what it's like being in a dream." Scientist: "So dreaming lets you know that reality exists." Alexa: "No - only that my mind exists. I'm not sure about anything else." |
The two characters here are each complex in their philosophical outlooks. Alexa is both a skeptic and a utilitarian - she sees it is easier just to reprogram the machine instead of letting it come to its own conversion, which is not assured. She also says that she is certain of nothing more than the existence of her own mind, which is the basic precept of solipsism. The doctor is by turns both moralistic in his wanting to encourage the machine's own free will and freedom to choose, and is also skeptical, as evidenced in his asking how Alexa can know if any "reality" is "real," given her past experience of being plugged into The Matrix. This is the longest bit of dialogue in the film and the most intriguing, with no real answer as to whether what either character thinks is ultimately right. It is up to the viewer to decide, which is the desired intent.
As the rebel group prepares to enter their own version of a "matrix," they prepare the small monkey for insertion as well. This creature is interesting in that it is a bush baby (whose name is Baby), a member of one of the world's smallest species of primates. This is the first incident in The Matrix story-line where a biological being besides a human has been "plugged in." The fact that the bush baby is a type of primate is telling, seeming to imply that only a creature related to man can function in the digital world. It is also implied, in the statement that Baby is "dreaming already," that the creature thrives in, and perhaps prefers, the dream world.
It may be significant that in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the character Dr. Heywood Floyd calls his young daughter from a phone on the moon and asks her what she would like for her birthday - she answers: "A bush baby." Since 2001 deals with the evolution of man from his earliest days as a baser primate to his current advancement in space travel, it seems significant, even an esoteric joke, perhaps, that attention should be drawn to the least developed species of primate, a testament to the humble origin of man. So it would seem to be in Matriculated as well.
Another (though most likely coincedental) connection between 2001 and the story-line of The Matrix is that author Arthur C. Clarke had initially written a shorter version of 2001 which he entitled The Sentinel.
The group, including the "runner," is then plugged into the matrix. As the runner awakens, it sees humans, in their stylized digital self-images, being playful and interacting uninhibitedly with one another. The digital setting is brightly illuminated and appears to be exclusively metallic. It generates a bizarre atmosphere of peace and confusion. Before it can react to its new surroundings, the runner watches as all the humans run off into archways which close behind them. The bush baby also appears, in a way which is significant. Its eyes are tightly shut, it is making a painful, protesting sound as it clutches its stomach and hobbles towards an exit, seemingly in great discomfort. The source of Baby's discomfort is not addressed (none but the observant runner even notice its pain) and is open to speculation. It may indicate that the bush baby has had some kind of prescient alertion of disaster, which would specifically be the sentinels being drawn by the homing beacon dropped earlier by the runner.
The runner pursues the humans, still apparently having malevolent intent -or perhaps just wanting to examine things and gather information- when it has its head trapped in a wall. On the wall's other side, its head is seen to be positioned at the center of a bull's-eye which appears similar to the device on Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons - the cartoonish music which is playing confirms this. While it examines its bondage, the machine has its outer skin peeled off by some invisible force. The metal skin rolls into a ball which falls into a conic basin, just out of the machine's reach. This would seem to imply the loss of part of the runner's initial identity. Its under-"musculature" now revealed, the machine now becomes self-aware (and/or self-conscious) of its own nakedness and desires to conceal its naked "flesh." Self-consciousness and the donning of clothes were the first emotions felt and actions taken by Adam and Eve after eating the Edenic fruit from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" which granted them free will, and are indicative (on a religio-philosophical level, at any rate) of the possession of sentience. The runner now has the choice (and possibly, as stated, the desire) to clothe itself in a form of its choosing, to supply itself with its own desired digital self-image. The runner alters form - apparently under its own volition - into a simulated humanoid. Notably, the form chosen by the machine is feminine.
Seemingly, the runner is on its way to the "conversion" spoken of by Alexa and the scientist, at least insofar as it may now have reached an acknowledgment of its own ego outside the dictates of its original identity, that of its programming.
These and the remainder of the "dream sequences" within the simulated matrix continue to be highly symbolic, using psychedelic images which are open to many interpretations. The central symbol, however, is that of a black centipede-looking creature which was extracted from the machine as it changed form. This would appear to be the runner's malevolent side, or perhaps its unquestioning mechanical directive to hold humanity in enmity, to follow a set of rules without question.
In one sequence, the now-female runner and Alexa are pitted at opposite ends of a chasm filled with hubs of light. This scene is somewhat mindful of the laser-disc game sequence in Tron. The symbolism here seems to indicate a great division which still exists between the robot and humanity. Using their situation as a sort of play, the runner and the woman try to eliminate all the hubs that stand between them by "knocking them out" with a metal sphere - significantly, the ball is the same one which was made earlier from the runner's sloughed skin. This sequence could be interpreted in many ways, though the two most probable explanations are that the "game" is a way to diminish the perceived distance between robotic and human identities, or that it is a way to change the normally murderously aggressive competition between machine and human into a more playful one.
Eventually, the runner encounters the black centipede again, watching as it crawls into a crystal block which perfectly fits a hole in the floor of the room both of them are in. The machine, trying to come to a logical conclusion in this seemingly illogical, metaphysical place, places the block in the hole, only to have the centipede begin to expand throughout the floor and the rest of the room, growing rapidly - extending black filaments which fill the room and break it apart. One of the humans tries to push his way into the room and attempt to save the runner, offering it his hand. The machine hesitates but does in fact eventually reach out to take his hand, which would seem to be significant in its development (or "matriculation"). However, it doesn't reach him in time and is drawn into the black, grim chaos generated by the centipede. As it is drawn in, the machine screams in panic - another indication of its emergent sentience: the desire of self-preservation.
After being apparently drowned or suffocated in a miasmic sea, the machine manages to emerge, near Alexa, whose digital self-image is a gold body centered with a burning purple light which does not appear to hurt her. She offers the machine her hand, which it takes, and pulls it fully out from the influence of the centipede. The two join in a moment of communion, the machine examining its surroundings now with a sense of calm. This would seem to symbolise the ultimate choice which the machine has made, "converting" (or evolving) into a free-thinking and moralistic life form; an automaton with real autonomy.
However, as soon as this happens, the lab is attacked by sentinels and other hostile machines responding to the homing signal, before the runner can be evaluated in the "real world" as to the effect of its matriculative lesson. However, one clue as to its successful conversion is the fact that the color of its "eyes" change upon awakening from red to green. For the significance of this, read the comments below.
The humans and their converted machines are all destroyed while the runner watches, not assisting either side in the battle even though Alexa pleads with it to help her: apparently the runner is too new to its freedom of action to know which side to assist. During the fight scene a human is thrown through the air, uttering the infamous stock audio Wilhelm scream. After the battle ends, the runner seems to lament its decision of inaction, looking around itself at the corpses of humans (and Baby) and the destroyed remains of all the machines - both the antagonistic and the converted. Again, a type of machinistic examination of mortality. The runner then decides to save at least one of its human teachers and attempts to join itself and Alexa in the matrix. It is possible that the runner attempted this specific action for one of two reasons: either it felt it could maintain Alexa's life electronically, keeping her mind alive within the dreamworld of the rebel's program, or that it desired to return to the state where it had just been comfortably interacting with humans for the first time. The runner does not appear to understand the significance of Alexa's condition, however - namely, that her body was apparently mortally damaged and that it is not appropriate to keep only her brain alive within the matrix; she should be dead. This is thematic of The Matrix in general: that the body is kept in a coma-like state while only the mind operates in a simulated reality, but may be specifically more comparable to the Philip K. Dick story Rautavaara's Case, or even the right-to-live arguments over the moral/legal status of such invalids as Terri Schiavo.)
The machine, in its feminine form, reaches out a hand to Alexa, as had been previously done for it. Behind the machine, there is a roiling blackness which Alexa appears to notice, though the machine does not. This could symbolize the dissociative "drowning" which the runner experienced earlier, or indicate the wrongness of keeping Alexa conscious in a simulated reality. Alexa suddenly comes to and realizes what the machine has tried to do and screams in horror. It seems likely that she understands her body has died but she is being kept alive through the simulation, and reacts with horror because of her previous experience of being imprisoned in the "dream" of the Matrix, helpless to awaken from it, as she is now helpless. She then shudders, looking sad, and wraps her arms around herself as her residual self-image evaporates - apparently dying under her own power.
In the last scene of the film the runner is shown sitting near the blue fire by the shore apparently continuing the work of the humans, desiring to do so of its own free will.
This film is perhaps the most open-to-interpretation of the nine shorts within The Animatrix, having only sparse dialogue and no real explanations of much of what is happening. The meaning is subject to the viewer's interpretation as they view and gather information without ever coming out and definitively saying "what it's about." This is typical of most of Peter Chung's style of animated story-telling.
[edit] Integration in Matrix
The most significant tie-in between Matriculated and The Matrix is the "eye" color change that occurs when a "brainwashed" machine effectively "changes sides" and allies itself with the humans. When this shift in the machine's allegiance occurs, its eyes change from red to green. This ties in with the original Matrix trilogy in that, after the theatrical release, the last film in the trilogy — The Matrix Revolutions was altered slightly, seemingly to incorporate an element introduced in Matriculated. In the theatrical release of The Matrix Revolutions, at the end, when Neo's dead body is being carted away on a barge-like machine, this barge machine's eyes are red, as are the bulk of the lights to be seen in the Machine City landscape.
- However, in the subsequent DVD release, the barge machine's eyes have been changed to green, as well as the lights in the Machine City landscape — just as the machines in Matriculated who had "changed sides."
It is also helpful to keep in mind that the change from red to green 'eye' color does not necessarily mean a simple change from "the machine team," to "the human team." In fact, it could be taken to mean a change in the machine's psychological paradigm. To go from a binary understanding of the world (human = enemy, machine = friend) to a more comprehensive open-minded paradigm in which the humans are seen as fellow conscious beings that they can co-exist with. This may suggest that the peace bartered by Neo in the end of The Matrix Revolutions, may indeed last.
This could also be seen as an incorporation of elements of Ken Wilber's philosophy.
Ken Wilber's Quadrant paradigm[1] is alluded to in the design of The Matrix Revolutions DVD cover[2]. And he is also one of the few people Larry Wachowski has agreed to be interviewed by, regarding the Matrix[3]. So it seems likely that perhaps the choice to shift the machine's eyes from red to green may be an allusion to Chris Cowan's color codes for Spiral dynamics memes (possibly more easily described as a person's world view). In this paradigm:
red = egocentric, power, feudalistic
green = postmodern, tolerant, sensitive, pluralistic.
[edit] Runners
A type of machine scout with multiple transformation modes, Runners are named after their function to run over ground instead of the typical hovering that most of the machines use. They can transform into a form that slides along with its head tentacles and uses its legs as arms. They can even swim. If the Runners spot rebels, they can drop off a tracking device that alerts the nearest sentinels. And unlike sentinels, they lack a cutting laser.
[edit] Notes
- The animation's director was Peter Chung (of Aeon Flux fame).
[edit] Voice actors
- Melinda Clarke — Alexa
- Dwight Schultz — Nonaka
- Rodney Saulsberry — Chyron
- James Arnold Taylor — Raul
- Jack Fletcher — Sandro
- Olivia d'Abo — Rox
