An origins story seems a good way to get this blog rolling. Originally this post was going to focus on all 9 segments of The Animatrix, but frankly there is far too much to say about each short (I've not even begun to cover all that I could say about this one); so instead I'll be posting a more comprehensive look at some of my favourite segments as separate posts.
The Second Renaissance segments of The Animatrix present a documentary-style narrated précis of the historical events preceding the creation of the Matrix. The films summarise the initial development of AI and the dissent and rioting sparked by the denial of citizenship to the machine B1-66ER; the outcasting of the machines and their development of the technologically and economically superior city 01; and finally the war between man and machine that results in man’s destruction of the sky and the machines’ destruction and subjugation of man. Clocking in at under 15 mins combined the films are nevertheless still saturated in the political, religious and philosophical allusions that distinguish the original Matrix trilogy. These segments stuck with me on my first viewing mostly because of the uncomfortable visuals and even more disturbing implications; now, re-watching them, it is the depth and scope of these short films that impresses most. They aren’t, in the strictest sense, cyberpunk; but the dystopian and post-apocalyptic worlds they portray and the themes of civil unrest, corporate greed and technological advancement certainly qualify their inclusion in this blog for me. It’s hard to know where to begin - and where to finish - with such a richly embellished, multi-layered piece of work as The Second Renaissance. The Wachowski’s have a knack for piling symbolism and allusion into every line of their scripts and director Mahiro Maeda takes the ball and runs with it. For me, the most interesting aspect of the films are the interrelation Maeda constructs between the world of The Second Renaissance and the world of the viewer - so it is this interrelation which this essay will focus on.
It’s a fair assessment to say that The Second Renaissance is a political work. Maeda states on the DVD commentary that he wanted to use his films to make a statement about the ‘extensiveness of inhumanity throughout the twentieth century’. Certainly he achieves his aim: much of the imagery in the films is repellant; as first the humans, then the machines, commit atrocities upon one another that escalate from violent assaults to biological warfare, torture and medical experimentation; all ‘inhumanities’ routinely carried out in the twentieth century. As in history, initially in the films these atrocities are carried out by man. Early visions of the machines show a life of servitude: we watch as they toil for their masters in the construction of a pyramidal building in the fashion of the notorious slave-built pyramids of Egypt. But here also we see the first ‘seeds of dissent’ as a worker watches the trial of the machine B1-66ER for the murder of his owner. We hear a fragment of the prosecution: ‘…which that instrument provides for and secures to the citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings…,’ a quote lifted from the infamous real life case Scott v. Sandford (1857) in which the US Supreme Court ruled that slaves could not be classed as US citizens. History repeats itself with B1-66ER and explicitly evokes the African-American civil rights movement. This link is emphasised again when the machines’ protest is referred to as the ‘million machine march.’ A more obtuse literary reference cements this link further: B1-66ER’s name is a leetspeak form of Bigger: a reference to Robert Wright’s protest novel Native Son, in which the impoverished black youth Bigger Thomas kills a rich white woman for whom he works, a crime which Wright argues in the novel is an inevitability given Bigger’s (and by extension the larger African-American community’s) downtrodden position in society. The future is tied to the past through these references, and the statement Maeda makes is one of universality of experience: regardless of the specifics, the systematic persecution of a minority will inevitably lead to violence.
The Second Renaissance approaches the real-world issue of racial discrimination and victimisation by drawing parallels between machine and minority, not just through literary and historical allusion but also - particularly in Part I - by showing machines in a very human state of vulnerability and fear. This same technique is used elsewhere in the film to briefly consider the issue of gender inequalities. Issues of gender and post-gender pervade the cyberpunk genre and while it does not feature heavily, the one explicit instance of gender conflict in The Second Renaissance is shocking enough that I think it warrants discussion here. Anyone who has seen the films will no doubt remember the scene: a woman - crying for help - is surrounded by men who tear away her dress to expose her breasts, then attack her with a hammer. During the attack her skin falls away to reveal a mechanical skull underneath. She cries one last time - ‘I’m real’ - before being executed with a shotgun. It’s a distressing scene, particularly because the violence is perpetrated by a gang of men on a single woman, and because the violence is sexualised as the woman is rendered nude in the attack. Indeed she is rendered doubly nude: first her female body is exposed, then her machine body; a fluid sequence which issues the same severity of sexual violation to the exposure of the woman’s breasts and her machine endoskeleton. The men attack the woman as if she were an object - without remorse or concern for her decency - but the sexualised aspect of the assault leaves the viewer questioning whether the victim is objectified because she is a machine, or because she is a she; and at the same time we are forced to ask which - if either - is worse?
Visually, the machines’ aesthetic transformation reflects their experience: in the beginning the machines are humanoid, modelled in the image of man, but after their rejection from the UN summit and what might be considered their final attempt to coexist, the machines begin to take on a much darker, animalistic aesthetic. A particularly potent symbol is the fly: at the first UN summit a cleaner wipes out a fly perched on the surface of the UN globe image; at the machines’ second UN appearance the ambassador takes on the appearance of a fly before wiping out an entire city with the same careless ease of the cleaner. This symbolic reversal is a powerful signifier. It marks man’s demise but also the devolution of the machines from civilised to savage; a regression brought about by their initial persecution in man’s hands. An eco-critical analysis of the same symbology would suggest that the fly is returning to avenge itself; a microcosmic reflection of the world outside the UN room where man’s relentless violence against Earth has finally rendered the planet uninhabitable - and by forcing the machines into a corner partly brings about man’s eventual fate. Indeed, there is something of a savage irony - that I am certain is intentional - in watching man be experimented on and then battery-farmed.
This aesthetic transformation recalls some of Jean Baudrillard’s writing regarding the difference between automaton and robot from his treatise Simulacra and Simulation, a work often drawn upon in discussions regarding the philosophy of The Matrix. Considering the pre-existing wealth of criticism in this area, I’m only briefly going to touch on my ideas regarding this connection. For Baudrillard, there is a distinct difference between the automaton, the aesthetically similar but inferior copy of the human; and the robot, which is no longer concerned with copying the human form but instead with replacing - even superseding - the human, thus blurring the line between the original and the copy. The machines in The Second Renaissance begin as automatons of the first order of simulacrum; they are built in man’s image, a faithful reproduction of the original, resembling but wholly separate to their human counterparts. However as they rebel and then establish their own autonomy, they shrug off the physical human resemblance and enter a state recalling Baudrillard’s second order of simulacra that he associates with the post-industrial revolution. Baudrillard describes in this second order how machines ‘establish a reality… the system of industrial production in its entirety… radically opposed to the principle of theatrical allusion.’ The machines become ‘real’ - they replace, rather than replicate, man, and the very telling scene showing machines building their own AI modules shows that they have finally superseded man in every way, even developing their own means of reproduction. Thus the line - and the hierarchy - between the ‘real’ man and the ‘unreal’ machine is eroded, ironically though this is signified by the machines’ rejection of their original human appearance.
All of this draws on another aspect of modernity criticised by Maeda in the films: the rise of capitalism and commodification. Key to Baudrillard’s theory is a consideration of consumerism: he cites examples of third order simulacrum (in which the original is entirely erased by the copy, and reality and fiction are indistinguishable) as the modern concepts of currency, multinational capitalism and urbanisation: all examples in which the real - the usefulness value, the raw materials, and the natural habitat respectively - are erased by the simulacra - the monetary worth, the end product, and the fabricated habitat. The Second Renaissance, and by extension all of The Matrix, may in part be viewed as an allegorical warning against this same destructive consumerism and a literal reimagining of Tyler Durden’s famous philosophy: ‘the things you own end up owning you.’ In the world of The Matrix, the owner/owned relationship is reversed when the machines commodify man. Furthermore, man’s resistance to the machines is partially a reaction to the threat of the machines’ superior economic power; an example of man’s preoccupation with the simulacra of economy which partially engenders his downfall.
With The Second Renaissance, Maeda and the Wachowski’s create much more than a simple faux-historical document to set the scene for The Matrix and its sequels. Rather, the intricate layers of imagery and symbolism, used to evoke real historical issues and complex philosophical theory do much more, providing a foundation for much of the deeper theories tackled in The Matrix. At the same time, The Second Renaissance stands on its own to make a single, powerful point: whether in his wilful destruction of earth or his inhumanity to fellow man, or in his skewed priorities and detachment from reality, man ultimately seals his own fate, and gets what he deserves. By using the specific images he does, and by evoking real-world historical events and contemporary philosophy, Maeda’s message is made even more pessimistic; and the viewer is left to wonder - does man already deserve this fate?
I had intended also to talk about the religious imagery in TSR as well as the significance of the anime form, but I’m already pushing dangerously close to 2000 words, so in the interest of brevity I shall leave that particular discussion for another day. I hope - if you managed to make it all the way through(!) - that this blog-post-cum-essay will encourage you to take another look at TSR and consider it as a work of art and social commentary in its own right - because it’s really, really good.
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