Jean Baudrillard, the Mind Behind ‘The Matrix’
March 7, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7761639
Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and sociologist, wrote dozens of books. But his ideas may have found their biggest platform in the movie The Matrix. Baudrillard died Tuesday at the age of 77.
Baudrillard’s radical ideas about the blurring lines between simulation and reality influenced the makers of the hugely successful movie trilogy.
The Spiritual Message of ‘The Matrix’
Authors Find Inspiration in Film’s Mythology of Fighting for Truth
May 16, 2003
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1264976
This idea is not new — it mirrors the 2,000-year-old spiritual tradition of Gnosticism, an early form of Christianity. “Gnosticism maintains that the world that we’re living in is not the ultimate reality,” says Frances Flannery Dailey, who teaches religion at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. “It believes that the god who created this world is not the ultimate god — there is a higher God, a transcendent reality.”
“Religion and spirituality are communicated to our culture by movies much more than they are by traditional venues of synagogue or church,” Garrett says. “A really good myth does more than just create a symbolic world. It articulates the feelings that a culture already feels or believes.”
related:
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/05/18/478488286/fear-of-not-knowing
If You Don’t Know You Are Held Captive, Does It Matter?
June 10, 2015
Marcelo Gleiser
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/06/10/413342960/if-you-don-t-know-you-are-captive-does-it-matter
the classic movie The Matrix. As a counterpoint, they also read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” from Book VII of his dialogue The Republic. Both can be seen as explorations of the value of knowledge and freedom.
If you were a chained slave or a human in a cocoon, would you like to know? Is “ignorance is bliss” a viable life?
related:
related:
https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/living-in-the-matrix-requires-less-brain-power
it never cuts loose the way The Matrix or Joseph Ruben’s jolly B-movie Dreamscape did. If you’re hoping for a thriller that will take you into another realm, well: Dream on.
