Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation

'''Kapell, Matthew and William G. Doty, eds. Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation.''' New York: Continuum, 2004. Reviewed by Andrew M. Butler, "Tune In, Jack In, Drop Out."Science Fiction Studies #96 = 32.2 (July 2005): 333-39 (directly on pp. 336-39) — our initial source for this entry, later supplemented with the Wikipedia discussion.

From the Wikipedia "Overview": "Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise examines the films, video and computer games, comics, anime short films and other aspects of the franchise. The book is organized as a series of essays on the cultural and religious implications of the Matrix franchise, including gender, race, ethics, religion, and cybernetics."

Essays as listed in Wikipedia article and checked against image on Amazon.com:

[1] "Welcome to the Sexual Spectacle: The Female Heroes in the Franchise" by Martina Lipp [2] "Is Neo white?: Reading Race, Watching the Trilogy" by C. Richard King and David J. Leonard [3] "Religion, Community, and Revitalization: Why Cinematic Myth Resonates" by Richard R. Jones [4] "Story, Product, Franchise: Images of Postmodern Cinema" by Bruce Isaacs and Theodore Louis Trost [5] "Fascist Redemption or Democratic Hope?" by John Shelton Lawrence [6] "Stopping Bullets: Constructions of Bliss and Problems of Violence" by Frances Flannery-Dailey and Rachel L. Wagner [7] "The Déjà-vu Glitch in the Matrix Trilogy" by Michael Sexson [8] "Visions of Hope, Freedom of Choice, and the Alleviation of Social Misery: A Pragmatic Reading of the Matrix Franchise" by Stephanie J. Wilhelm and Matthew Kapell ]9] "Biomorph: The Posthuman Thing" by Gray Kochhar-Lindgren [10] "Strange Volutions: The Matrix Franchise as a Posthuman Memento Mori" by Timothy Mizelle and Elizabeth Baker [11] "Try the Blue Pill: What's Wrong With Life in a Simulation?" by Russell Blackford Note in addition, "Introduction" by one editor, William G. Doty, "The Deeper We Go, the More Complex and Sophisticated the Franchise Seems, and the Dizzier We Feel"; "Conclusion" by the other editor, Matthew Kapell, "At the Edge of the World, Again"; and full scholarly apparatus.

Butler notes that the editors, "Wilhelm and Kapell attempt to escape from both modernist and postmodernist categories, in favor of a utopian vision [for THE MATRIX films]. For them the trilogy ends with the sense of human agency and machine capabilities, the incorporation of 'the traditions or myths of that past and a grand narrative of progress' (138). [...] I’m not so sure whether this does not simply mistake the simulation for the real; perhaps a better fictional future might inspire the possibility of a better real future, but I don’t see many of the machines around me learning anything as they enslave us, nor for that matter do we humans find it that easy to learn" (Butler p. 338).

Note especially Gray Kochhar-Lindgren's "Biomorph: The Posthuman Thing," which has as a kind of log-line in the anthology's Table of Contents, "Machine plus human plus computer software: things, they are a-changing."

RDE, finishing, 3Sep19