Movie the First Matrix and Joseph Cambell\'s the Power of Myth

¶ … Matrix and the Power of Myth

Most people spend their lives caught up in petty matters like money, food, career, and worldly obligations. We are surrounded by so much technology and "progress" that finding time for the important things in life can be difficult or impossible. Today, our society is dominated by the city. "It is all stone and rock, manufactured by human hands. It's a different would to grow up in when you are out in the forest with little chipmunks and the great owls." (Campbell 92). Quickly, the spiritual and subconscious side of the homosapien is being phased out; it is not productive. Even the heroes of modern society are losing their luster. The original hero of the West, Christ, is falling out of favor. Even American heroes like Washington, Jefferson, and Boone stood for things that are now antiquated or misunderstood. Campbell believes, "life today is so complex, and it is changing so fast, that there is no time left for anything to constellate itself before it's thrown over again." (Campbell 132).

Perhaps this is why the motion picture The Matrix has attained such a level of popularity. People are anxious for a hero to play a role in a modern day myth. They want to see someone throw off the shackles of the work-a-day world and become something greater than an ordinary human. "The public hero is sensitive to the needs of his time." (Campbell 134). What is lacking in our time is a true sense of spirituality and, "The Hero is today running up against a hard world that is in no way responsive to his spiritual need." (Campbell 130). The Matrix follows the motif of a myth, as outlined by Joseph Campbell.

Modern society has created an antiseptic and sterile setting for the story of human life. Neo-recognizes this fact and feels that there was always something missing; there was always something not quite right. Neo-is the hero of this story, and as such, the film begins with this general uneasiness in his character; a restlessness; a searching. According to Campbell the typical adventure begins with someone "who feels there's something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on al series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir." (Campbell 123). Neo-soon meets Morpheus, and with his aid is reborn into the true world.

Morpheus himself could be compared to a shaman. Neo-is being introduced to a new way of thinking, a level coconsciousness other than the fantasy he has experienced for the first portion of his life. Morpheus is Neo's guide along this righteous path. And, like a shaman, Morpheus' authority was not handed down to him by some abstract deity, but "comes out of a psychological experience, not a social ordination." (Campbell 100). Bill Moyers describes the idea, "The shaman has been somewhere I haven't, and he explains it to me." (Campbell 100). It is in this way that Morpheus is analogous to a shaman: he is not Neo's superior, he is merely his aid, showing him the way and introducing him to the supernatural side of the world that was previously invisible.

The way in which Neo-is born into the "real" world is quite similar to a number of Native American myths. The legend of some tribes in the American Southwest holds that the first people came out of the earth from a hole that extended deep into the ground. "The story is that there were people deep down in the depths who weren't yet really people, who didn't even know they were people. One of them breaks a taboo that nobody knew was a taboo, and the floodwaters begin coming in." (Campbell 105). The people in the matrix have no idea that they are living in a dream world, and their physical bodies are far from where they imagine them to be. When Neo-falls from the matrix it is like he is crawling out of the hole of emergence into a strange and unfamiliar place. He broke a taboo that until that moment he was completely unaware of.

Another aspect of many ancient myths that surfaces in The Matrix is manifested in the character of the Oracle. Clearly, the most obvious analogy to the Oracle is the Oracle of Delphi who was said to have the power of divination. The Oracle in The Matrix is believed to also have this power, but she is a very different character than the teenage girls who breathed in sulfur at Delphi. For one thing, she is a middle-aged woman -- she is not young and pure as was required of the priestesses at Delphi. Secondly, the Oracle is not a hierarchical instrument of the clergy. Much like Morpheus -- the shaman -- the Oracle is independent; she only gives aid to those who ask for it.

The Oracle lives in a run-down apartment, caring for children and baking cookies. The Oracle is motherly, and could almost be considered the first mother. The Oracle is similar to the idea of the goddess. Campbell explains, "Since her magic is that of giving birth and nourishment, as the earth does, her magic supports the magic of the earth." (Campbell 101). This is why the Oracle in The Matrix is someone who is unable to leave the matrix; her powers are limited to earthly tasks. She is the goddess of ancient myth.

Neo-is, of course, the hero in this modern myth. He satisfies all of the major requirements for the typical hero in such a tale. According to Campbell, "A hero is someone who has given his or her life for something bigger than oneself." (Campbell 123). The hero is also someone "who has found or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience." (Campbell 123). Neo-satisfies both of these requirements. First, he enters a world that no ordinary person has ever witnessed and finds within himself capabilities that he never knew existed. Second, Neo-dies. But, like many mythical heroes, he returns; having overcome death and possessing a new understanding of life.

Because of his triumph over death it is easy to compare Neo-to Christ. The world that Neo-enters is not as comfortable or as easy as the world of his earlier life. The reality is that life is painful, difficult, and harsh. The story of Christ is similar in this way. Jesus is said to have come down from heaven, and suffered a gruesome death for the purpose of awakening "our hearts to compassion, and thus to turn our minds from the gross concerns of raw life in the world to the specifically human values of self-giving and shared suffering." (Campbell 116). Neo's goal is quite comparable -- he seeks to awaken the human race to the fact that they are slaves, and the world they live in is only a shadow of reality.