Example of Semiotic Methodology Applied to the film, The Matrix. This example is done in a chronological order of the signs as they appear in the film. This is not a complete analysis and to be used only as a starting point. The opening of The Matrix: Warner Bros brand shown as a nostalgic, analog TV shimmer as well as the green code aesthetic of the Matrix reality. This film will acknowledge that it is part of the system that provides a representational reality and how it is created and controlled by a particular cultural mythology such as Warner Brothers Corp. of Hollywood/Entertainment industry Metacommentary. This film is revealing how the medium of film itself creates the signs that serve the cultural mythologies that surround and pervade our minds. Phone call with monochrome green monitor revealing that a computer system is involved. Trinity says, It doesn t matter what I believe Noir theme 1940 s/50 s/60 s 1. Cops 2. Limousine and Cars carrying the powerful Disconnected voices. These outside voices are calling into a system trying to reach people/minds existing in that particular system of reality. The perception of a reality, and reality itself are independent. Belief often obscures perception of what is actually there. The Noir or detective genre represents themes like selfdiscovery in a world of deception, ambiguity and violence. Nothing is as it seems for normal individuals and outlaws alike. This is a much larger conversation Semiotics Premise: all signs are political in nature. This scene is a political expression. The voices in this scene represent the dissent outside the current hegemony (cultural mythology in power of dictating reality). These voices are speaking into this existing system. This scene establishes a struggle existing between those who control a particular system of reality affecting a society and those outside of it. The interpretation of facts and actual events begin with belief but generally result in someone perceiving a truth. However, an individual is actually experiencing a truth constructed by his or her cultural mythology and the mythology s relativistic decoding of the facts. Things are not as they seem. Ambiguity, violence and passion move along the struggle for knowledge and power. This is a much larger conversation
Heart O the City Hotel This acts as a portal for Morpheus and crew to enter and leave the Matrix. Hotels are transitory places people come and go, to live for a moment on the way to their next destination. Nobody keeps track of who comes and goes. By being called Heart O the City, there is an acknowledgement of the inner city and its relationship to the greater power structure of the reality. This is to say that the poor or the underworld of the inner city (downtown) can observe the operations of the people in power and the people that support them from an anonymous, perspective outside of the system. This hotel exists at the margin of the city. Like the building itself (old, in disrepair and disuse) the inhabitants here (also at the margin) represent the oppressed or disenfranchised or forgotten or an underworld that provides the mainstream and powerful members of the city with cheap labor or illegal goods and services. You can t have powerful class without an oppressed class. The powerful need the oppressed to provide the labor, goods and services they are not willing to produce themselves. The oppressed also represent an undesirable status from which to differentiate the class in power as well as act as a warning to the lesser powerful that they may end up in this status. Running the roof tops eluding the cops. Superheroes especially those who seem more ambiguous as good heroes like Batman, Dare Devil and even Spiderman exist outside the system and try to help greatest number in society, going after evil or bad power. Trinity et al (Latin and others usu. all other authors in an article) are acting above the system as they travel over the rooftops of the Matrix. This action sequence represents the fight of the oppressed against the powerful. Rising above the system, in terms of consciousness, represents the struggle between ideas of one cultural mythology and its adversary to assert which ideas will govern our perceptions of reality.
Call Box/Phone Booth Informant (later revealed to be Cipher) Thomas A. Anderson s Home Computer Thomas Anderson is shown to be a Hacker providing an underworld with insider information about the system. Phone booths are used to privately communicate with another place while in public. Like Superman and probably more accurately like Dr. Who, Trinity et al literally change states of consciousness/being or public/private persona in order to enter and leave the Matrix. The Matrix agents have an informant within the system of the outlaws (as the outlaws have within the Matrix the Oracle, etc) This computer seems alive since someone is communicating intimate information through it that only Thomas Anderson knows (the message addresses him as Neo ). This foreshadows that Neo s reality is a computer created, generated and controlled one. Being a hacker identities Neo as having an ideology that is in conflict with the Matrix ideology, acting to circumvent or exploit the system to gain more power: money, access, etc. Ironically, his exploits take place within the system of the Matrix and his power gained: money, access, does not give him what he wants. He wants information to confirm his deep suspicions of system called the Matrix. There is a basis for struggle between ideologies it is through the transmission and acquisition of information: the cultural codes. The outlaws have to be able to enter into a conversation with the system in order to work within it and dismantle or transform it. Communication of these ideologies brings them into conflict and resolution. Informants secretly report information between groups struggling for power. They literally are ciphers that decode the secret information that one side needs to use to destroy the function of the other s system. Information can be used for propaganda or liberation but nevertheless it is the basis for much of how individuals understand their world. Controlling information or providing it is part of the struggle for power between ideologies. From outlaw to revolutionary. One has to go beyond the system or else one is merely playing into the system by accepting power to be wielded within it from one s outlawed activities. Ideals are the new ideas (or larger ideas) that challenge the existing system and its legitimacy as providing the truth.
Neo asks of outlaw: Do you ever have the feeling of being awake or still dreaming? All of the time, answers underworld guy. Rabbit Tattoo Foreshadows the colored pills. Trinity comments that most men imagine her as a man upon Neo s reaction to realizing she is the person called Trinity. Allusion to Alice in Wonderland. The conscious choice to take the journey into alternate reality. Plays on a construction of gender where men are prescribed roles of power and not women. On the one hand her hairstyle is gender neutral (or speaks to a Noir style) strengthening her as a sign that is ambiguous in the system of the Matrix. Both Trinity and Switch have short hair with no color (either black or white). They are strongly contrasted with the only other woman given any A revolution requires a political will. Political will is often generated by someone or a group raising or altering consciousness in a group of people you want active in the struggle. With a politically aware consciousness, individuals act under the idea that they have knowledge of their ideological adversary and a program for forwarding their own cause. There must be a person or group that has an intrinsic desire for change to begin revealing and fighting a system so pervasive and efficacious (a term for describing the ability to produce a desired or intended result). Supports how ideology operates explicitly (in a very relatable, contemporary example) that power is derived from people believing in, and perceiving through constructs. This illustrates how constructs are often baseless because of how contradictory examples are so easily discovered when people simply see things for what they are become aware of their basic prejudices.
Alarm clock significant attention in the film: the woman in red who is an obvious construct (ironically created by mouse a human freed from the power plant ). waking state vs. reality This foreshadows a series of waking states throughout the film. Realizing that alternate realities can exist within the same person s existence (awake and asleep) is a gateway to imagining that when things are not as they seem when they are out of sync this presents the conditions to make perceiving an alternate ideology plausible.