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the ‘cyber’ component in the term cyberpunk alludes to the fact that the point of reference of this branch of science fiction is cybernetics rather than spaceships and robots. The ‘punk’ element, for its part, hints at a defiant attitude based in urban street culture. Cyberpunks characters are people on the fringe of society: outsiders, misfits and psychopaths 4 , who struggle for survival in a technological enhanced system that tries to dominate the lives of most people.

Often this technological system extends into its human ‘components’ as well, via brain implants, prosthetic limbs, cloned or genetically engineered organs etc. Humans themselves become part of ‘the Machine’. This is the ‘cyber’ aspect of cyberpunk. However, in any cultural system, there are those who live on its margins, on ‘the Edge’: criminals, outcasts, visionaries, or those who simply want freedom for its own sake. Cyberpunk literature focuses on these people, and often on how they turn the system’s technological tools to their own ends. This is the ‘punk’ aspect of cyberpunk. 5 This technological enhanced, oppressive system exists in The Matrix as well: artificial intelligence rules the earth and the vast majority of mankind. But the concept of the ‘cyber system’ is taken a step further in two ways. The system’s technological extension is much more extreme: humans not only have brain implants, through holes in their heads they are plugged into the system permanently. A direct connection between the brain and the artificial intelligence’s means of control: the matrix. On top of that, the system not just extends itself into the individuals, but humans are already a fixed part of the system. Lying in cocoons of the power plants, being the machine’s energy supply, human minds are plugged into the system, and at the same time they are physically contained in it.

But not only the ‘cyber’ aspect of cyberpunk is present in The Matrix, the ‘punk’ element fits too. The protagonist, Neo, is very much the outsider, the criminal hacker, the punk as explained in the quotations above, already very clear in the beginning of the movie. He is an outsider because “you [Neo] live alone […] and night after night sit at your computer” 6 , searching for answers, looking for freedom for its own sake. He is a criminal because, as Agent Smith puts it, he “is guilty of virtually every computer crime we [the system] have a law for” 7 . He is also a punk because he has “a problem with authority” and he gives the

4 Dani Cavallaro. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture. London: Athlone Press, 2000. p. 14

5 Erich Schneider. „Cyberpunk as a Science Fiction Genre“. Project Cyberpunk. 25 March 2003. .

6 Andy and Larry Wachowski. The Matrix. Village Roadshow Pictures. 1999.

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agents the finger, not being scared of “this Gestapo crap” 8 . Neo’s Christian name is Thomas, after the doubtful disciple of Jesus Christ. Neo is very doubtful and he does not accept rules and orders without questioning. Being picked up in the car by Trinity, Switch and Apoc, Neo is confronted with a decision: Switch commands him to blindly follow their orders by saying “Right now, there is only one rule, our way or the highway” 9 . It takes Neo, the doubtful, distrusting, only a fraction of a second to chose the highway. He would rather not meet Morpheus, whom he has been searching for the past two years, than blindly follow the orders that he does not understand.

Yet so far Neo has no idea about the system that oppresses him and once he knows, he turns into a messianic figure more than a punk. That is emphasized by his surname Anderson, which can be translated as ‘son of man’, which is Jesus Christ’s title. The concept of the cyber – punk is not limited to the protagonist though. Most members of the resistance group are punks, except for Morpheus, who is more of a leading father figure. And one thing the whole resistance group have in common, and which marks them as cyberpunks, is that they turn the system’s technological tools to their own ends. By hacking into the matrix and fighting the machines inside cyberspace they attempt to beat the system by its own means. Another cyberpunk identifier is the topic of mind invasion, the interface of the human brain and the computer. In The Matrix this topic cannot be separated from the concept of the cyber–system that extends itself into its human components because, as mentioned above, the majority of mankind is hardwired to the system all the time. The term matrix used for the concept of cyberspace first appeared in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). In this novel the matrix is the virtual reality, where the human mind, separated from the body, moves freely in the endless space of abstract data. Gibson describes the matrix as “a consensual hallucination […] a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system” 10 . Yet the matrix in the film is very different from Gibson’s matrix. In the film, “the matrix is everywhere” 11 , as Morpheus puts it. It is the “neural- interactive simulation” 12 of the world at the end of the twentieth century, a whole and completely simulated reality. The humans who are plugged into the matrix, are in no way aware that the matrix even exists, and the matrix is there to control them, it is “a prison for your mind” 13 , whereas Gibson’s matrix is information technology, designed as a tool for

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9 The Matrix 10 William Gibson. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984. p. 51 11 The Matrix 12 The Matrix 13 The Matrix

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humans. In cyberpunk the individual still has a certain amount of control of how he wants to use the matrix. The border between man and machine, between the natural and the artificial is breaking down, but still there. In The Matrix this concept is pushed further: the humans have no control about using or not using the matrix at all. Humans live in an involuntary symbiosis with the machines: they provide energy and body heat for the machines and in return their minds are fed the neural–interactive simulation of the matrix. There is no self-determination at all and humans have become artificial themselves, since they have absolutely no awareness for the only thing that is still real: their body that is imprisoned in the power plant. One could argue that their minds are real as well, but the minds have no idea what reality actually is because people are “born into bondage” 14 , they grow up in the simulated reality, in the prison that is the matrix. The world in The Matrix is post human: the machines have won the war and humans no longer hold the highest position in the food chain.

The aspect I will look at now, is cyberpunk symbolism, mainly reflections and mirrorshades, for “mirrored sunglasses have been a Movement totem since the early days of ‘82” 15 . Reflections, mirrors and mirrorshades keep reoccurring in cyberpunk for various reasons: “by hiding the eyes, mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous” 16 and mirrorshades “keep others from knowing the intensity of your gaze, the measure of your knowledge, and thus the degree of your power” 17 . That is why the resistance group only wear sunglasses inside the matrix, in the real world there is no need to hide ones gaze. On top of that, mirrorshades are so widely used in cyberpunk because “mirror images are virtual, uncannily reversed counterparts of the objects they reflect” 18 . A mirror image is a simulation, an image of the world that seems to be accurate but is not. This becomes quite obvious in The Matrix in the famous ‘Spoon Boy’ scene, where Neo attempts to use his gift of manipulating the matrix by bending a spoon. Neo’s face is reflected in the bending spoon and he bends himself to the left, along with the spoon, for the boy tells him: “there is no spoon […] it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself” 19 . The reflection in the spoon is virtual, just like the spoon itself and thus serves as a metaphor for the matrix, which is also virtual; a simulated reflection of the real world. On top of that the reflected images in The Matrix are simulations because they could not be filmed and had to be put in the picture digitally.

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15 Sterling. “Preface. Mirrorshades. p. ix 16 Sterling. “Preface” Mirrorshades .p. ix 17 Sare L. Gordy. On Glasses & Mirrors & Reflections. 28 March 2003.

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18 Cavallaro. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture. p. 32 19 The Matrix