Matrix

I am fascinated by the fact that there is an entire world within academia dedicated to sholarly works regarding pop culture. PhDs gather at conferences to discuss Buffy, Madonna, and Baywatch. This is amusing, as well as very interesting to me. Now, I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that I view most things "scholarly" with an eye of suspicion. I am turned off by the useless scholarly terminology, turned off by the cleverer-than-thou attitudes and condescending tone, and turned off by many scholars themselves. As one PhD candidate friend of mine says, "I hope they don't actually force me to trade in my social skills." (Of course, I must point out that I have a few friends who are notable exceptions to this rule, and a few acquaintances who practically define the rule.)

Anyway, I have recently become very interested in the complex symbolism within The Matrix trilogy, which I had heretofore avoided. Mostly, the web is full of rubes who think they are wicked clever by informing me that "Neo means new, and if you rearrange the letters, you get One." Wow. What a fucking revelation. Some even went so far as to tell me that Neo is a Christ figure. Really? I'd never have gotten that on my own. I was looking for something a little deeper, and unfortunately, the only way to get there was to turn to the academic demagogues. For enlightenment, I looked to some of these scholarly articles to see if I could find anything of worth, and I did, well, kinda. These are the best articles I found, in The Journal of Religion and Film, via the University of Nebraska.

So, if you feel like delving a little into Gnosticism and Buddhism and Morpheus, try these out. If you read only one, choose the second in the list.

Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded - This guy is obviously a little of a blowhard, but he makes some interesting points.

Wake up! Gnosticism and Buddhism in The Matrix - Probably the most succinct, straightforward, and enlightening article of the three. Certainly, it is the least annoying. Probably because it was written by women.

Buddhism, Christianity, and The Matrix:The Dialectic of Myth-Making in Contemporary Cinema1 - The most obtuse of the three, using the highest volume of annoying scholarly buzzwords. BIG WORD MAKE BOBO LOOK SMART.