Technicity: Al and Cyborg Ethnicity in the Matrix (Critical Essay‪)‬

If we agree there is such a thing as post-humanity, then surely science fiction serves to provide its operating manuals. (1) Particularly in its interrogation of race, species, gender, and identity, SF, whether in literature or media, serves to suggest and to help understand what it may mean to be post-human. As a necessary but hitherto undeveloped corollary to this project, I would like to propose a new experiential framework by which to reconceptualize the study of ethnicity in the post-human future--a technologically based ethnicity, that I term technicity. Films involving artificial intelligence run amok, cyborgs, and/or genetic engineering such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Colossus, the Forbin Project (1969), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), Robocop (1987), GATTACA (1997), and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), among many others, illustrate varying aspects and implications of this phenomenon in its conflation of technology with ethnicity. (2) However, one of the most provocative examples of this concept is The Matrix, a film that has been widely discussed in terms of almost everything but race. Indeed, a number of popular issues were raised when The Matrix debuted Easter weekend 1999. Richard Corliss, a film critic for Time magazine, noted the intelligence of this film was reflected in "a futurismo fashion statement" Laurence Fishburne's tiny black shades (75). More importantly, Corliss touched on the idea of virtual reality/computer simulation presented in the film as a compendium of dystopic SF, complete with a cybermessiah theme. Richard Schickel briefly drew attention to the man vs. machine conflict at the heart of the film. Corliss and Schickel both agreed that the densely allusive nature of the film created a hip present-day mythology in their glowing reviews. Roger Ebert found the film's strengths to be the visualization of cyberspace and the fight sequences, but also a rehashing of tired action themes involving good and evil. Yet Ebert momentarily focused on a third issue, the comic book nature of the film. Ebert called the film, "a superhero comic book in which the fate of the world comes down to a titanic fist-fight between the designated representatives of good and evil" (n. pag). New York Times film critic Bernard Weinraub mentioned this idea as well in his interview with the Wachowski Brothers entitled "Brothers Unleash the Comic Book of Ideas." While both Corliss and Ebert referred to the cyberpunk movement started by William Gibson in their reviews, P. Chad Barnett later crystallized a fourth issue--the revival of cyberpunk--in his essay for Extrapolation. Somewhat surprisingly, reviewers focused on a wide range of cyberpunk themes but completely overlooked the film's constructions of ethnicity.