Bem-vindo ao oásis da ficção: Matrix e a cultura como banco de dados

Abstract

This article examines the incorporation of a sort of "computer logic" to contemporary narration in film, taking Andy e Larry Wachowski´s Matrix as an illustration. It presumes that such a dialogue between two different technologies - that of computer, and that of cinema - generates a hybrid discourse, which reconfigures, at least partially, some elements of film language. The subsequent changes may be noted both on the level of theme (the fabule), and on the articulation of narrative (the plot). The main focus is on three characteristics that appear as a result from this interface between cinema and computer: (1) intertextuality, referring (principally, but not exclusively) to works and genres of the so-called mass culture; (2) the discussion about simulation of reality proposed by fictional universes affected by innovative computer solutions, either on diegetic level, or on the level of productive techniques and material supports of representation; and (3) a concept of culture that sees it as a huge data base at the service of the most different uses and ends - including, of course, the creation of fictional universes in film. The first of these characteristics is not new, but nowadays it is surely potentialized by the two others; the latter, by their turn, have, as their requisite, that contemporary cultural condition, defined as post-modern, which finds some of its dominant means of representation in computer and digital technologies. What makes Matrix an emblem of this new cultural condition is an intimate relationship among those three characteristics, and that is, as the article proposes, the key for one to understand the fascination the film provokes both on audiences and critics.