Why Baudrillard Hated The Matrix
And why he was wrong
“The Matrix is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce.”
These were the infamous words that Jean Baudrillard used to break his silence on The Matrix movies in a 2004 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur. Baudrillard’s idea of simulation — which we explored in-depth in a previous instalment — was the primary inspiration behind the Wachowski siblings’ movie series.
His 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation was not merely a prop in The Matrix but was the main inspiration for the movies and was required reading for the whole cast. After the release of the first movie the Wachowskis reached out to Baudrillard inviting him to work on the sequels but he turned down the offer and in this interview we learn why.
As it turns out Baudrillard — the “high priest of postmodernism” — hated the movies. In this article we are going to look at the three reasons he gives for this disdain:
- It misrepresents Simulacra and Simulation,
- It is a work of hypocrisy and
- The Matrix fails to represent his overall theoretical position.
And following that we are going to look at why Baudrillard is wrong.
