Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Prominence of Black Characters in the Matrix


The term Africanist is introduced in Toni Morrison’s book, and she describes it not as the study of African history, but rather “the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people.”


The Matrix Reloaded definitely has strong Africanist themes, with a generally positive illustrations of “the connotative blackness that African people...signify”. To make these illustrations possible, there is a noticably disproportionate number of black characters in the movie. If you dig a little deeper, you realize that it isn’t just the number of characters, but the fact that most of the protagonists are black, while the major antagonists in the movie are all white (the agents). To drive the point even further, among the protagonists, it is a definite trend that the stronger, more influential characters are black, whereas white characters play more cautious, less influential characters. These include the head of the defence forces, Captain Lock, the inspirational leader Morpheus, who delivers the rallying call in the Temple of Zion and Captain Niobe, whose unparalleled skills as a pilot eventually save countless lives in the final battle.


Oftentimes these strong black characters actually have a more cautious, less effective white counterpoint. For example, Captain Lock’s practicality in the face of the invasion is contrasted to the Head Councillor’s faith in Neo (although this turns out to be the wrong viewpoint, it still points towards Captain Lock’s masculinity.) Captain Niobe decision to support Neo and eventually the salvation of mankind also finds its counterpoint in one of the white captains who is seen as overly practical.


One might argue that these cases contradict each other. After all, in the first situation I am postulating that Captain Lock’s practicality is a positive, and in the second Niobe’s faith is a positive. However, this contradiction actually strengthens the point that the Matrix has very positive (if that is the right word) Africanist themes. To illustrate this, let us take the stance that faith is eventually the right option. The way the scenes were shot, even when Captain Lock chose the wrong option, he was shown to be more forceful and masculine, standing up and facing down the Councillor.


Toni Morrison takes the presence of such Africanist themes in all American literature and films to be something of a given. She states that “major...characteristics of our natural literature - individualism, masculinity...[might actually be] responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence”. The fact that Captain Lock, Naobi and Morpheus are all strong symbols of such characteristics could be an illustration of this point.


I feel that black characters having such prominence in the Matrix is not a show of bias or reverse racism but rather of an ideal that we can work towards, because so often in our racialized world, not all races have an equal prominence.

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