Popular films, according to Mules (2007, p. 71), “provide sites for the exploration of fears, pleasures and desires”. Brosnan (1991, p. 85), referring to the science fiction and monster movies of the fifties, regards those texts as “metaphors for the anxieties” prevalent in American society at that time. Turner (1998, p. 78) avers films exist within “a social context”. Kuhn (1990, p. 16) goes as far as to propose that “social trends and attitudes in a sense produce films”. Not only a site for entertainment, contemporary cinema has something to say. Films convey meaning. That meaning, as this paper will elucidate by way of a reading of two recent science fiction films, The Matrix (1999) and I Robot (2004), is produced through the codes of genre, narrative and character.

In regard to filmic texts, genre, as Mules (2007, p. 72) states, is a way of categorising those texts “according to type”, such as the Western, horror or science fiction. But more than merely a system of classification, genre offers an expectation, a promise, as Kuhn (1990, p.2) suggests, that a particular film will follow certain conventions and exhibit recognisable and expected iconography, as well as equally recognisable and expected characters and narrative. If one chooses a movie from the Western section at the local video store, one would not be surprised by cowboys and Indians, a brawl in a saloon, or the mysterious lone rider who reluctantly liberates a township from domineering ‘baddies’ in black hats before riding off, still alone, into the sunset. Were one to have chosen a horror movie, there would be an expectation of a blood-lusting Count, a lagoon-dwelling creature of slime or other monster, perhaps an evil entity with knives for fingers, chasing college students down the corridors of their dreams. Science fiction, as well, brings with it an expectation of spaceships or futuristic vehicles, robots and technological gadgetry in an environment not of this world or time. These conventions provide familiarity. It is, as Bordwell and Thompson (2004, p. 111) claim, the iconography of a genre consisting of “recurring symbolic images that … [carries] … meaning from film to film”.

While, as Bordwell and Thompson (2004, p. 109) contend, “no genre can be defined in a single hard-and-fast way”, of all the various cinematic genres, arguably the richest, in terms of textual analysis, is science fiction. It can include adventure (Star Wars 1977), action (Terminator II 1991), war (Starship Troopers 1997), the Western (Back to the Future III 1990), horror (Alien 1979), parody (Galaxy Quest 1999), even romance (Metropolis 1927). Science fiction is, as Landon (1997, p. 5) suggests, “a multimedia genre with SF narratives prominent” not only in cinema, but also on television, in literature, in comic books and music. But rather than getting bogged-down attempting a definition of science fiction as a genre, it is more important to consider what it does or says “in cultural terms”, or as Kuhn (1990, p1) puts it, its “cultural instrumentality”. While a dominant feature of the genre is separation from the present through space, time or technological and/or biological advancement, science fiction tends, as Gold (Kuhn 1990, p. 15) claims, to reveal “the wishes, hopes, fears, inner stresses and tensions” of the time. Cold War paranoia, metaphorically represented by alien invasion and mutant creatures, was a dominant theme in 1950s science fiction (Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956, The Thing 1951, Gojira 1954). Issues concerning the environment and biological warfare were themes in the 1970s (The Omega Man 1971, Soylent Green 1973 and Logan’s Run 1976). The 1980s witnessed a questioning of identity (Blade Runner 1982 and Total Recall 1990). More recently, this question of who we are has been compounded with concerns over race, gender, sexuality, genetic engineering, the growth of the corporate body and globalisation, ‘Big Brother’ and the “conflict”, as Kuhn (1990, p. 5) describes it, “between science and technology on the one hand and human nature on the other” (Gattaca 1997, Minority Report 2002, The Matrix and I Robot). The two films of concern to this discussion are, despite their quite different diegetic narratives, interesting examples of this contemporary era, a time Baudrillard (Telotte 1995, p. 4) considers an “age of simulation”. We have come, as Baudrillard (Telotte 1995, p. 150) notes, “preoccupied with saving our identity … [and] … proving our existence”.

The narrative of The Matrix describes a ‘New World Order’ where artificial intelligence dominates. But unlike the future world of robotic rule depicted by the Terminator films, in this case, the humans, save for a small band of rebels, are blissfully unaware of their reality. Humans are used as batteries to power a simulation of a world that resembles late twentieth century New York. The plot within this narrative involves the rebels, led by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), inducting computer hacker, Neo (Keanu Reeves), into their cause. Morpheus believes Neo is ‘the One’, who will bring down the captors of humanity. Neo’s story, as Bartlett and Byers (2003, p. 34) state, “closely fits the paradigm of the hero myth”. Riding on the outskirts of society, he is a loner, who by day works in an office cubicle indistinct from all the other cubicles around him. By night, he deals in illicit virtual reality software. He is a ‘rebel without a cause’, and just as James Dean’s character imbued audiences with empathy, so too does Neo. From his initial contact with Morpheus, who phones him to warn of impending capture by the ‘authorities’, the audience is invited to rally in support of this naïve fugitive. The agents in pursuit are white men with emotionless facial features, wearing grey business suits – the image of subservience and anonymity within the Western corporate state. As an overstatement, the leader of these police officers is called Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). The cold and heartless character of Smith is in direct opposition to the darker, more romantic and appealing innocence of Neo’s character. But Neo’s character develops and matures as he learns the ‘truth’ about the Matrix. He undergoes training to become a Bruce Lee-type hero for the rebellion, and hence, a saviour for the human race. As Mules (1998, p. 7) claims, characters in films “constitute an ensemble of identities which are capable of symbolic meaning”. The masculine character of Neo, the fighter, represents, as Geller (2004, p. 10) would suggest, a strong “nation-state, defending its borders from foreign threats”.

Other characters worthy of mention for their role in the production of meaning, particularly through their relationship with Neo, are Trinity and Cypher (Joe Pantoliano). Trinity begins as a strong individual whose short hair, masculine attire and ability to fight against the agents “signals”, as Geller (2004, p. 15) argues, “a range of political meanings irreducible to sexuality”. Her gender transgression is, however, transformed and returned, to some extent, towards heteronormativity, when she reveals her love for Neo, becoming the woman behind the man who is the ultimate hero. Indeed, it is the love of Trinity which brings about a virtual ‘resurrection’ of Neo as ‘the One’. The religious connotations in this text are unavoidable and further enhanced by the Judas-type figure of Cypher who, rather than betraying the ‘Messiah’ for 30 pieces of silver, does so for a piece of virtual steak. Cypher is portrayed as a greedy and self-interested character, which, as Bartlett and Byers (2003, p. 35) point out, invites the audience “to reject his unprincipled choice of virtual pleasure over materiality and authenticity”. The closing non-diegetic music, “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine, hammers home this message. But the story is not over. There is not the closure typical of the classic Hollywood narrative. Rather, as Neo says:

I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how this is going to begin.

The story, it would seem, is now up to the audience – surrender to technological servitude or take control of your own humanity.

I Robot, on the other hand, although also serving up a similar message, does follow the classic narrative line moving from a seemingly normal situation, through disruption, leading to a climactic confrontation between good and evil, which concludes in the restoration of patriarchal ‘normality’. Where The Matrix borrowed heavily from the action genre, the narrative here closely resembles a typical mystery/detective narrative. The protagonist, Del Spooner (Will Smith), is, like Neo, a loner. The opening shot of Spooner, asleep on his bed, employs a chiaroscuro effect reminiscent of that classic film noir text, The Maltese Falcon (1941). This Venetian-blind lighting effect on Spooner is a recurring motif expressing that characters duality. On the one hand, he resents robots for saving him ahead of a young girl in a car accident. On the other hand, he is, to some extent, indebted to the technology, having had a bionic reconstruction. But he is not proud of his robotic arm. It taunts him as a reminder of that accident where a robot chose his life over that of the girl. It does, however, enable him to eventually bring down the evil V.I.K.I. (Fiona Hogan). The acronym, V.I.K.I., stands for Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence. V.I.K.I. is a central ‘brain’ controlling the robots which exist as servants to humans. But V.I.K.I. decides the only way to protect humans, a primary law of the robotic ethos, is to take control over them; to protect them from themselves.

The patriarchal hegemony, as an ideological force, is, to borrow from the wise Yoda of Star Wars, “strong” in this text. V.I.K.I. has a feminine name, a feminine visage and a feminine voice. V.I.K.I., as the ‘baddie’, is female. When she communicates with her robots, their chests glow a bright red. This could well be read as a sign of wicked intent, as in the ‘red menace’, or even be symbolic of the redness of female sexuality as a seductive device for the hapless male. In this sense, it signifies the femme fatale, another icon of film noir, as well as the ‘bitches from hell’ films of the eighties, most notably, Fatal Attraction (1987). This intertextuality is also evident in The Matrix when Neo is in a training simulation. In that scene, it is a woman in red who turns out to be an agent of the enemy.

Del Spooner is the epitome of the patriarchal male. When Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), a robot ‘psychologist’, challenges his authority, he reacts with: “You must know my ex-wife”, expressing the hegemonic ideology that a woman who is anything other than submissive has no place within the patriarchal home. The final clash between Spooner and V.I.K.I., which ends in the destruction of V.I.K.I. and the sublimation of the robots, is not merely a victory for humanity over technology. It is a powerful statement of the dominance of the masculine over the feminine. As Thwaites, Davis and Mules (2002, p. 159) claim, this representation of conflict “resolved through male action and decisiveness enacts a patriarchal ideology” (emphasis in the original).

Through a reading of these two films, it has been shown that meaning is indeed produced through the codes of genre, narrative and character. These films, as texts of science fiction, express contemporary concerns with the encroachment of technology into our lives. As with other texts of the genre, they take us to a place away from our own to reflect our anxieties; to reflect the issues of our time. Through their narratives, they depict these concerns and “fabulate”, as Thwaites, Davis and Mules (2002, p. 172) would say, how this “conflict” has come about, and how it may be “resolved”. While superficially appearing as texts with different stories to tell, they employ “generic intertextuality”, as Cranny-Francis (1988, p. 174) suggests, to alert their audiences “to similarities between genres which apparently have very different interests and aims”. Yet, through their characters, these texts produce the same effect of meaning, that is, the survival of humanity is, ultimately, not to be secured by the domination of humans over technology, but by the continuance and adherence to the hegemonic ideology of the patriarchy. Once again, in the tradition of Hollywood cinema, regardless of genre, it is the lone, male rider who comes to town to save the day.

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