Katabasis in Myth and Film

“Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.”

This introductory passage of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations immediately reminded me of the scene in the Matrix when Morpheus was showing Neo the real world. Before having a type of rebirth, Neo believed that his world existed as he saw, felt, and generally sensed it. However, the world that he lived in was nothing more than an abstraction. This abstraction was so advanced that the majority of the people actually believed that there was nothing else even though they were being harvested and grown for their energy. The simulation was so advanced and powerful that it completely veiled the true reality. Then, what of the real world? Like Baudrillard’s essay it was rotting and decaying away. The real world was neither needed nor used because, for most of the people it was completely unknown. Neo was able to see the true appearance of the world as darkening, decaying, and, becoming a type of hell in appearance. Even though it physically resembled hell, in the real world there were people and a civilization that were fighting for their freedom. After Neo got over the initial shock of the appearance of the real world, he realized that the simulation was the actual hell where the people were trapped within their minds and with no recognition of this. The fight against the matrix is not completed until after the second and third movies but, the first movie can be analyzed with its own katabasis and anabasis. Neo’s katabatic journey involved him traveling back into the matrix, gaining an understanding of what it truly was in order to combat its hold over him, and returning. His anabasis or journey out of the matrix saved the resistance and ensured that it would continue.

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