The idea behind The Matrix was not a new concept. A lot was written on the perception of reality. from Plato’s Allegory of the cave, to the writings of philosophers as René Descartes and Immanuel Kant, to post-modern theorists as Jean Baudrillard. The subject of this item.

At the beginning of the film, Neo (Keanu Reeves), is selling some sort of digital hardware to a group of hackers. The products are hidden inside a cut-out copy of Baudrillard’s most important book, “Simulacra and Simulation“. The book introduces his theory of Simulacra in contemporary media-based society. Simulacrum, in original Latin, means Similar. In this case, a simulacrum is a copy that has replaced it’s original. The most common example used when trying to define this situation is the golf war. It was the first war to be so closely covered by the media, that the perception of it in the public is those CNN images broadcasting 24/7.  In short, what Baudrillard suggest is that the modern, western society has become so detached from reality that it was replaced by images.

Assuming that Reeve’s character actually read the book before using it for storage, shows that he is already started his journey towards ‘the real’. more likely it was just a small homage to a book that impacted the Wachowski brothers profoundly and in a way, perhaps, led to the creation of the movie.

(© Groucho II Film Partnership)