The Matrix Reloaded, the second film in a trilogy by the Wachowski brothers, contains many subtextual themes, one of which is control.  The systems of control described by the lead character Neo bear a striking similarity towards attitudes regarding slavery in previous centuries.  When Neo is asked, “what is control?” he replies that control is being able to “shut them down.”  This, of course, was the final recourse of the slave owner.  If he so chose, he could take the life of a slave without justification. According to Neo, that was control in its most essential form.  This is the same kind of control that Hollywood now holds over the representation of blackness in film.  According to Ed Guerrero: “Once many plantations grew cotton; today, some grow movies. But the imperatives remain pretty much the same” (9).  Hollywood did not pioneer the commodification of blackness, but the industry's behavior is heavily influenced by slave owner traditions and plantation values.  At any time, usually for financial reasons, the film industry can "bleach" the screen and stop making black films or hiring black actors and actresses.  This happens regularly, and as Jet magazine foresaw in 1974, while black experience may be a component of the plot, “the underlying story must be universal.”  The Matrix Reloaded is this sort of film, using black characters to add color to a universally acceptable plot.  Blackness in The Matrix Reloaded escapes some of the confines of traditional Hollywood narratives and complements several of the themes of the film, but fails to fully appreciate black cultural values.

Although there are several Asian characters with secondary roles, the overwhelming majority of non-white characters in the film are black.  In a film so full of dichotomies this is not accidental.  In The Matrix, Neo is presented with a choice to take either a red or a blue pill.  The red pill releases him from the Matrix—a virtual world created by machines to enslave humanity—while the blue pill would have returned him to the Matrix and without any memory of his choice.  Opposite the Matrix is the underground city of Zion where a small number of humans hide from the machines and plan their battles.  Also addressed are issues of choice versus fate.  Neo is obsessed with a desire to know if he is in control of his own fate, and if choice is possible.  He and his followers trust in the fortune telling of a woman known as the Oracle.  She tells Neo, “You have already made the choice. All that remains is to understand why."   The final dichotomy present in The Matrix Reloaded is that of black versus white, in terms of both color and race.  Unlike the other dichotomies, the use of black and white as binaries is never explicit.  No character is ever given a choice to be black or white—neither in a literal or metaphorical sense—and they all seem blissfully unaware of their own skin color.  This would be a good thing if it weren’t for the fact that there are disparities present in the roles of white persons versus those of black persons.

In the city of Zion, the council is composed of an approximately equal number of white and black councilors.  Similarly, the captains of the ships are neither all black nor all white.  This equality falls apart when the overall hierarchy of the plot is examined.  The two councilors who give orders are both white while two of the three captains who take these orders are black.  The black Captain Morpheus trusts in his belief that the white Neo—who was originally written as a black character—is The One, a chosen warrior with the power to end the war between human and machine.  Neo and his white lover Trinity are surrounded by blackness throughout the movie.  Because of Morpheus’ conviction that Neo is somehow special, few questions are asked and everyone follows Neo around as if he is superior.  By giving the white character a divine gift, Hollywood makes it easier to accept the subordinated roles of those black characters surrounding him.

Although only a small part of the film takes place in Zion, one scene in particular stands out.  In celebration of their fearlessness to go into the final battle between human and machine there is a gigantic dance party thrown in the main hall.  This party is a mix of a rave and an African tribal dance.  The techno music is overlaid with dozens of tribal drums, and the dancing is frenzied and orgiastic.  Most of the dancers are black with only a few white couples and barely any interracial couples.  Female bodies can be seen tossed into the air by their partners as if on display.  During this dance, Neo and Trinity make love in a secluded area nearby.  Cutting back and forth between the sweaty black dancers and the sweaty white lovers there appears to be a shared energy.  Blackness is shown as a source of virility and sexual energy and as the perfect complement to a white sexual encounter.  Neo and Trinity climax as the dance floor reaches its own ecstatic break.  In Black Looks, bell hooks notes that “by the eighteenth century, the sexuality of the black, male and female, becomes an icon for deviant sexuality,” adding that “it is the black female body that is forced to serve as ‘an icon for black sexuality in general’” (62).  It is also remarkable that while Neo and Trinity have the kind of pure love that rarely exists outside of the silver screen, Morpheus’ only love interest is an ex-partner Niobe who is now dating an old rival of Morpheus.  I do not see the accident in portraying the black families as broken and the white relationship as pure and untarnished.  Morpheus also chooses not to dance, separating himself from the rest of the black population of Zion even further. Morpheus, as a leader and an icon, has perhaps given up some of his racial identity in order to distance himself from the people he must lead.

The last of the human characters bearing mention is the operator Link.  Link is a young black man with dreads who seems to be the embodiment of racist perceptions of black masculinity.  The most denigrating scene is one where he returns home to his wife in Zion.  Upon entering the room he says, “Where’s my puss-?” but cuts himself short as he realized that his niece and nephew are visiting.  Nothing more is said about this line, and I am surprised it was left in the film.  It reinforces the idea that black men care only about sex, and that black women are kept around only as playthings.  After being gone for, as his wife says, three times as long as the other ship operators, Link cares only for one thing; sex.  Later in the film, a mission barely succeeds and Link throws his arms up in the gesture signaling a football goal.  It is a reference which does not really belong in the movie and can only be explained as a gratuitous affirmation of his stereotypical blackness.  The third such affirmation comes from another interaction with his wife.  Before he leaves for the final mission she gives him a silver chain which gives her good luck.  He tries to refuse it but gives in to her wish.  Later in the film he puts it on with the quote, “it can’t hurt.”  The portrayal of blacks as superstitious is live and well in 2003.

The remaining characters in the film are mostly programs that exist within the Matrix.  Of these, only one is black and two are Asian.  The rest of the inhabitants of the Matrix are white.  The Oracle, the only program who represents herself as either female or black, smacks of tokenism.  She is revealed to be the so-called mother of the Matrix, having helped the Architect to design the world that became the Matrix.  Just like Link, she reinforces narratives of superstition as an integral part of blackness by telling futures and guiding Neo and Morpheus through their journeys.  Although she is not real, she embodies herself as a slightly modernized Mammy.  As Ed Guerrero explains, these black servant roles are “demeaning renditions of the myths and stereotypes inflicted on blacks by an indelible culture of racism” (19).  She gives motherly hints to Neo and treats all of her visitors like children.  Another interpretation of the Oracle—one which can also be applied to Morpheus to some degree—is that of the “Magic Negro.”  People listen to her advice because she has spiritual insight and just like Morpheus, the Oracle derives her authority from the supernatural.  She is also the one to articulate the existence of exiled programs that must hide in the Matrix to avoid deletion.

With one exception, all of these renegade programs are represented as ethnic characters.  Asian or black, they are minorities symbolically and literally.  The one exception is the program-virus known as Mr. Smith.  A former agent of the Matrix, Smith has found a way to replicate himself without authorization.  He is able to turn any other inhabitant of the Matrix into a clone of himself.  When he does this to a black person he is actually turning them white.  Mr. Smith wears an all black suit and the special effect chosen to show his viral attack is shiny black protoplasm.  A character is engulfed in shiny blackness and then becomes white.  It is not surprising that the agents of the Matrix are white since it is revealed that the Matrix was created by a master-program known as the Architect.  The Architect is embodied as an elderly white man with a white beard sitting behind a desk.  In the final scenes of the film, blackness disappears from the screen almost completely.  Neo, Trinity, the Architect, Mr. Smith, and other agents are the characters left to wrap up the plot.  Throughout the movie the black characters are shown as secondary and in the final moments of the film they become obsolete.  Having helped Neo to his goal they sit back and let the white characters decide the fate of the world.

The last program worth discussing is the Twins.  These characters may actually be two programs but it is more likely a single program embodied as two identical twins.  The Twins are hyper-racial.  Their skin is bleached, their hair frosted white, and their features pale.  However, they have dreadlocks and carry straight-razors. What I find interesting about them is the use of a hairstyle associated with black nonconformists or Rastafarians to make a hyper-white character seem more grotesque and menacing. They are an interesting pair of characters in a film where white and black mean so much.

While reading non-critical reviews of the film written by viewers I was surprised at how few people found the black cast of The Matrix Reloaded to be unusual or indicative of anything extraordinary.  Many people noticed it, while a few claim to be so color-blind that they did not, but the ones who were aware of the racial undertones of the film mostly thought it was a “step in the right direction.”  It was often mentioned that by diversifying the cast the movie was somehow made more realistic and that the presence of black characters was by itself enough to balance the racial narratives of the movie.  Those who did not think the balance of race was good usually cited weak reasons for their claim.  Some said that it was not realistic, either in the sense that it did not reflect the racial percentages of our society, or that it was not realistic given the groundwork set forth by the plot of the film itself.  Regardless, I see the issues of race in The Matrix Reloaded not as issues of realism or plausibility, but as issues of control.  Hollywood subverts even seemingly diverse films with its narratives of racial inequality.

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.