Dance and Popular Culture

“Rage Against the Colonialist Machine: Movement as a Means of Liberation in the Matrix Trilogy”

To be presented at the 2008 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference

Abstract: Throughout the history of colonialism in the United States, indigenous people retained their cultural identity and sense of freedom through dance, often while incorporating colonizing influences: e.g., the Ring Shout of the African slaves and Ghost Dance of the American Indians. In the fictional post-apocalyptic city of Zion in the 20th-century Matrix films, the human population—those liberated from the immobilizing pods created by the colonizing machines and connected to a mainframe through which their minds experienced the Matrix simulacrum—gather together in a tribal rave prior to battle with the machines.

This paper examines this tribal rave—created by concert-dance choreographer Charles Moulton—as a historic approximation of dance ritual as a means of liberation among indigenous, colonized populations. At the same time, this paper contrasts the tribal rave with the movements of the liberated humans who plug back into the simulacrum as individual, asexual, cyber-enhanced rebels in scenes choreographed by martial-arts expert Yuen Wo Ping.

In particular, the paper examines the movements of the re-birthed Neo who, while prone in the Nebuchadnezzar, re-enters the Matrix as a superhero progressively defying the simulacra of time, space and gravity. Only by plugging into the Matrix can Neo’s body move as an act of subversion and defensive measure against colonialist control. In the process, his movement becomes a neo-colonial facsimile of the robotic agents’ who patrol the Matrix. Within these provocative layers of simulacrum the mind is free, but the body is the means to an end.