One of the most overt philosophical references occurs near the beginning of The Matrix when Neo stashes his illegal software inside a hollowed-out copy of a book by French postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard entitled Simulacra and Simulation. Originally published in 1981, Baudrillard’s book argues that late-twentieth-century consumer culture is a world in which simulations or imitations of reality have become more real than reality itself, a condition he describes as the “hyper-real.” For example, walking and running are not nearly as important as they were in premodern societies, but jogging is a recreational pastime, replete with special shoes, clothes, books, and other gear. To take another example, we no longer live in communities where food is produced locally and whole grains are a necessary dietary staple, but we have health food that enables us to replicate the experience of a peasant’s diet. (Admittedly, terms such as “jogging” and “health food” show that the book is somewhat dated, but the point still holds.)

Baudrillard argues that consumer culture has evolved from a state in which we are surrounded by representations or imitations of things that really exist, toward a state in which our lives are filled with simulations, objects that look as if they represent something else but have really created the reality they seem to refer to. In such a situation, the world of simulations increasingly takes on a life of its own, and reality itself erodes to the point that it becomes a desert. Morpheus introduces Neo to the real world by welcoming him to “the desert of the real,” a phrase taken from the first page of Simulacra and Simulation. Thus, the entire concept of the Matrix films can be interpreted as a criticism of the unreal consumer culture we live in, a culture that may be distracting us from the reality that we are being exploited by someone or something, just as the machines exploit the humans in the Matrix for bioelectricity.

Baudrillard’s greatest philosophical influence is Karl Marx, and while the Matrix films do not refer to Marx explicitly, the fact that the inhabitants of the Matrix are exploited by means of an illusion that they all inhabit renders the films closer in spirit to Marx than to any other philosopher. Marx argued that the working class is exploited by the ruling classes, but the working class’s exploitation is only possible because it does not perceive itself as being exploited. The working class misunderstands its own position because it is confused and distracted by social messages that give workers a distorted explanation of how they fit into the world—for example, religion, school, and ideologies such as nationalism and patriotism. (According to Baudrillard, consumer culture is what misleads us.) Marx’s partner, Friedrich Engels, coined the term false consciousness to describe the working class’s ignorance. Of course, the argument that average people are ignorant of their own best interests and exploited by rulers who create and capitalize on that ignorance is still common today. The documentary films of Michael Moore, for example, have sought to demonstrate that politicians and the news media exploit Americans’ fears of violence and terrorism to distract us from our true economic and political best interests. Nevertheless, the original source of all such “false consciousness” arguments, including that of the Matrix trilogy, is Marx.