Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation is a book about The Matrix trilogy of films and other associated media. It was published by Continuum Press in 2004 and edited by Matthew Kapell (later publishing as Matthew Wilhelm Kapell), anthropological historian, and William G. Doty, professor emeritus of religious studies and religion at the University of Alabama. A second printing was published in September 2006, essentially the same volume with a new cover.
Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise examines the films, video and computer games, comics, anime short films and other aspects of the franchise. The book is organized as a series of essays on the cultural and religious implications of the Matrix franchise, including gender, race, ethics, religion, and cybernetics. Contributors include John Shelton Lawrence, Russell Blackford, Matthew Kapell, Bruce Isaacs, and William G. Doty.
The title phrase "jacking in to the matrix" appears frequently in (and is probably a reference to) the novel Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Famous quotes containing the words jacking, matrix, cultural and/or reception:
“When shot, the deer seldom drops immediately, but runs sometimes for hours, the hunter in hot pursuit. This phase, known as ‘deer running,’ develops fleet runners, particularly in deer- jacking expeditions when the law is pursuing the hunters as swiftly as the hunters are pursuing the deer.”
—For the State of Maine, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
““The matrix is God?”
“In a manner of speaking, although it would be more accurate ... to say that the matrix has a God, since this being’s omniscience and omnipotence are assumed to be limited to the matrix.”
“If it has limits, it isn’t omnipotent.”
“Exactly.... Cyberspace exists, insofar as it can be said to exist, by virtue of human agency.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)