Panel #2

"The

truth was a burning green crack through my brain."

*The first thing Max talks about in this panel is “the truth” with all of its references to religious revelation and “seeing the light,” corroborated by the fact that he describes the truth as “burning green.” It should also be noted that the color motif of green is repeated throughout the film The Matrix and is generally associated with the digital world and with cyberspace. Green is associated with binary code, and binary code is the most essential (both in terms of what is most basic and also what is vital) to computer operation. Everything else, what we see and hear when we interact with computers, is a representation of that series of ones and zeroes that provides the backbone for all operations. As Katherine Hayles points out in As Katherine Hayles points out in My Mother Was a Computer, code reveals what is really going on beneath the surface (Hayles). The “truth” then, is the finality of technology and digitalization of the human experience. Also, not only is the truth green, it is also inside Max’s brain, which makes Max part man part machine- a cyborg. (TECH, MATR, & META binary code)  

“Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves. The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step.”

**This description is a perfect illustration of the union of man and machine through the medium of a video game. A later passage in Haraway’s essay describes perfectly describes the scenario we see playing out in this panel description: “[it is] a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the 'West's' escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space” (Haraway).

This quote, which brings together teleology, cyborgs, and the isolated image of “man in space” (or, as it were, cyberspace) touches on all of the major themes and ideas going on within this three screen sequence. Max is in a computer game he can "beat," he is a combination of man and machine, and he must find his way alone through a hostile and unfamiliar world.  (THRY: cyborg, irony) 

 And what of the sentence “The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step?” This sentence has some interesting implications. If Max is in a computer game, the person controlling his every step is the player, thus putting that player in the glorified position of a deity. However, there is also the authority figure that reveals the situation to Max. Who then, is really in charge? Is the player merely a puppet that carries out the plans of the authority figure that cannot itself intervene? William Gibson also touches on this theme in his novelNeuromancer. The Artificial Intelligence Wintermute cannot appear to Case, the protagonist, without first assuming a form Case is already familiar with, or, as Wintermute calls it, a “spokesperson” (Gibson 116). (META: player/controller dynamic)