The Matrix..."Simulacra & Simulation"

In all the times I have watched the Matrix I never noticed the title of the hollowed out book that Neo opens. My brother brought to my attention yesterday, the book is called, Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.

The back cover of the book reads:

"The publication in France of Simulacra et Simulation in 1981 marked Jean Baudrillard's first important step toward theorizing the postmodern. Moving away from Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concearned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this bbok a theory of contempory culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure.

Baudrillard, uses concepts of the simulcram - the copy without an original - and simulation, crucial to an understanding of the postmodern, to address the concept of mass reproduction and reproducibility that characterizes our electronic media culture."

I do not believe that it was either accident or coinceidence that the creators of the Matrix movies, the Wachowski brothers palced this book in the begining of the movie where Neo is asked to "wake up" and to follow the "white rabbit."

Watch the scene here:

Jean Baudrillard's book Simulacra and Simulation heightens the appreciation of an already great film enbedded with much philosophical thought.