Animating a classless society: a comparative analysis of metamorphosis of (post) human bodies in 'the matrix trilogy' and 'the animatrix'

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1295912 (Table of Contents)

This study involves the comparative analysis of the (post)human bodies and their metamorphosis as they are represented in the live-action and computer animated films that were released mostly in 2000s. The analyses are done through a case study and a focus group study. The case study involves the analysis of selected sequences from The Matrix Trilogy (1999, 2003) and The Animatrix (2003). The sequences of metamorphosis are analyzed in terms of their implications about the blurring boundaries of human and machine and the "freedom" and / or fear that is associated with this hybridization. In this context, the real flesh and bone bodies of the live-action films are juxtaposed to the fluid and virtual bodies of the animation films. The focus group study, which involves three separate groups of mine-workers, housewives and high school students who were asked to react and interpret selected scenes from The Matrix Trilogy and The Animatrix and it aims to present the influences of class difference in defining a new cultural understanding of how people associate freedom and technology in Turkey. Is metamorphosing about getting adapted to a new social system or is it a reaction to the social and political changes that are imposed on the body? How does the gradual metalmorphing of the body as it is reflected on the screen deal with the issues of freedom, bodily ambiguation, boundary breaking that are associated with "becoming" posthuman? What role can animation as a popular art form claim in terms of being prosthesis for human body and/or mind or the externalization of the mind? These are the questions that this thesis tries to answer through the comparison of the metamorphosing post/human bodies as presented in different media of live action, animation and liveaction and animation hybrids.