‘Matrix’ marked a whole generation. And is not for less. His aesthetics, his ideas and his characters have everything to be a shock, even today. If to that is added a script calculated to the millimeter and a portentous direction, it is logical that even the most skeptical would have to accept that there was something more than shooting and countercultural posturing.
But that doesn’t mean it was something new. The Wachowskis drank from many sources that were already there, modeling an image of the world that they would later adapt in a very particular way. Something that, without a doubt, helped them to gain public acceptance. And among all those other sources, one of the most important and least talked about was Grant Morrison’s ‘Los Invisibles’.
‘Los Invisibles’ was a comic published by the Vertigo label between September 1994 and June 2000, written and conceived by screenwriter Grant Morrison with the intention of creating a hypersigile, a kind of large-scale magical ritual, with which to change reality. That is, for Morrison, ‘The Invisibles’ is not just a comic, but a way to change the world. An act with which, through fiction, he wanted to influence the future of reality.
This must be understood in context. Even if that doesn’t make it any less insane. Grant Morrison, in addition to being a screenwriter, is a magician of chaos who is convinced that changes in reality can be achieved through sigils, that is, symbolic representations of the result he wants to obtain. That is what we mean by ‘Los Invisibles’ is a great magical ritual. That, by making visible the mechanisms of the conspiracy in which we live, Morrison intended to make humanity aware of the shackles that bind it.
Of magicians and artists
If we decide to take it on the more skeptical and deadly boring side, obviously, there is no magic here. Or not beyond all magic inherent in art: Fiction is capable of transmitting more effectively than non-fiction certain aspects of reality that are difficult to appreciate.. But that was Morrison’s intention. Create an artifact, be it magical or artistic or both at the same time, if there is any difference between the two concepts, capable of making us see reality as it is. Breaking the lattice of our convictions and showing us the daily conspiracy in which we live.
Now, what is that conspiracy that shapes the history of ‘The Invisibles’ and that has to reveal to us the daily horror in which we live? Summarizing a lot a convulsive development of fifty-nine issues, it is the story of a group of anarchists who are fighting against a massive alien conspiracy that tries to turn human beings into mindless conformists who never consider any decision more important than if they prefer Pepsi or Coca-Cola with the intention of taking control of the earth and everything that inhabits it. In between, we have homeless hunts, virtual reality lobotomizations, and drugs that allow rich old whites to occupy the bodies of young black men to perform all kinds of atrocities. Which makes Jordan Peele’s excellent ‘Get Out’ suddenly not as original as we thought.
It is also difficult to deny that, put like this, the resemblance between ‘The Matrix’ and ‘The Invisibles’ may seem non-existent. If we add that the whole story of ‘The Invisibles’ starts from the fact that our main group manages to “wake up” a young rebellious boy, Jack Frost, who has the potential to be the next leader of the revolution to come due to the conviction of the leader of the group , King Mob, then the resemblance becomes more apparent. But if we change aliens for robots and anarchist magicians for hackers, we have essentially the same premise: a group of characters belonging to a specific counterculture fight against a massive conspiracy that is impossible to expose.
Even so, it could be said that these are only superficial similarities. Certain common traits. But it is that, to nothing that we delve into, the unquestionable similarities blossom quickly.
Similarities and discords in the subculture
Perhaps the most striking thing is the similarity that exists in the relationship between the characters that make up the first known relationship in both works: the similarities between Jack Frost and King Mob, and Neo and Morpheus. Being in both cases a relationship of pupil and teacher, the first being abandoned after being revealed only a part of the truth so that they discover it (and decide what to do knowing it) for themselves, being led before an oracle so that they read their destiny and revealing itself as the personal bet of their teachers, it is difficult to question the parallels that exist between both relationships. Even in how Jack Frost is called like that for the same reason that Neo is not called by the name with which he was born: because his teacher, whether King Mob before transmuting into Morpheus, gives him to understand that An invisible person cannot use the name by which he identified himself before knowing reality, since he is no longer the same person.
The whole story of ‘The Invisibles’ starts from the fact that our main group manages to “wake up” a young rebellious boy, Jack Frost, who has the potential to be the next leader of the revolution to come due to the conviction of the group’s leader, King Mob
But even there the similarities do not end. In both works we find characters capable of breaking the biological limits of the human being, travel through different dimensions via technology is the norm and, of course, hosts like bread via kung-fu are the best method of defeating your enemies. If to that we add that both works follow the fetish fashion for the revolutionaries and a classic three-piece suit for the reactionaries, or that Agent Smith blatantly shoots the concept of humanity as a virus that one of the invisible ones dedicates to the new young man recruited before becoming Jack Frost, it is difficult to deny all the parallels between the two works. Especially when the comic started being published five years before the movie was released.
This has not prevented certain contradictions between the intention and the act. After all, although his intention is that ‘The Invisibles’ was a hypersigile that changes the world, the similarities of ‘The Matrix’ with its comic made Grant Morrison take the production of the film very, very badly. Without being cited in the credits, without giving him any kind of royalties, the Scottish author considered that the Wachowski sisters owed him that recognition. Especially when, as he said in an interview with Suicide Girls, both directors gave the film’s staff two books to read as essential references for it: ‘Cultura y simulacro’, by Jean Baudrillard, and ‘Los Invisibles’.
Disagreements and encounters of two immortal works
Anyway, as much as what it says is true and that an acknowledgment (and its associated money) would have been a nice gesture given the massive success of the film, it is absurd to ugly to ‘Matrix’ not to have credited Morrison . Not when ‘The Invisibles’ are still an influence. One of a whole morass of vaguely disguised references.
Because, make no mistake, most of the things in which we can compare both works are still typical of certain forms of contemporary fiction. The hero, the guide, the conspiracy and the subcultural aesthetic can be found in dozens of other films and comics of the time. Even the most particular aspects, such as humanity and language as a virus or reality as virtuality, have clear previous references. I mean, it’s not that Morrisons or the Wachowskis invented anything. It is that, literally, they were in a context in which all those ideas circulated freely. ‘Matrix’ goes on the shoulders of giants.
That is why it is easy to trace the references that ‘The Invisibles’ and ‘The Matrix’ have in common. Philip K. , Robert Anton Wilson, Terrence McKenna, Jean Baudrillard and William Burroughs, to name only the most prominent, make an appearance in both works, not always in the same way, giving them a common ground of action. In this way, they share the same aesthetic, narrative and even philosophical current, which makes it seem that they have more similarities and closeness than they actually do. That is to say, it is logical that Morrison saw in ‘The Matrix’ a copy of his own ideas, because, after all, both works were based on the same common substrate made up of a very specific cultural context.
The Wachowskis addressed a mass audience, while Morrison addressed a more specialized audience. That is where the only obvious difference between the two works lies, which could well be sisters.
In addition, none of the above takes away so that the similarities between both works were exhausted quite quickly. As Morrison himself recognized, the second and third films of the trilogy could not be further from ‘The Invisibles’. And although their things in common ended there, it is no less true that both works, influenced by their references, dealt with the same theme: the struggle between the search for freedom and the inherent need of every society to feel safe through of the control of the freedom of its citizens. A debate that would advance, very astutely, what would happen in all of post-9/11 politics.
In the end, the difference between ‘The Matrix’ and ‘The Invisibles’ is not their intention, which is the same, but their extension: The Wachowskis addressed a mass audience, while Morrisons addressed a more specialized audience.. That is where the only obvious difference between the two works lies, which could well be sisters. One simpler and easier to understand, extravagant in a popular way, and another more complex and crazy, extroverted in a fascinating and incomprehensible way. Because, as we said, we have always been on the shoulders of giants. But the most surprising of all is that, in the end, the giants have always been us.
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