Gnosticism originated in the ancient world, but has evolved throughout history. The core of Gnostic thought is that the material world, especially the human body, is corrupt. While God created the good, spiritual world, a lesser being, the Demiurge, created the physical world. One can be saved from the curse of physical existence only through secret knowledge, or gnosis.
William Butler Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium” encapsulates some of the essential elements of Gnosticism. The second stanza denigrates the body, pointing to the soul as the only source of hope: “An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress.” The elderly reveal the body at its most fragile. Yeats likens an old man to a “tattered coat” to express how insubstantial the aging body is. Unless the soul can escape the body it is doomed. Yeats reiterates this idea in the third stanza: “Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal.” The body is now compared to a “dying animal” separate from the heart, pained with the desire to escape the cage of corporeality. The final stanza presents the image of the soul escaping the body to inhabit the form of a golden bird. This form is free of the disease and decay to which the human body is subject; it is pure, beautiful, and eternal.
Gnosticism in The Matrix
Perhaps better than any other film, The Matrix dramatizes a Gnostic mythology. As Gnosticism posits that the physical world is a prison, so Morpheus calls the Matrix a “prison for your mind.” A sophisticated computer program that simulates a virtual reality, the Matrix seems so real that most humans do not suspect that the world around them is an illusion, or that their bodies will be harvested by machines. Yet, some, like Neo, feel an inexplicable sense of wrongness in the world–“like a splinter in your mind driving you mad,” as Morpheus says. This corresponds to the Gnosticism’s idea that only a small minority of people are “pneumatic,” those who possess the ability to understand gnosis, to realize the nature of reality, and transcend materiality to achieve salvation. Most people are “hylic,” oblivious to the reality behind the physical world, just as millions of people are unaware of the Matrix. Some glimpse the true nature of reality, but lack the discipline to be saved. Cypher fits into this middle group. Although Morpheus shows him the truth and frees his mind from the Matrix, after almost a decade of guerrilla warfare against the machines, Cypher’s new motto is “Ignorance is bliss.” Cypher betrays Morpheus to Agent Smith in exchange for his mind being re-implanted in the Matrix. He loves physical pleasures too much to value his freedom. As he eats a steak in the Matrix, he tells Agent Smith “You know, I know that this steak doesn’t exist. I know when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.” They sit in an elegant restaurant, and Cypher tells Agent Smith that he wants to be “rich, you know, someone important, like an actor.” Morpheus saves people from the Matrix by revealing to them the secret knowledge that the world as they perceive it is an illusion. Morpheus is aptly named because in Greek mythology Morpheus is the god of dreams. The Matrix is a dream-world; as Morpheus tells Neo, “You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up.”
Agent Smith embodies Gnosticism’s disgust toward materiality. While interrogating Morpheus, he says, “I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it. It’s repulsive, isn’t it?” Body odor is a constant, palpable reminder of the filth and corruption of the human body. Agent Smith even feels contaminated by it, which is absurd since Morpheus’ sweat in the Matrix is not real. Furthermore, Agent Smith is a computer program, so it is impossible for him to actually be contaminated by human bodily fluids. Yet, Agent Smith must inhabit a human form, albeit a virtual one, within the Matrix, and he abhors it. More so than any other sense, smell is offensive to Gnosticism. Agent Smith feels the Gnostic longing for freedom from corporeality, as he tells Morpheus, “I must get out of here. I must get free.” He also compares people to viruses, arguing that unlike other mammals, humans fail to develop a natural equilibrium with their environment, but rather exhaust all of the resources in a given area before moving to the next area: “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, and we are the cure.” Agent Smith is, thus, a Gnostic misanthrope.
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Agent Smith’s hatred of Neo overcomes his revulsion toward the human body. In The Matrix Revolutions, he transfers his consciousness from the Matrix to the real world by possessing the man Bane. After trying to kill Neo and Trinity, he reveals himself and reiterates his Gnostic complaints against the human body, particularly its fragility and stench: “Still don’t recognize me? I admit, it is difficult to think, encased in this rotting piece of meat. The stink of it filling every breath, a suffocating cloud you can’t escape.” As the speaker of Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” calls the body a “dying animal,” so Agent Smith calls it a “rotting piece of meat.” He continues, “Look at how pathetically fragile it is. Nothing this weak is meant to survive.” Agent Smith taunts Neo, “Look past the flesh, look through the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes and see your enemy.” When he is blinded by Agent Smith, Neo gains the ability to perceive the true nature of things. He can no longer see physical appearances, but he can look beneath them. When he looks at Agent Smith, he sees a fiery, infernal form, and the machine city as he sees it is made of golden light. In reaching the peak of his power as the One, Neo no longer even perceives the physical world. Neo’s new sight reveals that the human body is no more than a “tattered coat upon a stick,” in Yeats’ words, easily torn away to reveal the spirit.
Gnosticism in Prometheus
Prometheus likewise features Gnostic elements, including characters on a quest for ultimate knowledge and a portrayal of the body as a hindrance to the soul. Two scientists, Drs. Holloway and Shaw, lead a corporate-sponsored expedition to a distant planet, seeking the beings who created humans. They discover a crypt of humanoid creatures which they name Engineers. Shaw tests the genetic material of the severed head of one Engineer, finding that it resembles human DNA. As Gnosticism posits that humanity was not created by God but by a lesser being, the Demiurge, so in Prometheus the Engineers designed people. The film’s premise and title are derived from Greek mythology. Prometheus is one of the titans, the first race of gods, who were eventually overthrown by Zeus and the younger Olympian gods. It was not Zeus, but Prometheus who created humanity.
The expedition discovers a massive structure which turns out to be a star ship buried underground. One of the chambers is full of canisters of black ooze. Shaw, the mission’s lone survivor along with the android David, realizes that the Engineers were planning to destroy earth’s population when they were mysteriously killed. They also encounter a single living Engineer, a paler, more muscular version of a human. Although they had hoped to learn why the Engineers created humans, this Engineer is in no mood to enlighten them. Apparently, the Engineers regretted creating people and planned to wipe them out, much like God’s decision to flood the earth and begin again with Noah’s descendants: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them'” (Genesis 6:5-7).
Prometheus’ opening scene shows an Engineer drinking some of the black liquid. After a few moments, his body begins to rot, dissolving completely as it washes down a waterfall. The film later implies that this is the Engineers’ method of creating life: the poison breaks down and mutates their DNA, and the water disseminates it throughout the planet. The same poison that destroys the Engineer’s body engenders new life forms. The paradoxical nature of the black liquid–life-creating and life-destroying–is confirmed throughout the film. Two members of the expedition get lost and are killed by predatory reptilian creatures bred from the ooze. David takes one of the canisters of the life-spawning poison back to the ship, putting a drop of it in Holloway’s drink because Holloway relentless taunts him about being an android. Holloway rapidly grows ill; even such a small dose of the poison is sufficient to rot him from the inside. Yet, before the poison takes effect, Holloway and Shaw sleep together, and Shaw, who is infertile, conceives. Even as ingesting it kills Holloway, the Engineer’s poison engenders life in the barren Shaw. Shaw’s “child,” however, is not human. It is a squid-like creature, which grows with the terrifying speed of a tumor. Shaw extracts the creature from her body with the help of an automated surgical machine. Despite its severance from Shaw’s body and any source of nutrients, the creature continues to grow. It is soon disgustingly large, like a huge, fleshy squid with long tentacles. While the physiological details do not bear close scrutiny, the fact that Shaw conceives such a monster, which has not will other than to feed and spawn, suggests that human nature is not so far from the utterly bestial. For the Gnostic, the human body is as repulsive as the squid-like monster which Shaw conceives. Prometheus, thus, presents a vivid image of humanity’s capacity to, literally, breed monstrous evil.
Peter Weyland, the trillionaire sponsor of the expedition, is on a Gnostic quest for immortality. Weyland funds the mission because he believes that Holloway and Shaw have found clues that will lead them to the creators of humanity. The aged Weyland, who hopes that the Engineers will show him how to defy mortality, signifies the Gnostic view of the fragility of the body. As Yeats says in “Sailing to Byzantium,” “An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick.” Welyand is so near death that he spends the entire voyage in suspended animation. David awakens him only when he discovers the last living Engineer. Although Weyland meets this Engineer, he is not given immortality. The Engineer kills Weyland and as many of the other humans as he can; only Shaw escapes. Shaw, too, is a bit of a Gnostic. Although she does not loathe her body, at the end of the film she chooses to seek the Engineers’ home world instead of returning to earth. She abandons earthly life to search for the secret knowledge of humanity’s origin.
Sources:
Govindini Murty, “Decoding the Cultural Influences in ‘Prometheus,’ from Lovecraft to Halo.'” The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/decoding-the-cultural-influences-in-prometheus-from-lovecraft-to-halo/258357/#slide1
