"What's so bad about living in the Matrix?"

You have a choice. You can take the blue pill, and watch "The Matrix" as a simple sci-fi action flick.

Or you can take the red pill, and let Princeton philosophy professor James Pryor GS '97 and his colleagues show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Viewers of the film face a choice similar to that faced by Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) within the film: to seek a deeper truth (the red pill) or to remain unaware (the blue pill).

Having taken the red pill with enthusiasm, Pryor has authored an essay entitled "What's So Bad About Living in the Matrix?" which will be posted to the "Philosophy Section" of www.thematrix.com, the official Warner Brothers website for the film.

Philosophy professor Christopher Grau of Brooklyn College edits the site's collection of essays.

According to Pryor, important issues in the film include "whether there is reality beyond what you can see, how you know what's going on beyond, and whether you should care."

This assessment is perhaps a reflection of his areas of specialization: the philosophy of the mind and epistemology, the study or theory of knowledge, not just an A.B. distribution requirement.

Indeed, William Irwin of King's College, Pennsylvania, paraphrasing Slavoj Zizek of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, has described the film as "a philosopher's Rorschach inkblot test. Philosophers see their favored philosophy in it: existentialism, Marxism, feminism, Buddhism, nihilism, postmodernism.

Name your philosophical "ism" and you can find it in 'The Matrix.'" Several of these interpretations of the film are represented in the Grau collection and in an unrelated book edited by Irwin: "The Matrix and Philosophy" (Open Court, 2002).

In addition to Pryor's essay, the Grau collection includes "The Matrix of Dreams" by Colin McGinn, "Reality, What Matters, and 'The Matrix'" by Iakovos Vasiliou, "The Matrix—Our Future?" by Kevin Warwick and "Wake Up!—Gnosticism & Buddhism in 'The Matrix'" by Frances Flannery-Dailey and Rachel Wagner.

Irwin's book contains essays such as "The Metaphysics of 'The Matrix,' " by Jorge J.E. Gracia & Jonathan J. Sanford, "The Matrix: Or, the Two Sides of Perversion" by Zizek, and "Computers, Caves and Oracles: Neo and Socrates," by Irwin himself.

The authors' enthusiasm for the film is unmistakable. "All of the essays share the aim of giving the reader a sense of how this remarkable film offers more than the standard Hollywood fare," Grau wrote in his introduction to the website's collection.

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And in his own introduction, Irwin wrote that "the contributing authors of this book aim to bring the reader from pop culture to philosophy."

Pryor's enthusiasm for "The Matrix" is evident in his use of the film as a means of bridging the culture gap Irwin describes. This past fall, Pryor used the film in Philosophy 313: Theory of Knowledge, and has also used it in several of his courses at Harvard, where he taught before returning to Princeton this fall.

Pryor, who has also used "12 Monkeys" and "Memento" in his courses, noted that sometimes films are used in a course just to drum up excitement and fill a lecture hall.

"Most of the opposition to using films comes from people who ask whether they're just sugar coating for the course, or whether there really is something important," he said. On the other hand, sometimes using films in courses can make the course too exciting, Pryor said.

"When I taught the parallel to Philosophy 313 at Harvard, the course had gotten a reputation because I used 'The Matrix,' and so more and more people were coming to it. The problem was that some didn't have the necessary philosophical background."

Even if the popularity of "The Matrix" wanes, Pryor's courses will undoubtedly continue to attract students, for the issues involved are fascinating, challenging, and timeless. And the film's own philosophical implications will surely bear the test of time well.