If “Reality is a thing of the Past”, is this the Future of Sex?

If you live under a rock and don’t know what The Matrix is, here is a brief synopsis: Computer-hacker Thomas Anderson (Neo) discovers that life on Earth is nothing more than an elaborate façade created by cyber-intelligence for the purpose of placating us while our life essence is “farmed” to fuel the Matrix’s campaign of domination in the “real world”. Neo (Keanu Reeves) joins rebel warriors Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss) in a struggle to overthrow the Matrix.

Since there is really only one main male character, and one main female character, they simply must fall in love; it's mainstream movie algebra. Neo and Trinity finally have sex (in Matrix Revolutions) in their cave-like bedroom that is lit with enough candles to fill a shrine (watch the scene below). Slow-motion, extra-zoomed-in clips of kissing takes the focus off the fact that their bodies are covered with little metal holes (giving way to more sexual possibilities?) and of course the sex is so hot that she has to do the sex scene trademark of clawing her fingernails into him.

In the midst of the two cyberfreaks getting it on, scenes of a rave orgy cut in and out, where sweaty half-naked couples dance and grind with each other in celebration, and six foot tall black men jump (what seems to be) 20 feet in the air as part of some sort of strange dance move (if someone tried that in a club today, they would either get beaten up, made fun of, or thrown out). The sweaty skin clips of the famous couple are mixed in with the skin-filled clips of random party-goers' random body parts (toned and sexy, of course—because everyone in the Matrix has all the time in the world to tone and sculpt their beautiful bodies – just like all the people in 300 *eyeroll*).

The pulsing music with a strong backbeat gives the feeling of a racing, throbbing heartbeat that’s in tune with each lustful thrust (like Neo cares that he is missing the party – he’s getting lucky, damn it). Then suddenly, they stop, the music slows, they look longingly into each others eyes, and … we get the image of Trinity falling to her death (well, certain sexual occurrences are called “little deaths”, aren’t they? Well played, Wachowski brothers).

So, what’s the deal with all the sexiness in a movie whose premise is that we can transcend our bodies using computers? After all, most of us went to see it for another taste of a virtual world where Neo flies, Trinity leaps across buildings in a single bound, and Morpheus battles albino bodygaurds who can dematerialize at will.

Does this scene show a juxtaposition of the hedonism of Zion with the truly pure love of a hero, or does the scene come off as compleltey irrelevant, rediculous, and un-sexy, and manage to undermine the hero and cheapen the film’s entire purpose?

Is the sex in this movie a radical statement of multiracial, multipartner, out-of-wedlock sex that for once doesn’t spell doom for its participants, or does it seem like it is simply placed in the film for Matix nerds to gawk at a glimpse of skin in order to fulfil the media’s need to sell sex?