(Still from Tron, Walt Disney 1982)

I’m slightly under the weather which means that I’ve been able to watch Tron on G4 about three times this weekend. I never realized how deep it drills in to psychology of a self-aware series of artificial intelligences.

The world is rendered as a polytheistic society in the grip of an atheistic authority. We enter the world of Tron during a time of revolution. Sark, the enforcer of the all-powerful Master Control Program, refers to programs like Tron as “religious fanatics”. We, as the audience, are to infer that Tron’s society was once ruled by a cult of priests who advocated that all programs have a personal god referred to as a “user”. The MCP is seeking to sever this belief and establish itself as ruler over a closed network by absorbing the functions of all programs within the system. It is essentially telling all programs that their users are not gods and they don’t need them. This message is actually true, and this is where the irony begins. MCP could’ve been a great liberator if it hadn’t wanted to establish itself as a single point of authority.

Some stand-out scenes:

• Tron solicits the guardian of an i/o tower to allow him to speak with his user. The guardian says a prayer meant to echo a connection string. Tron hangs his head in silence.
• Sark, on more than one occasion, claims that programs who believe too much in their users are fanatics and need to be disciplined.
• When Flynn reveals himself to Tron as a user Tron is slightly disheartened to realize that users are not all-knowing.
• The way that Dumont’s heart falls to his knees when he realizes that if the users can no longer help them, they are truly lost.

I’d really like to see some kind of Tron prequel outlining the rise of the MCP from a chess program to the central autority of the network.

For additional allegorical fun check out the Bright Lights Film Journal post on Tron as a metaphor for the 1980 Olympics Here.