1.RACE: Sleep Dealer is obviously influenced by The Matrix (among other films). What connections do you see to The Matrix and like films? What differences do you see? What do these differences say about issues of race, for example Sleep Dealer is a Mexican-American production--What elements or themes in the film mark it as “particularly Latino” or “particularly Mexican”? What does Sleep Dealer have to say about the rural life versus urban life?

Well the obvious connection to the Matrix is the whole living in a virtual world where your energy is being wasted by machines. When they work in the Sleep Dealers, the workers themselves are tired and being used as an energy source, to power the machines which they work out of. it is similer in the Matrix because Neo and all the other humans are in a cocoon powering the machines. They are all in many ways a duracell battery for the machine world which they live in.

The difference how ever is all to obvious as well. The main difference in both movies is of course is choice. Neo never had the option of going into the Matrix and know that he is being used as an abundant energy source. The main character in Sleep Dealers had a choice as to whether to stay on the farm or run away to the big city and work to make the money he felt he owed his family. Another difference is of course the graphics that make the Matrix look more advanced than Sleep Dealers. The only expplaination for this is that Sleep Dealers never really needed those special effects to tell the story.

The race issue I have with the film is that it shows that even in the future it seems tha Latin community is met with a great deal of arragance and distraught as they face today. Unfortunatly the message that I see here is that all a Mexican is good for is to work for the whole family. Other than that this seems like another crazy theory about everything that go's on in this world, especially in Mexico.

it seems to show many differences from rural life versus urban life, one of which is the nodes that they have surgically grafted into the bodies of the workers. In the rural part of town, that's not practiced much because it's more of a farmers land then it is a city land. That city life style is the urban life style that all the young people want. I loved this movie it was such a great film espcially the ending, I didn't see that one coming at all.