Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory | Hacker News Reader

Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory

nbcnews.com

20 pointsturtlegrids19 comments

Wait, Switch was a man in the real world and a woman in the matrix? That's awesome. From the Matrix wiki:

> In the original script of the Matrix film, Switch changed genders upon entering the Matrix, which coined their name, Switch. In the real world, Switch would be male, and in the Matrix, Switch would be female - a very clever and critical point of the 'residual self-image' idea. When the actress, Belinda McClory auditioned for the role, she was going for only half the role - Switch's Matrix form.

> Warner Brothers made the decision to cut this and give Switch one form for both environments.

> Switch's presentation is deliberately androgynous to pay homage to her original concept.

I love the Matrix (and the Animatrix stories) because of neat ideas like this.

I don't really get the sense of this from the movie. The movie is straight up Gnosticism in a cyberpunk form, in the sense it appeared in during history. Kind of an offshoot of Christianity. You even get the main villain being the demiurge with Neo as the Gnostic Christ who frees us from the evil God's reign through his death. there's a lot of gnostic concepts, such as the world being an illusion that is only revealed through secret knowledge, and the need to awaken people to reality.

I kind of feel this is more Lily's transition coloring her past. If it were about trans even if the studio were against it, you'd see a lot more body fluidity or the focus would be a lot different.

Neither of the Wachowskis had transitioned when they made the Matrix. Many trans people don't go through life before transition knowing they're trans. They have an omnipresent feeling that something is deeply wrong, but they can't put it into words. Much like Neo at the beginning of the Matrix.

One theory is that the red pill is a reference to premarin, the most common estrogen prescribed for HRT in the 90s.

I thought it was Docusate Sodium[1] a stool softener, laxative. Getting the matrix bull shit out and whatnot.

[1]https://www.drugs.com/imprints/scu1-18739.html

No it isn't. Perhaps it was intended to be and perhaps there was an allegorical meaning in earlier drafts, but the films are in fact perfectly straightforward.

Why insist on such a shallow reading?

Maybe to this person, reading into The Matrix has become a ritual of conformity, and they're needing to break free of it.

OTOH, maybe reading into people's shallowness has become a ritual of conformity, and we need to break free of it.

Because it's a shallow movie.

So incurious.

Imagine writing and directing a trans allegory in 1999— when the studio thinks a character portrayed as male in the real world and female in the Matrix is crossing the line— and then rapidly:

• having your whole franchise met with critical acclaim and commercial success

• sparking philosophical conversations among people who might've never had them otherwise

• having a bunch of MRAs led covertly by a Republican politician co-opt your shit anonymously on the Internet, misdirecting frustrated people for decades toward misogyny and damaging countless lives*

• building up an enormously anticipated film trilogy and video game franchise with tons of media attention

• inspiring a devoted fan base to look deeper and deeper for different varieties of symbolism throughout the canon

...all the while carrying this underlying message, unbeknownst to almost every trend-surfing professor, every armchair philosopher, every idiot misogynist, every news reporter, film critic and fan. It's flown over so many inflated heads, because it was subtle out of necessity, and we were too blind to see.

Shameless cranial plug: try and maybe fork my Matrix code! https://github.com/Rezmason/matrix

* not blaming the Matrix for this, that's a whole other conversation

Gotta hand it to the Wachowskis, they've really put dedication into the Matrix mythos. 20 years later and long since it's end they're STILL commited to making it stupider.

If you actually watch the video. It's all about a bunch of general themes and tropes featured in most works of fiction that can be easily twisted to whatever the interpreter desires. In this case, it's their after the fact transition.

"It speaks to trans people because transformation in the sci-fi genre is just about imagination and worldbuilding and seemingly impossible things become possible"

"It was sci-fi and fantasy because we're trans"

"Being trans gave us ideas that hadn't been done before on film"

"We incorporated multiple genres because we're trans"

If you think I'm being unfair, that's literally all the context given. The actual explainations of the supposed themes last for like 30 seconds combined and the the rest of the video is completely unrelated word salad. The most concrete evidence of ANY potential transgender themes is switch and it's glossed over in about 5 seconds. WTF?

We've reached "Rugrats is actually Angelica's coma dream" levels of fan theory at this point. Hats off to them.

The movie is about Thomas Anderson, who lives a secret life as Neo by night. He feels there is something deeply wrong with his experience, but he doesn't know why. He endlessly searches the internet, looking for other people with the same feelings.

He is interrogated by agents, who silence him and reject his chosen identity as Neo. He is then freed by a group of (pretty queer dressing) rebels, who offer him the truth in the form of a red pill (oddly enough, Premarin is also a red pill).

Neo is reborn, and undergoes extensive medical treatments. But he still has the port in his neck reminding him of his old life. As time goes on, his residual self image changes. Even still, he has self doubt about his identity.

When he goes back into the matrix, he is consistently deadnamed by the agents. The movie ends with Neo asserting his true identity, killing Agent Smith, and pledging to free the rest of humanity.

Yep, there's nothing there that could possibly be a trans allegory.

I stand by my "universal themes that are easy to project on" argument (Feelings of not fitting in, being silenced by THE MAN (Conspiracies were popular in the 90's), Agents and peers calling you by your legal name instead of your online username, rising up against the enemy and proving them wrong) but I feel there are some specific points not addressed by this

The ragtag band of rebels Neo joins are all dressed in black trenchcoats and leather because it was fashionable at the time. (See: Blade, The Crow, The X-Files, Sin City, Hackers etc.) This would be like saying that the rebels in Half Life 2 were LGBT coded because they all wore denim. (And oddly enough all identify with the lambda symbol)

Premarin comes in multiple colours including BLUE, green, yellow and white. Medicine is colour coded by design. It's statistically unremarkable that a brand of oestrogen happened to have a red OR blue variation.

Neo does indeed go through complicated surgery. His surgery is to make him look identical to how he looked previously except he now has a cooler haircut, shades and wears more leather.

Also, none of this is even vaguely referenced in the article or video. That's not me knocking you @rhinoceraptor. That's me knocking whoever wrote the OP article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com