The Matrix is a Trans Allegory now

[clearspira]

[url]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/07/entertainment/matrix-transgender-netflix-wachowski-scl-intl/index.html[/url]

Personally, I am immediately suspicious of any allegory or plot hole revelation that takes 20 years to be revealed and is hot on the heels of the announcement of a new sequel but I'll put my suspicious nature aside and analyse the actual film itself.

1) Why use an allegory at all? Why not have Neo a man in The Matrix and a woman in the Real World? Look, I get it, 1999 wasn't as liberated as today but nor was it 1969. Gender bending films/books/shows existed and did well. Ranma anyone? Mrs Doubtfire anyone? I just do not believe that The Matrix would not have been a success if they went down that route.

2) I don't think the allegory works. Neo is ''freed'' to be who he is. OK, I get that. But in order to reach his full potential as a quasi-superhero, he has to remain within the chains of the Matrix because in the Real World he is just another guy living in a post apocalyptic shit hole (Sequels aside of course). It seems to me that his life was better inside The Matrix than it ever was eating snot for breakfast. And laughably enough, Cypher agreed with this and his central conflict comes from the fact that Morpheus is not a liberator but rather a manipulative bastard.
Again, this is why the gender swapping angle would work better, because that way he can be a superhero in The Matrix and a woman outside of it - two wins if you will.

3) How does this allegory work with the Sequels in mind? Because now Neo becomes nothing more than a manufactured product of an old white man and then goes on to be the literal puppet of the machines once more. Is he still ''freed'' to be who he is? If there ever was to be an allegory to be found here then the Wachowski's blew it by tacking on the lackluster Sequels.

[ProfessorDetective]

A story of liberation, of finding ones true self and embracing it no mater what society has to say about it? Then fighting that system head-on for your right to be your true self?

Yeah, that sounds like The Matrix. It also sounds like an LGBT+, coming-out, drama.

I don't think The Matrix IS an LGBT+, coming-out, drama (at least, not explicitly), but it does fit themeaticly. And given the post-film history of the filmmakers... That's very likely not accidental...

Now, let's see if the new film actually goes all-in with the idea. Or they'll hide it behind three-to-seven layers of metaphorical and/or alligorical obfuscation to make it feel 'deep' (with a billion lore dumps to make it EVEN DEEPER). Looking at you, modern western animation!

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Mrs Doubtfire fuckin rocked.

All movies based in San Francisco seem to do very well though. The Rock being one.

[GreyICE]

1) Why use an allegory at all? Why not have Neo a man in The Matrix and a woman in the Real World? Look, I get it, 1999 wasn't as liberated as today but nor was it 1969. Gender bending films/books/shows existed and did well. Ranma anyone? Mrs Doubtfire anyone? I just do not believe that The Matrix would not have been a success if they went down that route.

Well your belief was shared by the studio, because they vetoed the idea that a minor character (named "Switch") would have a separate gender identity in the real world and the Matrix. So if you think they were going to spend millions of dollars on a leading role that was trans, hah. Studios are extremely reluctant to have a leading man or woman who is gay, in Hollywood, today in 2020 (and I mean gay in real life - nevermind the movie fiction). The closest I can think of is Zachery Quinto, and no surprise he spends most of his time on TV, the same place they sent Emma Watson. Positive transgender representation in a blockbuster 1999 movie? Hah. That was the year Boys Don't Cry came out, often cited as the first positive transgender representation in Hollywood - with its awesome $2 million budget.

In 1999 transgender people or crossdressing (they really did NOT distinguish at all) were the punchline of jokes, prostitutes, predators, or murder victims. Mrs. Doubtfire. Ace Ventura. Any transgender people seen in Hollywood at all, basically. What's the positive representation? None.

3) How does this allegory work with the Sequels in mind? Because now Neo becomes nothing more than a manufactured product of an old white man and then goes on to be the literal puppet of the machines once more. Is he still ''freed'' to be who he is? If there ever was to be an allegory to be found here then the Wachowski's blew it by tacking on the lackluster Sequels.

Oh boy a lot of things break down in the sequels. So the original idea is that the computers were not digital, but cybernetic. See, we had started implanting computers into our minds, and using digital interfaces, and the machine consciousness was an emergent AI that was fundamentally tied to our wetware. That's why they can't kill all the humans - they themselves are part human, and wouldn't function the same or even be the same if they didn't have the mental portion. That's why Neo can change the code, because it's operating on his own brain. So because the local portion of the Matrix is operating inside his own mind, his mind can change it - he can reprogram the Matrix by executing code differently from within it.

The idea originally is a classic tragedy. The machines need humanity to even be themselves, they can't be THEM without us. But at the same time humanity needs the machines, the machines sustain their life, it's what makes society work. Yet as soon as they learn the existence of each other, war becomes inevitable, because both of them control each other's survival, and neither side can trust the other with the survival of their species.

The studio didn't like that, and went with D cell batteries. The sequels kind of rolled with some weird mix of D cell batteries, the original idea, and some techno-Christian bullshit that I'm sure played well to the studios ("Appeal to Christianity!" was always a seller back then, just watch Signs for proof the studio would sign on any idea that says "Christianity is ultimately right and atheists are wrong" no matter how fucking ca-ca it obviously is). As soon as a studio is handing a hundred million dollars to relative unknowns, you better bet executive meddling is in full swing.


Ultimately you're saying that two trans women wrote the Matrix, a movie about a world where you have a constructed identity (made out of your "inner self image" as I believe Morpheus puts it) and a world where you have a physical body, and the interplay between the constructed world and the physical world. And both women say it's a metaphor/inspired by the experience of being trans.

I dunno friend, feels a bit like questioning Jordan Peele when he says "Get Out" is about his experiences with race and racism in America in the weird "post-racial" era after Obama was elected.

[ProfessorDetective]

1) Why use an allegory at all? Why not have Neo a man in The Matrix and a woman in the Real World? Look, I get it, 1999 wasn't as liberated as today but nor was it 1969. Gender bending films/books/shows existed and did well. Ranma anyone? Mrs Doubtfire anyone? I just do not believe that The Matrix would not have been a success if they went down that route.

Well your belief was shared by the studio, because they vetoed the idea that a minor character (named "Switch") would have a separate gender identity in the real world and the Matrix. So if you think they were going to spend millions of dollars on a leading role that was trans, hah. Studios are extremely reluctant to have a leading man or woman who is gay, in Hollywood, today in 2020 (and I mean gay in real life - nevermind the movie fiction). The closest I can think of is Zachery Quinto, and no surprise he spends most of his time on TV, the same place they sent Emma Watson. Positive transgender representation in a blockbuster 1999 movie? Hah. That was the year Boys Don't Cry came out, often cited as the first positive transgender representation in Hollywood - with its awesome $2 million budget.

In 1999 transgender people or crossdressing (they really did NOT distinguish at all) were the punchline of jokes, prostitutes, predators, or murder victims. Mrs. Doubtfire. Ace Ventura. Any transgender people seen in Hollywood at all, basically. What's the positive representation? None.

3) How does this allegory work with the Sequels in mind? Because now Neo becomes nothing more than a manufactured product of an old white man and then goes on to be the literal puppet of the machines once more. Is he still ''freed'' to be who he is? If there ever was to be an allegory to be found here then the Wachowski's blew it by tacking on the lackluster Sequels.

Oh boy a lot of things break down in the sequels. So the original idea is that the computers were not digital, but cybernetic. See, we had started implanting computers into our minds, and using digital interfaces, and the machine consciousness was an emergent AI that was fundamentally tied to our wetware. That's why they can't kill all the humans - they themselves are part human, and wouldn't function the same or even be the same if they didn't have the mental portion. That's why Neo can change the code, because it's operating on his own brain. So because the local portion of the Matrix is operating inside his own mind, his mind can change it - he can reprogram the Matrix by executing code differently from within it.

The idea originally is a classic tragedy. The machines need humanity to even be themselves, they can't be THEM without us. But at the same time humanity needs the machines, the machines sustain their life, it's what makes society work. Yet as soon as they learn the existence of each other, war becomes inevitable, because both of them control each other's survival, and neither side can trust the other with the survival of their species.

The studio didn't like that, and went with D cell batteries. The sequels kind of rolled with some weird mix of D cell batteries, the original idea, and some techno-Christian bullshit that I'm sure played well to the studios ("Appeal to Christianity!" was always a seller back then, just watch Signs for proof the studio would sign on any idea that says "Christianity is ultimately right and atheists are wrong" no matter how fucking ca-ca it obviously is). As soon as a studio is handing a hundred million dollars to relative unknowns, you better bet executive meddling is in full swing.


Ultimately you're saying that two trans women wrote the Matrix, a movie about a world where you have a constructed identity (made out of your "inner self image" as I believe Morpheus puts it) and a world where you have a physical body, and the interplay between the constructed world and the physical world. And both women say it's a metaphor/inspired by the experience of being trans.

I dunno friend, feels a bit like questioning Jordan Peele when he says "Get Out" is about his experiences with race and racism in America in the weird "post-racial" era after Obama was elected.

Well there you go, it WAS supposed to be explicit but the studio buffed it all off. Let's see how far the new one can go...

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

According to Wisecrack, the movie had a philosophical foundation tied to Baudrillard's Simulation Simulacra. That substantiated a degree of blinding social convention to the point where we are subjectively unable to distinguish real circumstance for manipulated social fabric.

The first movie apparently was not good for Baudrillard because the protagonists are directly aware of this obfuscation, which derides crucial tenets or something. Thus they came back with the sequel with further obscurity in the mechanism of force between the machine and humanity.

How much that ties into their identity issues I'm not sure. Maybe they really were just trying to be more faithful to their modern philosophical inspiration, and Joel Silver's like fuckity fuck yeah.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

btw this is pretty old news about the trans allegory. SF Debris mentioned it in his own review.

[Rocketboy1313]

It always was.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

It's a shit movie and the sequels are more shitty.

[Darth Wedgius]

So it's not quite the reveal that Dumbledore was gay.

I dunno, but I think it doesn't matter. Death of the Author seems especially striking to me when it's been the author's intent has been unseen long enough to be declared legally dead.

But it is probably better than using humans as batteries.