So much for taking the red pill. The Matrix is firmly in far left, blue pill territory. The Wachowski Sisters are now regarding their Matrix trilogy is an allegory about coming to terms with being transgender.
The creators of The Matrix have officially added a new dimension of interpretation to their landmark action trilogy as a “trans allegory.” According to Lilly Wachowski, Neo’s struggle with the human enslaving machines wasn’t just a straight forward action movie about kicking robot ass in the future, it was about the struggles and joys of accepting yourself as a “trans person.”
If finding this out is supposed to be us unplugging from The Matrix, well then Morpheus, please plug us back in.
Lilly Wachowski, one of the two former Wachowski brothers, (they’re trans women now) talked to Netflix Film Club on Tuesday, August 4 and acknowledged a deeper meaning and interpretation behind her Matrix movies. She stated, “I’m glad that people are talking about the movies – The Matrix movies – with a trans narrative. I love how meaningful those films are to trans people.”
See, according to Wachowski and the trans community, it’s all about “transformation.” In the same way Neo comes to accept the hard truth that his life is a simulated reality manipulated by machines meant to siphon his life force, trans people come to accept that hard truth that they were actually a man in a woman’s body all along, or vice versa, while the evil patriarchy would deny them reassignment surgery to keep them slaves to the nuclear family-driven capitalist system.
It’s all so on the nose, right? Perhaps we weren’t ready to see in 1999. We were “still part of the system.”
Anyways, Wachowski explained, “when you talk about transformation, specifically in the world of science fiction, which is just about imagination and worldbuilding and the idea of like the seemingly impossible becoming possible, that’s why it speaks to [trans people].”
“I’m grateful that I can be a part of throwing them a rope on their journey,” Wachowski added. Though it at this point seemed as though Wachowski had been leaving the film open to trans interpretation, she did confirm that it was her “original intention” for the film to be a “trans allegory.” “I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention.”
She claimed that they couldn’t make it more obvious back when the film’s came out because “the world wasn’t quite ready… the corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”
Well now that the culture has been completely inundated with LGBTQ everything and people fetishizing any sort of sexual or gender “transformation” they can have, it’s the perfect time for this reveal. Perhaps it injects some new relevance into a 20 year-old franchise, just as a 4th entry in the saga is being produced. Got to get that new pro-Black Trans Lives Matter audience into those theater seats.
