JK Rowling seems like she’ll take any credit that people want to ascribe to her.
The idea that the Wachowski sisters intended this meaning based on their experience but were overruled by the suits feels more legit based on who they are in the world.
At this point, they are mocking us. It’s incredible what bs you can churn out when everyone is scared to criticize you, lest they be canceled for being “transphobic”.
Authors lie about their work all the time. A work stands on its own. Author statements, especially after the fact, are evidence. But because their reputations and public personas are uniquely tied to the work, they should be treated very skeptically. Especially if they concern a new political issue that more or less didn’t exist at the time the work came out. She is a transwoman best known for creating the Matrix, back when she was a man. She has plenty of reason to lie.
Also, the theory and “evidence” is just patently absurd. Read those tweets for yourself.
I’m not up on what the latest orthodoxy on this is. But plenty of people have transitioned back and forth. And haven’t we also been told that gender is “fluid”?
Her evidence: she wrote and directed the film and is explaining her experience and intentions into the art she created.
Yours: ... people lie sometimes?
Why are you a more authoritative expert on this topic? If you don’t feel you are, can you point to someone who is that agrees with you (producers, actors, etc)?
If you can’t, why does this artist explaining their artistic vision feel like something you need to disparage?
You know what else happens all the time? People getting triggered by trans or gay issues being in any way connected to things they like.
Unless you can show that she has any history of lying about this stuff I am going to assume that she is honest and that this is just a case of you being a snowflake.
> Especially if they concern a new political issue that more or less didn’t exist at the time the work came out.
The fight for trans rights very, very much existed in the 1990s. To suggest that trans rights is somehow a recent phenomena ignores a whole lot of history.
a lot of stuff in the twitter thread is eyerolling english undergrad turning everything into a literal symbol for essay points, sort of thing. but it is kinda true that the plot of movie is a morose depressed practically catatonic hacker guy feels trapped and cut off from authentic experience until a symbolic rebirth frees him to grow into the entity he was always meant to be
> Especially if they concern a new political issue that more or less didn’t exist at the time the work came out.
Wachowski, AFAICT, doesn't tie the movie to trans rights as a political issue (though that had been an issue, though with very little public traction, for quite a while before the movie was made, so if it was going to be addressed in a major motion picture, doing it indirectly and subversively would be natural and necessary). It's incorrect to equate any story about that groups experiences, whether literal or metaphorical, as necessarily being about some political issue involving the group, though it's a common mistake for people outside the group whose only attention to the group is political to make that mistake.
If you think its nonsense have the guts to argue why its nonsense. If its bs like you say it is, it shouldn't be difficult to argue based on the text of the movie that it is so.
I'd start with the fact that it's 21 years later, and that the 'matrix is gender binary and agents are transphobes' makes zero sense to anyone who has seen the movie. Unless trans folk can slow time to dodge bullets, which would make me rethink my own gender I guess.
The agents are a stand in for authority, and cultural normativity. They literally kill anyone who refuses to follow the rules of the matrix. Its very easy to to see this as a stand in for a society that refuses to accept people who are different.
That's still 15 years. Why not say, 2 or 3? This reminds me of a 'Han shot second' type thing. There's a million examples of creators lying after the fact.
And if that was the real message, should not the 'real world' feel more beautiful and free than dystopian and depressing?
I'm not trying to discredit the author as a person, trans people, or the ideals..just the movie.
It was the first thing i could find in google. I mean wikia didnt even exist as a company in 1999.
> And if that was the real message, should not the 'real world' feel more beautiful and free than dystopian and depressing?
On the contrary, i think that supports the message. I don't know what its like to be trans, but i'm pretty sure its not all rainbows and butterfly's. The characters in the matrix decide it is better to live as their authentic free self as opposed to being in the gilded cage of the matrix. I think that is a great metaphor for transitioning.
> There's a million examples of creators lying after the fact.
Fwiw, i do believe that a work should be considered separate from authorial intent, especially post-hoc authortorial intent. In this case, i think the work supports what the creators say, and its much more compelling than say harry potter where there is very little support in the text for the things jk rowling said later.
Oh right. I liked how 'Up' was really about pedo rights the whole time. Married man never has fun or takes his wife anywhere because he's depressed. She dies, he meets a special boy, and they see the world together. Really beautiful story.
The difference is that you're not the creator of Up.
This isn't an arbitrary ex post facto ret-con. This is someone finally feeling comfortable enough with who they were to tell the actual meaning behind their creation.
Jaded, insensitive curmudgeory doesn't make you a better person, you know. If you're lucky enough to know who you are, and to be able to express that identity without fear of harm, oppression or ostracism, then you could at least have the common courtesy to respect someone who—until recently—couldn't do so.
Sure, which is why the word of authors undergoing transition at the time is worthless, and all the other clues. /s
It makes 100% sense to anyone who has seen the original screenplay floating on the internet since forever, which has more detail.
Why do you think there's a character that is a different gender in and out of the Matrix? (Switch.) It's not typical even in cyberpunk genre.
Why put in the doubts about being the one, or the pill rather than some other references?
Why put the woman in the red dress in the movie at all and make that a philosophical point?
Why say that general people (not unplugged) would defend the matrix when it is only agents attacking?
Why did the authors self-insert in the movie in a subtle rather than overt way? (Scene with cleaning windows.)
A full blown blockbuster directly about transitioning would be a literal box office flop back then, and even now. Imagine that.
At the time I watched the thing I believed the story to be about coming out. Believed many of the references to be gay culture. That was back in about 2000. It is actually completely clear now even with author's stamp on it.
The idea of a gender switch between online and real life has been a meme since at least the early 90s. 18/F/Cali anyone?
I don't understand the pill reference, other than that they behave diffently as medicines.
The woman in a red dress is...a woman in a red dress. Please elaborate.
I'm willing to be proven wrong here, I didn't even particularly like the movie, I just feel like the connections are rather vague.
It reminds me of a time in elementary school I won some award for a drawing I did because of my use of limited colors to express something. Truth is I was just lazy and liked red and black, but people see what they want. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
To express my own take, it was more about government, society, and the inevitable end we would come to some day as resources constrain. To say that's wrong and it's about the individual (neo) feels wrong, to me.
Edit to add -
One of the great things about works is people being able to take their own meaning away from things. Whether it's my view of societal collapse, a gay man's view of a person coming out, or a trans person's view of being trans, I like to think nobody is wrong. When an author then boxes it in after the fact with such vague references feels like an affront to the work.
> I don't understand the pill reference, other than that they behave diffently as medicines.
Trans people often take hormone therapy in order to become their true self, just as the characters in the matrix take a pill to "wake up".
Edit: because i can't directly reply anymore, replying here to your response on pills. I agree that by itself, it means nothing. Pills can mean lots of things to lots of people. Its not one individual thing that makes the movie an allegory about trans people. Its the pattern and combination of elements that make it an allegory. Any one of the various minor plot elements or aspects of the theme that relate to the trans "experience", on its own, mean nothing. Its that there are so many such elements that all fit together.
Idk what the trans connection is to the woman in the red dress. I always just took it as a nod to how in movies the dangerous female characters always wear red dresses (think #6 in bsg, but many other examples)
> To express my own take, it was more about government, society, and the inevitable end we would come to some day as resources constrain.
But in the movie resourses weren't constrained due to overpopulation, but due to war. And even then, people may not have lived in luxery in zion, but we had no indication that people were doing without.
The only character who talked about over-population and resource constraints was Agent Smith, and he was the villian
> I like to think nobody is wrong
While good art can support multiple interpretations, i definitely think that interpretations can be more or less wrong. E.g. Anyone saying the matrix is actually about the benefits of double-entry bookkeeping, is straight up wrong.
Edit: lol, i just realized that the sequels were all about how the equations were "unbalanced" and neo is the result of things not adding up. Maybe it is about double entry book-keeeping after all.
But tons of people take pills. I take aspirin when I have a headache, and a mild anti anxiety pill at times etc. Some people take pills for blood pressure, some for anti psychotics. Equating pills to hormones is doing a disservice to the 99.9 percent of people who take pills for other reasons. When I think red pills I think Sudafed, blue NyQuil. Maybe Neo had rhinitis after all :).
I'm not mad at all IF this was truly a trans movie, like some. I just don't buy it, and attribute it to the likes of JK Rowling. A combo of some mild mental illness and/or grasping for fame or brownie points.
> I'd start with the fact that it's 21 years later, and that the 'matrix is gender binary and agents are transphobes' makes zero sense to anyone who has seen the movie.
Makes sense to me, and I saw the movie. In fact, it validates that a lot of casual connections I saw in the film when it first came out (and throughout the trilogy) were intentional, and I'm a cisgender heterosexual Catholic that's not super prone to seeing LGBT themes everywhere.
Of course, I also got the “humans are processors, not energy sources” thing before reading that it was the Wachowskis intent, and the dialog about “batteries” was added at the studios insistence after test audiences found the concept confusing (but it's also clear that they didn't do anything much with the power sources thing but dialog from an unreliable narrator, and people-as-processors is more consistent with the presentation of pretty much everything in the film, and the whole trilogy.)
> Unless trans folk can slow time to dodge bullets, which would make me rethink my own gender I guess.
Metaphor. It's a thing distinct from simple literal presentation.
I will say, the Netflix idea dump is a bit self contradictory, and draws some pretty silly conclusions in places. The bullet time part in particular reads like nonsense.
On one side they talk about eggs, people who don't know yet. Then the next post is about the camera zooming between the M and F. Well which is it, did they not know, or was it intentional? Either the red pill was intentionally modeled after an estrogen pill or it wasn't. If it was, again the egg theory is out the window. Personally, I think the movie is much better from the egg point of view. Someone not understanding their identity and searching for answers. The rest doesn't need to be spelled out as having one specific meaning. The Lilly interview video embedded in the article is much better than any of the headlines journalists took out of it as clickbait. But it's editing is questionable, and parts nearly contradict each other, I suspect because their contexts were cut. ("It was always intended as a trans allegory" vs "I don't know present my transness was in the background of my brain while we were writing it" and "we were existing in this place where the words didn't exist" the latter two implying a more eggness.)
The idea of questioning your identity, purpose, and capability are broader than just specific communities. The Matrix works because it broadly touches upon themes without being overt, so many people can relate to it. I think saying "it specifically means this and only this metaphor" not only does it a bit of disservice, but is revisionist in a pigeonholing way. Lilly didn't say what these articles are interpreting her words as.
Not knowing your place in society and your community is universal, and when they were making the movie I think it's pretty clear they wanted to achieve that universalness. They took bits and pieces from thousands of sources and sricked something together that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Looking at the movie through different lenses is great, and I enjoy having more ways to interpret the movie, but don't get too stuck wearing just one pair.
I don't know how you can say that fans haven't discussed this movie through a trans lens.
Like, a very cursory googling of articles over the past two decades indicates that yes, in fact, many fans have discussed the film through the trans lens.
Fascinating article. Both the creator and the audience can have their own interpretations of the same story. I think Lilly’s is pretty easily defensible and makes a lot of sense.
“Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building they live in—otherwise there is something terribly wrong.” — Søren Kierkegaard
It seems to me that the Wachowskis are brave and coherent enough to just embrace this additional value in the original movie. Not surprised at all, once I read about it—it connects really well with the rest of the allegories in the movie.
There should be a law, sequels should come within 2-3 years. Cartoons were way better, so many episodes. Cartoon to movies taking too much time. Now Matrix it's long time for a sequel.
I know I'm late to this discussion and nobody will see this, but, the Matrix is very clearly an exploration of the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard...
Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by the sociologist Jean Baudrillard, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of culture and media involved in constructing an understanding of shared existence.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original.[1] Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time
46 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadThe idea that the Wachowski sisters intended this meaning based on their experience but were overruled by the suits feels more legit based on who they are in the world.
At this point, they are mocking us. It’s incredible what bs you can churn out when everyone is scared to criticize you, lest they be canceled for being “transphobic”.
Also, the theory and “evidence” is just patently absurd. Read those tweets for yourself.
Yours: ... people lie sometimes?
Why are you a more authoritative expert on this topic? If you don’t feel you are, can you point to someone who is that agrees with you (producers, actors, etc)?
If you can’t, why does this artist explaining their artistic vision feel like something you need to disparage?
Unless you can show that she has any history of lying about this stuff I am going to assume that she is honest and that this is just a case of you being a snowflake.
The fight for trans rights very, very much existed in the 1990s. To suggest that trans rights is somehow a recent phenomena ignores a whole lot of history.
Wachowski, AFAICT, doesn't tie the movie to trans rights as a political issue (though that had been an issue, though with very little public traction, for quite a while before the movie was made, so if it was going to be addressed in a major motion picture, doing it indirectly and subversively would be natural and necessary). It's incorrect to equate any story about that groups experiences, whether literal or metaphorical, as necessarily being about some political issue involving the group, though it's a common mistake for people outside the group whose only attention to the group is political to make that mistake.
The agents are a stand in for authority, and cultural normativity. They literally kill anyone who refuses to follow the rules of the matrix. Its very easy to to see this as a stand in for a society that refuses to accept people who are different.
And if that was the real message, should not the 'real world' feel more beautiful and free than dystopian and depressing?
I'm not trying to discredit the author as a person, trans people, or the ideals..just the movie.
> And if that was the real message, should not the 'real world' feel more beautiful and free than dystopian and depressing?
On the contrary, i think that supports the message. I don't know what its like to be trans, but i'm pretty sure its not all rainbows and butterfly's. The characters in the matrix decide it is better to live as their authentic free self as opposed to being in the gilded cage of the matrix. I think that is a great metaphor for transitioning.
> There's a million examples of creators lying after the fact.
Fwiw, i do believe that a work should be considered separate from authorial intent, especially post-hoc authortorial intent. In this case, i think the work supports what the creators say, and its much more compelling than say harry potter where there is very little support in the text for the things jk rowling said later.
This isn't an arbitrary ex post facto ret-con. This is someone finally feeling comfortable enough with who they were to tell the actual meaning behind their creation.
Jaded, insensitive curmudgeory doesn't make you a better person, you know. If you're lucky enough to know who you are, and to be able to express that identity without fear of harm, oppression or ostracism, then you could at least have the common courtesy to respect someone who—until recently—couldn't do so.
It makes 100% sense to anyone who has seen the original screenplay floating on the internet since forever, which has more detail.
Why do you think there's a character that is a different gender in and out of the Matrix? (Switch.) It's not typical even in cyberpunk genre.
Why put in the doubts about being the one, or the pill rather than some other references?
Why put the woman in the red dress in the movie at all and make that a philosophical point?
Why say that general people (not unplugged) would defend the matrix when it is only agents attacking?
Why did the authors self-insert in the movie in a subtle rather than overt way? (Scene with cleaning windows.)
A full blown blockbuster directly about transitioning would be a literal box office flop back then, and even now. Imagine that.
At the time I watched the thing I believed the story to be about coming out. Believed many of the references to be gay culture. That was back in about 2000. It is actually completely clear now even with author's stamp on it.
I don't understand the pill reference, other than that they behave diffently as medicines.
The woman in a red dress is...a woman in a red dress. Please elaborate.
I'm willing to be proven wrong here, I didn't even particularly like the movie, I just feel like the connections are rather vague.
It reminds me of a time in elementary school I won some award for a drawing I did because of my use of limited colors to express something. Truth is I was just lazy and liked red and black, but people see what they want. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
To express my own take, it was more about government, society, and the inevitable end we would come to some day as resources constrain. To say that's wrong and it's about the individual (neo) feels wrong, to me.
Edit to add -
One of the great things about works is people being able to take their own meaning away from things. Whether it's my view of societal collapse, a gay man's view of a person coming out, or a trans person's view of being trans, I like to think nobody is wrong. When an author then boxes it in after the fact with such vague references feels like an affront to the work.
Trans people often take hormone therapy in order to become their true self, just as the characters in the matrix take a pill to "wake up".
Edit: because i can't directly reply anymore, replying here to your response on pills. I agree that by itself, it means nothing. Pills can mean lots of things to lots of people. Its not one individual thing that makes the movie an allegory about trans people. Its the pattern and combination of elements that make it an allegory. Any one of the various minor plot elements or aspects of the theme that relate to the trans "experience", on its own, mean nothing. Its that there are so many such elements that all fit together.
Idk what the trans connection is to the woman in the red dress. I always just took it as a nod to how in movies the dangerous female characters always wear red dresses (think #6 in bsg, but many other examples)
> To express my own take, it was more about government, society, and the inevitable end we would come to some day as resources constrain.
But in the movie resourses weren't constrained due to overpopulation, but due to war. And even then, people may not have lived in luxery in zion, but we had no indication that people were doing without.
The only character who talked about over-population and resource constraints was Agent Smith, and he was the villian
> I like to think nobody is wrong
While good art can support multiple interpretations, i definitely think that interpretations can be more or less wrong. E.g. Anyone saying the matrix is actually about the benefits of double-entry bookkeeping, is straight up wrong.
Edit: lol, i just realized that the sequels were all about how the equations were "unbalanced" and neo is the result of things not adding up. Maybe it is about double entry book-keeeping after all.
I'm not mad at all IF this was truly a trans movie, like some. I just don't buy it, and attribute it to the likes of JK Rowling. A combo of some mild mental illness and/or grasping for fame or brownie points.
Makes sense to me, and I saw the movie. In fact, it validates that a lot of casual connections I saw in the film when it first came out (and throughout the trilogy) were intentional, and I'm a cisgender heterosexual Catholic that's not super prone to seeing LGBT themes everywhere.
Of course, I also got the “humans are processors, not energy sources” thing before reading that it was the Wachowskis intent, and the dialog about “batteries” was added at the studios insistence after test audiences found the concept confusing (but it's also clear that they didn't do anything much with the power sources thing but dialog from an unreliable narrator, and people-as-processors is more consistent with the presentation of pretty much everything in the film, and the whole trilogy.)
> Unless trans folk can slow time to dodge bullets, which would make me rethink my own gender I guess.
Metaphor. It's a thing distinct from simple literal presentation.
On one side they talk about eggs, people who don't know yet. Then the next post is about the camera zooming between the M and F. Well which is it, did they not know, or was it intentional? Either the red pill was intentionally modeled after an estrogen pill or it wasn't. If it was, again the egg theory is out the window. Personally, I think the movie is much better from the egg point of view. Someone not understanding their identity and searching for answers. The rest doesn't need to be spelled out as having one specific meaning. The Lilly interview video embedded in the article is much better than any of the headlines journalists took out of it as clickbait. But it's editing is questionable, and parts nearly contradict each other, I suspect because their contexts were cut. ("It was always intended as a trans allegory" vs "I don't know present my transness was in the background of my brain while we were writing it" and "we were existing in this place where the words didn't exist" the latter two implying a more eggness.)
The idea of questioning your identity, purpose, and capability are broader than just specific communities. The Matrix works because it broadly touches upon themes without being overt, so many people can relate to it. I think saying "it specifically means this and only this metaphor" not only does it a bit of disservice, but is revisionist in a pigeonholing way. Lilly didn't say what these articles are interpreting her words as.
Not knowing your place in society and your community is universal, and when they were making the movie I think it's pretty clear they wanted to achieve that universalness. They took bits and pieces from thousands of sources and sricked something together that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Looking at the movie through different lenses is great, and I enjoy having more ways to interpret the movie, but don't get too stuck wearing just one pair.
"inconsistent or silly" for silly
"I don't know how present" for I don't know present
"stitched" for sricked althought sricked is a cool word
It certainly comes across that way. It’s impossible to credit that whoever is writing these tweets believes this stuff.
For example:
“For years, fans of THE MATRIX have discussed the film through a trans lens.”
No, they haven’t.
Like, a very cursory googling of articles over the past two decades indicates that yes, in fact, many fans have discussed the film through the trans lens.
https://twitter.com/search?q=until%3A2015-01-01%20%22the%20m...
yes they have
So yeah, people have noted this for at least eight years, probably on other forums even longer.
It seems to me that the Wachowskis are brave and coherent enough to just embrace this additional value in the original movie. Not surprised at all, once I read about it—it connects really well with the rest of the allegories in the movie.
Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by the sociologist Jean Baudrillard, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of culture and media involved in constructing an understanding of shared existence.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original.[1] Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
Neo even handles a copy in the first film: https://unfoldlearning.net/2016/09/11/beyond-modern-educatio...
Is this then a metaphor for being trans? That's awfully circuitous.