What started as an allegory for the path of a trans person realizing they're trans and taking "the red pill" to find the reality of their world and escape "the Matrix" that forces them into a confined box in which they don't actually fit...
...turned into the dumbest bro'd out bullshit from people who think the "red pill" means you're the strongest smartest man who is has figured out society and you're a superman like Neo who can fly and shit.
Honestly, I'm on the side of executives on this one. Most people are too fucking stupid for it.
From what I’ve read, The Matrix wasn’t created as a trans allegory, it’s just that you can apply the fundamentals of its story to many concepts. One of the most popular interpretations happens to be gender identity because its creators transitioned years after the original trilogy ended.
I went back and looked at the articles I had read and dug a little deeper to get to an interview with Lilly Wachowski herself:
Continuing onThe Matrix**, you confirmed a couple years ago that it was a trans allegory —**
No, I didn’t.
You didn’t? Tell me more.
Yeah, so that came from an interview I did for Disclosure. They had a bunch of Matrixquestions. And the question they asked me was about Switch, who was originally written as a trans character who was male in the real world and female in the matrix. And they took that response and attached the question that everyone now references that it’s a trans allegory. And so it was slightly out of context, but I don’t sit here and put a stink up about it, because it is a trans allegory in that it was written by two closeted trans women. And so all of the things that are in it are super-duper trans. The idea of transformation, even the whole “My name is Neo, Mr. Anderson —” that idea of claiming identity, it’s undeniable.
Yeah, it sounds to me like she has issue with just that specific thing being treated as a trans allegory rather than the whole thing, the film, The Matrix, itself, as trans allegory as a whole, and the idea that it was purposeful rather than happenstance.
It sounds more like "we were closeted at the time, and we unconsciously were putting in trans allegories to our own paths and ideas" which still means its trans allegory, even if it was unintentional at the time, because they still hadn't "come out" to even themselves yet.
And so all of the things that are in it are super-duper trans. The idea of transformation, even the whole “My name is Neo, Mr. Anderson —” that idea of claiming identity, it’s undeniable.
In other words, it's undeniably trans allegory, but perhaps that wasn't consciously on their mind at the time they wrote it.
Thanks for the link, I hadn't read that one. Definitely clears it up a little.
Glad to see I’m not the only person on earth who has played it. Such a remarkable, funny and weird game. Still trying to get that damned Seepage song out of my head.
That was one of the (many) things that mad me go “Yes! That’s what it was like! That’s what the internet was really like in 1999!” And those download accelerators, which we then recklessly installed on the family computer and gave it virusses.