Transcription
[Music] My friends invited me over to watch The Matrix Resurrections last month. I didn't know it was debuting on a Wednesday and ended up cancelling too much to do that day. We rescheduled and decided to watch it during Christmas dinner but opted to watch Home Alone instead. It was too late for me to stay any longer and watch another movie.
I watched The Matrix Resurrections alone, I think the next day, and in retrospect, I'm glad that I did because I would have spent the communal experience of seeing it with friends gushing about how beautiful I thought it was, talking over their movie watching experience, and choking back tears when Neo and Trinity reached for each other. If you didn't like it, that's fine. Nobody's lack of enjoyment is strong enough to damage my affection for this film.
I'm sure you can understand why our beloved parent company Warner Brothers has decided to make a sequel to the trilogy. One, The Matrix Resurrections is so sincere, so hopeful, and so kind that it must have come from a genuine place. The sequel happened because the studio wanted it to happen, but the narrative is not solely the product of a studio and its conveyor belt of profitable but middling products. Obviously, The Matrix is about transpolitics, crypto-fascism. It's a metaphor of capitalist exploitation. As the film tells us, the matrix has always been about a multitude of topics: capitalism, free will, identity, and more.
In fact, identity became the most fascinating lens in which to view the original trilogy once both Wachowskis came out as transgender. The confirmation by Lily Wachowski that this interpretation was valid was met with both applause and fascination by the trans community, but skepticism meant disbelief by anyone opposed to having their movie be tainted by the dreaded wokeness, outraged that their favorite martial arts movie was made by trans women and that their identities contributed at least in some way to the films. Denials that rely on the idea that the Wachowskis only retroactively claim that their genders had anything to do with the themes of the trilogy. Even if that were true, The Matrix Resurrections cannot be dismissed so easily, as it was directed and co-written by Lana Wachowski many years after transitioning.
What makes the film so beautiful to me is how brave and uncompromising it is in what it wishes to say. The Matrix Resurrections, directed solely by Lana this time around, is more autobiographical than any other big-budget Hollywood movie in modern times. An allegorical but unambiguous retelling of the experience of transitioning in public, the struggles that come from that scrutiny, unrelated but still devastating personal tragedies during such a vulnerable time, and the power of denying what the world insists that you are and coming out the other end your true self. Put more simply, The Matrix Resurrections, even more than the previous films, is a kind of rumination on living authentically. Although this theme can be embraced by all people, it holds a specific meaning for trans people.
Now, my experiences online and in the totality of my life are obviously quite different from that of Lana Wachowski or anyone who has similarly transitioned in public, but I hope my outsider's perspective will not be completely discounted, as the unshakable beauty of this film is something I desperately want to discuss. I strongly recommend watching the film before continuing this video, but for those who refuse, here is a brief synopsis.
Following the events of the original trilogy, Neo and Trinity are reanimated and inserted into a new version of the matrix. The designer of the new matrix, the Analyst, believes that the bond between Neo and Trinity was the key component to making his version work, but that they still needed to be separated within the artificial world. Neo, with no memory of the events of his real life, is now a computer game programmer, most famous for creating a game series based on the actual events of his forgotten life. Neo struggles with what he perceives as real and not real and is in treatment with the aforementioned Analyst. During his therapy sessions, the Analyst tells Neo that the events that he remembers are not true. A group of humans from the new city of Io find Neo, tell him the truth, unplug him from the matrix, and work together to free Trinity. Once the therapist is revealed to be the designer of the matrix, Neo and Trinity fight him and his minions and triumph through the power of love.
If the first Matrix film had a whisper of meaning to the LGBT community, The Matrix Resurrections is a shout, a far less ambiguous declaration, one that is impossible to ignore. Neo is trapped inside an inauthentic reality. In the first Matrix, the reality is inauthentic, but Neo's life as a hacker is one he chose. In Resurrections, Neo's inauthentic persona is shaped by his authentic self. His life as Neo is made into a fiction within a fiction, a game that he allegedly designed from whole cloth. Neo does not only live in an inauthentic world but has been given an identity that must be torture for himself to have glimpses of his authentic life without being able to form the vocabulary for what it means. In his confusion and fear, he performs this inauthentic identity. There is this added layer of falseness, an added dimension of non-reality, of loss of identity. Neo cannot remember his past, but it exists somewhere in his mind, a feeling that this life is not his, that this body is not his.
According to Nicholas M. Teach, author of Transgender 101: A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue, realization that one is trans can take anywhere from a few moments to several decades. Usually, trans people have an inkling early on in their lives that their assigned gender feels out of whack with their bodies. The self-realization process is extremely complicated. The human mind does its best to help us survive, which can translate into triggering intense denial. Even though trans people have always existed, society is only recently beginning to come to terms with that fact, and there is still a tremendous amount of pushback. Those who are unfamiliar with trans people sometimes dismiss their identities as products of imagination or mental illness. They sometimes treat an individual coming out as trans with hostility or mockery.
The scene that most overtly references coming out as trans centers on Trinity. Trinity has begun to learn who she really is, and she tells Neo a heart-wrenching story. Trinity told her husband that the woman in the Matrix computer games resembles herself, and in response, he laughed at her. It is a heartbreaking scene, especially for anyone who has ever told someone who they really are, hoping for acceptance or at least acknowledgement, and receiving mockery instead. "And I laughed too, like it was a joke. How could it not be, right? Made me so angry. I hated myself for laughing." Not only skepticism, not only outright denial, but actual punishment and emotional abuse for even suggesting what that individual knows to be true. It is such a raw scene and clearly comes from a sincere place.
After her revelation about what her husband did to her, Trinity still refuses to come with Neo. She believes that it's simply too late. "I wish I was who you think I am, but look at me. I can't be her. It's too late." Trans people in their 30s, 40s, or later sometimes internalize their feelings because of a perceived lateness in realizing their identity, a fear that the people in their lives are too accustomed to relating to them by the gender they were assigned at birth, a worry that their body may not be as pliable as it once was, and that transitioning may not bring them the exact desired effect. However, the longest-running study of the topic, a 50-year survey, found that only two percent of trans people ever express regret about gender-affirming surgery. In truth, there is no age limit to transitioning. There is no "too late."
"I hate that name. My name is Trinity, and you better take your hands off of me."
In addition to The Matrix Resurrections functioning as a transition allegory, it's also a rebuttal to a common myth about transitioning. The myth is that those who transition generally regret it. According to a comprehensive study by Cornell University, "We conducted a systematic literature review of all peer-reviewed articles published in English between 1991 and June 2017 that assess the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being. We identified 55 studies that consist of primary research on this topic, of which 51 (93 percent) found that gender transition improves the overall well-being of transgender people, while four (7 percent) report mixed or null findings. We found no studies concluding that gender transition causes overall harm."
Those propagating this myth point to the rare case in which a trans person will choose to detransition. In these extremely rare cases, the reason is almost never that the individual made a mistake or was unhappy with their results. According to Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, the most common reasons given for detransitioning were pressure from parents, pressure from society, difficulty finding a job, pressure from medical institutions that do not practice informed consent, and pressure from religious leaders. Only 2.4 percent of trans people who ever detransition do so because they come to believe they were mistaken about their gender identity.
To put it another way, of the entire world population, less than one percent is transgender. Of that small fraction, only another fraction of that fraction will ever medically transition. Some trans people only socially transition. Of that fraction of a fraction, an even smaller fraction within it will ever permanently detransition. And of that tiniest fraction of a fraction of a fraction, almost nobody detransitions because it was wrong for themselves, but because other people demanded it. In nearly every case, trans people know themselves. The data consistently backs this up.
Neo escaped from the matrix in the first movie. In Resurrections, he is not back in the matrix willingly; he is a prisoner. He has de-transitioned back into his inauthentic life, and he is miserable. This myth spreads because it feeds into a larger myth that trans people are not actually who they say they are and that transitioning will not make them happy. Those who spread this myth sometimes point to trans people having a higher rate of self-harm than average, but that is not because being trans makes them unhappy; it's transphobia that can make them unhappy. There are easily quantifiable benefits of transitioning and benefits of proper care. Cipher wanted to detransition, and look what it got him.
When Neo begins to think of himself differently, he is confronted with more and more opposition, including acts of aggression. A cadre of computer programs designed to keep Thomas Anderson as Thomas Anderson and not Neo. To Neo, this is an act of aggression, but to the Analyst, Neo in and of himself is the aggression. Transphobic people justify their aggression towards trans people, ironically, as self-defense. According to Professor Gail Solomon, author of The Life and Death of Leticia King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia, queer or transgender becomes a target of homophobic and transphobic aggression through first being read as itself constituting an act of aggression. First, the supposed aggression is retroactively installed as temporarily prior, a threat that can be marked only after the body in question has already been the object of violence. Second, the attribution of aggression then gives the violence leveled at vulnerable subjects the cover story of preemption, that violence is self-defense against an aggression that would presumably have taken place sometime in the future. To put it in more simple terms, those who instigate transphobic violence claim that it is self-defense because simply being transgender is aggressive to them, an affront to their sensibilities.
When Neo assumes that there must be some other explanation for his feelings, he speaks to the Analyst. "When we started working together, you had lost your capacity to discern reality from fiction. You came to me after trying to jump off a building." "You wanted to fly away." "Am I crazy?" "We don't use that word in here." "What word should I use? What word explains what is happening to me?" The Analyst tells Neo, in so many words, that this is all in his head, that it is impossible that he is Neo.
Trans people often report that finding a therapist who understands them is strenuous. Even more challenging is finding a psychiatrist who will provide the necessary confirmation or permission for hormone replacement therapy and surgeries. Not all trans people medically transition, but for those who do transition medically, there are obstacles depending on the location, insurance provider, hospital, and medical staff. A trans person seeking to medically transition can sometimes be faced with a gatekeeper, a person or institution that requires a tremendous amount of paperwork and doctor's appointments, essentially a skepticism that prevents some trans people from getting the care that they need. Years ago, I met a trans man who had a hostile psychiatrist who purposefully dragged his feet on giving permission for a surgery. He eventually had to seek his care from someone else, and he ended up wasting a lot of time and money.
Trans people generally favor and seek out doctors and institutions who use the informed consent model, such as Planned Parenthood. An informed consent provider lays out the risks and allows the patient to have autonomy over their own body and what should be done with it. While such providers exist, they don't exist everywhere, and finding proper care can still be a challenge. This is particularly difficult for trans youth who often face greater skepticism and mistrust from society and specifically from their parents. According to Erwin Krieger, author of Helping Your Transgender Teen: A Guide for Parents, transgender teens often feel completely certain of their gender identity and have little or no fear about taking hormones or having surgery. Parents have tremendous fears and concerns. Most often, teens are advocating for immediate, full authenticity, while parents advocate for caution and safety, putting the two parties at odds.
Much like my acquaintance who faced a hostile psychiatrist, Neo faces his own gatekeeper. The Analyst will not give Neo the red pill that allows him to transition to his authentic self; he gives him blue pills that keep him as his inauthentic self. The Matrix Resurrections is wrapped up in the broad idea of being your authentic self and what that means for trans people, but the film also touches upon more highly specific events in the life of someone transitioning in the public eye. Lana Wachowski revealed she was a trans woman in 2008 after many years of speculation in the press. It must have been heartbreaking to watch something you created, something that meant so much to you, appropriated by people who don't believe you should have the same rights and considerations.
Around 2013, the term "red pill" was adopted by the men's rights movement, drafting the characters of The Matrix into a war that they would never fight. They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial. Red pill eventually became the only Matrix reference still frequently used as the series itself faded out of popularity over time. The legacy of the trilogy became iconography stolen to popularize something else entirely. The red pill eventually became synonymous in conservative circles as representative of right-wing ideology in general.
The virtual environment for this allegory allows for a more seamless introduction of characters representative of being trans online. The Analyst's operatives are called bots: imitation people who are individually weak but are dangerous in a swarm. Although real-world social media bots are utilized across the political spectrum, they have found their greatest success and greatest numbers among the right wing, the transphobic corner of the internet in particular has found this useful in muddying the conversation and making their movement appear greater than it is.
So, considering all the heartache and autobiographical references to the struggles of transitioning in public, why is The Matrix Resurrections a beautiful film instead of a miserable film? Popular media about trans people often depicts their lives tragically, and I can only imagine how frustrating that must be. Even sympathetic portrayals often end badly. However, in this film, the avatars of Lana Wachowski's life as a trans woman break free. Although the film spends a long time on the struggles of coming out, transitioning, and being one's authentic self, it also focuses on the triumph of overcoming these struggles.
Remember that scene when Trinity says, "It's too late"? Mere moments later, she changes her mind and decides that the heartache of remaining this way, remaining inauthentic, is worse than anything she might face in her authentic life. Remember those scenes with the Analyst? Neo and Trinity beat the Analyst, and they don't do it by destroying him; he is still there in the end. Neo and Trinity beat the Analyst by defying him, by ignoring his falsehoods. Neo and Trinity also defeat the entire world that told them they were someone else, told them they were wrong. They took a leap of faith and held on. Sure, most movies have a happy ending, but this one feels especially earned, as this particular Matrix story and this particular ending to The Matrix feels like the culmination of everything that it had struggled to say in the past, everything that was always in there, but the world still wasn't ready for in 1999. It's not just a happy ending; it's the happiest ending imaginable.
[Music] [Applause] [Music]