A Congenial Response to “The Matrix: Really that Good” by Bob Chipman (aka MovieBob)
I must admit that being a fairly nonvisual person, I’ve never really engaged with videocasts or the YouTube community, but MovieBob is truly a master of the format. In a strange contradiction to what I just said about not being very visual, I’d love to make movies — but for me, movies are about combining audiovisual content to tell a story, and the story is what matters to me. So I will admit that Bob Chipman’s excellent analysis video, “The Matrix: Really That Good?” is one of the first video podcasts I’ve watched all the way through, and I was sincerely impressed. Here it is, you should watch it.
Chipman makes a huge amount of valid points, and he consulted with me and linked to my writing and Twitter (@BootlegGirl) and I really appreciate that. He also credited many other people, many of whom I presume based on how he introduced them are also queer critics. I want to write about Chipman’s video because I admire that he sought out queer voices and he hit on many, many of the reasons why a film that I firmly believe is a trans narrative on an objective level (Chipman and I disagree slightly on this point, but not really in a major way) has in many ways become an icon for juvenile anarchism (not to bash legit anarchism to be clear) and even fascism. Largely, while I’ll take issue with a couple of points Chipman makes, I agree with his analysis and I want to expand on it.
First, I need to tell the story of how I first realized that the film was a trans narrative. It was 2013, I had been out as a transgender woman for perhaps three months, which meant that while my legal name was still “Luke Lockhart” (my dox are out there, and Luke Lockhart was a pretty cool name) people called me Ellie or Eleanor or “Professor Lockhart” even though at the time my title was technically “Graduate Assistant Lecturer Lockhart” which is really kind of an improvement over my new legit professor title because it’s not, you know, a Harry Potter character who steals people’s memories. Anyway, I ended up needing to call my bank for some reason, and of course they through no fault of their own had no knowledge of my transition — I hadn’t filed name change paperwork, or gender marker change paperwork which was nearly impossible in Texas, where I lived at the time, anyway. But, it was a jolt — and I’m sure some alt-right troll reading this will be like ZOMG HE WAS TRIGGERED BY HEARING HIS REAL NAME — no, I wasn’t triggered, I was discomforted and then thoughtful — when I was addressed, seemingly respectfully, as “Mr. Lockhart.” Something felt familiar about it, and as MovieBob points out in his video, the familiar part was precisely the way in which the Agents in The Matrix, specifically Agent Smith, repeatedly use the name “Thomas A. Anderson” and “Mr. Anderson” to refer to Neo, who has repeatedly requested to be referred to as Neo. Neo is his true identity.
Now of course, Neo’s still a dude. But, again as Chipman points out, this is a movie directed by two deeply closeted at the time transgender women, and it has numerous parallels to what it’s like to transition in a hostile society. At this point, I need to attach a trigger warning for discussion of suicide for the following couple of paragraphs, and then I’ll mark when that segment ends.
BEGIN TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE DISCUSSION
When filmmaker Lana Wachowski was a teen, she nearly attempted suicide on a Chicago L-train platform, but changed her mind at the last minute. In a 2012 speech she recounted how she had spent her time prior to what she expected to be her final moments at a Burger King, writing a suicide note, in which she explained her deeply held feelings that her death was inevitable because she was never, ever going to be accepted by society, and she might as well just give in.
Remind you of anything?
I’m aware of MovieBob’s perhaps correct assertion that it may be somewhat tasteless to speculate on the personal lives of people who’ve faced vicious outing and harassment and essentially had their rising-star Hollywood careers devastated by simply being who they are — and yet every Wachowski film contains clear traces of a transgender narrative, and Ms. Wachowski’s choice to share the subway story is I think a clear signal that she intends The Matrix to be read as a story about transition, and specifically about resisting the suicidal ideation that comes with a lifetime of being denied your true identity. (It’s worth noting that while the Wachowski Sisters themselves have agreed that the sequels… could have been better… the revelation that Smith is literally part of Neo in The Matrix Revolutions strongly supports the idea that he is literally suicidal ideation in digital form. It’s unfortunate, then, that they chose to end the series with Neo giving in to that ideation, allegedly to save the world, an ending they later repudiated in the video game The Matrix: Path of Neo where they literally break the fourth wall and said “yeah we had no idea how to end the series so how about we change it so you just beat up Smith as a giant robot in the real world?”)
END SUICIDE TRIGGER
There’s a LOT of transgender content in the entire Matrix saga. I agree with Chipman that you can easily read it as a (white-appopriated) Buddhist parable or a Christian narrative or just a story about wearing cool BDSM gear and shooting cops. Which leads me to one of Bob’s most salient points: the way the violence of the film is handled. The famous “lobby scene” is essentially an amped up version of the terrorist takeover of Nakatomi Tower in the first Die Hard, and it’s clear that absolutely no sympathy is being shown for the denizens of the Matrix who have no idea that they are secretly serving a hegemonic identity so devastating and evil that it literally liquifies them for food. The Matrix makes violence look cool, and that IS a problem, and one that has had serious political implications, in particular because of its evolution from the early Internet culture that later became the chans, and then GamerGate, and then possibly helped elect a Russian agent and reality star as President of the United States. I wasn’t really very active in 1999 on many things other than Star Wars roleplaying forums, but it’s my understanding that transgender organizing, along with drug dealing, was one of the earliest uses of the Internet, and it’s easy to understand why. You can create your own identity and on the Internet, no one knows you’re not a dog.
Here’s the thing: I do not know and will not attempt to find out details unless they choose to disclose about how “out” Lilly and Lana were to anyone at the time they made the original film. What I will say is that the narrative that Bob critiques in his video is actually not, as Bob suggests, a predominately white cis male narrative of being better than everyone. There’s an unfortunate truism in the trans community that you have two choices for careers: information tech, or sex work. Technology is power to trans women, for exactly the same reason movements like GamerGate and the incredibly ironically named Red Pill Movement have turned it against us: because no one polices social behavior online. People form insular groups because they have to, for self protection. It’s why in The Matrix, the Zionite rebels use individual cells for maximum security. It’s also why in the sequels we learn their society is every bit as restrictive and oppressive as the Matrix itself. (See: queer community and callout culture.) I have a very strong suspicion that the phrase “die cis scum,” an ironic phrase used by some trans people specifically because we know we can’t kill cis people, but they can kill us, is the root of the power fantasy at the heart of The Matrix. “What if being a minority gave you superpowers” goes back a long way to the X-Men and the old, non-fascist Captain America but The Matrix is Magneto’s story, not Xavier’s. It’s a story about immense abuse, personal pain, all of it filtered through a science fiction lens, and yes, it’s a revenge fantasy. Unlike many revenge fantasies, like the entire work of Quentin Tarantino, it’s a revenge fantasy made by the people with the reason to have the fantasy, as opposed to a desire to assuage guilt (and IMO, the fact that Tarantino knows his films are motivated by white guilt is something I want to write an entire other essay about).
I’m continually baffled by the appropriation of Wachowski imagery — their version of the V for Vendetta story, come on, Nazis didn’t REALLY read the Moore comic or they’d be less enthusiastic about the whole thing — and the abhorrent antifeminist Red Pill movement which literally says “the Matrix is feminism and men need to take the red pill to wake up.” (Incidentally, the hormone pills I take are both red and blue — the red suppresses testosterone, the blue gets estrogen in my body.) But the point is that yes, the film has had some harmful impacts on people, and arguably may have played a role in the Columbine shootings. That’s tragic. The Wachowskis know this, and while they still aren’t great at race representation, their handling of violence has improved vastly, to the point that the season 1 finale of their amazing (but SUPER TRIGGERY FOR SUICIDE) show Sense8 is almost to a T a redo of the Matrix rescue of Morpheus, but with no clear on screen deaths, combined with a ridiculously violent scene in which a character we’re clearly meant to hold in contempt puts on a trenchcoat and hundreds of guns and murders a ton of people for basically no reason, leading his friends to tell him to fuck off.
The Matrix has always been my favorite movie but I didn’t know why until I was 25 and I realized who I really was. Lana and Lilly’s stories resonate with me. I won’t dig into their private life, but I will suggest that Sense8 is also heavily autobiographical and can shed some light on how things went down with their film careers. I’m very grateful for MovieBob’s video, because this narrative needs to be taken back from Nazis and antifeminists who completely miss everything that was being said (if nothing else, it’s certainly an antifascist film). My only quibble would be to say that it doesn’t really reflect white male rage — that’s a product of having to cast a man in the lead role and make the trans themes metaphorical. Neo is, for all intents and purposes, an avatar of the Wachowskis’ suffering in the closet — a suffering that they seem to have made great strides in overcoming.
One last note: I’ve hit some serious financial difficulties in the past week involving a robbery, and unlike MovieBob I don’t get ad revenue for articles. I have a GoFundMe for a novel I’m writing which I actually hope addresses some of the themes of the Matrix in a more contemporary fashion, and I also have a PayPal account. If you enjoyed this essay, I would love to eat this week, and donations are certainly not expected, but quite welcome.
Sorry for the e-begging, but I hope the essay was worth it. Love to all, and… if Lana or Lilly ever read this, I hope I have not misrepresented or overstepped my bounds in any way by interpreting your (for me) life changing work.
Sincerely,
Dr. Eleanor Amaranth Lockhart (or, if you prefer, MISTER LOCKHART)
