"One of these lives has a future, and the other... does not."

February 21, 2015 11:25 AM

Smith confronts Neo like this - his intent is hostile, and yet it's also friendly in the same way. He acknowledges how he himself has been changed by Neo's defeat of him in the previous film - "I'm a new man," he says. The way the two rivals look at one another and shrug is not unlike two trans people who knew one another before transition meeting one another, either; it's clear that Smith has been "queered" in some way, as the other agents act creeped out by him in an explicitly homophobic way.

Looking at The Matrix series through a trans lens.
posted by MartinWisse (45 comments total)

Wow, I guess it's a testament to what was good about those movies that even years later you can encounter an analysis about an aspect of them that really, really makes you think. Thanks for posting this.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:38 AM on February 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

Yes, this was excellent. I really appreciate the fact that she addresses the issue of the movies failures as movies right up front so that it doesn't derail the larger point she's trying to make with her analysis.
posted by KingEdRa at 12:00 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

What a fantastic analysis! Time to re-watch the original.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:05 PM on February 21, 2015

That was surprisingly compelling and made far more sense than I expected.
posted by localroger at 12:16 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

What a wonderful take. Great link.
posted by clavdivs at 12:19 PM on February 21, 2015

I think this supports my "Mom Racer as Author Surrogate" hypothesis.
posted by mikelieman at 12:26 PM on February 21, 2015

I'm sure some people will say the author is reaching here, but I can't imagine a fact so central to Lana Wachowski's life wouldn't be central to the films. It's a great article. That said, through no fault of the author, I did zone out a little bit when she started talking about the sequels (much as I did watching the only one I was able to put myself through).
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:27 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

They give audiences gritty "real-world" robot-battling action rather than skyscraper-hopping kung fu like they were led to expect.

Can't we have both?
posted by mikelieman at 12:30 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to read trans themes into the Matrix. Another article I read about this subject a while back pointed out that the word "trans" appears on screen right at the beginning of the film, not that that really means much, but it made me go "huh."
posted by malapropist at 12:30 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

So weird. I was watching the first movie last night for the first time in a decade. It really is kind of a perfect movie, assimilating a dozen different influences into an entertaining pulp comic book whole. This interpretation makes it even more fascinating. Thanks.
posted by fungible at 12:33 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm sure some people will say the author is reaching here,

On the other hand, a lot of criticism is reaching, almost by definition. Everyone brings their own life to a text and finds different things. What makes a piece of critical analysis "real" is not authorial intent but whether the critical analyst can build a structure that supports their reading and honestly address counter evidence. Obviously, this process, when badly done, can generate loads of nonsense, but , when done well, it can open up a whole new way of looking at a text (and the world), like everything has suddenly been turned right side up*. I think bootleggirl makes a solid case for her reading, so while there's "reaching," it's not in a pejorative way, since she backs up her points multiple times..

* I think this is why some people go down the rabbit hole of really extreme departure from the mainstream critical reading of a text -- the feeling of finding a hidden substrate is a rush.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:46 PM on February 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

The Matrix never really interested me but I thought this piece was quite powerful and fascinating, thanks for posting.
posted by threeants at 1:07 PM on February 21, 2015

This is fascinating. I've been meaning to rewatch the second two movies for years now, and this might have finally given me a reason.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:18 PM on February 21, 2015

The article also prompted me to go watch this speech from Lana Wachowski (you can skip the boilerplate introduction from the spokesperson guy) which, wow, is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and humane personal talks I've ever seen. I'm attention-challenged, so sitting down and watcingh a 30-minute speech on Youtube isn't really within my general wheelhouse, but this had me riveted.
posted by threeants at 1:34 PM on February 21, 2015 [7 favorites]

This is even starker in a brief but unsettling bit in "The Second Renaissance," (probably should add: animated depiction of assault/murder with stomach-churning real world parallels, given context) the Wachowski short for The Animatrix.

Which is 100x better than the movies proper.
posted by byanyothername at 1:40 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is great, and so is the whole Bootleg Girl blog. Thanks for posting it!

The Matrix was my very favourite film when I was sixteen. I guess I'm due a rewatch.
posted by daisyk at 1:49 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised that nobody's brought up the character of Switch, who was originally written as a transsexual -- female inside the Matrix, but male-bodied in the real world. At earlier stages of the film's development, it seems that the subtext was much closer to the surface.
posted by Strange Interlude at 2:07 PM on February 21, 2015 [29 favorites]

I was just thinking because of this article how weird it was that everybody was basically identical when they went back in, guess it made it easier on the audience, but who wouldn't change at least a few things beyond kung fu knowledge if they could?
posted by Drinky Die at 2:13 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm trans myself, and while this was an interesting and well-written read I also doubt the Wachowskis (there are two of them, remember) intended the films as a trans narrative. I think a lot of it was just a cyberpunk-y spin on the classic Joseph Campbell stuff. Neo is a young, lost soul who refuses the call to adventure, meets the wizard mentor figure, etc. I don't doubt that the film was informed by Lana Wachowski's experiences growing up trans, because every filmmaker is going to bring their own experiences to every story, but I don't think Neo is any more trans than Ed Norton in Fight Club or what's-his-name in Wanted. They are restless, urban males who feel emasculated and escape their stunted lives and transform society through acts of explosive violence. I don't see The Matrix as the story of a trans woman finding herself, but a Luke Skywalker-esque tale of a boy becoming a man.

Looking back, I do see a very familiar trans arc in Lana Wachowski's own life, and one I can identify with. For years the Wachowskis were famous for not granting interviews, they always scowled in pictures and they were kind of noir geeks, heroes to trenchcoat misfit boys everywhere. When Lana came out she kind of exploded with color and sparkles and giggles; she positively glows with joy and there is a stark contrast with the dour, silent, masculine image she used to project. I love to see her now, because she seems like one of the happiest people I've ever seen.

But that's not Neo's story. He finds glory in honing his angry loner geek-boy thing until he becomes a cyber-Jesus, finally giving up his physical body in the real world and existing only as a kind of ghost in the machine. If anything, I think the Matrix could just as easily be read as a trans person rejecting her trans self. As the author says in this essay, "Neo's second death/resurrection scene might have been a self immolation without purpose."

I rather liked The Matrix but I wasn't a raving fan, so maybe that's why the sequels didn't break my heart. If The Matrix was an A-, I thought the sequels were both a solid B+. The Matrix sequels weren't tight like the first film, I definitely had the feeling that the Wachowski's were straining to keep all those plates in the air. But people talk about them like they were Star Wars prequel bad, and it makes me wonder if we saw the same movies.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:33 PM on February 21, 2015 [27 favorites]

I was just thinking because of this article how weird it was that everybody was basically identical when they went back in

Residual self-image. So it would've made perfect sense for Switch to "see" herself as a woman.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:34 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've been wondering why people haven't been comparing the same to Jupiter Rising, [SPOILER ALERT] with the female protagonist about to be killed during an egg donation procedure, then going through an Odyssean shift in identity, there must have been a lot of self reflection that went into the plot.
posted by furtive at 3:35 PM on February 21, 2015

I will admit. I haven't read the entire article yet. But doesn't this way lie fanfic? Okay I'll finish it now. Sorry.
posted by Splunge at 3:47 PM on February 21, 2015

If searching for non-literal interpretations is fanfic then every high school and college literature course I've ever taken has been about fanfic.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:48 PM on February 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

The perfect thread to link I See With My Eyes, a trans-themed Matrix fanfic with some adult themes (NSFW) that I think I originally found through Metafilter.
posted by tigrrrlily at 4:09 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will admit. I haven't read the entire article yet. But doesn't this way lie fanfic? Okay I'll finish it now. Sorry.

I know, right? Just like the WWII fanfic that Kurt Vonnegut stuck in his cool time travel story, or the Bolshevik Revolution fanfic that Orwell threw into his funny talking-animal story. Totally detracted from those books, dude.
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:46 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I also doubt the Wachowskis (there are two of them, remember) intended the films as a trans narrative.

C'mon. Authorial intent, assuming we can actually divine such a thing with full accuracy, is only one tiny subset of the critical toolbox. (The best retort to this was said to Isaac Asimov, discomfitted by a discussion of his story "Nightfall": "Just because you're the author, what makes you think you know what the story is about?") At the very least, one must assume that the interaction of the viewer with the work has some relevance. But the author of a work, abstractly, is also the sum of the experiences of the human person who is the embodiment of the author, and thus the cultural milieu and social context are also necessary to understand almost any work.

In short, it really doesn't matter what Lana was thinking at the time -- it's impossible to separate the work from any of its authorial influences, whatever they may be.
posted by dhartung at 5:15 PM on February 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

Cool Papa Bell: "Residual self-image. So it would've made perfect sense for Switch to "see" herself as a woman."

Though then in the context of Matrix = illusion which we must cast off for reality is that going to have the connotation that her self-image is an illusion and her biological gender is reality?

Did the machines assign him as female and he spent years thinking this body wasn't real and had his suspicions confirmed when he saw his "real world" body? But that assignment is still residual enough in his mind that he reverts when in the Matrix?

Or did the machines assign her as male to match her physical biology, but she is able to manifest as female in the Matrix the same way she can will herself to jump higher, move faster than her physical body would allow?
posted by RobotHero at 6:08 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Just because you're the author, what makes you think you know what the story is about?"

I hadn't heard that specific line before, and frankly it sounds like a parody of an obnoxious, smug little student. I think authorial intent matters quite a bit, even when we would prefer it didn't. (Some great authors are terrible people, after all, and manage to write wonderful things despite their loathsome intentions. And then you have cases like Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, which he eventually claimed was an anti-television screed and wasn't about censorship at all. I think he was either addled by age or he was lying about his earlier intentions, but in either case he just wasn't the same dude who wrote the original book.)

I can't see how Lana (and Andy) Wachowski's intentions don't matter in a discussion of their work. If we found out the film was intended as a trans story, that's going to give us a whole new angle to look at it from, and we can argue about how well it succeeds or fails at that. It would arguably transform every minute of the film. As it is, I tend to doubt anybody would be reading it as a trans story if Lana Wachowski never came out.

I'm too busy/lazy too look up in the Wachowskis ever addressed a trans read of the film. I suspect they didn't intentionally put anything like that in the film, but in retrospect they would see some stuff. Art often works like that for the artist, especially when it's going well. You can put more of yourself into something than you know, and you look back at it years later and really surprise yourself.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:15 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's not super difficult to make a pretty good argument that the trans angle is intentional, even if not consciously. Living your life as a performance of false identity in an illusory world that most can't comprehend at anything but face value is enough of an eerie parallel, and the movies have had some resonance among trans people even before Lana Wachowski made it official.

Of course, by "the movies," I mean The Matrix and The Animatrix. The sequels don't exist, which is where this analysis starts to stray. Your memory of the sequels is actually SCP-42XX-C.

You don't want to know what B is. There aren't enough amnesiacs in the world for that kind of retcon.
posted by byanyothername at 6:54 PM on February 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

C'mon. Authorial intent, assuming we can actually divine such a thing with full accuracy, is only one tiny subset of the critical toolbox. ... In short, it really doesn't matter what Lana was thinking at the time

The author of this article is going after authorial intent, is she not? That's what she finds interesting about the possible connection. She isn't trying to find a way to justify a sympathetic reading based on another form of literary criticism. She is wondering, quite out loud, if the Wachowskis were very deliberate about this. That is an interesting question, and pretty much any other literary approach, in light of what the author is trying to determine, isn't nearly as helpful. It's also a question that can in theory be verified (i.e., ask them), as much as we like to separate authorial intent from analysis at times.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:59 PM on February 21, 2015

I think authorial intent matters quite a bit, even when we would prefer it didn't.

I don't think anyone's saying authorial intent never matters, rather that there are methods of critical analysis that ignore authorial intent entirely and produce interesting arguments not in spite of, but because they ignore authorial intent. Or to put it in a way that doesn't specifically involve critical analysis: people make up their own counter-readings all the time. Ask anyone who enjoys, say, Showgirls as a campy romp.
posted by chrominance at 7:01 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

But people talk about them like they were Star Wars prequel bad, and it makes me wonder if we saw the same movies.


Yeah. As SciFi action movies on thier own, they're not bad at all. They're certainly a lot better than most of the throwaway schlock and genre exploitation of the last 50 years. I think people dislike them simply because they didn't live up to the first film. But really, little could.

I hadn't heard that specific line before, and frankly it sounds like a parody of an obnoxious, smug little student.

This is fallout of postmodern, academic techniques of critique, which include "reading against text". The idea is authors reveal unconscious ideology by the structure of thier narratives and the nature of the subjects they choose to write about. I agree with this idea, but like most things postmodern, it's applied too broadly and clumsily by an army of second-rate scholars. And it makes no allowance for the sophistication and self-reflection you find in truly great artists. And as the idea degrades through repetition, it leaves fools feeling entitled to say whatever snide shit they like.

And then you have cases like Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, which he eventually claimed was an anti-television screed and wasn't about censorship at all.

I'm willing to believe it. In Guy Montag's world (and in a lot of his parallel short stories) the authorities weren't against any particular idea, they were against ideas in toto, and striving to exterminate literacy itself. In light of what you just said, the image of the giant plastic wall screen splitting when Montag doused it with fire makes me think Bradbury really did have a thing or two against TV.
posted by clarknova at 7:13 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Though then in the context of Matrix = illusion which we must cast off for reality is that going to have the connotation that her self-image is an illusion and her biological gender is reality?

Hold on, I'm going to need more shrooms. BRB.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:24 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some of the most cogent film criticism I have ever read. Thanks MartinWisse!
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 8:59 PM on February 21, 2015

My main objection is that Chicago isn't really a sickly cathode green in hue. It's more of a dry blue-green, like weathered copper crusted over with road salt.
posted by Iridic at 10:12 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I hadn't heard that specific line before, and frankly it sounds like a parody of an obnoxious, smug little student.

I wanted to apologize for a line that now strikes me as awfully snide. I think I crossed a line, there.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:01 AM on February 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure that there is much serious support for the idea that authorial intent doesn't matter. Derrida's clarification of perhaps his most well known statement is probably useful:

The phrase which for some has become a sort of slogan, in general so badly understood, of deconstruction ("there is nothing outside the text" [il n'y a pas de hors-texte]), means nothing else: there is nothing outside context.

Authorial intent is, I think, probably the primary context in our evaluations of most contemporary works. It is not the only context, and it should not, I think, be taken as the ultimate context, merely the one we will be best served to explore first in the majority of cases.

But I also tend to think of intention itself as overdetermined, even from the perspective of the author. This is where the quip against authorial understanding gains its force, I think. It is not that an author's motivations in creating a work are irrelevant to the meaning of the work, but rather that these motivations themselves are, from any point of view, including that of the author, capable of being accounted for in multiple satisfactory ways.

Of course, in works without a single clear author, like almost any film, the question of intent is complicated once more. But we can, in any case, really only create "rules" for criticism on a case by case basis, I think. If we are serious about doing away with grand intellectual narratives, we must make sure that attempt does not become its own grand narrative.
posted by howfar at 4:34 AM on February 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not all work by trans creators is About The Transition.

Work begun before coming out to oneself may well turn out to be About The Transition, especially if its creation process takes long enough for transition to begin before the work is done.

Or at least that's my experience as a trans creator. My current project is emphatically not about The Transition; my next one is an idea I've been working towards since before I came out to myself, that is pretty definitely a metaphor for the transition in some ways.
posted by egypturnash at 6:26 AM on February 22, 2015

Isn't this the kind of thing you could do with almost any heroic narrative, though? Batman is who he is because he has to be, his father-figure Alfred is trying to help, but all the same wonders if "master Bruce" (he can't get used to his chosen name) wouldn't be happier if he stopped doing it, stopped wearing those clothes. But Batman isn't just dressing up: it isn't play-acting, but an expression of his authentic self. Even his allies wonder who he "really" is, and every so often we get a storyline where Jim Gordon learns to accept him for who he is, although he is conflicted. He is often referred to as abnormal, even by his own side. Other costumed adventurers get it, even if they're rivals or even enemies.

I mean, that's a reading, but I don't think it's really saying anything about Batman, and I think you could come up with an equally (un)convincing read saying the exact reverse opposite. I'm not coming from a humanities background though... is this meant to have any relationship to anything outside that webpage, or is it more like improv comedy riffing, where there is no arguable point? This isn't so much about the death of the author (I guess if Lana Wachowski confirms it, we should regard it as confirmed) as the nonspecificity of the reading.

Although it would be pretty cool to have a tumblr full of trans film readings, to be fair.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 7:05 AM on February 22, 2015

And then you have cases like Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, which he eventually claimed was an anti-television screed and wasn't about censorship at all. I think he was either addled by age or he was lying about his earlier intentions, but in either case he just wasn't the same dude who wrote the original book.

In the opening of the book, Montag's TV-obsessed wife attempts suicide but has no memory of it because she's so docile and feeble minded from all that TV and sleeping pills. So I don't think Bradbury is wrong. Even if there's more there.

And I mean, Fight Club, written by a closeted gay author, something could be read there about double identities and construction of masculinity, sure.

I say this as a writer-person who is sure that all sorts of things about myself are revealed through my writing, intentional or not. Even when writing fiction.

Isn't this the kind of thing you could do with almost any heroic narrative, though? Batman

There's a history of queering the (sometimes extremely campy) batman, for all the reasons you say. More.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:14 AM on February 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

My main objection is that Chicago isn't really a sickly cathode green in hue.

Funny story about that. I worked on the Matrix video games, and while there was definitely an intention to use green hues in the Matrix world, it was far less overt in the original film. According to people in the production we spoke to, the real culprit was a poor DVD transfer that amped up the green levels to an extreme degree. Remember, the Matrix was one of the first ultra-popular DVD releases, often credited with driving adoption of the format, as well as sales of the PlayStation 2, which used it. The tech really hadn't been mastered at that point.

When the Wachowskis saw the transfer result, they just kinda shrugged, thinking it just pushed things more in a direction they were already going. So they doubled-down on it for the sequels. For example, the suit fabric of the upgraded Agents is literally green, while Smith's suit remains true black.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:21 AM on February 22, 2015 [11 favorites]

I think authorial intent matters quite a bit

Sure it does, but it's not the only thing that matters. As I say up above, every reader brings their own life to the text, and the reading is a "collaboration" (for want of a better word) between the author and the reader, mediated by the text. Sloppy writers often express things they didn't intend, and I think film and television (and comic books, for that matter), since they are products of so many hands, tend to be a bit "sloppier" than novels or short stories. In any case, readers are going to read texts through their own lenses, so the only "wrong" reading is one that can't be supported through textual evidence.

For example, I would bet a lot of money that Lovecraft did not mean for Lavinia Whately to be a feminist meditation on how women are valued only for their reproductive capacity and then scorned for becoming mothers, but I don't think it's wrong to read her that way. Given that the Wachowskis likely had trans issues on their minds way more than Lovecraft had feminism on his, I don't think that bootleggirl is being unreasonable in the way she finds her own experiences mirrored in the film. I have to say that I like her analysis of Agent Smith as being repressed (since the Agents are, almost by definition repression), and I find her discussion of the way Agent Smith says "Mr. Anderson" over and over with a sort of clipped repugnance as a way to force Neo into a role he has (or is trying to) discard illuminating.

I won't go as far as some critics do to say that authorial intent is utter irrelevant, but it's only part of the story. I've seen too many authors surprised by unexpected groups embracing their work to think otherwise.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:44 PM on February 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Huh. I'd watched it through an Asperger's filter. But I can see where the author is coming from, too.

Nice link.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 1:07 PM on February 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interesting angle. Definitely need to rewatch the whole trilogy with this in mind.
posted by RainyJay at 2:53 PM on February 22, 2015

My main objection is that Chicago isn't really a sickly cathode green in hue.

Is there anything in the movie which ever claims a connection with Chicago? I thought it was a (deliberately) nameless megacity, not any specific real-world city.
posted by Mars Saxman at 4:15 PM on February 23, 2015