‘The Matrix is still the most successful trans movie of all time, 25 years on’
"The body cannot live without the mind," says Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) during an early training session where Neo (Keanu Reeves) discovers that death in the matrix means death in real life too.
But what if your body and mind don't match? What if the body you were born in is not the body you were meant to have?
Back when the Wachowskis first wrote and directed The Matrix, the public had no idea that these two sisters were trans, but 25 years later, it's obvious how their unique outlook on the world shapes and informs every aspect of this game-changing saga. Or at least it's obvious to anyone who's queer (or trans especially). To the rest of the world, The Matrix is just another sci-fi film, albeit a very important, influential one.
For those not plugged in, The Matrix is set in a dystopian future where humanity is trapped in a simulated reality which keeps everyone distracted while machines use people as a source of energy. When computer programmer Thomas Anderson, aka Neo, discovers the truth, a rebellion begins.
The premise, almost too realistic now, was revolutionary back in 1999, and that's still true when it comes to the queer coding that this entire Matrix franchise was first built upon.
When Morpheus explains the concept of The Matrix to Neo (and us), he likens it to a dissonance of the mind: "What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."
That's a feeling any nascent queer person can relate to, not being fully aligned with the world around you. Something's not quite right, you don't quite fit in, and often, you can sense that before you even realise your own queerness.
But it's not just this vague notion of being othered that roots The Matrix in these feelings. There are also specific characters who embody queer thoughts and concepts, although some more obviously than others.
For example, Switch was originally supposed to present as male in the real world while being portrayed as female within the Matrix. The idea was to tap into how trans people can often live more authentically in a virtual space, presenting themselves as how they want to be perceived, a notion that was becoming more and more common as the internet grew prevalent at the turn of the century.
Unfortunately, the studio wasn't ready for that, so as per usual, queer filmmakers like the Wachowskis had to work around the hetero agenda, dealing instead with LGBTQ+ subtext.
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Just look at Agent Smith, a raging queen in all but name. Ok, that one's not so obvious, but think about it. This is a man, an artificial man, who is fake in every way possible. He fights Neo at every turn, yet he doesn't even believe in his own cause. "I hate this place," says Agent Smith, "This zoo, this prison, this reality, whatever you want to call it". Yet here he is trying to convince others to join him anyway like a closeted priest or a queer TERF who has turned on their own community.
It's no wonder then that Agent Smith hates the likes of Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). Their resistance to the Matrix speaks to queerness regardless of where you might identify on the spectrum because we too as queer people don't fit in. This world wasn't made for us, and it often takes all our strength to push back and hold onto who we are in the face of the Agent Smith's in this world.
But that strength does exist in us, even if it doesn't always feel like it. "I can only show you the door," Morpheus says to Neo earlier on at a crucial point. "You're the one that has to walk through it." And walk he does with that stylish leather coat swishing behind him as he goes.
Remember how androgynous Neo and Trinity's leather-bound look was back then? In breaking the binary code of The Matrix, they also broke binaries of gender and sexuality, pushing back against the so-called norms that uphold a dangerously conservative status quo where everyone is the same and individual expression is essentially forbidden.
That's true even on a formal level thanks to how The Matrix revolutionised visual effects in cinema by popularising "bullet time". You know, that bit when Keanu Reeves does half a death drop but stops mid-air to avoid grievous bodily harm. In the wake of that moment, everyone from Shrek and Lizzie McGuire to Scary Movie and even the Resident Evil franchise had their own spin on bullet time, which is extremely camp when you think about it.
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But beyond that, bullet time transcends the physical world to introduce two competing temporal spaces at once, which academics have noted is the kind of dissonance that trans people working through their gender transition can experience too, this notion of transcending the physical reality we find ourselves in.
Even before the bullet time kicks off, Neo initially assumes Trinity is a man upon meeting her, to which she replies, "Most guys do." Together, they both reject the names they were assigned at birth, much like trans people do as well. And by the end of the film, the Wachowskis aren't even subtle when the last scene ends by zooming in on the words "system failure" until we're quite literally pushed between the letters M and F, now existing in a liminal space between these two binary extremes.
As this happens, Neo tells the machines that they're afraid of the resistance, that they're afraid of change. By fighting back, he's ready to show them, "A world without rules and controls, without borders and boundaries. A world where anything is possible."
When Neo ends his monologue, saying "Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you," he's not just talking to the malevolent ChatGPT bots that imprisoned humanity. He's also talking to us, the audience, because The Matrix is all about the choices we make to live our truth and how we must make those decisions for ourselves.
This all comes down to the central red and blue pill choice that defines The Matrix in popular culture. Because if Neo takes the blue pill, life continues on just like before, effectively ending the story before it even began. Neo doesn't do that, of course. He goes for the red pill, the one that takes him on the first steps towards living his truth, except first he'll have to upend his life and face overwhelming odds to reach that authenticity he's been craving for so long.
The parallels between this and accepting who you are as a queer person are clear, even more so if you're trans. Coming out and coming into your own puts you at odds with the rest of the world, forcing you to reckon with everything from systemic discrimination to the obstacles of gender-affirming medical care and even feeling safe in public. But to take the blue pill is to live in denial, and as Mouse (Matt Doran) says, "To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human."
It's a message that can be read as very specifically queer or trans, yet it's also quite universal in its reach. Because everyone has felt like they don't fit in at one point or another, that they don't live up the expectations that society forces on them.
Just as The Matrix bridges the gap between reality and simulation, between free will and determinism, so too does it bridge the gap between cis and trans experiences, creating a story that resonates with both without excluding either.
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Lana Wachowski's sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, brought that queerness more to the forefront, as you'd expect from a trans filmmaker who has evolved and come into their own during this 22 year interim. Yet it's the trans allegory inherent to the first film that's still the most impactful, circumventing queer stereotypes to prove that our true selves aren't bound to our physicality, that the choices we make matter.
The Matrix trilogy is available to watch on Sky and NOW.
