Queer Symbolism is The Matrix’s True Legacy
Like many different youngsters of the ’90s, Myriad Augustine was a fan of The Matrix. However as a trans, non-binary particular person, their connection to the movie sequence meant one thing completely different.
Augustine knew their gender didn’t match with the gender assigned to them at beginning, however as a toddler, there was little to do about this realization. That modified in 1999 when The Matrix, in all its sci-fi splendor, offered a brand new actuality. “Even once I was very early in determining my very own identification, there are issues within the film that resonated,” Augustine says.
The Matrix’s queer significance runs deeper with its fourth installment, The Matrix Resurrections, which premiered Dec. 22.
The dystopian sequence — set in a world the place AI-powered machines have seized management and trapped people inside a simulated actuality — has impressed tutorial literature, video essays and social media threads that interpret its queer symbolism.
Because it seems, this wasn’t simply fan hypothesis. Sisters Lilly and Lana Wachowski, who co-wrote and directed the sequence, each got here out as trans after the primary movie hit screens. And in 2020, Lilly Wachowski confirmed that The Matrix was, as many locally suspected, a trans allegory. However 20 years earlier, a younger Augustine had already taken notice.
For years, followers of THE MATRIX have mentioned the movie via a trans lens. When you’ve heard the speculation earlier than or simply realized about it, right here’s a thread breaking down the trans allegory of the movie, from trans writers and critics.
Welcome to the desert of the true. (thread) pic.twitter.com/XlgY8hAcNI
— NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) August 6, 2020
Now a board member of Youth Line, a company that helps 2SLGBTQ+ youth in Ontario, they are saying The Matrix additionally speaks to the methods know-how can foster group.
“When you concentrate on the method by which 2SLGBTQ youth [are] contacting us, we don’t exist head to head with them. That’s the entire level: there’s anonymity and there’s security,” they clarify. Now, COVID-19 has thrust the group additional into the digital realm.
“Out of the blue, we needed to keep our digital existence whereas fully radically altering our bodily existence. Not not like The Matrix, I suppose, now that I’m saying it out loud.”
The sequence follows Neo (Keanu Reeves) as he fights alongside a workforce of rebels to free humanity. The primary movie opens with Neo main a double life: switching backwards and forwards between his given identify, Thomas Anderson, in the course of the day, and Neo, his chosen web hacker identify, at night time.
In the long run, he embraces his true identification as Neo, and this journey has been lengthy been linked to the gender transition course of.
After writing and directing the unique trilogy together with her sister Lilly, Lana Wachowski is making historical past with The Matrix Resurrections as the primary out transgender director to helm a serious blockbuster movie.
The Matrix Resurrections options brazenly homosexual forged members like Neil Patrick Harris and Jonathan Groff, and equally to the unique, some characters are queer coded (that means, not explicitly acknowledged to be queer). Queerness is arguably symbolized by way of the characters’ refreshed wardrobes, consisting of vivid colors which might be distinctly completely different from the unique trilogy’s all-black aesthetic.
“The style was extraordinarily on level for representing queerness,” says Augustine of the brand new movie. That is maybe greatest seen via Morpheus, Neo’s trainer, who’s offered as a brand new model of himself.
Actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II units a brand new tone because the Morpheus of 2021. When Neo first meets Morpheus, he’s sporting a burnt yellow swimsuit with a press release belt buckle. “All the colors there are extraordinarily resonant of Caribbean [and] West African tradition,” remarks Augustine.
Within the authentic movie, the character (performed by Laurence Fishburne) wears the long-lasting cyberpunk model that’s now synonymous with the sequence. Fishburne’s Morpheus was the primary time Augustine, who’s a combined Black particular person, felt represented within the overwhelmingly white goth subculture.
“I used to be buddies with all of the goths, however I may by no means be a goth since you simply don’t have non-white goths actually — which isn’t true, however that’s the message,” they clarify. “To have the ability to see Morpheus within the authentic film on this bizarre goth cyberpunk subculture was an enormous entry level to inclusion for me.”
The Matrix has been lauded for its messaging of existentialism, selection and identification. A long time later, The Matrix Resurrections builds on its legacy within the queer group.
“[The Matrix conveys] the concept which you could change your life radically. Perhaps you gained’t look nice if you begin doing it, perhaps you’ll probably not know what you’re doing if you begin doing it. However in case you discover that group, it’s value it,” Augustine says. “It’s at all times value it to stay really and symbolize your self really.”
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