![]() ![]() Suicide is disproportionately common among trans people, the result of bullying, social ostracisation and many other factors, and Smith here is the embodiment of the cause of all of it. Neo’s defeat of Smith in a subway is particularly noteworthy, as in an HRC visibility award acceptance speech Lana Wachowski described almost having committed suicide in her youth over her gender identity by stepping in front of a Chicago L train. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. ![]() Before he scores his first true victory in the face of authority we get this exchange:Īgent Smith: You hear that Mr. This finally comes to a head in their confrontation in the underground station, in which Neo finally asserts his identity in the face of death as Smith pins him to the tracks in front of a train. When Smith interrogates him early on he describes this as Neo having two lives, insisting he must give up the private one as “One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.” In contrast, Neo’s friends and allies exclusively refer to him by his chosen name Neo. Anderson with emphasis on the male pronoun. His birth name, Thomas Anderson, is used exclusively throughout the film by identically dressed representatives of authority in the forms of his boss and Agent Smith, always addressing him as Mr. The main thrust of this analogy, however, is that Neo’s incredibly blunt rebirth-as-your-true-self metaphor is conveyed through his names. Along with Cypher’s insistence in the film's opening that their attempt to free Neo will kill him, this is a reference to a toxic narrative among trans people, formed by gender-normative society’s continuous pressure to conform to its standards, that you will never be able to truly be the gender you identify as if you transition after puberty. After literally rebuilding his body, Morpheus apologises to Neo for the stress he’s going through, telling him they have a rule against freeing people from the Matrix after a certain age. Morpheus wakes him from his dream with a red pill very reminiscent of spironolactone, the most common testosterone suppressant used by trans women, which typically comes as a sunburnt red tablet. A splinter in his mind, as Morpheus puts it. He has friends in the counter culture but he doesn’t really connect with them either, and when they go out he stands in a corner staring at beautiful women. Every day he puts on a suit and tie and goes to work, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t fit in. Aside from never being explicitly described as such, Neo is practically an archetypal trans woman. The first film is about a trans woman coming out and asserting her identity, in the face of society’s demands that she stick to its pre-determined ideals of who she is. The Wachowski Sisters are both transgender, and their genre-defining sci-fi trilogy functions as an extended metaphor for trans people trying to survive in a society that wants to be rid of them. My favourite example of this is the Matrix trilogy. This lets authors bypass their audience’s inbuilt prejudices and defense mechanisms, and engage them in an experience they would refuse to consider if they knew what it really was. A phallic alien is just a phallic alien, a robot woman imprisoned in a man’s basement is nothing more. When people approach sci-fi however they often assume the science fiction elements are merely what they appear to be. Art is fundamentally the communication of human experience, but audiences who think they’re being preached to are instantly defensive against whatever they think the work is trying to say. The greatness of science fiction is in its ability to smuggle political ideals past an unknowing audience. “All waking life’s just a living dream” – Laura Jane Grace, Transgender Dysphoria Blues
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