The Matrix trilogy is a transgender allegory, says co-director Lilly Wachowski
Written by News on 10/08/2020
The co-director of The Matrix movies, Lilly Wachowski, has confirmed fan speculation that the sci-fi trilogy is a transgender allegory.
The theory has flourished since Lilly and her sister Lana both came out as trans women after the films, starring Keanu Reeves as fictional character Neo, were released between the late 1990s and the early part of this century.
Responding to a question posed about this theory, Wachowski said she was “glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention”.
She said: “The world wasn’t quite ready yet. The corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”
An allegory is described as a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning.
In a Netflix interview on YouTube, Wachowski said she loves how “meaningful” the movies are to transgender people.
She said: “The way that they come up to me and say: these movies saved my life.
“I’m grateful that I can be throwing them a rope to help them along their journey.”
She said the Matrix series was about a “desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view”.
Wachowski described Switch – “a character who would be a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix” – as representative of where her and her sister’s “headspaces were” when they were making the films.
“I don’t know how present my transness was in the background of my brain as we were writing it,” Wachowski said, “but it all came from the same sort of fire that I’m talking about.”
The pair directed the first three films – The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions – which hit cinemas between 1999 and 2003.
Lana is helming the fourth Matrix film herself, currently set for release in 2022.
(c) Sky News 2020: The Matrix trilogy is a transgender allegory, says co-director Lilly Wachowski
