Lily Wachowski explains why ‘The Matrix’ is a trans story
The Matrix films set the epoch for science fiction in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The films created a perfect blend of many different genres, including science-fiction, cyberpunk, martial arts, corporate politics and fantasy.
The movies were wildly successful, primarily due to their innovative use of CGI and special effects and an absolutely mind-bending plot that pulled you in from the off. One of the reasons that The Matrix was so alluring was because it placed you, at first, into a world that was utterly mundane and familiar before showing you that things are not as they seem; that actual reality lies beneath our usual perceptions.
Recently, with the ongoing movement for transgender rights, The Matrix films have been viewed with a trans narrative. The films’ writers, Lana and Lily Wachowski, are both trans, and Lily once stated that the films ought to be viewed as such.
“I love that people are talking about the Matrix movies with a trans narrative,” Lily once said. “I love how meaningful those films are to trans people. They come up to me and say, ‘these movies changed my life.’ Because when you talk about transformation, specifically in the world of science fiction, which is just about imagination and the idea of the seemingly impossible becoming possible, I think that’s why it speaks to them so much.”
She added, “That was the original intention, but the world wasn’t quite ready yet. The corporate world wasn’t ready for it. We engage in art in a non-linear way so that we can talk about something in new ways and in a new light. The Matrix was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view. So we had the character of Switch, who would be a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix. That’s where both our headspaces were.”
Lana had first begun transitioning in the early 2000s, although neither of the Wachowski sisters had spoken publicly about it. Initially, they had both rejected claims that The Matrix films contained a trans agenda, as society had not begun to address trans rights. In 2016, Lily also pronounced herself a transgender woman.
She said, “I don’t know how present my transness was when I was writing it, but it all came from the same sort of fire. We were existing in this space where the words didn’t exist, so we were always living in a world of imagination; that’s why I gravitated towards science fiction.”
