The Matrix’s Queer Subtext Is Plain Text in Resurrections

Up till Resurrections, the Matrix collection hasn’t straight acknowledged LGBTQ individuals in any respect. Switch was written as trans within the authentic Matrix screenplay however the character was modified for the completed movie, as a result of studio executives have been confused. That didn’t cease queer readings of the work, after all, which intensified after administrators Lana and Lilly Wachowski got here out as trans ladies.

Even Lilly Wachowski encouraged these readings within the 2020 documentary Disclosure: “The Matrix was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view.” The Matrix Resurrections is the primary movie within the collection made because the Wachowskis each got here out. Queer and trans points usually are not interchangable, however the newest sequel supplied a chance to acknowledge these readings. Lana Wachowski (directing with out Lilly, who has gravitated away from science fiction in favor of more realistic queer stories) and the crew took it.

In the most recent installment of the saga, Neo is alive (shock) and trapped in a brand new Matrix, residing as online game developer Thomas Anderson. While engaged on an bold new undertaking titled Binary (very delicate…), his boss Smith strong-arms him into growing a sequel to his blockbuster online game collection The Matrix, which has similarities to the film trilogy we’ve all seen and that Neo can’t bear in mind he really lived by.

This meta first act permits for Resurrections to straight touch upon the allegorical interpretations of The Matrix. In a gathering the place Anderson’s improvement group discusses what The Matrix video games have been about, one developer chimes in that the unique story was about “trans politics,” the primary direct LGBTQ reference within the collection. This alternate is tongue-in-cheek, nevertheless it’s not an entire rejection of this studying both. The collection does clearly include most of the issues these builders deliver up—“bullet-time!” “WTF!”—and the scene is simply frivolously ridiculing those that say The Matrix is about anybody factor.

Most of the queer content material in Resurrections follows the identical allegorical strains as the unique, repeating outdated situations of the woke up Neo and Trinity rejecting their “deadnames” and including in copious new references to “binaries” which have inevitably been learn as a commentary on gender binaries. While there nonetheless aren’t any characters straight said to be queer, Resurrections makes LGBTQ headcanons quite a bit simpler than the earlier movies did, giving Niobe and Freya in addition to Bugs and Lexi sufficient onscreen shows of affection to learn them as {couples}.

What may be essentially the most fascinating facet of The Matrix Resurrections’ queer subtext, nonetheless, is with reference to its villains. Queer-coded villains have an extended and problematic historical past in Hollywood, however regardless of and even due to this historical past, they’re usually a supply of fascination for queer artists and audiences. So when Lana Wachowski determined to solid two brazenly homosexual actors, Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris, within the roles of Resurrections’ two main antagonists, Agent Smith and the Analyst, I’m fairly positive she knew precisely what she was doing.

Agent Smith is the richer character with reference to queer subtext, since a point of subtext was already a part of Hugo Weaving’s interpretation of his character within the authentic trilogy. In queer readings of The Matrix, Smith has been in comparison with homophobic closeted preachers, trans women who force themselves to live as men, and “conversion therapy” advocates. When Smith tells Morpheus within the first movie, “I hate this place, this zoo, this prison, this reality, whatever you want to call it,” his self-loathing comes by loud and clear.

If Weaving’s Smith is closeted, then Groff’s Smith has principally come out. Not as trans (Lana already made it clear that The Matrix isn’t one-to-one allegory for transness), however as homosexual. The queer-coding on the rebooted Smith is so heavy that it virtually goes past coding; it’s as apparent because it might be with out turning into both an offensive stereotype or express sufficient to warrant the form of censorship frequent with LGBTQ+ materials in blockbuster films world wide. Though Groff hasn’t spoken on taking part in Smith as homosexual, he has described the movie as a complete as being “more queer,” and it’s simple to learn this bleeding into his efficiency.

In angle alone, it’s evident that Groff’s Smith is extra relaxed and comfy in his personal pores and skin than Weaving’s Smith was. When Smith makes his attraction to Neo round an hour and 22 minutes into Resurrections, it turns into clear he’s additionally much more comfy expressing affection for his legendary opponent. “There’s so many theories about the two of them,” Berg, the crew’s resident Neo scholar, coyly quips, maybe alluding to Smith/Neo shippers. Smith tells Neo, “You never appreciated our relationship,” and says that the Analyst used their “bond” and made it a “chain.” Smith asks Neo his opinion on his “piercing blue eyes,” and takes quite a lot of pauses to make flirty faces. It’s complete shipper-bait.

When they’re lastly about to combat, Smith says that “Anderson and Smith” are one of many “binaries that form the nature of things.” Given the gender subtext of Resurrections’ criticism of binaries, be at liberty to make a “the two genders” joke right here. With how heavy BDSM imagery is all through the Matrix collection, it’s additionally not onerous to see some sadomasochistic eroticism in Smith’s passionate want to combat each Neo and the Analyst, the latter of whom he suggestively claims had “his leash on my neck.” Later within the film, when Smith in the end saves Neo and Trinity from the Analyst, he says that when Neo obtained out of the Matrix and woke up him, “I was free to be me.” (Also, Smith and Morpheus technically have a child collectively within the type of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s new Morpheus program character.)

Aside from Smith’s sadomasochistic feedback and the casting of Harris, the Analyst isn’t as closely queer-coded as Smith. He’s coded extra as a type of “alt right” Matrix followers who’ve appropriated the unique’s imagery than something, monologuing about “alternative facts” and looking out down on others as “sheeple.” While most viewers know that Harris is a homosexual man, in addition they know that his most iconic characters, from Barney Stinson to his personal caricature within the Harold & Kumar films, have been extraordinarily heterosexual.

Yet even when taking part in a personality so wildly totally different from himself on the web page, Harris says that he performed the character as a “version of myself.” Given the Analyst’s tough relationship with the reality and the hyper-stylized nature of the unique Matrix trilogy, it was simple for him to lean into related stylization, however Lana Wachowski’s model has advanced in a extra naturalistic path, leaving Harris considerably confused over how “truthful” his efficiency wanted to be. The Analyst clearly isn’t the “true” Neil Patrick Harris, however nonetheless anybody who is aware of the actor goes to deliver their data of his public identification to the Analyst. In mixture with the heavy queer-coding of Smith, it creates an odd phenomenon wherein the 2 most important brokers of a system usually learn as a metaphor for conformity and anti-LGBTQ oppression give off at the least some homosexual vibes.

In 1999, being brazenly queer robotically made one an enemy of the system. In 2021, this isn’t essentially the case. Rights resembling marriage and safety from employment discrimination have at the least been written into legislation, and sufficient has modified that some (largely cis, largely white, largely male) queer persons are capable of maintain energy inside the system. Just as a result of our governments and firms are extra gay-friendly than earlier than, nonetheless, doesn’t essentially make them extra pleasant on the whole. “Rainbow capitalism” is usually performative at finest in the direction of the wants of the LGBTQ neighborhood, and “pinkwashing” makes use of nominal progressiveness on queer points to distract from dangerous actions in different areas.

One of the primary themes of The Matrix Resurrections is that methods of energy acceptable and assimilate forces that have been initially in defiance of stated methods. This is most blatant in how Neo’s story of rebel towards the Matrix has been was a online game franchise inside the Matrix itself. Subversion is lowered to a company product that the majority audiences don’t even perceive the supposed message of. As Bugs says, “They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial.” When the Analyst makes use of bullet time, The Matrix’s most iconic picture, as a weapon to freeze Neo and Trinity in place, it’s completely symbolic of how the aesthetics of revolution get warped towards their authentic which means.

The queer-coded villains of Resurrections are yet one more instance of this assimilation into the system, whereas offering two very totally different responses to it. The Analyst embraces his energy inside this method, whereas Smith is in the end capable of redeem himself by breaking away from it. There have all the time been heated debates over whether or not the targets of the LGBTQ motion ought to be centered on displaying the cishet world that queer individuals will be “just like everyone else” or whether or not it’s higher to reject normality and respectability politics. Lana Wachowski may object to anybody saying what The Matrix Resurrections is “about,” nevertheless it’s honest to say at the least a part of it’s an anti-assimilationist message: not homosexual as in completely satisfied, however queer as in fuck you.

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