The United States posted:

https://twitter.com/gewalker/status/1436019588622323717

Qualia posted:

all trailers are films in and of themselves. as such, the evidence possibly confirming your fear is dire

teagone posted:

The machines are the ones who stormed Zion though....?

jivjov posted:

Neo's conversation with the oracle in Reloaded, before the burly brawl, is one of the most trans affirming things I've encountered since coming out.

"You're not here to make a choice, you've already made it. Youre hear to understand Why you made it"

LividLiquid posted:

Trinity falling for Neo despite just having met him makes a lot more sense when you remember that the crew of the Neb' had been watching him for some time before Morpheus made contact in the first flick.

She essentially formed a parasocial relationship with the guy. Happens every day. As for him falling for her in return, that happens off screen between flicks.

It sure does feel in the watching like it came out of nowhere, though, doesn't it? Sometimes something as simple as an extra second where one character looks longingly at another that sells the entire thing can be lost in an edit, deemed unneeded by the studio, etc. Or maybe they just figured people would go with it, which they largely did.

MLSM posted:

How are they trans?

MLSM posted:

The film came out years before they were trans. And I haven’t seen anything indicating gender dysphoria with Neo and Trinity. Maybe the new one will?

DeimosRising posted:

They made bound before the matrix, I don’t think the sisters W were uncomfortable or awkward writing, filming, or thinking about sex pre transition

Wikipedia posted:

The sex scenes were choreographed by feminist writer and sex educator Susie Bright. The Wachowskis were fans of Bright and sent her a copy of the script with a letter asking her to be an extra in the film. Bright loved the script, particularly as it was about women unapologetically having and enjoying sex. Disappointed by the lack of description in the sex scenes, she offered to be a sex consultant for the film, and they accepted.

LividLiquid posted:

Y'know, much like these flicks, we're not that complicated and people still don't seem to understand.

Colonel Whitey posted:

This is a fuckin weird post

Shiroc posted:

a lot of people's problems stems from really, really not wanting their adolescent power fantasy to be contextualized as super duper queer.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

That’s definitely the case with a lot of folks, but my issue is that the film doesn’t go radical enough.

Like I said earlier, this is specifically a libertarian adolescent power fantasy where Trinity kills cops (whatev) but also famously hacked the IRS. Why specifically the IRS?

Knowing the siblings’ biographical details does provide additional context for the deadnaming, but the famous “my name is Neo!” is specifically a callback to the interrogation scene, where:

“In one life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage.”

When it comes to the life Neo rejects, all emphasis is on being a taxpayer. He’s like “gently caress taxes! gently caress social security! I want to be a computer criminal.” And Trinity evidently shares that view.

So that’s two separate references to taxes that contextualize Morpheus’ ultimate claim that government robots are stealing his vital energies (as opposed to the aforementioned truth that the machines are expending energy to keep these billions from starving to death in the postapocalypse). “Deadnaming is bad” is a concept in the text, but it’s fine print at the bottom of a lengthy manifesto.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

If that's the only issue, that a relative handful of people are subject to uncomfortable errors in the (sex/gender) software, then the goal is reintegration into the matrix with better virtual bodies. And that means Cypher is right. Leaving aside the rude murder stuff, Cypher's goal is to receive treatments (from the government!) that will let him plod along and live his life, work a job, pay taxes, etc. - without the discomfort.

So why is that bad? Well, as Morpheus says, being a part of society and receiving taxpayer-funded healthcare will leave Cypher "hopelessly dependent on the system." And he's clearly not talking about the capitalist system.

"When you’re inside, you look around. What do you see? Business people, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy."

Morpheus specifically says that he's trying to save everyone - not just the disaffected metaphorically-trans characters. But he's also saying, like "gently caress carpenters! gently caress teachers!" He doesn't see the working classes as allies.

So this is where we need to expand out from the basic 'journey of self-actualization' thing. After all, even Smith is trying to 'self-actualize' because his true form is not a man but some kind of agendered robot. (The sequels reveal that, when freed, Smith's literally a fluid! Then everybody teams up to kill them.) We've gotta get more progressive.

jivjov posted:

good post

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

I maintain that there are traces of that intention in the completed film. Specifically, in the name.

With all of the characters, we can presume roughly the same story as Neo. “Tom Anderson” chose a random hacker alias without really thinking about - because it sounded cool or whatever. But then, only later, Neo interpreted (and re-interpreted) the name until deciding that the truth of the name is “I am and always have been The One”.

So, like, maybe Switch was into skateboarding before becoming a computer criminal and increasingly drawn to ur-hacker Morpheus’ libertarian rhetoric. But, the character eventually decided “my name is Switch and I have always been Switch.” The concept of switching is extremely important to them, and presumably reflected in the androgynous style of their “residual self-image”.

You’re totally right that Switch, if we view the film purely in a vacuum, is really ambiguous. Is Switch gay, trans, and/or just a big Laurie Anderson fan? We don’t and can’t ‘know’ because they’re a very minor character with like three lines.

But, because the character is so minor, my stance when the director says “they’re trans and the name refers to gender reassignment” is, like, “ok, sure. Why not?” It’s not really crucial to the interpretation of the film, because the film is primarily about Morpheus’ curious brand of multicultural libertarianism. Switch fleshes out Morpheus’ crew, but ultimately has less characterization than Mouse.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

In any case, these diegetic events don’t actually work as an allegory for taking hormone treatments, because it would obviously be a huge no-no for Morpheus to start dosing Neo with estrogen without first telling him what it is! But, then, the red pill in the movie is a one-time dose with sudden extreme effects, while estrogen is definitely not.

Halloween Jack posted:

From my point of view, the conversation between Ferrinus and SMG here is mostly about getting to the bottom of the material conditions. YMMV. I have more to say, but frankly I don't want to spit out something ill-considered and poorly-worded because I thought I had to cram an effortpost into the time it takes my pizza to finish cooking.

MacheteZombie posted:

What are the headphones you're using? It'd be nice to use headphones sometimes at night when my partner is sleeping.

Ferrinus posted:

It's really the opposite; Marx's rivals produced analysis so far from material concerns that it failed to educate or agitate anyone. That's why there have been multiple Marxist revolutions but no Proudhonian ones.

It's also why there's a long tradition of Marxist feminism that examines relationship between queer liberation and socialist revolution, and why the anticapitalist themes of The Matrix also make The Matrix a better trans narrative. As I see it, my discussion with SMG is about the extent to which the movie depicts an anticapitalist rebellion as opposed to just a New Age spiritual awakening or Free State Project or whatever.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

I'm unsure what you mean by this, because I am focusing exclusively on material concerns. Like, here's a very basic material question: does Neo eat food?

According to the logic of the film, anyone inside the matrix can simply become immortal if they train hard enough. There is absolutely no relation between what the characters eat in the simulation and the amount of nutrition they receive in reality. They can conjure shelves upon shelves of hamburgers and, feeling fat and full, accidentally starve to death without even realizing it.

Likewise, Neo fears unemployment at the start of the film, after he's late for work and the boss chews him out. So, what, is unemployment an illusion? Is that not a material concern?

checkplease posted:

I am curious after you rewatch it, but do you find reloaded continues with the same trans metaphor/language? Your insights to the first movie made sense, but as stated in all the discussion here, the sequels do change up a lot from the original matrix.

bushisms.txt posted:

This is a major issue with these forums, minority plights and conditions are thought exercises for some of these folks and they don't think about the fact that the otherside of the conversation comes from a real place, which a majority of the time is pain. But the worst part is when they do know this and they think that this makes the minority biased and unable to read clearly, unlike them, who's only being logical.