On The 25th Anniversary Of The Matrix: A Retrospective.
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of The Matrix's release, a particular conundrum has been bothering me for a long time; like a splinter in my mind, driving me mad.
What is The Matrix? What is it really? What does it truly represent as a pop-cultural phenomenon?
Obviously the importance of The Matrix and its sequels to the Trans community cannot be overstated. And, before really I get into this: there are a certain number of people who were never going to take the fact that The Matrix was on some level a Transgender allegory very well, once they'd applied their own warped misunderstanding of the film into the mindset that would later become the basis for the "Men's Rights" or "Manosphere" movement. And, to be clear - it was never only *just* a Transgender allegory. That was just one level of it, or one aspect of it (though that aspect was definitely very there and very real, even back then; as Trans people and Queer people were aware.) But it was never meant to be a male chauvinist allegory like the manosphere dorks want it to be.
20 years ago, my friends and I were calling ourselves "Redpills" for rejecting the Bush administration's Iraq war propaganda, and for being what would be called "Woke" on today's internet. While this is probably not a reflection of the Matrix's true themes either, it's probably a lot closer to the mark than the so-called "men's rights activists" and their bullshit.
They did not respond well to the idea that they had misunderstood the film on a basic level, and that it was never really for them. Like all Reactionaries, they're determined to claim what isn't theirs, and to try to rub their stink all over it - in this case, referring to themselves as "Redpills," etc. And this is something that fans of the films have just had to deal with over the years.
They loved the first Matrix film. They embraced it, they made it a part of their psyche, they breathed it into their very souls; because it seemed to affirm their cultural narcissism. But when the Wachowski Sisters said "wait, there's more to this story, the prophesy isn't what it seems to be," they lost their shit.
And when Lana came back after 18 years and reiterated that same theme, they wasted no time in "throwing their toys out of the pram" over it again. It didn't matter that her other stated reason (besides having to make the film or Warner Bros would do it without her) was the need to reach out to two fictional characters she created for comfort in a time of intense grief. No, according to the haters "it was a cynical cash grab," or "she made it suck on purpose so she could give Warner Brothers and her fans the finger" (and presumably get her phone call.)
But it was also a rejection of the idea that she and her sister should be obligated, by the studio or anyone else, to just crank out more of the same. And the Extremely Mad Fans complained about this, too.
And there's a scene within Matrix Resurrections that appears to poke fun at all of the time people have spent analyzing these films and their meaning. And I don't really think this is meant to be an insult to the fans, as so many people seemed to think after seeing the fourth film. I think it is meant to maybe suggest that a lot of this analysis is missing the point. Which was that The Matrix was a love story. And the sincere emotional bond between Neo and Trinity was the most powerful force of all, in the face of The Analyst's cynicism.
For me, The first Matrix film also represents a time and a place, and a particular vibe that went along with it. That's what I would have said, if I were sitting with those game developers at that table in Matrix Resurrections. That magical era in time that Gen Z calls "Y2K." For me, this also includes all of 1998-1999; because the "vibe" that The Matrix film expressed, the cultural zeitgeist, really had its heyday starting in 1998. Then it proceeded through 1999-2001 - right smack into the double whammy of the Dotcom Bust and the events of 9/11, when the world changed forever.
This time period is also excellently expressed in musical form in Massive Attack's album Mezzanine, which was released in 1998. One of the tracks on Mezzanine, "Dissolved Girl," appears in the first Matrix, over Neo's earphones as he naps at his desk right before getting the fateful message to follow the White Rabbit.
Mezzanine is considered by some to be a kind of "unofficial soundtrack" to The Matrix. It came out the same year, and the song Dissolved Girl, which appears in the film (though not anywhere on the official soundtrack) is from that album. The album and the film just kind of go together. They have the same vibe. And one thing that Massive Attack fans have lamented since it dropped is that Massive Attack "never made another Mezzanine." They don't just mean another album that did as well. They're talking about that album's specific sound and atmosphere, which has not carried over to any of their subsequent albums.
But both the original Matrix film and the album Mezzanine are products of their time. They are uniquely, intrinsically, 1998-1999. I don't think they could be made in any other time, and I don't think that there's a specific "formula" that would enable the Wachowski Sisters or Massive Attack to just keep cranking out more of the same.
But people seem to desperately want to recapture that time period. If they can't go back to that, they want to break off a piece of it to carry with them into their current day-to-day life. For people who were born after 1998, I think there is a feeling of wistful nostalgia for a time they never knew, a time before the wheels figuratively started to come off. But they started to come off nearly right away.
It really does feel sometimes like people want to somehow shift the world into the timeline where 2001 and everything after happened differently, and we ended up facing the dystopia we were expecting to get - the one that our media seemed to be training us to resist, instead of the one we actually ended up getting. (Though, let's be fair: the corporate media "suits" were never going to just hand us the tools or language to resist them, either way.)
At turn of the century, Generation X was strugging with the idea of "selling out" and "leading lives of quiet desperation," like Neo in his "before-life" as Thomas Anderson. Giving up on youthful, rebellious ideals, assimilating into the workforce, and becoming obedient, reactionary consumer-serfs like our parents had. No one in 1999 was worried that all of this would change just a few years.
No, the anxiety that seemed to be gripping Generation X as we came of age was that, like the Boomers before us, we would settle for bland, materialistic lives of comfortable but tedious mediocrity instead of seeking any kind of real enlightenment or creative fulfillment. A lifestyle full of material comforts and financial security that was devoid of any actual spiritual growth or individual expression seemed like a horrifying dystopia to some: and this was the crisis that turned up again and again in the media of the time (Dark City, The Truman Show, Fight Club, etc.) We had no idea what form the dystopia would actually take when it came, or that even basic necessities would be beyond the reach of many of us.
(After all, that was the social contract that the Executive or Billionaire class, the owners of the means of production, made with middle/working class after the social upheaval of the 60s and 70s: "go back to work in the field, the office or the factory. Don't don't go looking for anything above or beyond that, and don't make anymore waves. Conform, and a comfortable living will be assured. The only true freedom is the freedom to consume, and The Bad People want to take that away from you." But when our parents complied, they just played their trap card: Ronald Reagan, who worked on pulling that ladder all the way up.)
I saw The Matrix during the first week of its original release in 1999. I was 21 years old, in between stints at college, and still living with my parents and working in a movie theater in Dallas, TX. My job made it possible for me to get free passes for my friends.
I feel like it's relevant to mention that I went and voted in a local election (and was stared at for an uncomfortably long period of time by a little girl who was there with her mother - like, shocked, gape-jawed staring - possibly due to my gothic attire) before driving up to Bill's Records And Tapes on Spring Valley and Coit RD, and calling my friends from the payphone outside the adjacent grocery store to arrange how we were going to meet up. Considering the role that payphones played in the first film, I smile to think about that now.
The film blew my mind, as it did with so many others - just like the film Dark City had done a year before. I know people have made a ton of comparisons between the two films, that they share a lot of similarities and themes, and even some similar aesthetics. I know they were shot on some of the same sets. And I feel like both films informed a lot of my "subconscious programming" (if that makes sense) in the years that were to come.
The sequels have been taken back out and re-examined in the years since they were released. I'm glad that the sequels seem to be finding their audience now, and I'm convinced it will eventually be the same with the fourth film.