Trans Matrix co-director Lilly Wachowski says conservatives utilizing the time period ‘red-pilled’ are ‘fascists’
Wachowski said that it was pornography that first drew him into the trans lifestyle.
Trans filmmaker Lilly Wachowski is finally coming to terms with The Matrix having been appropriated by conservative culture. Wachowski, who co-directed the Matrix trilogy of films along with his trans “sister,” gave a recent interview and said that the appropriation of “red-pilling” by the conservative right is fascism.
“So right wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything. They appropriate left wing points of view, and they mutate them for their own propaganda, to obfuscate what the real message is,” Wachowski said on So True with Caleb Hearon.
“This is what fascism does. And so, of course, that’s going to happen. They do it with absolutely everything. They do it with, you know, I mean, Make America Healthy Again, is like, it’s like, are you, what is going on?
“This idea of, you know, putting scientific gender in the words of our, I mean, we’re, where are they putting this? ‘There is only two biological genders.’ They’re calling it science, but it is not science, right?
“And that is what fascism does, it takes these things, these ideas that are generally acknowledged as questions or investigations, or, you know, truisms about, you know, humanity and life, and they turn them to something else so that they are, they remove the weight of of what those things represent,” Wachowski said.
It was from the Wachowski directed Matrix trilogy that the concept of red-pilling emerged. That concept, of taking a pill to wake up and see reality for what it is, has been appropriated by conservatives for the phenomenon of a person coming to conservatism and abandoning a leftist, or Democrat mindset. Wachowski, who came out as trans in 2016 was not trans when making The Matrix films. Neither was his “sister,” but now both are trans
“I look at all of the crazy, mutant theories around the Matrix films, and the crazy ideologies that those films helped create, and I just go, What are you doing? No! That’s wrong!” Wachowski said.
“But I have to let it go to some extent,” Wachowski said in the interview. “You’re never gonna be able to make absolutely every person believe what you initially intended.” The Wachowskis were not trans when they made The Matrix back in 1999. The two have said that the Matrix was meant to be an allegory for the trans experience.
Wachowski spoke in 2019 about what led him to become trans. Speaking on a panel called “The Power of TV: Trans Visibility in Storytelling,” Wachowski, then 51, revealed that it was pornography that drew him into the lifestyle.
“As I was growing up all of the trans characters were played by cisgender actors; there was a façade and the characters lacked real depth … the characters I would see — John Lithgow playing trans in ‘The World According to Garp’ — while it was lovely portrayal, there was an element missing,” Wachowski said at the time.
“The first images I saw that struck a chord with me were trans images in pornography. It was something that unlocked in my brain and I saw these wonderful fearless performers becoming desirable. In my head, I could take the leap where I felt that if I could be desirable, maybe I could be loved,” Wachowski continued.
From there, Wachowski has come to believe that trans characters should be everywhere and represented across all media. “We all have to break the f–king door down and tell our stories because it’s about education. It’s about having a voice,” Wachowski said. “All of the storytellers up here and all of the storytellers in this room, it’s a part of this larger conversation that we’re having when we’re finding the language to talk about ourselves.”
It is ironic that many of those who are red-pilled in the conservative sense end up coming to conservatism over trans and gender ideology, which claims that men can become women simply by wishing it so or through the “magic” of modern medicine.”