And for anyone who wants to check: US release of "The Matrix" was March 31st 1999
The character of Switch was originally meant to be male in the real world and female in the Matrix. Warner Brothers put a stop to that.
Not sure why, would have been a pretty cool addition to the universe.
I can imagine nowadays people saying it's "too woke" though.
Back then :
It won't bring in the same money, don't put your weird tranny shit
Now :
This is marketable in certain demographics, but we've already met the diversity quota, so no thanks. Besides, we don't want it to be too "political" and lose our dependable fanbase.
Ah yes, famously apolitical movie The Matrix in the entirely apolitical genre of dystopian sci-fi.
All studio execs do is "mitigate" movies to appeal to a broader audience...
An analogy would be a corporate chef who removes garlic from a tomato sauce so that people who don't like garlic will eat it, and those that do will know something is missing but can't complain too much because... endless salad and breadsticks, plus mom likes the "atmosphere"
Replace garlic with trans character, and endless salads and breadsticks with the MCU
If you think that society was friendlier to trans people in 1999 compared to 2024, you are mistaken.
I can think of one reasonable reason for it. They'd be harder to identify between the two versions. It makes some sense to not change the look that much (or the actor if that was the plan) to not confuse the audience.
Makes sense. Sucks it never happened though because that would have been a cool idea.
Also have to pay and credit two actors for one role, which might get sticky, especially with awards.
I mean you credit them as 2 different roles, Switch (In-Matrix) and Switch (IRL). Happens all the time for different ages of the same characters being portrayed by younger and older actors.
The more I think about that, the less I'm sure how it would have worked. Any interpretation has knock-on effects for the sci-fi aspect of the premise. (Less of a problem for the philosophical and filmmaking side of things, where it's often fine to say "fuck you, deal with it.")
If Switch in the matrix is physically female but androgynous trending butch (kinda like canon), while Switch on the Nebuchadnezzar is plainly played by a dude... is that Switch being FTM? The character's deepest internal state, behind the false system of the matrix, is a dude in a bucket. Maybe their presentation (via the body the matrix slots them into) is limited to a haircut, because who cares what your avatar looks like? It's not you. Take your Fortnite default skin, get on with the mission, and get back to reality.
Obviously the more-likely-intended take is that Switch IRL is MTF, and gets to present however the hell she wants via the matrix. But that implies anyone could look like anyone else. If that requires some deep-seated self-image, rather than a malleable state only limit-breaking individuals like Neo can freely change, you figure Cipher would have hair. Or at least Mouse could give himself a couple inches. In one way or another. Even if it is only limited to modifications of your physical body, the idiot-proof shorthand would be a character who lost a limb during a squid attack still having it in the matrix. There is the image, the body, and the mind, and the body is overall a shite vessel for conveying the image from the mind.
Anyway, the funny version would be to cast a brother and sister for the separate parts (phrasing) and never mention it. Maybe Neo gets a double-take during the rapid-fire introduction to the crew. Not so much as an "Oh."
I bet Warner wouldn't even notice.
It would be easier just to use an androgynous actor and dress them female in the matrix and male outside. No need for two actors, and it would be easier for the audience to remember the were the same person. Give them a little piece of styling that's unique and consistent between both, and it wouldn't be an issue.
How does it fit trans day?
The Wachowskis are both trans and the matrix can famously be read as a trans allegory
How’s that an allegory? Taking the red pill is waking to trans reality or something?
Edit: thanks everyone for your responses, it was eye opening. Time for a rewatch.
antidepressants vs HRT
I was typing up a thesis, but this really sums it up, doesn't it lmao
The leading brand of estrogen in the 90s was red.
OH. Hah, I always thought this was one detail they got wrong for some reason, considering estradiol is bluegreen. Should have considered the context back then.
There's a lot. Like the way Agent Smith (representing the system) constantly disrespects Neo's identity and deadnames him.
Taking the red pill (estrogen at the time was a red pill) enables you to see that a lot of society is a facade and there are depths beyond it. In the real world that could be things like learning that there are people and lives that society refused to acknowledge like trans people
Switch was meant to be trans (hence the name I think) and their in matrix visual identity was different to "reality". But corpos didn't like it.
I've always wondered the same. I've watched the trilogy multiple times looking for the trans parallels, but I don't really get it.
Thanks for choosing the right wording! It's certainly one of the ways to read it. And it's also a good idea to sometimes search for a new matrix theory and then doing a re-watch. It is mindblowing how many different, sometimes completely crazy yet beautiful narratives the original trilogy can fit to, all while also being enjoyable as is without any.
Agent Smith identifies as all genders
The movie is a massive allegory for being trans.
Why am I suddenly so fucking old?
The problem is it didn't happen suddenly 😭
It feels like it was longer ago to me, because the Trump presidency and the pandemic seemed to take forever. 2020-2022 alone felt like a decade.
The fifties of Back to Future are closer to the eighties of Back to the Future than their eighties are to now. You're welcome.
There’s a good joke here somewhere that ends “Instead, only try to realize the truth… there is no dick”
Or different body parts or gendered terms as appropriate for the speaker, of course.
It is too bad they weren't able to make Switch a trans character.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard about the trans plan for the character before. But, it sounds like the perfect kind of thing to have in the Matrix. :(
Another major plot point that got shit-canned: The original idea was that the humans would be distributed computing power for the machines, not batteries. That makes a lot more sense, but the studio thought that explanation would be too technical (i.e. confusing) for the audience.
I simultaneously wish they didn’t change that, and understand that they were probably right to do it. I bet if they focus group tested it with random consumers, an 80/20 split preferred the battery over the distributed compute node.
I mean, to the layperson, describing neutral networks, distributed computing, system redundancy, parallelism, and everything else probably sounds like Star Trek or Terminator technobabble.
Maybe not so much in modern times dice “AI” language models and image synthesizers have put some of those terms on the evening news.
They wouldn't have to explain it in any detail. It's not like they explained the battery concept in any detail. All they need is, "they hijacked your brain for its computing power, you may notice you need less sleep outside the matrix."
chainsaw revving in the background
"Not like this... Not like this!"
I mean, that version works pretty well for the Wachowskis.
Doesn't even put "Switch" in the pictures
We're talking about the realness of reality here.
This gender stuff seems rather petty, comparatively.
No, the two went together for a very long time.
Because if the nature of your reality is that physical embodiment is an illusion and that all which really matters is what's inside you, then gender conformity isn't an important issue at all.
For example, this was a saying from an early 'heretical' tradition of Christianity which claimed that we are in a non-physical copy of an original physical world as created by an intelligence the original humanity brought forth (quite simulation hypothesis-y):
Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom."
They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?"
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter."
The idea here was that this realm is the copy of an original that we don't enter in some transition but are literally born into at birth (a rather radically different notion of "born again"). But this would necessarily mean that we are only in the image of the past, but are not foundationally male or female at all, as it's a temporary embodiment recreating the past.
The tradition's key point was to understand the nature of reality and in so understanding to realize that there will be an afterlife, but very close behind that point was pushing the importance of self-knowledge and self-truth:
But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.
So while yes, the notion of reality being simulated is a very big idea objectively, the subjective implications of that being the case are certainly tied to personal identity and in shedding the constraints of physical embodiment on how we define that identity.
Not really. Understanding gender stuff helped me figure out the nature of reality in several ways.
First, it made me realize that we don't have the freedom to choose what we want. We don't choose to desire food or water. We don't choose who we love or what gender feels right. I didn't choose to be trans, and I can't choose to be cis. Like not drinking water, I could avoid transitioning, but I'd die. If not doing something results in death, than there is no real choice on whether or not we can do it.
Second, I realized that we can never have certainty about anything, even what we want or who we are. I thought I was cis for a long time, and I didn't have total certainty that I was trans until I came out and felt better as a result. I didn't know I was a girl or wanted to be a girl, only that I wanted to be trans so I could be a girl.
Third, it helped me understand the true nature of evolution. It is the source of our very understanding of good and bad, right and wrong, but it is a cruel system of pain and suffering fuelled by blood sacrifice. Evolution, despite being the original good, is not good for individuals. Understanding "the good" tells us little about how to be good, ethical people.
I don't give a damn what our creator wants for us, it sucks. I feel a similar way about the Christian conception of God: I don't think anybody should look to a higher authority for their morals. There is no intrinsic good, only good from specific perspectives.
If all that doesn't touch on similar themes as the Matrix and its sequels, I don't know what does.
I think that you are rendering your personal drama in inflated terms. A tempest in your own personal philosophical teapot. It is large and important because it's up in your face. An ant on your nose that you mistake for Godzilla. A trick of perspective.
I mean, people's experiences of romance or their struggles with faith are types of "personal drama" that have informed philosophy and literature for millenia. There's no "trick" in how meaningful gender is in people's lives. Tell any feminist throughout history that their gender hasn't played a large or important role in their life. Is they patriarchal oppression just a tempest in women's philosophical teapot? Are the thousands of dollars in medical expenses I have to pay to not hate my body to the point of suicidal depression an ant I am mistaking for Godzilla?
I'm sorry my biggest problems don't seem important to you. I'll talk about philosophy in regards to trolly switches or impossible hotels or ship maintenance or boulders we have to push up mountains instead. You know, things that matter in our lives 😶
Or maybe whether you paint your fingernails or not is an issue because you make it an issue. You. Not the cosmos, the creator or society. You.
Which, yes, doesn't make it any less of an issue. But, again. Perspective.
Because, and I think I can say this objectively: fingernail polish is very very small.
My only problem with this meme is that it says one movie, but then one of the screen shots is from The Matrix Reloaded not The Matrix.
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