Thread by @TillyBridges

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Here’s the one you’ve all (apparently!) been waiting for. (NO PRESSURE)

We’re diving head-first into THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, part 1!

🚨CAUTION CAUTION🚨

🚨SPOILERS ABOUND 🚨

🚨CAUTION CAUTION🚨

Also, maybe more than ever before, it is just absolutely REQUIRED you’ve read the threads on the first three movies. As you might expect, the trans allegory again builds off of everything that came before. If you want to understand, it’s the only way.

All of them are linked here:

https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1475194703544864769

Resurrections is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most densely packed movie in the franchise (in terms of the trans allegory). Lana Wachowski has 20 years of being an out trans woman under her belt, and the entire context has changed.

Also, as with the previous movies, there are multiple allegories at work here, and it has a lot to say about a variety of things. There’s very much still a philosophical aspect to it, it’s got important things to say about consumerism and capitalism, and trauma, and aging.

These threads are not for those! I think that stuff’s GREAT, and I love to read about it. Here’s a great one on what it has to say about trauma from @emilyvdw:
vox.com/culture/228475…

If you have others you like, please link me! Just be advised that this is not that. We’re talking the trans allegory ONLY, and that’s a good thing because the movie’s so dense it took me nearly 12 hours and 15000+ words of notes and research to get the full picture.

This movie is about two things: detransitioning, and the co-opting/erasure of trans voices. Very briefly, destransitioning is when someone who has transitioned then transitions back the other way.

I have not detransitioned, nor ever seriously considered it, so I needed a bit of extra context. And I’d like to thank @MPersephoneRose for being honest and open about detransitioning, and answering my questions to help me be sure I was understanding things correctly.

The context provided confirmed what I’d been thinking, and will help me help *you* get a much better idea of everything the movie’s talking about. You’ll get more info on this (and the erasure/co-opting of trans voices) later on.

Important things to know:
1. Trinity is still Neo’s self-actualization
2. Morpheus is still his subconscious
3. Niobe is still his confidence
4. Red is still truth, blue is still doubt, yellow is still fear
5. Keep an eye on Neo’s coat (oh, no reason)

There are a handful of new characters, though most of them play minor roles we’ll talk about as needed. Except for everybody’s new favorite: BUGS.

Bugs is now Neo’s heart. The Oracle was his heart previously, and as to the how/why of the switch, again, we’ll discuss when we get there. Ah, but I hear you say, “TILLY! THEN WHY THE FUCK IS HER HAIR BLUE??”

Because Neo. Has doubt. In his heart.

Remember past movies have shown you that doubt isn’t always bad. The kind Cypher represented was the WORST, but Link’s kind wasn’t bad at all. It was… understandable. And this doubt? This doubt is GOOD. Why? How? Read on.

But note that doesn’t mean all blue in this movie is good doubt. There are plenty of bad, awful doubts lurking too. And isn’t it so interesting that Neo’s always got a woman in his heart. How about that. Weird!

Also I’m sorry but this one’s going to be much longer than most. The opening of the movie is maybe the densest part and there’s too much that needs to be explained. Splitting it in the middle just feels wrong. So settle in and grab some popcorn, true believers. Off we go.

1:29 - We’ll talk about the Modal more in a bit, but note the 101. We know what that means from movies 1 and 2. Back to the beginning. The modal has been BREACHED by a USER.

And that user is Bugs. The heart has broken through to this place where everything’s broken and wrong. Her first line: “Seq, I’m in.” She says the same words Trinity did when she first appeared in Reloaded. Foreshadowing the Bugs/Trinity connection we’ll get to much later on.

She notes her entrance was a skylight/window pane. Windows/mirrors/reflections are the ways in or out of this world Neo has made (and the world he finds himself in).

1:55 - We’re zooming in through the 0 - this is PART OF THE BINARY (0/1), but zero also = nothing. There’s NOTHING for Neo here in the BINARY.

2:06 - Our first reflection, and the world is upside down. This is the opposite of the truth. Not because this is a little box inside Neo’s head, but because Neo’s world is upside-down.

2:26 - Notice in this reflection of the real world, where Neo’s been turned upside-down, the cops are much more heavily armed than in the first movie. The danger is higher, the task more difficult.

2:30 - There’s no 303 on the door. This is not where Trinity was, this is not where Neo got to, there is no self-actualization to be found here.

2:37 - And in this corner of Neo’s mind, we find Trinity… but not really. We know that’s not really her.

2:51 - The Heart o’ the City hotel again. We’re back where it all began, but things have changed and the world is not the same.

2:56 - So this is obviously Morpheus, and we’ll get to why he thinks he’s an Agent shortly, but even if you didn’t know this actor was the new Morpheus, if you’ve been paying attention this should have pulled you up short. A Black man? As an agent of the system?

Again, something has gone very, very wrong. Everything you’ve seen in these three short minutes is conveying that to you. Things are fucked. up.

3:04 - Just like in the first movie, we get: “I think we can handle one little girl.” The one inside the heart.

3:15 - Morpheus: “No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead.” He’s directly quoting Smith from the original, which is important to remember for later.

3:35 - Seq: “This is a direct violation of the general’s protocols.” As we learn later the “general" in question is Niobe. She doesn’t want them there, ergo Neo has no confidence in his heart and doesn’t want it anywhere near his subconscious. He’s hiding something, from himself.

3:40 - Bugs stays, because she knows something important is happening with the fake Trinity in the Modal. The heart always knows when things are wrong.

4:15 - Bugs: “We know this story. This is how it all began.” Seq: “You’re thinking this modal is a loop? Or a treadmill? Some sort of sequencer evolving a program to do what?” So not only is Neo hiding something from himself, he’s made it so he doesn’t have to deal with it. Ever.

These clues are telling you what’s going on with him. It’s why this Trinity is not the real Trinity. These memories aren’t really mine. They didn’t really happen. THAT WASN’T REALLY ME, BECAUSE THAT’S NOT WHAT I LOOKED LIKE WHEN I SELF-ACTUALIZED.

4:40 - As faux-Trinity runs, the lights in the city are… yellow. So much fear.

4:47 - But the sign is RED, the truth is still here. And the truth IS LITERALLY A SIGN. And what does this sign say? “Sabor a Mierda,” which means “the taste of shit.” Whatever’s going on, the TRUTH of it is that it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

4:59 - As she runs, the entire street is yellow. This is a path of fear. The path of fear will return again and again and again, it’s a recurring motif, as you’ll see. Because that’s what Neo’s existence is now.

5:01 - An Agent takes her down. This does not play out like before. This is not his true self-actualization.

Bugs notes it’s all wrong, this isn’t the way it happened. Seq wonders why you’d use old “code” to MIRROR something new. Clues clues clues.

5:25 - Seq and Bugs are awash in yellow, fear over what this means.

5:32 - Bugs: “Maybe this isn’t the story we think it is.” Despite being back at the beginning, this is not the story of Neo’s acceptance/transition. That story was already told. What’s going on here is different. Clues clues clues!

5:41 - Bugs is caught… by Morpheus. The subconscious has been locked down and MADE INTO A TOOL OF THE SYSTEM (again, cluing you in to what’s happened to Neo), and it wants to stomp out the doubts in his heart about this not being the way it should be!

6:01 - Bugs holds her own in this fight, the doubt in our heart is STRONG. But the heart and our subconscious are at odds.

6:21 - Morpheus does a Smithy-ian tug on his suit coat. This is the second time he’s directly connected to Smith. Have you figured out what’s going on with Neo’s subconscious yet?

6:37 - To escape this conflict, where the subconscious has been made into part of the system, Bugs runs. Toward. The. Truth.

Even if that truth tastes like shit.

6:49 - The sign she uses to break her fall, but that breaks and sparks as she falls, reads ANDERSONS, Neo’s surname from his deadname days. The letters are in BLUE, except for the O aka the ZERO we originally zoomed into. It is RED, and it is STRUCK THROUGH.

The heart is destroying the fake reality he’s made for himself. The deadname is a lie, the truth is you are not a 0, aka not part of the binary.

And the small sign attached says “For those who love to eat shit.”

“For those who love” is in RED. “EAT SHIT” is in BLUE. Love (of self) is the truth, the shit you’re presenting eating is the lie. What shit is he eating, that leaves a bad taste in his mouth? We’re almost there.

The sign shatters, calling back to all the glass shattering/Neo’s worry in Reloaded that his world would shatter and he’d lose his self-actualization.

6:52 - Because here it’s his DEADNAME and his belief he has to EAT SHIT that shatter. The doubt in his heart is breaking him out of the prison he finds himself in!

7:14 - The Agents should have had Bugs cornered, but she’s escaped somehow. The doubt in his heart has been freed from the tiny box he put them in, and even his subconscious couldn’t stop them. He’s going to have to deal with them sooner or later.

7:20 - And the doubts in our heart didn’t just escape society and our converted subconscious, but look at the back building. Our doubts have escaped a wall of fear.

7:23 - Bugs enters… a key shop. Our heart escaping all that society and our corrupted subconscious and our fear has thrown at us is the key to solving the predicament we find ourselves in.

7:29 - A NEON BANANA in the background. This symbolizes peeling back the fear to get to the sweet interior where - NO, COME ON. But it’s funny. :)

7:39-7:49 - Watch the very deliberate colors as Bugs tries to escape the pursuing agent. She walks through yellow/fear, down past doubt, and toward the truth.

7:56 - Morpheus appears behind her, the subconscious is literally looking at the heart sideways. After their brief encounter, PERSPECTIVE HAS CHANGED.

8:00 - He pulls her into the limbo between worlds. She’s afraid, because he was an Agent of the system, but of course he’s now waking up to the truth. Our subconscious wants to engage with our doubts honestly, but has to be away from society in order to do it.

8:26 - She says her name is Bugs, as in “bunny,” the very obvious allusion to the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland that appeared in the first movie, and appears again later. But in this instance literally following these doubts in your heart will lead you back to wonderland.

But she ALSO says her name is reference to tech “that listens.” What do you think the heart does?

She knows Neo, she knows Morpheus, she has listened and taken to heart their earlier beliefs in the first three movies, and that’s why she doubts that the way things are now is the way they should be, she is the doubt in his heart that BUGS him.

8:30 - She says a Modal is a simulation used to evolve programs. So let’s talk about modals! In our world modals are a few different things. They can be a window in front of your main program that DISABLES THE MAIN PROGRAM, and works like its own mini-program within the main one.

This is the world Neo has put himself in to ignore the truth.

But did you know… did you KNOW it also applies to anything that relates to or favors FORM over SUBSTANCE.

Do you understand what simply calling this mini-world a modal means? Neo has locked his subconscious within a FALSE WORLD that obscures the real one, and this false world favors form (presenting as a man) over SUBSTANCE (the woman he truly is on the inside). I JUST. 🤯

God damn that is so good.

8:50 - Morpheus says he knows his job (he doesn’t), and calls Bugs a “synthient,” which by the movie’s own definition later on, she absolutely isn’t.

The subconscious is confused and entirely turned around. How does that happen? You’ll see more of this later, but it’s because the hope for the peaceful future Revolutions tried for DIDN’T HAPPEN.

Society didn’t keep its part of the bargain. So Neo detransitioned because he felt he couldn’t deal with it anymore, and now he’s become a tool of the system and has tried to force his subconscious to do the same. But the subconscious doesn’t work like that, does it?

9:10 - Morpheus: “No one was ever in the key shop. So I started looking.” Bugs: “The more you looked, the more you found.”

Neo’s done everything possible to keep his subconscious from accessing the key to his true freedom, aka listening to those doubts in his heart that he was wrong to detransition.

And even the tiniest sliver of doubt woke up the subconscious, who said HEY HOLD THE FUCK UP.

And this is the story of Bugs, because she DIDN’T EXIST before. Both as she hadn’t been born yet in the surface sci-fi world, but because these are NEW doubts that only crept into Neo’s heart after Neo detransitioned!

9:33 - And where is it that our subconscious is beginning to listen to and come to terms with our heart? BACK WHERE IT ALL STARTED, in Neo’s original apartment (which confirms what the 101 in the opening shot told you).

As everything has told you so far, though the reasons and circumstances are different, Neo’s back where he started aka he needs to accept his transness and choose to transition. Also note the badge is showing you Neo is (again) boxed in inside the metacortex!

But Neo already escaped it, and we know things are different now. Why? Because he’s got to do it AGAIN. And the only reason you’d have to do that is if… you detransitioned.

9:44 - re: Thomas Anderson, Morpheus: “I searched everywhere. He doesn’t exist.” Of course he doesn’t! That’s never who Neo truly was. The subconscious knows this! It’s waking up!

9:50 - Bugs: “He stopped being Thomas a long time ago, but maybe you know him by his real name. ...most people think that Neo is dead. But I know he’s not.”

It’s very important to note it’s the HEART saying this, reminding the subconscious, because it’s showing you these doubts are well-founded and RIGHT.

10:12 - We get a shot of Bugs being a window washer. Remember the first movie, showing Neo still locked inside the Metacortex, looking out as the world became clearer? And now he’s back inside and this shows you who/what will help him see clearly again.

Bugs, the doubt in his heart, is now the one making things clearer. It’s the only part of him that’s presently seeing things clearly. And what does she see?

Standing alongside fear, she saw Neo and knew the truth, which led to her BECOMING what she is. It woke her up to becoming the thing in our heart that bugs us and won’t leave us alone, that lets us know we’re living a lie.

And so at 10:30, right on cue - “The moment he looked at me, I felt something unlock my mind.”

10:42 - Morpheus says something like that happened to him, and we get a shot of him (without his real world forced body modifications, to show you Neo was trying to be cis), surrounded by yellow. And something in the mirror/his reflection was like a splinter in his mind.

No they didn’t reuse that line, but that’s exactly what it is, and how realizing you’re trans starts, and it happened to Neo’s subconscious first, now as before, because that’s always where it begins.

In one of his brief moments of awakening, the bold red line shows you this was the path to truth.

Note this is the later shop Neo is inside as Trinity’s reflection passes by (it’s an important moment, but we won’t get there for a while). Just note Neo’s subconscious was, naturally, there first. I’ll remind you of this moment when it comes up again.

11:06 - He touched the mirror, and it rippled. Knowing something was wrong with the reflection, AGAIN, opened his mind, and it sent ripples out through the subconscious.

11:13 - Morpheus: “And suddenly I understood.” Bugs: “This is not the real world.” The prison the subconscious has been locked in by Neo’s detransitioning, and presenting as a man again, pretending to BE a man, is Not. The. Real. World.

11:20 - Morpheus: “For the first time I felt I had real purpose. I knew who I was, and what I had to do.” Neo’s subconscious realized the truth, and knew that detransitioning was a lie, it was wrong, and he needed to (again) set things right.

He confirms he IS Morpheus. He looks different now because Neo has changed, he locked his truth away so he could pretend to conform, and that CHANGES YOU.

This Morpheus is a program in the surface story, aka he’s been changed by society. But our subconscious is still our subconscious, and at its core it’s still the same.

And his mission? Well, it’s right there at 11:38. “I have to find Neo.” Yep yep yep.

The heart embraces the subconscious, reunited they’re all Neo needs to re-self-actualize. If they can get through to him.

11:57 - Bugs offers him red/blue pills, and he comments on how that’s no choice.

And she confirms the first time someone offered them to her she went off on “binary conceptions of the world,” which is acknowledging that there’s more than binary m/f, which these movies have obviously always said…

But there’s more than binary cis/trans, which the movies only INDIRECTLY said before. This is TEXT acknowledging all the people who aren’t cis but aren't trans men or women: non-binary, agender, gender fluid, and every other gender (or lack thereof) someone can be.

Bugs then says that the choice is an illusion, and it is, because Morpheus knows what he HAS to do. Choosing to keep living a lie is not a real choice at all, not for Neo. It was a mistake that has to be corrected.

And Neo’s not non-binary, he’s very clearly a trans woman. I know the pronouns get so wonky talking about this, but I try to stick with what they use in the surface sci-fi story.

Though something interesting’s gonna happen with them whenever we get to the end. But do not go calling any trans women “he” or trans men “she”, okay? DON’T.

12:30 - Morpheus says “Truth.” And takes the red pill. I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU. Anyway, Neo’s subconscious has woken up (again) to the truth he’s a woman, and is fully on board with making self-actualization happen again. And for good.

13:02 - As he struggles with extraction, Bugs puts her blue glasses on him. He now fully sees the same doubt she does.

13:15 - Morpheus accidentally wobbles up into the key shop, and greets AGENT WHITE. Again… I have been telling you they’re always cis white men, this dude literally is. Making sure you really don’t miss it this time around.

White mistakes him for Smith, who we last saw as the personification of transphobia, and we’ve seen Morpheus directly call back to him multiple times. But Morpheus LAUGHS. Because no, not anymore and never again.

But now that he sees the doubt about detransitioning clearly, it’s the heart’s turn to return the favor and save him.

And then Morpheus and Bugs run from cis white male society… out of a theater with a YELLOW sign showing you that cis white male fear is the ROOT OF ALL EVIL. And they’re running on a RED carpet/path to truth. How much more blatant do you need Ms. Wachowski to be?

Also I LOVE all the Sense8 actors who appear in this movie (and there are many!), but also: peep that sign giving a call out to the sweetest soft boi Lito, also from Sense8. Yay. Glad he’s getting work.

14:00 - They run through another path of fear and dive through a window, shattering the “ordered” world Neo set up to subdue them, one that mimics the binary of the cis matrix.

14:18 - And when we pull out you see that indeed this was not the “real world,” and Neo’s doubts and subconscious were never part of it. He’d just sequestered them away in a tiny little box in the corner of his mind where he pretended the cis binary matrix is real.

14:23 - And just look how miserable detransitioning, conforming, and pretending to be Thomas Anderson, has made him. He’s even got a denial beard. My heart breaks.

Next time we’re going to find out what happens when Neo’s heart and subconscious have broken free, what that’s going to do to him, and what he’s going to do (or not do) about it.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.