More than 25 years later The matrixLilly Wachowski is not surprised by the right’s misinterpretation of her magnum opus and that of her sister Lana Wachowski.
After the film’s revealing “red pill” accidentally became a symbol of the MAGA movement, the co-writer/co-director attributed it to an example of “what fascism does” as she talked about parting ways with her work.
“You have to give up your work. People are going to interpret it the way they interpret it,” she explained on the So true with Caleb Hearon podcast. “I look at all the crazy and mutating theories around The matrix movies and the crazy ideologies those movies helped create and I just say, “What are you doing?” No! This is false! » But I have to let it go to a certain extent… You will never succeed in making absolutely everyone believe what you initially wanted.
In the now iconic scene of The matrixLaurence Fishburne’s Morpheus offers Neo (Keanu Reeves) the choice between taking a blue pill, which will keep him in blissful ignorance of the simulated reality he lives in, and a red pill, which will unplug him from the Matrix and open his eyes to the truth.
Having previously noted that the trilogy was a metaphor for the transgender experience, Wachowski told Hearon: “Right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything. They appropriate left-wing views and twist them for their own propaganda, for their own propaganda, to obscure the real message. That’s what fascism does. And so, of course, that’s going to happen.”
Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix” (1999)
Warner Bros/Everett
“That’s what fascism does,” she added. “It takes these things, these ideas that are generally recognized as questions or inquiries or truisms about humanity and life, and transforms them into something else in order to remove the weight of what those things represent.”
With The matrixAs Donald Trump’s Red Pill became a symbol for Donald Trump’s supporters during his presidential career, Wachowski criticized his supporters, such as Elon Musk and his daughter Ivanka Trump, for misinterpreting the film.
