\n<\/p>\n
As an artist, how do you react when a political party appropriates a concept you invented? It\u2019s a question that Lilly<\/strong> Wachowski<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> codirector of the Matrix<\/em> trilogy<\/a>, has had to contend with since the concept of becoming \u201cred-pilled\u201d\u2014a.k.a. becoming politically aligned with radical far-right ideology\u2014went mainstream. In a recent interview<\/a> with comedian Caleb Hearon<\/strong><\/a> on his podcast, So True<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Wachowski said she\u2019s learned that \u201cyou have to let go of your work,\u201d as well as people\u2019s perceptions of it: \u201cPeople are gonna interpret it however they interpret it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI look at all of the crazy, mutant theories around the Matrix<\/em> films, and the crazy ideologies that those films helped create, and I just go, What are you doing? No! That\u2019s wrong!\u201d Wachowski continued. \u201cBut I have to let it go to some extent\u2026You\u2019re never gonna be able to make absolutely every person believe what you initially intended.\u201d<\/p>\n The concept of becoming \u201cred-pilled\u201d dates back to arguably the most famous scene from The Matrix<\/em> (1999), the seminal science fiction film starring Keanu Reeves<\/strong> as computer hacker Neo, which Wachowski directed with her older sister, Lana Wachowski<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> In the film, Neo is presented with the choice of \u201cblue pill or red pill\u201d\u2014not knowing that if he takes the red pill, he\u2019ll be freed from the Matrix. Since 2004, the phrase \u201cred pill\u201d has been defined on Urban Dictionary<\/em>\u00a0as signifying \u201ca free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a \u2018normal\u2019 life of sloth and ignorance.\u201d But in more recent years, right-wing conservatives have co-opted the term to describe someone who has purportedly \u201cwoken up\u201d from the liberal political agenda and is now aligned with right-wing ideology.<\/p>\n In August 2020, Lilly Wachowski, who publicly came out as trans in 2016<\/a>, four years after her elder sister, Lana, came out as trans<\/a>, said that the \u201coriginal intention\u201d<\/a> of the Matrix<\/em> trilogy was for it to be an allegory for the trans experience. But \u201cthe corporate world wasn\u2019t quite ready\u201d for that narrative, she maintained.\u00a0 In her interview with Hearon, Wachowski said that she was unsurprised that conservatives have latched on to the film because \u201cright-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey appropriate left-wing points of view and they mutate them for their own propaganda, for their own to obfuscate what the real message is,\u201d she continued. \u201cThis is what fascism does. And so, of course, that\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Original story appeared in<\/em> VF France<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n