Pop culture and political culture crossing paths is nothing new. But in a world propelled by social media and memes, entertainment can become co-opted by groups that interpret material according to a specific point of view—even when the creators of said material speak out and say that’s not the meaning they intended. Think of the Punisher logo being taken up by real-life police officers, or certain fans of The Boys belatedly realizing that the show is satirizing them, not supporting their beliefs.
One of the original internet-era misappropriations, of course, is the sci-fi masterpiece The Matrix—released in 1999 to great acclaim not just for its visually astonishing fight scenes but also for its exploration of simulation theory. At a key moment, Keanu Reeves’ reluctant hero, Neo, must decide whether to face up to the harsh reality within the Matrix—and join the rebellion against it—or keep living a lie as one of the cogs in its machine.
Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers Neo a choice. “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is; you have to see it for yourself,” Morpheus explains as he opens a small box. He holds out his hands, one holding a red pill, the other a blue pill.
“You take the blue pill; the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Neo chooses red, of course, and The Matrix takes off from there, as he wakes up and breaks free from the pod that’s been imprisoning him his entire life. In recent years, the idea of “taking the red pill” and embracing “the truth” has been adopted by the conservative movement. In doing this, they’ve chosen to overlook the progressive views of the people who dreamed up the “red pill, blue pill” choice in the first place: co-writers and co-directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski.
In the most recent example of Wachowski pushback against “red pill” interpretations popularized by MAGA followers, Lilly Wachowski talked about the phenomenon on the So True With Caleb Hearon podcast. As reported by Deadline, the filmmaker has become accustomed to it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother her.
“You have to let go of your work. People are gonna interpret it however they interpret it,” she said. “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!’ But I have to let it go to some extent … You’re never gonna be able to make absolutely every person believe what you initially intended.”
In addition, Wachowski—who has made it crystal clear in the past that The Matrix is a trans allegory—also noted that “Right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything. They appropriate left-wing points of view, and they mutate them for their own propaganda, for their own to obfuscate what the real message is … That is what fascism does. It takes these things, these ideas that are generally acknowledged as questions or investigations or truisms about humanity and life, and they turn them [into] something else so that they remove the weight of what those things represent.”
You can watch the full episode of So True With Caleb Hearon featuring Lilly Wachowski on YouTube.
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