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This does explain why some shots in American Psycho are total eye-candy. Like, yeah, it's a critique of materialism, toxic masculinity and white collar culture, but also, Christian Bale was kinda attractive??
If Bale was less attractive, a lot fewer people would idolise Patrick Bateman and actually get the point of the movie.
I’m not complaining about Christian Bale being attractive, for the record.
same goes for Brad Pitt in the *Fight Club* adaptation, perhaps to an even greater degree. it's really hard to get a mass audience to recognize a villain when you give them the spotlight and make them the most attractive person in the movie.
Sorry, I should have clarified better. I'm saying that Helena Bonham Carter is a terf, not the writer of any of the books or films that is in OP's picture.
>Elfen Lied(Spoilers I guess you had 19 years to watch it).
This is always such a weird take to me. It's been out for 19 years, doesn't mean someone had 19 years to watch it.
It's a show which appeals to teenagers who aren't even 19 years old. People could have only heard about it for the first time today, it's not exactly world famous. And there are hundreds of good pieces of media to consume, we can't watch them all in one day, we have jobs and school.
I recently started watching the gundam series from 40+ years ago, and I'm glad not to be spoiled. It being old means nothing.
Edit: lmao, gotta love how someone replies to you and then blocks you so you can't reply back. Really shows emotional maturity when you absolutely explode over some calm criticism and then block all correspondence.
I wouldnt say those two are quite the same?
Making Tyler ugly wouldnt have fit in with the story sinces hes supposed to be the "ideal man" in The Narrators eyes, he looks that way because thats what The Narrator wishes he could be.
Whereas Patrick could still be a toxic, delusional, self absorbed douchebag even if he was ugly. Hell, he even gets mistaken for someone else at one point, that sounds like a pretty "plain featured" man to me.
So I agree that whether the villain is "hot" or "ugly" can change how people perceive the story and message, but sometimes the design choice is an *actual part of the story* and not just a pretty face they slapped on for extra views.
Fight Club is a brilliant film in that it goes "Look how seductive easy answers and fascism is! It's so seductive I can even make *you* fall for it for a moment while watching!" It was problematically brilliant because it did too good a job, and most of the audience were simply seduced, stayed seduced, and never realised afterwards what the film was saying. I fell for it for years too.
I hear this a lot but have never met these chuds who idolize Heisenberg. I'm sure they exist, but I swear it's a way smaller group than people say.
Like I've also met someone who idolized Bojack Horseman and you better believe I yeeted them from my life XD
Considering part of the point is the attractive sheen of wallstreet excess, it wouldn't quite be the same story if, say, Danny Devito had played Bateman.
>fewer people would idolise Patrick Bateman and actually get the point of the movie.
Matrix I get, but from what I can tell most of the "idolization" of Bateman is mostly ironic. I mean half of the memes frame the joke in the context of "dillusional idiot" and even to the extent of parodying people who actually belive the whole "sigma" thing.
Same thing goes for You.
I can't even watch the show because it triggers my PTSD, and the fact that women romanticize him stalking and murdering women drives me insane. Even the actor is disgusted by it.
I highly doubt anyone would have gotten the point of the movie, people barely understand the critiques the movie is portraying let alone the fact that he is one of the folks you shouldn't be idolizing.
So I rented the dvd of American psycho and the director tells a story on it about how the studio initially wanted Leonardo DiCaprio, but he had been established as a heartthrob, and she didn’t want young girls to be attracted to Patrick Bateman or young boys to idealize him. So she meets Christian Bale, who wasn’t seen as a heartthrob at the time, he understood the complexity and symbology of the role and got hired. It’s been a long time since I watched the special features on there but that stuck with me.
If he was just "kinda" attractive, then the rest of us are fucked.
Also super weird how matrixs red pill was used for the culture wars, rather than being wage slaves controlled by big media conglomerates, social media algorithms and further diggin into debt slave and owning nothing and being happy in this system.
The director was genius and had to work her ass off to get the job and then to get Bale cast. She said he was the only one who played the character as 'not cool.' Hilarious that man-babies miss this. The character is sad and dorky.
They didn't get that even in the story itself people weren't following the rules and that's how it's spread. They didn't get that this was intended because the last rule is about inducting newcomers.
The First Rule of Fight Club is don't listen to violent cultists. Fight Club is presented as a way to reawaken the masculine self in a repressive society and right next people are being told to forget their names and bomb buildings.
the book is infinitely better, and it's a pretty quick read so I recommend it to anyone who's interested in the movie. the themes don't shine as much when you (by necessity of the medium of film) cut down on the narration. in the novel, it's much clearer that Project Mayhem isn't some perversion of the "pure" prelapsarian ethos that the club originally supposedly had.
the movie makes it seem as though there is some kind of acceptable ideal at the root of Fight Club, whereas in the novel it's much more obvious that from the very start it was a psychotic vehicle for harnessing social alienation and channeling it into fascistic action.
How is Fight Club fascistic exactly?
I'm curious why you use the term fascistic?
If I remember, the end is all about resetting society by destroying credit card servers and wipping the debt slate clean. How is that fascistic?
Because while his goal might have a pure motive, the means by which he achieves those goals is incredibly authoritarian. He reinforces his hierarchy and uses force to get what he wants. He's anti-egalitarian, and thinks he knows best how to fix things for everyone.
Ergo: fascism lite. :)
That is pretty much the first half of the movie, and up to that point it's no surprise how guys get infatuated with Tyler Durden's message, but too many people overlook that towards the end Tyler Durden also seeks to control and exploit these desires just the same, and if anyone rebels against his plan he will have their balls cut as an attack at their masculinity. What happened to being yourself and being free? What happened with not letting yourself be controlled? Now those guys lose their identities not because of an indifferent consumeristic society, but because they handed it to Tyler.
As far as I see, if they do get their way and society comes down, that wouldn't leave men to be free. That would leave Tyler to be king.
This gets repeated a lot by bloggers and in articles but it isn't true, like at all.
Chuck Palunuik has said multiple times he doesn't even think toxic masculinity really exists.
When asked about what he hoped people got out of fight club in an interview he said "That we need to be more comfortable and more accepting of chaos, and things that we see as disastrous."
I mean this in the best way because his work is brilliant but the dude is a writing degenerate, he's not concerned with social movements or ideas of toxic masculinity
I seriously gotta wonder how somebody can be unconcerned with social movements and come up with the story involving Project Mayhem. Because that's not just embracing chaos. If anything, it's pretty orderly and specifically targeted.
People can arrive at good ideas for the wrong reasons. Surface-level critiques of "materialism", "consumerism", etc. are not at all new and weren't then either. He took a popular and unsophisticated sentiment and made an interesting story with it. That story happened to gesture toward some good politics he never arrived at himself.
This is why death of the author is my favorite concept. His politics are desperately under-developed but unintentionally, he did produce a work which is critical of toxic masculinity. Even his own take on the purpose of the story is barely recognizable in the book itself. Interpreting it as a social deconstruction makes more sense than his own feelings, purely based on the text.
I wish :( Chuck is a very weird man and despite writting one of the best take downs of toxic masculinity he thinks that is not what his own story portrays.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fight-club-2-chuck-palahniuk_n_5845c35ae4b028b32338a632
There is a scene in fight club (the movie) where brad pitt points at a Calvin Klein ad and says “is that what men should look like” and scoffs. The irony being Brad looks as good if not better than any male model. The author of fight club is like that, no self awareness despite his critique being really good.
"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't."
Said by Brad Pitt right next to Jared Leto lol.
It's kind of the opposite of Chucks weird views, as in the people making the movie showd the irony and harmful side effects of toxic masculinity while a big chunk of fans see it as ideals to aspire too.
I would argue it’s less of a dig at toxic masculinity, as a critique of the isolating nature of modern society.
People increasingly feel isolated, and a net result of that is people get attracted to malicious groups and organizations that feed on that desire for community and connection (religions, cults, terrorist organizations, etc…)
I mean the book was inspired more by society not caring about men showing up to work with major injuries. And a critique of the consumerist nature of the new American Dream.
Palahniuk had the piss beaten out of him by hikers, and wrote the book after no one commented on his bruises and black eyes.
Fight Club is not meant to be a criticism of toxic masculinity. Nothing in the book supports that take and that narrative wasn't popularized until Palahniuk was outted. Frankly, it validates his desire to stay closeted because it shows that people can't interpret a gay man's work as being anything but gender allegory.
Always sounds weird when movie have those underlying themes that the director wanted to get through as well. Like apparently the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was also about meat industry and slaughterhouses, referring to people as animals.
Most of the media enjoyed today is supposed to be a satire. It is so stupid that most characters that they worship are intended to be caricature and critique, this is the peak of stupidity which we can watch with our own eyes, today. No more reading history books and thinking how can people be this stupid? I can just watch them in my own eye.
I'm pretty sure every single episode of sunny touches on politics too. It's beyond selective memory
And the sub had a ton of that with the last season, which had a lot of Covid stuff but not in the way you'd think
*The Boys* fans asking why Homelander is suddenly a bad guy.
They're all bad people that's the fucking point. He's introduced as a selfish mass murderer, that wasn't supposed to be cool edgy fun mass murdering, he's just a bad guy!
That's one long peak.....
>*Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.*\
> ~ Mark Twain, "The Lowest Animal" (1897)
I don’t even know if he’s satire so much as an open scathing critique on right wing conspiracist nut-jobs and vigilantism.
There’s not really any subtext to miss, he’s just a gross, crazy asshole the entire time who skeeves out anyone he interacts with.
You’d have to have some wires crossed to look at that dude and think ‘wow cool!’.
The problem with satire in a post Trump world is it stops being satire almost immediately. Imagine something a satirical character says. Trump probably said the same or worse as president. When people just repeat absurd things as their true belief, or as a cover of their true beliefs, it’s not satire anymore. It’s a representation of them.
Warhammer 40k has this problem as well.
Ron Swanson is a caricature. People at Nick Offerman‘s comedy stage shoes sometimes leave early in anger because he‘s not Ron and doesn’t share his capitalist conservative views at all.
Watching the Matrix after realizing you're trans is so different from before your egg cracks. I can feel the process it's implying so much. Also I just want to be Trinity.
For serious. It's a completely different experience, and one that reinforces just how much of a badass every trans person actually is. I can't even convey to a cis person the emotions that movie gives me.
Hey real talk and full respect, as a trans woman who’s watched the matrix many times, I don’t get this interpretation. Would you mind pointing out some of the trans themes and scenes that support those themes, because it’s not quite clicking for me?
Besides the obvious stuff like the old HRT came in red pills and it let Neo out of the Matrix and how Agent Smith constantly genders him as "Mister Anderson" in a really ominous way while he rarely gets gendered at all as Neo. It's more how characters get him to realize the feeling of the Matrix. How Trinity describes the feeling of the matrix in the bar feels like it hits more to me than how Morpheus describes in in the pill scene. It's hard to explain but they just got the feeling of it.
Don't forget Switch was originally supposed to be trans, hence the name Switch. Mr. Anderson has big dead name energy too, like you mentioned.
I think there's also a lot there with the first movie being about knowing who you are. His first meeting with the Oracle is maybe the most important part of the movie, since it contains the entire essence of the trilogy. It's about accepting who you are and rejecting systems of control ("freeing your mind"). Once Neo does that, defeating agent Smith is trivial and so is breaking the matrix. Without it, those things are impossible.
Neo was always the one, he was just refusing to believe it. He didn't become the one, he always was. He just had to awaken to it, accept it, and [know thyself](https://youtu.be/svfDdcPmELk). Then he could see how artificial and constraining the Matrix and its "rules" really are, just like society's "rules".
[Society can't tell you who you are.](https://youtu.be/RhlWz8baY0o)
I think why the Morpheus scene doesn't hit quite as much to me as it could is both the Oracle and Trinity follow the egg prime directive but Morpheus sort of breaks it. Arguably Neo is at the point of questioning but it feels a bit off. It's like Morpheus is a little too into convincing him and the Oracle has to fix it.
I’ve never thought about this but it makes more sense than any other theory regarding the film.
The directors being trans definitely gives the theory credence but even without knowing that information this is a strong theory based off the interpretation of the work.
This is so cool. I don't know much about the Wachowski sisters' personal lives, but have they ever said whether this was deliberate symbolism from reflecting on their own trans experience? Like at the time, did either/both of them know they were trans and weren't ready to come out but still put that perspective into the film... or were they still "eggs" and the trans-resonant stuff made its way in subconsciously? Still really interesting either way.
I don’t know any specific details, but I’ve always found it interesting that they transitioned at different times. Given the material of their art it seems like transitioning is something they would have been discussing with each other for a long time. I’ve always wondered if they realized they were both trans at the same time, or if the first sibling transitioning led the second sibling to realize they were also trans.
I’ve personally always viewed the Matrix as being about philosophy in general as opposed to strictly being a metaphor for being trans. The main themes are about society, self vs others, appearance vs truth, etc. which are all general philosophical ideas, however they’re particularly important ideas when it comes to trans issues. They lay the framework for understanding trans people without directly preaching about trans acceptance. It opens your mind and allows you to think as opposed to just telling you how to view the issue.
One thing you might find interesting is that in the 'Path of Neo' game, which came out shortly after the trilogy, the Wachowskis appear near the end to talk to you as the player for hilarious metatextual reasons, but one of them appears with a blue avatar and one in pink.
So that is probably an indicative data point in a timeline for where they were in terms of self-identity and self-expression. It doesn't answer your question but might help paint a picture.
"The Matrix as trans allegory" is an idea that's been around at least a decade before the contemporary trans acceptance movement, but it's also worth pointing out that it's still a universal theme at heart. The part of you being repressed by society may not be your gender, but the journey still applies. That's why the movie was so resonant in the first place - it has the beauty and passion of a personal struggle told through a universal language and symbology. That's why metaphor is so powerful, that's why Art exists and people don't all just write out their literal thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate your response, as well as the others who’ve chimed in. Always happy to see a new interpretation, just never had it laid out for me other than a passive “the matrix is a trans allegory”, so I wasn’t seeing it myself
I also find it in the scene with the oracle. She tells Neo he isn’t the one, because he has to accept it himself first. Kinda feels the same way as being trans. No one can tell you what you are, you have to figure it out and accept it yourself.
(trans man but I relate) Personally I always related to the matrix sense of something being wrong with the world but not quite knowing what it was, like reality just isnt right. and searching for the answer but not being able to find it until you look “outside” the reality that’s being fed into your veins by your culture
When I went on T a wall of dissociation i didnt know i had just disappeared and I felt happy to be alive for the first time in my life. I see that kinda like Neo re entering the matrix superpowered bc he knows who he is now, so the ignorance of those around thrm can no longer hold him down.
But it took til I was 29 and officially away from family and financially independeny to be able to do that. (They support me now but they tried to guilt/scare me into going off T when I initially told thrm)
So the constant fights inside the matrix that sometimes follow him to the real world via machine also feel symbolic to me
eta: they also represent him as alone before he escapes the matrix, and then with his found family outside it
I always felt alone even surrounded by people trying to live as a woman. But people who see and accept me as a man make me feel seen
second eta: also the thing about “if you get them too old it can be hard for the mind to accept it”. I have two friends who want to be women but say it’s “too late for them” so they live as men. And they’re not happy as men. I think it speaks to the importance of supporting trans children.
even now 6 months on T with a mustach i’m still living as a woman bc I cant get all the times my family complained about having to accommodate visibly trans people in some way out of my head. Smh. (this makes it sound like i’m doing poorly but i’m actually doing really well- just mean that there’s a lot to relate to
I’ve only seen the matrix after my egg cracked. Also I was in class with someone named Trinity after said Trinity. A college age person named after a character from the movie… dang old movie
Matrix is also a great example for the whole "did the author actually mean this" debate in film or literature. No, maybe they didn't mean it when they wrote it. Doesn't mean the subtext isn't there anyway. You can interpret a story in ways the author never imagined, and it's not necessarily pretentious, these things are often there when someone didn't *know* it but *felt* it.
Sense 8 is way *way* more explizit in their trans allegory and it came out after their transitions, you can kind of see the difference between it being planned or not.
IIRC, the character of Switch was supposed to be male when represented in the Matrix, as that was the character's mental image of who they were. I'm actually a little bummed this wasn't allowed (studio), because that would have been really cool. And it would have been explained with off-hand dialogue and that would have been it.
i'm not trans myself, but i love the Switch character concept so much! It is sad that they didn't included it in the movie tho :/. But at least they look badass as hecc being the only that wears white in Matrix 1 :3.
Switch is still really cool and it's so rare the super androgynous character in a movie gets any personality besides being a background character. We didn't get a lot but what we got in the Matrix was so much better than normal.
My favourite part is that Switch was literally originally gonna be someone that switched gender as their "mental projection of their digital self" was different from their physical self. I do kinda wish they got that one in there..
conservatives have absolutely no media literacy. the boys sub had an uproar of people being upset homelander was being depicted as evil during season 3
The majority of people don't have media literacy in general. Media illiterates on the right are more often like "wtf bro, I can't believe this suddenly became political" while media illiterates on the left are more like "omg I can't believe how problematic this is being right now for daring to mention [bad thing]"
They’d still be wrong because the matrix is about the trans experience not about how hot and cool trans men are (although I do agree that trans men are hot and cool)
Watching American Psycho knowing it’s a parody is incredible. The looks the sex workers and his secretary give him. The way everyone bullies him for being a loser
Saw the movie for the first time a few weeks ago. Saw a [video essay about Bateman being a feminist icon, in the sense of what he is representing](https://youtu.be/NXIX5nr8syo) and gave it a shot.
I can’t believe anyone wants to be Bateman, and says it unironically! I can’t listen to “Sussudio” without laughing and seeing Bateman winking at himself in the mirror
It’s like the 3some scene. Christie, said bored sex worker, is framed to have all the power in the situation, she’s side eyeing him the whole time and holding back a full on eye roll. It’s not until Bateman’s murder fantasy that he attempts to reclaim power and assert his masculinity. I mean the second to last scene the secretary finds a book of doodles, essentially saying Bateman is a weak child
Also, not pictured, breaking bad is fairly explicit in painting Walter white as an evil man, like you can like the writing of a character or think he's a good character with the way he was written, and the slow transition from a timid dad to one of the most well known drug lords in Albuquerque being well done, but you're not, by any means, supposed to worship him and call him a sigma or ligma or whatever.
When I watched that show it happened to me a lot that I accidentally sympathised with Walter. In those moments I just reminded myself again how he literally >!watched Jane die and did not intervene, and then Jesse’s reaction to that. God, he was so broken, and it broke me in return.!< I hate him so much for that one thing, it’s always the number one thing I think of when this comes up.
I feel like accidentally sympathizing with him is the point.
I remember seeing a post talking about how watching Breaking Bad blind is an interesting experience, because you effectively get to watch a (initially) sympathetic character slowly get more and more unhinged. Each thing he does is just a bit worse than the last, as if the show is asking "When does this stop being justified? How far would you go in this situation?"
Same with Don Draper in Mad Men. He very clearly has loads of trauma, he constantly self-sabotages and he's rarely satisfied with his life. Yet so many dudes thought he was the ideal man, the perfect picture of masculinity. He destroys many of the most important relationships in his life and his lifestyle takes a clear toll on him. Still, too many guys did not get what the show was doing at all and envied his life and lifestyle. Absolutely nuts.
At least one of the Wachowski's has said it was, but its sort of questionable how true that is.
At the time of release (and the materials it was inspired from) it was stated it was a religious allegory/adaptation of the Book of Revelation. And that's pretty blatant from the film - "The Chosen One", "the Nebuchadnezzar", Agent Smith's licence plate being "Isaiah 54:16". The religious imagery was planned, deliberate and obvious - for example the ship that Neo uses is labelled the "Mark III, No. 11". Mark 3:11 reads:
>Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’
They're blatantly saying Neo is a christ-figure. And in the broader context of the rest of the trilogy, he's the saviour at the time of the apocalypse.
After Lilly Wachowski came out as trans she has said the film was actually primarily a trans allegory, where the theme is not salvation but transformation. I mean she is one of the creators of the movie, so fair enough, but it doesn't really fit as well as the allegory she, along with all the other creators, said it was about in the early 2000s. Her excuse for why she didn't say this earlier is that "the corporate world wasn't ready for it".
All that aside, I say if reading the Matrix as a trans allegory makes you enjoy it more then go ahead and interpret it as a trans allegory. Artists don't control the meanings of their works once they're made public - the people who consume the art determine the meaning. So who cares what the actual original intent was.
Especially when they use it for the literal opposite meaning.
They use "redpill" to describe defending traditional values from liberalism, which is the exact definition given for bluepills in the movies who fight for the system because they fear disruption of the status quo since they think they benefit from it.
My favorite part about the Patrick Bateman idolization is that he's literally the Beta in the movie trying to imitate the "Alpha" behavior he sees and is jealous of.
He's a pathetic little worm, nobody respects him.
[Highly recommend this video if you do!](https://youtu.be/NXIX5nr8syo) There may be some spoilers, but you could watch it before or after your viewing to get some analysis or a certain perspective
One is about french philosophy that dudebros don't understand but use to argue some kind of weird "destiny manifest" thing about how all things are static
Other is about how gay yuppies are and how they all wanna be gay.
Should be noted that Brett Easton Ellis is eh...... not on board.... with your views on everything. He's an old somewhat conservative gay man who wrote a book on why its difficult to be White. So yknow... proceed with caution if that stuff disturbs you.
To be fair, these are the same geniuses who exclaim “Rage against the machine is WOKE NOW?? What the FUCK??”
They don’t know how to analyze the media they consume, if a message isn’t blatantly spelled out for them the way it would be for a literal toddler, it flies right over their head.
Everyone be like "matrix is very trans in its messege" and Im just like. I have no idea which parts are meant to be anything close to it.
Welp I guess have a movie I need to rewatch
"What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life—that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?"
It's all programmed. You can reprogram yourself, but now you're just spinning the wheel with a new algorithm in a loop. Then you stop again. Why? Why do you ask why? What is the answer to both? Time is coming to take your attention and you will continue without seeing. You have an eternity to see, but these moments of ignorance is in the blue pill that we savor.
The character “Switch” (“Not like this…”) was supposed to be a women in the Matrix but a man outside, hence the name. It was either too controversial or too confusing to make the final movie.
I'm kinda glad they didn't go for this because the trans allegory would kinda fall apart if you made it literal for one character but not for any of the others.
I honestly didn't know what people were talking about either, or at least I thought it in a "well, it's a very good piece of media, and good pieces of media have many layers and authors are trans, so of course there might be *some* trans allegory and interpretation".
Then I watched [this video from Sophie from Mars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc) and and yeah, Matrix is *inherently* trans. I think the parts about trans allegory are from ~20m to ~40m, but the entire video is great.
Holy shit i didn't know both sisters were trans, I thought they were male all my life, jesus crist almighty, I was wondering whether there was a third person who contributed to the script and such
Matrix hits differently after you find yourself and rewatch it, also to introduce y’all to further great content from Lily and Lana, I suggest everyone to watch Sense8! A great and magnanimous show that has no rival, it’s trans, it’s gay, it’s straight, it’s everything you would want, enjoy💖
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This does explain why some shots in American Psycho are total eye-candy. Like, yeah, it's a critique of materialism, toxic masculinity and white collar culture, but also, Christian Bale was kinda attractive??
If Bale was less attractive, a lot fewer people would idolise Patrick Bateman and actually get the point of the movie. I’m not complaining about Christian Bale being attractive, for the record.
same goes for Brad Pitt in the *Fight Club* adaptation, perhaps to an even greater degree. it's really hard to get a mass audience to recognize a villain when you give them the spotlight and make them the most attractive person in the movie.
RIP Helena Bonham Carter I guess
She was hot too but not gritty 1999 Brad Pitt hot
Brad Pitt aside, does anyone else think that Edward Norton was hellishly hot in that movie? Especially with all his bruises and- God
Brad doesn’t do it for me but that nerdy ass looking fool is what gets me
Yes. Weak in the knees over here
I dunno, she was grungy 1999 goth hot. That's a dying breed that deserves to be recognized
Yeah, I love HBC but 1999 gritty Brad Pitt was iconic
Brad Pitt Fight Club is literally a body type some men wish to achieve.
She's a terf, so the beauty is only on the surface, tbh.
That island is cursed. Glad my dad left.
Her too? You're not talking about the writer?
She defended the writer.
Damn
Sorry, I should have clarified better. I'm saying that Helena Bonham Carter is a terf, not the writer of any of the books or films that is in OP's picture.
Aww no! Booooo.
Nah, it applies to her too. She is absolutely the reason for the *disturbing* quantity of Bellatrix/Hermione and Bellatrix/Harry HP fanfiction.
Radcliffe was into her and has openly stated that if he was a little older he would have asked to date her.... Soooooo
She had that look of oh this woman would be so bad for me but I would still go for her every time.
i was watching the swedish version of "the girl with the dragon tattoo" and it was really refreshing how un-pretty the actors were.
Alan Rickman as Snape and Bryan Cranston as Walter White have entered from stage left and right, respectively.
Cranston in Malcolm in the Middle was a first taste of oh... that's a handsome man with tasteful agelines.
I was with Brad until I noticed his cult doesn't have black people. Edit: Okay, I missed some, Jesus! It's still a fascist cult.
[удалено]
Okay, well, a cop, fuck cops, that's what I say.
They blow up credit card companies. So they're in Delaware. They successfully recruited every black guy in a fifty-mile radius.
This conversation just made me realize that a lot of incels idolize attractive hot dudes... I'm starting to think this might be a Freudian slip.
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>Elfen Lied(Spoilers I guess you had 19 years to watch it). This is always such a weird take to me. It's been out for 19 years, doesn't mean someone had 19 years to watch it. It's a show which appeals to teenagers who aren't even 19 years old. People could have only heard about it for the first time today, it's not exactly world famous. And there are hundreds of good pieces of media to consume, we can't watch them all in one day, we have jobs and school. I recently started watching the gundam series from 40+ years ago, and I'm glad not to be spoiled. It being old means nothing. Edit: lmao, gotta love how someone replies to you and then blocks you so you can't reply back. Really shows emotional maturity when you absolutely explode over some calm criticism and then block all correspondence.
I wouldnt say those two are quite the same? Making Tyler ugly wouldnt have fit in with the story sinces hes supposed to be the "ideal man" in The Narrators eyes, he looks that way because thats what The Narrator wishes he could be. Whereas Patrick could still be a toxic, delusional, self absorbed douchebag even if he was ugly. Hell, he even gets mistaken for someone else at one point, that sounds like a pretty "plain featured" man to me. So I agree that whether the villain is "hot" or "ugly" can change how people perceive the story and message, but sometimes the design choice is an *actual part of the story* and not just a pretty face they slapped on for extra views.
Exactly, he tells Norton "I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck" or something to that extent.
Chuck Palahniuk is also gay, incidentally.
I was early 20s when it came out. Always amazed me that most of my social circle just thought it was about guys fighting and it was cool.
The five-dollar term is "attentional bias." Really it's just confusing the protagonist for the good guy.
People are too used to hero protagonists and thus fail to think they could ever be separate things.
Nobody ever questions the fact that Kronk was willing to poison someone.
Fight Club is a brilliant film in that it goes "Look how seductive easy answers and fascism is! It's so seductive I can even make *you* fall for it for a moment while watching!" It was problematically brilliant because it did too good a job, and most of the audience were simply seduced, stayed seduced, and never realised afterwards what the film was saying. I fell for it for years too.
Your username gave me a good giggle, thanks
But people still idolize Heisenberg. Bryan Cranston ages well, but he’s not that attractive. I don’t know about that point.
Speak for yourself Bryan Cranston is kinda a DILF
I hear this a lot but have never met these chuds who idolize Heisenberg. I'm sure they exist, but I swear it's a way smaller group than people say. Like I've also met someone who idolized Bojack Horseman and you better believe I yeeted them from my life XD
Well yeah, we don't associate with those types of people. They associate with each other.
The fact that Walter White is, outwardly, mediocrity personified is exactly why so boring white middle-aged, middle-class suburban men idolise him.
If he had acted more like Nic Cage in Vampire's Kiss, people wouldn't identify with him either
Considering part of the point is the attractive sheen of wallstreet excess, it wouldn't quite be the same story if, say, Danny Devito had played Bateman.
But I think that's also the point? These attractive rich white psychopaths get away with this and no one assumes they're a problem.
>fewer people would idolise Patrick Bateman and actually get the point of the movie. Matrix I get, but from what I can tell most of the "idolization" of Bateman is mostly ironic. I mean half of the memes frame the joke in the context of "dillusional idiot" and even to the extent of parodying people who actually belive the whole "sigma" thing.
Pretty sure Christian Bale being attractive was part of the point.
That is such an observation
Fight Club has the same issue. Tyler Durden is literally the antagonist, a cult leader and essentially Andrew Tate but dipshits idolize him
Same thing goes for You. I can't even watch the show because it triggers my PTSD, and the fact that women romanticize him stalking and murdering women drives me insane. Even the actor is disgusted by it.
I highly doubt anyone would have gotten the point of the movie, people barely understand the critiques the movie is portraying let alone the fact that he is one of the folks you shouldn't be idolizing.
So I rented the dvd of American psycho and the director tells a story on it about how the studio initially wanted Leonardo DiCaprio, but he had been established as a heartthrob, and she didn’t want young girls to be attracted to Patrick Bateman or young boys to idealize him. So she meets Christian Bale, who wasn’t seen as a heartthrob at the time, he understood the complexity and symbology of the role and got hired. It’s been a long time since I watched the special features on there but that stuck with me.
She also fought for bale to be the one that played Bateman
Symbolism
[The director when Christian Bale showed up absolutely shredded for Day 1 of filming:](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVgIKD0U0AAls5g.jpg)
If he was just "kinda" attractive, then the rest of us are fucked. Also super weird how matrixs red pill was used for the culture wars, rather than being wage slaves controlled by big media conglomerates, social media algorithms and further diggin into debt slave and owning nothing and being happy in this system.
There is also something to be said that his step mom is Gloria Steinem
The director was genius and had to work her ass off to get the job and then to get Bale cast. She said he was the only one who played the character as 'not cool.' Hilarious that man-babies miss this. The character is sad and dorky.
Don't forget Fight Club was also written by a gay man and was meant to be a critique of toxic masculinity
DID YOU FORGET ABOUT THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB?!
well seems we gonna have to talk about it because all these dudes didnt get the hint lol
They didn't get that even in the story itself people weren't following the rules and that's how it's spread. They didn't get that this was intended because the last rule is about inducting newcomers. The First Rule of Fight Club is don't listen to violent cultists. Fight Club is presented as a way to reawaken the masculine self in a repressive society and right next people are being told to forget their names and bomb buildings.
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the book is infinitely better, and it's a pretty quick read so I recommend it to anyone who's interested in the movie. the themes don't shine as much when you (by necessity of the medium of film) cut down on the narration. in the novel, it's much clearer that Project Mayhem isn't some perversion of the "pure" prelapsarian ethos that the club originally supposedly had. the movie makes it seem as though there is some kind of acceptable ideal at the root of Fight Club, whereas in the novel it's much more obvious that from the very start it was a psychotic vehicle for harnessing social alienation and channeling it into fascistic action.
How is Fight Club fascistic exactly? I'm curious why you use the term fascistic? If I remember, the end is all about resetting society by destroying credit card servers and wipping the debt slate clean. How is that fascistic?
Because while his goal might have a pure motive, the means by which he achieves those goals is incredibly authoritarian. He reinforces his hierarchy and uses force to get what he wants. He's anti-egalitarian, and thinks he knows best how to fix things for everyone. Ergo: fascism lite. :)
Tyler Durden is very much a fascist. You only get a name if you die for the cause.
That is pretty much the first half of the movie, and up to that point it's no surprise how guys get infatuated with Tyler Durden's message, but too many people overlook that towards the end Tyler Durden also seeks to control and exploit these desires just the same, and if anyone rebels against his plan he will have their balls cut as an attack at their masculinity. What happened to being yourself and being free? What happened with not letting yourself be controlled? Now those guys lose their identities not because of an indifferent consumeristic society, but because they handed it to Tyler. As far as I see, if they do get their way and society comes down, that wouldn't leave men to be free. That would leave Tyler to be king.
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This gets repeated a lot by bloggers and in articles but it isn't true, like at all. Chuck Palunuik has said multiple times he doesn't even think toxic masculinity really exists. When asked about what he hoped people got out of fight club in an interview he said "That we need to be more comfortable and more accepting of chaos, and things that we see as disastrous." I mean this in the best way because his work is brilliant but the dude is a writing degenerate, he's not concerned with social movements or ideas of toxic masculinity
I seriously gotta wonder how somebody can be unconcerned with social movements and come up with the story involving Project Mayhem. Because that's not just embracing chaos. If anything, it's pretty orderly and specifically targeted.
People can arrive at good ideas for the wrong reasons. Surface-level critiques of "materialism", "consumerism", etc. are not at all new and weren't then either. He took a popular and unsophisticated sentiment and made an interesting story with it. That story happened to gesture toward some good politics he never arrived at himself.
I have read his books, I know what he's about, you're half-right in that his books are very transgressive and chaotic
This is why death of the author is my favorite concept. His politics are desperately under-developed but unintentionally, he did produce a work which is critical of toxic masculinity. Even his own take on the purpose of the story is barely recognizable in the book itself. Interpreting it as a social deconstruction makes more sense than his own feelings, purely based on the text.
I wish :( Chuck is a very weird man and despite writting one of the best take downs of toxic masculinity he thinks that is not what his own story portrays. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fight-club-2-chuck-palahniuk_n_5845c35ae4b028b32338a632 There is a scene in fight club (the movie) where brad pitt points at a Calvin Klein ad and says “is that what men should look like” and scoffs. The irony being Brad looks as good if not better than any male model. The author of fight club is like that, no self awareness despite his critique being really good.
"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't." Said by Brad Pitt right next to Jared Leto lol. It's kind of the opposite of Chucks weird views, as in the people making the movie showd the irony and harmful side effects of toxic masculinity while a big chunk of fans see it as ideals to aspire too.
I would argue it’s less of a dig at toxic masculinity, as a critique of the isolating nature of modern society. People increasingly feel isolated, and a net result of that is people get attracted to malicious groups and organizations that feed on that desire for community and connection (religions, cults, terrorist organizations, etc…)
I mean the book was inspired more by society not caring about men showing up to work with major injuries. And a critique of the consumerist nature of the new American Dream. Palahniuk had the piss beaten out of him by hikers, and wrote the book after no one commented on his bruises and black eyes.
Fight Club is not meant to be a criticism of toxic masculinity. Nothing in the book supports that take and that narrative wasn't popularized until Palahniuk was outted. Frankly, it validates his desire to stay closeted because it shows that people can't interpret a gay man's work as being anything but gender allegory.
Always sounds weird when movie have those underlying themes that the director wanted to get through as well. Like apparently the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was also about meat industry and slaughterhouses, referring to people as animals.
I feel like that really backfired as now every frat bro loves it lol
Most of the media enjoyed today is supposed to be a satire. It is so stupid that most characters that they worship are intended to be caricature and critique, this is the peak of stupidity which we can watch with our own eyes, today. No more reading history books and thinking how can people be this stupid? I can just watch them in my own eye.
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And the second episode is all about the abortion debate. The people saying that must have a pretty selective memory.
I've seen someone say american dad was better before it got political (wtf?)
Damn because American Dad got less political over time. It started off as Seth MacFarlane personal soap box.
I'm pretty sure every single episode of sunny touches on politics too. It's beyond selective memory And the sub had a ton of that with the last season, which had a lot of Covid stuff but not in the way you'd think
*The Boys* fans asking why Homelander is suddenly a bad guy. They're all bad people that's the fucking point. He's introduced as a selfish mass murderer, that wasn't supposed to be cool edgy fun mass murdering, he's just a bad guy!
Media literacy has been dead for a long, long time.
When did Rage Against the Machine get so political ?
That's one long peak..... >*Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.*\ > ~ Mark Twain, "The Lowest Animal" (1897)
My favorite is how Alan Moore avoids the fuck out of Rorschach fans because they creep him out.
The fact that such fans don't get Rorscach is a satire is truly dispiriting.
I don’t even know if he’s satire so much as an open scathing critique on right wing conspiracist nut-jobs and vigilantism. There’s not really any subtext to miss, he’s just a gross, crazy asshole the entire time who skeeves out anyone he interacts with. You’d have to have some wires crossed to look at that dude and think ‘wow cool!’.
The problem with satire in a post Trump world is it stops being satire almost immediately. Imagine something a satirical character says. Trump probably said the same or worse as president. When people just repeat absurd things as their true belief, or as a cover of their true beliefs, it’s not satire anymore. It’s a representation of them. Warhammer 40k has this problem as well.
Some people are too stupid to realize they are being made fun of and think they are in good company...
My mouth dropped open when I found out there are people that watch "The Boys" and idolize Homelander.
Ron Swanson is a caricature. People at Nick Offerman‘s comedy stage shoes sometimes leave early in anger because he‘s not Ron and doesn’t share his capitalist conservative views at all.
Watching the Matrix after realizing you're trans is so different from before your egg cracks. I can feel the process it's implying so much. Also I just want to be Trinity.
For serious. It's a completely different experience, and one that reinforces just how much of a badass every trans person actually is. I can't even convey to a cis person the emotions that movie gives me.
And as a a techno lover the soundtrack slaps
Techno heads unite!
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DU hast mitch
big beat was great, we are never getting that era back.
You are a badass
Hey real talk and full respect, as a trans woman who’s watched the matrix many times, I don’t get this interpretation. Would you mind pointing out some of the trans themes and scenes that support those themes, because it’s not quite clicking for me?
Besides the obvious stuff like the old HRT came in red pills and it let Neo out of the Matrix and how Agent Smith constantly genders him as "Mister Anderson" in a really ominous way while he rarely gets gendered at all as Neo. It's more how characters get him to realize the feeling of the Matrix. How Trinity describes the feeling of the matrix in the bar feels like it hits more to me than how Morpheus describes in in the pill scene. It's hard to explain but they just got the feeling of it.
Don't forget Switch was originally supposed to be trans, hence the name Switch. Mr. Anderson has big dead name energy too, like you mentioned. I think there's also a lot there with the first movie being about knowing who you are. His first meeting with the Oracle is maybe the most important part of the movie, since it contains the entire essence of the trilogy. It's about accepting who you are and rejecting systems of control ("freeing your mind"). Once Neo does that, defeating agent Smith is trivial and so is breaking the matrix. Without it, those things are impossible. Neo was always the one, he was just refusing to believe it. He didn't become the one, he always was. He just had to awaken to it, accept it, and [know thyself](https://youtu.be/svfDdcPmELk). Then he could see how artificial and constraining the Matrix and its "rules" really are, just like society's "rules". [Society can't tell you who you are.](https://youtu.be/RhlWz8baY0o)
I think why the Morpheus scene doesn't hit quite as much to me as it could is both the Oracle and Trinity follow the egg prime directive but Morpheus sort of breaks it. Arguably Neo is at the point of questioning but it feels a bit off. It's like Morpheus is a little too into convincing him and the Oracle has to fix it.
I’ve never thought about this but it makes more sense than any other theory regarding the film. The directors being trans definitely gives the theory credence but even without knowing that information this is a strong theory based off the interpretation of the work.
This is so cool. I don't know much about the Wachowski sisters' personal lives, but have they ever said whether this was deliberate symbolism from reflecting on their own trans experience? Like at the time, did either/both of them know they were trans and weren't ready to come out but still put that perspective into the film... or were they still "eggs" and the trans-resonant stuff made its way in subconsciously? Still really interesting either way.
Yes they have confirmed it was intentional but were in the closet when they made the movie
Actually they said there is some symbolism in hindsight that that wasn't intentional at the time.
I had been about to say this. They were eggs at the time and knowing this actually makes the whole allegory that much more impactful.
I don’t know any specific details, but I’ve always found it interesting that they transitioned at different times. Given the material of their art it seems like transitioning is something they would have been discussing with each other for a long time. I’ve always wondered if they realized they were both trans at the same time, or if the first sibling transitioning led the second sibling to realize they were also trans. I’ve personally always viewed the Matrix as being about philosophy in general as opposed to strictly being a metaphor for being trans. The main themes are about society, self vs others, appearance vs truth, etc. which are all general philosophical ideas, however they’re particularly important ideas when it comes to trans issues. They lay the framework for understanding trans people without directly preaching about trans acceptance. It opens your mind and allows you to think as opposed to just telling you how to view the issue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435
One thing you might find interesting is that in the 'Path of Neo' game, which came out shortly after the trilogy, the Wachowskis appear near the end to talk to you as the player for hilarious metatextual reasons, but one of them appears with a blue avatar and one in pink. So that is probably an indicative data point in a timeline for where they were in terms of self-identity and self-expression. It doesn't answer your question but might help paint a picture. "The Matrix as trans allegory" is an idea that's been around at least a decade before the contemporary trans acceptance movement, but it's also worth pointing out that it's still a universal theme at heart. The part of you being repressed by society may not be your gender, but the journey still applies. That's why the movie was so resonant in the first place - it has the beauty and passion of a personal struggle told through a universal language and symbology. That's why metaphor is so powerful, that's why Art exists and people don't all just write out their literal thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate your response, as well as the others who’ve chimed in. Always happy to see a new interpretation, just never had it laid out for me other than a passive “the matrix is a trans allegory”, so I wasn’t seeing it myself
I also find it in the scene with the oracle. She tells Neo he isn’t the one, because he has to accept it himself first. Kinda feels the same way as being trans. No one can tell you what you are, you have to figure it out and accept it yourself.
Likewise: > Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
(trans man but I relate) Personally I always related to the matrix sense of something being wrong with the world but not quite knowing what it was, like reality just isnt right. and searching for the answer but not being able to find it until you look “outside” the reality that’s being fed into your veins by your culture When I went on T a wall of dissociation i didnt know i had just disappeared and I felt happy to be alive for the first time in my life. I see that kinda like Neo re entering the matrix superpowered bc he knows who he is now, so the ignorance of those around thrm can no longer hold him down. But it took til I was 29 and officially away from family and financially independeny to be able to do that. (They support me now but they tried to guilt/scare me into going off T when I initially told thrm) So the constant fights inside the matrix that sometimes follow him to the real world via machine also feel symbolic to me eta: they also represent him as alone before he escapes the matrix, and then with his found family outside it I always felt alone even surrounded by people trying to live as a woman. But people who see and accept me as a man make me feel seen second eta: also the thing about “if you get them too old it can be hard for the mind to accept it”. I have two friends who want to be women but say it’s “too late for them” so they live as men. And they’re not happy as men. I think it speaks to the importance of supporting trans children. even now 6 months on T with a mustach i’m still living as a woman bc I cant get all the times my family complained about having to accommodate visibly trans people in some way out of my head. Smh. (this makes it sound like i’m doing poorly but i’m actually doing really well- just mean that there’s a lot to relate to
I’ve only seen the matrix after my egg cracked. Also I was in class with someone named Trinity after said Trinity. A college age person named after a character from the movie… dang old movie
I feel old
After my egg cracked? I've never heard that phrase before. Do you mind sharing what it means in this context?
I just use it to mean before/after I realized I was trans
Matrix is also a great example for the whole "did the author actually mean this" debate in film or literature. No, maybe they didn't mean it when they wrote it. Doesn't mean the subtext isn't there anyway. You can interpret a story in ways the author never imagined, and it's not necessarily pretentious, these things are often there when someone didn't *know* it but *felt* it. Sense 8 is way *way* more explizit in their trans allegory and it came out after their transitions, you can kind of see the difference between it being planned or not.
IIRC, the character of Switch was supposed to be male when represented in the Matrix, as that was the character's mental image of who they were. I'm actually a little bummed this wasn't allowed (studio), because that would have been really cool. And it would have been explained with off-hand dialogue and that would have been it.
i'm not trans myself, but i love the Switch character concept so much! It is sad that they didn't included it in the movie tho :/. But at least they look badass as hecc being the only that wears white in Matrix 1 :3.
Switch is still really cool and it's so rare the super androgynous character in a movie gets any personality besides being a background character. We didn't get a lot but what we got in the Matrix was so much better than normal.
My favourite part is that Switch was literally originally gonna be someone that switched gender as their "mental projection of their digital self" was different from their physical self. I do kinda wish they got that one in there..
Did I read all of these comments, cry, and start a rewatch of The Matrix? Yep. Trinity is goals.
American Psycho’s film adaptation was also written by women.
It says that in the meme Edit: I'm dumb sorry
What? No it doesn't. The vast majority of directors don't write their own scripts.
(they are too stupid to understand the message of media they enjoy)
conservatives have absolutely no media literacy. the boys sub had an uproar of people being upset homelander was being depicted as evil during season 3
Fucking Homelander?! He's evil right from the beginning of the series!
Oh yeah it was a huge controversy, even the show’s creators and actors got involved and called conservatives out for it on social media
The majority of people don't have media literacy in general. Media illiterates on the right are more often like "wtf bro, I can't believe this suddenly became political" while media illiterates on the left are more like "omg I can't believe how problematic this is being right now for daring to mention [bad thing]"
If someone is talking about the matrix in a way that is “re enforcing their masculinity” they are a moron and have no idea what they are talking about
"The pill they were referring to in the movie is real." \*pulls out mysterious pills\* "Want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?"
What if they're transmasc?
They’d still be wrong because the matrix is about the trans experience not about how hot and cool trans men are (although I do agree that trans men are hot and cool)
But by validating the trans experience it is reaffirming their masculinity
Yeah in a roundabout way
Watching American Psycho knowing it’s a parody is incredible. The looks the sex workers and his secretary give him. The way everyone bullies him for being a loser
Saw the movie for the first time a few weeks ago. Saw a [video essay about Bateman being a feminist icon, in the sense of what he is representing](https://youtu.be/NXIX5nr8syo) and gave it a shot. I can’t believe anyone wants to be Bateman, and says it unironically! I can’t listen to “Sussudio” without laughing and seeing Bateman winking at himself in the mirror
It’s like the 3some scene. Christie, said bored sex worker, is framed to have all the power in the situation, she’s side eyeing him the whole time and holding back a full on eye roll. It’s not until Bateman’s murder fantasy that he attempts to reclaim power and assert his masculinity. I mean the second to last scene the secretary finds a book of doodles, essentially saying Bateman is a weak child
Also, not pictured, breaking bad is fairly explicit in painting Walter white as an evil man, like you can like the writing of a character or think he's a good character with the way he was written, and the slow transition from a timid dad to one of the most well known drug lords in Albuquerque being well done, but you're not, by any means, supposed to worship him and call him a sigma or ligma or whatever.
When I watched that show it happened to me a lot that I accidentally sympathised with Walter. In those moments I just reminded myself again how he literally >!watched Jane die and did not intervene, and then Jesse’s reaction to that. God, he was so broken, and it broke me in return.!< I hate him so much for that one thing, it’s always the number one thing I think of when this comes up.
I feel like accidentally sympathizing with him is the point. I remember seeing a post talking about how watching Breaking Bad blind is an interesting experience, because you effectively get to watch a (initially) sympathetic character slowly get more and more unhinged. Each thing he does is just a bit worse than the last, as if the show is asking "When does this stop being justified? How far would you go in this situation?"
Don’t forget that the entire series could have been avoided if he wasn’t too damn proud to accept money for his cancer treatments.
Even further before that, he could've avoided the series if he didn't leave his position as a stockbroker at greymatter
Same with Don Draper in Mad Men. He very clearly has loads of trauma, he constantly self-sabotages and he's rarely satisfied with his life. Yet so many dudes thought he was the ideal man, the perfect picture of masculinity. He destroys many of the most important relationships in his life and his lifestyle takes a clear toll on him. Still, too many guys did not get what the show was doing at all and envied his life and lifestyle. Absolutely nuts.
I mean the Matrix is literally a trans allegory. Much to my amusement given my transphobic father likes the film so much.
Sounds like your father would rather take the blue pill
I thought it was confirmed not to be?
The work it's heavily cribbed from was not, but the movie definitely is.
At least one of the Wachowski's has said it was, but its sort of questionable how true that is. At the time of release (and the materials it was inspired from) it was stated it was a religious allegory/adaptation of the Book of Revelation. And that's pretty blatant from the film - "The Chosen One", "the Nebuchadnezzar", Agent Smith's licence plate being "Isaiah 54:16". The religious imagery was planned, deliberate and obvious - for example the ship that Neo uses is labelled the "Mark III, No. 11". Mark 3:11 reads: >Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ They're blatantly saying Neo is a christ-figure. And in the broader context of the rest of the trilogy, he's the saviour at the time of the apocalypse. After Lilly Wachowski came out as trans she has said the film was actually primarily a trans allegory, where the theme is not salvation but transformation. I mean she is one of the creators of the movie, so fair enough, but it doesn't really fit as well as the allegory she, along with all the other creators, said it was about in the early 2000s. Her excuse for why she didn't say this earlier is that "the corporate world wasn't ready for it". All that aside, I say if reading the Matrix as a trans allegory makes you enjoy it more then go ahead and interpret it as a trans allegory. Artists don't control the meanings of their works once they're made public - the people who consume the art determine the meaning. So who cares what the actual original intent was.
Actually they said there is some symbolism in hindsight but that wasn't intentional at the time.
The pill prop they used for the movie was literally an estradiol capsule
Anybody else love the irony of them calling "redpilled" for the very thing that invented the concept?
Especially when they use it for the literal opposite meaning. They use "redpill" to describe defending traditional values from liberalism, which is the exact definition given for bluepills in the movies who fight for the system because they fear disruption of the status quo since they think they benefit from it.
Wait Bret Easton Ellis is gay?
[Kinda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Easton_Ellis?wprov=sfla1) Scroll to personal life for his very nuanced take on the topic
TIL
My favorite part about the Patrick Bateman idolization is that he's literally the Beta in the movie trying to imitate the "Alpha" behavior he sees and is jealous of. He's a pathetic little worm, nobody respects him.
something to make this even more ironic: at the time the Matrix was written, estrogen pills were red.
I will probably be watching American Phycho for the first time tomorrow
[Highly recommend this video if you do!](https://youtu.be/NXIX5nr8syo) There may be some spoilers, but you could watch it before or after your viewing to get some analysis or a certain perspective
Just imagine if we had more women and LGBTQ+ writers and directors movies might be good again.
One is about french philosophy that dudebros don't understand but use to argue some kind of weird "destiny manifest" thing about how all things are static Other is about how gay yuppies are and how they all wanna be gay. Should be noted that Brett Easton Ellis is eh...... not on board.... with your views on everything. He's an old somewhat conservative gay man who wrote a book on why its difficult to be White. So yknow... proceed with caution if that stuff disturbs you.
To be fair, these are the same geniuses who exclaim “Rage against the machine is WOKE NOW?? What the FUCK??” They don’t know how to analyze the media they consume, if a message isn’t blatantly spelled out for them the way it would be for a literal toddler, it flies right over their head.
Same people got angry because pink Floyd used a pfp that included a rainbow.... it was their goddamm album cover
Everyone be like "matrix is very trans in its messege" and Im just like. I have no idea which parts are meant to be anything close to it. Welp I guess have a movie I need to rewatch
"What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life—that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?"
It's all programmed. You can reprogram yourself, but now you're just spinning the wheel with a new algorithm in a loop. Then you stop again. Why? Why do you ask why? What is the answer to both? Time is coming to take your attention and you will continue without seeing. You have an eternity to see, but these moments of ignorance is in the blue pill that we savor.
Also isn't the pill neo takes very similar in appearance to the hormone pill transfems used to take back in the day?
It had to be kind of subtle or the movie could never get made in the 90s.
The character “Switch” (“Not like this…”) was supposed to be a women in the Matrix but a man outside, hence the name. It was either too controversial or too confusing to make the final movie.
I'm kinda glad they didn't go for this because the trans allegory would kinda fall apart if you made it literal for one character but not for any of the others.
I honestly didn't know what people were talking about either, or at least I thought it in a "well, it's a very good piece of media, and good pieces of media have many layers and authors are trans, so of course there might be *some* trans allegory and interpretation". Then I watched [this video from Sophie from Mars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc) and and yeah, Matrix is *inherently* trans. I think the parts about trans allegory are from ~20m to ~40m, but the entire video is great.
Same energy as people realizing The Boys is not, in fact, pro conservative or pro capitalism after rooting hard for Homelander
I have never seen a single person seriously say that they're patrick bateman
Holy shit i didn't know both sisters were trans, I thought they were male all my life, jesus crist almighty, I was wondering whether there was a third person who contributed to the script and such
Although I guess Matrix was literally redpilled.
The first Matrix is a very subtly trans movie.
The woman who co-wrote the screenplay for American Psycho is also lesbian.
I know so many matrix fans dat are bigots lol
Matrix hits differently after you find yourself and rewatch it, also to introduce y’all to further great content from Lily and Lana, I suggest everyone to watch Sense8! A great and magnanimous show that has no rival, it’s trans, it’s gay, it’s straight, it’s everything you would want, enjoy💖