Tilly Bridges Talks About Her New Book ‘Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of the Matrix’

Tilly Bridges wants to explain to you what The Matrix is really about with her exciting new book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of the Matrix. In the book, she goes scene-by-scene through all four films and The Animatrix to explain how the whole franchise is one long, extended metaphor about being transgender.

Personally, I’ve always taken The Matrix as an allegory for capitalism. Even after coming out as a trans woman myself, even when the Wachowski sisters announced that the entire series is an allegory for being trans, I took the condescending opinion of, “That’s cute. It’s about capitalism.”

I also came in with my own prejudices, as I’ve never been a fan of The Matrix Reloaded or The Matrix Revolutions, and I’ve often referred to The Matrix Resurrections as “the best sequel in a franchise that never should have had any sequels.” In some ways, I keep my opinion on that. In what Bridges refers to in her book as the “surface level sci-fi story,” there are serious flaws once you get past the brilliant first movie. But Bridges’ book convinced me, first of all, that the series is completely about being transgender and, secondly, that Reloaded and Revolutions have a really fascinating subtextual story going on that makes watching the complete franchise actually worth it.

After Bridge’s book completely changed my perspective on these movies, I simply had to sit down with her to discuss it.

Tell me how this book came about. You said that it began as a column?

When I came out publicly, in the summer of 2020, I started writing weekly essays under the hashtag #TransTuesday, just talking about my transition and things that I think people who are wondering if they’re trans might wonder about or things that cis people would never notice if they’re not trans. And it wasn’t long after I started that that everybody started asking me about The Matrix and its trans allegories because it was around the same time that the Wachowskis came out and confirmed it. I thought, well, I was always a big fan of the movies, and I had not rewatched them since coming out or knowing I was trans, so I thought I’ll sit down and do that, and I can get a good essay out of it. And what I got was 24 essays from the entire franchise.

One of the more fascinating things that you point out is the way the colors have meaning. In the movie, red is truth; blue is doubt, and yellow is fear. How’d you come to realize what those colors represent?

That all came from the scene with the pills. And when you know that the red pill is a stand-in for Premari—which was the estrogen pill that trans women on hormone replacement therapy were on back at the time these movies were made—then you realize, when you look at it through that lens of transitioning, it’s all about that truth. So, if red is truth, what does blue mean? Well, blue is the rejection of that truth; it is doubt. And the doubt takes many forms through the entire franchise because it changes; we don’t always have the same doubts with us. And then it was Reloaded where they added in the yellow with (Commander Jason) Lock where I keyed in on that being Neo’s fear. And then that even works retroactively back to the first movie. The green overcast of the movie shows you that the false cis binary matrix is rooted in fear and doubt. Blue and yellow makes green.

Keeping in mind that you’re an observer and not someone who has any sort of creative control over this franchise, I still want to ask: Do you think there is a future for this franchise? Because to me, I feel like the surface level sci–fi story pretty much demands a fifth movie—if not a fifth and sixth movie—but in terms of the subtextual story that you outline your book, it feels fairly complete after Resurrections. Do you think there’s anywhere to go for another movie?

I think there’s always more to the trans experience that, if the Wachowskis had more to say about it, that they could easily find a way to do it. I think the story of Neo’s transition from Thomas Anderson to Neo to Trinity completes itself in the fourth (movie), which was actually something I was so glad of when I saw Resurrections because I love the hopeful ending of Revolutions, but it left Neo’s transition incomplete. And Resurrections completes it. “He” is finally “she” and is Trinity now and forevermore. And so I think that’s a really beautiful, perfect spot to end it. But if they have more to say, I would absolutely be interested in that. I don’t think that the series should continue without them unless they were to oversee it. If they were to do that, to allow, maybe, other trans people to tell their stories within this world using this same sort of metaphor and allegory, I think that could be really powerful.

As much as I do love your book, I had one point where I think the allegory doesn’t quite work, and you didn’t quite address it, and that’s in the Animatrix with The Second Renaissance. In that—and to a certain extent in Morpheus’ explanation of the Matrix in the first movie—it sums up that there are no victims of the Matrix. The humans that the machines are using as batteries were responsible for starting the war and scorching the sky. And I feel like that doesn’t really fit into the trans allegory, or really any allegory for the movies because trans people aren’t responsible for the society that hates us.

Right. The way that I saw it with Second Renaissance is that things flipped. The machines within those two shorts represent trans people, and the humans represent the humans, and it changes by the time you get to the actual movies. I guess that’s what made it work best in the surface level sci–fi story to set it up that way. But the allegory still holds if you just flip that on its head for those first two.

You talked a little bit in your book about the people who interpret the franchise wrong. I have always thought it a little bit hilarious, in a sad and scary kind of way, that incels and MRAs have taken on the imagery of this movie. Even before I knew it was a trans allegory, I said, “It’s an anti–capitalist movie made by two trans women with a radical, left–wing heavy metal band playing over the closing credits. It’s not for you.” What do you think it is that attracts those people to this kind of story?

I think it’s exactly what the Wachowskis were brilliant enough to call out in the movies, in that they are the people that are so hopelessly inured to the system that they can’t see how deep inside it they are. Smith even goes through that arc where he’s so far inside the Matrix he thinks he’s outside of it. And that’s them. They think, “I’m the rebel. I’m doing whatever I want. Society’s not the boss of me!” never realizing that they’re the ones doing exactly what society wants them to do. And they think that they’re freely choosing this, even though it’s what they’ve been conditioned to do their whole lives. I think the disaffected cis white men want to feel like they have something to fight back against because people who are not them, as time goes on, have been getting more rights. And when you’ve been treated like you’re the only one who matters, when that happens, it feels like oppression.

Begin Transmission is available in hardcover and paperback from Bear Manor Media.