Latest / The Bechdel Cast / The Matrix (1999) with Emily VanDerWerff

Transcript

The Matrix (1999) with Emily VanDerWerff · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bell cast, the questions asked if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: best start changing it with the bec Del cast. Jamie, Hi, Caitlin. Hi, sorry,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: it's not Caitlin, it's morpheoush. I just want to tell
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: you that you're the one meet you, but I'm so
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: sexy and regular. Well that's just that you're too sexy
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to be regular. Oh my god. Therefore you are the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: one that is how movies work, isn't it. Wow? Well, um, okay,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I I accept. I accept this call to adventure, except
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: that you're gonna have to get kidnapped for reasons that
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: are a little confusing to me, and the stakes are
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: going to continue to rise from there. Sure sure, sure,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Oh wait, I have one more condition. Yes, yes, I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: need to get a little kiss at the end. Okay. Well,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: hey Jamie, it's it's a trinity now, Hi. Hi, And
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to tell you that the oracle told
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: me that I would fall in love with somebody, and
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: that somebody would be the one that's me and it's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and I'm in love with you further confirming that you're
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the one. So can I have a little kiss? Yeah?
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Here you go. Well, thank you. But that was a
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: very smooth intro. I think my intro is going to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: be very somber because I feel, well, let's introduce the
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: show and then I have to make an apology and
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: then I think we can get the episode started. Sure,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: for sure, I have a serious apology to make. So Hi,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: it's me Caitlin Durante. It's me Jamie loftus little tail
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: between my legs. And this is the Pectel Cast. It
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: is our show where we examine film through an intersectional
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: feminist lens, using the Bectel Tests simply as a jumping
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: off point, which of course is a media metric created
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: by queer cartoonist Alice in Bectel, sometimes called the Bectel
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Wallace Test. Uh. There are many variations on the test.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: This is the one that we are currently using, where
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: two people of any marginalized gender must have names, they
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: must speak to each other, and that conversation has to
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: be about something other than a man. Ideally it's a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: meaningful conversation that is like narratively relevant. Yes, okay, Uh,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: do you mind if I just please, you've got the floor.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I have a prepared statement really quickly. Okay, hello listeners,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: this is Jamie Loftus. You might remember that almost exactly
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: five years ago to the day, we released an episode
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: about the movie The Matrix on this very podcast. The
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: guest was comedian Matt donnaher lovely man, who we still
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: have a friendship with. However, if you try to listen
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to this episode today, you will not be able to
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: find it. And that is because as of December twenty
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't actually watched The Matrix before we recorded the episode.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I was very busy that week. It was the holidays,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and I was drunk at the recording off of Mike's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Hard Lemonade. Off of Mike's Hard Lemonade, as was my
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: custom at the time. I would learned years later, that's
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: actually not adorable to do. Um. So I just wanted
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: to uh apol. I've been receiving criticism for never having
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: watched The Matrix when I was twenty three. For years now.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It's been it's something that's uh, you know, a common
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: criticism has been brought up to me at shows. It's
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: been tweeted at me repeatedly. It's on our Wikipedia page
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: that I've never seen the Matrix. Um it took five years,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: but work course correcting. I'm a new person. I've been
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: uh living, laughing, loving and learning and I really liked
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: The Matrix and I'm excited for today's episode. So sorry
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: one last time for not watching The Matrix five years ago.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: And if I could editor allies for just a second,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I think it's very weird how mad everyone Wasn't me.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: We didn't make any money out the podcast. Then there's
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: people people were mad, some of them, but there are
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I would say, just as many people who think it's
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: awesome that you didn't see it and still writ prepare
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: well it would be. You could be bad now because
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: now it's our job, but back then it was our hobby,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and um yeah I was. I don't know who knows.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. We are doing the episode now and
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: we have a wonderful guest, so let's get her in here. Indeed,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: she is the critic at large for Vox. She's the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: co creator of the podcast art In. It's Emily Vanderworth. Hello, Hello,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: it's so good to be here. And if you're wondering
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: who the skywriter was above your house, that said, please
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: watch the Matrix, Jamie. That was I learned how to
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: fly a plane just for that. You flew the plane
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: in everything. Yes I did. It's the personal touch, it
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: really really is, and that her me extra deeply as
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a result. Yeah, well, you're also leaving out that you
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: learned to fly the plane by just like having a
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: training software uploaded immediately into your brain floppy disc. They
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: plugged it into my brain and I was like, now
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I can fly in nineteen twenties biplane. Cool. I'm so
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: excited for this episode, and we're so stuked that you're
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: here to talk about the movie with us. Emily. Um,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: so this is this is our the So I guess
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: whenever we cover franchise, we're covering the first movie. This
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: episode will be released lining up with the new Matrix movie,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: which I just I guess right at the top. I'm
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: curious if if y'all think it looks any good. I
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: can't tell. I can't tell. I think so. I think
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: it's going to be great. Yeah, Okay, I've just had
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: my ass handed to me. No I I am, but
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm a Wachowski home homer. You know, I think they're great. Uh,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: you know, they've made a couple of movies I don't love,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: like I think the Third Matrix is their weakest film,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: but I still watch it all the time, so you know,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: it's I'm excited for it. I'm excited that it's very
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: colorful from the trailers. I'm excited for Keanu Reeves to
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: have a little rubber ducky on his head. Oh my gosh.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I well, because I've watched the trailer dozens and dozens
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: of times, mostly because I was like, well, first, I
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: think it's very fun and it's great, and I think
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: it makes the movie look great. I'm excited to see it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But also I was trying to figure out a Halloween
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: costume for this year, and I was like, m, my
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: hair length is about the same hair length as Kanus
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: in the trailer. Maybe I'll dress up as Kanu like
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: from the New Matrix movie. But he doesn't have necessarily
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: a consistent look in the trailer. And also he like
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily look like Neo famously looks with all of
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: his like kind of has his like John Wick hair
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, right, and then he's just wearing
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: like scarves and like just regular clothes and like not
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: his at least in the trailer again, like you don't
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: see him with his like black trench coat and sunglasses
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. So I just kind of picked a
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: random look and replicated that there's like you see him
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: for like seventeen frames or something like that. And I
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: was just like, well, this is this is my costume
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: this year, so I will share that on our Instagram.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: But um, it was a solid costume. It was good.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. So Emily, tell us what is
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: your relationship your history with the Matrix slash the whole franchise. Yeah,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I saw this movie in theaters when it came out,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: but like very late, like after the buzz had kind
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of died down, because it was it was huge for
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a while, and I remember I was like very irritated
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: by the marketing because I was someone who cared about that.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: At that time. It was like what is the Matrix? Was?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Like all the marketing was um. And so I saw
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: it several weeks after it opened with my then girlfriend,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and I remember it just it spoke to me in
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: a way I didn't entirely comprehend, but I just I
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: loved it. And then I watched it. You know, probably
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: dozens of times when it was on DVD, and I
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: saw it again a few years ago in the theater um.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's one of the most perfect movies
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: ever made, like there's not really anything in it that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't work. I kind of prefer the second one because
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I am a weird woman who likes imperfect babies and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: just like holding it up and being like, your head's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a little dented, but I still love you. I think.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I think the third one. I've seen this argument of
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the third one, in the second one should be considered
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: one big movie, and in that case, the third one
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: is better, but it isn't isolated thing. I do think
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it's The Witch House kis weakest movie, but like it
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: not bad. I enjoy watching it. But the second one,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I think is My Dented Little Baby. I really enjoyed
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the second one as well. I would say I mildly
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I far prefer the first one. I agree
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: that it's a perfect movie, and I don't know what
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: it says about me that I like perfect things. You know,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: like liking perfect things is fine, you know, it's just
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's uh, you look at that dented
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: little baby. And you're like, no, get rid of that one,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: throw that one away. I am not like that. So
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: so yeah, that's actually a huge flow. Let the baby
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: have a dead. Oh goodness, um, Jamie, what is your well?
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: You you did read your prepared statement. I just I
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: just give a really long winded I should have saved
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: it for here. I have never seen it. I lied
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: about it five years ago. Uh, and then I have
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: now seen it twice and I loved it. I really like.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I wish I hadn't been so glad formatively out watching
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it as a bit because it is such a good
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: movie and I've really enjoyed. Um, I don't know, I
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: feel like but with some certain movies, you're like, I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: don't really want to engage with the fan culture around
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: certain movies. But I've really enjoyed reading more about the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Matrix and learning more about it. And I liked the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: sequel and I'm interested in what the new one is like.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And I skipped the third one because I didn't have
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the stamina. But I yeah, the first Matrix movie, I
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: can say with the whole heart, I loved it. What
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: about you? I am a long, long, long time Matrix fan.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I saw the movie at a drive in movie theater
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: when it came out. I was like thirteen percent didn't
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: understand it all the first time I saw it, but
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I think on subsequent viewings I did understand. I don't
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: know if it was because like I'm thirteen and I
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: don't under like, I don't like this is confusing, or
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: if it's just because I was like distracted and with
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: my friends. Anyway, I think I had it figured out
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: by the second watch, and I've seen it like probably
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: fifty times since then. I watched this movie multiple times
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: a year. I love it. I think it's perfect, and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: it holds up so surprisingly well for a movie from
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: because we've covered a lot of movies from this podcast,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and I would say almost none of them hold up,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: but The Matrix does very much does. Yes, I'm really
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, just one of the like hottest casts ever assembled.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Also just a gorgeous just just everyone is so incredibly
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: beautiful of this movie. Uh, that's my contribution to the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: discourse today. I mean, honestly, I was going to make
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a joke about Joe Pantoliano, but like he's never been hotter,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: He's really hot. He joey pants is hot. His goatee.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Even fine, I'll take it. I like, you know, the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: thing is with Joey Fans is goot. I like when
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: someone makes a strong choice, and that's what Jelley Fans
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: is doing with the goatee. I love that for him.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: All right, Should I recap the story and we'll go
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: from there. Let's do it, and Emily jump in whenever.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: During the recap, we're fast and loose. Here it's an
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: open forum, okay. So we open on some images of
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: some kind of computer code. Uh. Then we meet Trinity,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: who's played by Carrie and Moss. Some cops have her surrounded.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Hugo Weaving in a suit. A K agent Smith is
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: also after her. There's a fight, they chase her. She
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: seems to be able to defy gravity during a lot
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: of this fighting and running away. She also takes control
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of the cinematography for like just a couple of seconds.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that is the opening scene is so good.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: It it's just yeah, immediately the style and yeah, it's amazing.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I love it. Um. And then she escapes finally by
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: answering a pay phone and seemingly disappearing, and we use
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the audience seeing this for the first time in or
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Monday whatever earlier this week. We're like, what what is
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: going on? Oh my gosh. Then Agent Smith mentions an informant.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: He's talking to his other agent friends. There are these
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: like white guys in suits. He mentions an informant and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: also the next target, someone named Neo. Then we cut
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: to Kiana Reeves, who in this world goes by Thomas Anderson.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Someone has hacked into his computer and is sending him messages.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: There's mention of the matrix. I love hearing Kiana Reeves
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: just read something off of the screen. It's very compelling
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to me. It's very calming. I like it. Yeah, it's nice.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: His performance in this movie is incredible. I love him
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: so much. Kianu is a national treasure. Okay, So the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: person on his computer tells Kianu to follow the White Rabbit,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: which ends up being a friend's tattoo, which leads him
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: to a club where he meets Trinity face to face.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: She's like, I know that you're trying to figure out
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: what the matrix is. By the way, you're in danger
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and you're being watched. And then the next day at work,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Kianu gets a cell phone delivered to him and then
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: immediately receives a call from Morpheus, who gives him instructions
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: on how to escape Agent Smith and the other agents
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: who are after him. But Kanu is unsuccessful and he
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: gets captured by the agents who want his help in
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: finding Morpheus, who they see as a terrorist. I liked
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I liked that. Um. I felt like this movie could
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: have come out almost whenever. But there you think about
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: this movie. I felt like was like the office job sequence.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this is such a late nineties
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: like gen X, I hate my job. The man is
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: killing me. Like it feels like it was made just
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Mike Judge just had some office space out takes, just
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: laying was like here you go. They just like color
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: corrected it green and they're like, and now it's these
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: are scenes from the Matrix. This is this is the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: scene with with the bug in it, right, a little
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: bug that goes in yes belly button. UM. When I
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: saw this movie in nine, I saw it with my
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: my then girlfriend, who had enormous Reese Witherspoon energy, UM,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and she was so disgusted by this. She was just
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: horrified by it and like hiding her face. And I
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: was watching it like, yeah, this is just how life is, right,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: somebody just traps you and puts a bug in you,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and then you have to just walk around with it
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: inside of you. And yeah, that was when I was like,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite movies ever because it's
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the only one that understands what it's like to have
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: a little bug crawling around inside you. To this day,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: I cannot watch the bug either going into his belly
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: button or coming back out of it. I don't know.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I have like a weird of belly button thing where
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I just so I loved watching it. I thought how interesting.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting to watch. I'm stuck on
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the phrase enormous Reese Witherspoon energy. That is, like you
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: said it as immediately I was like, I know exactly
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: what that means. Yes, yes, I I dated the girls
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be at that time, but yes. This
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: is the scene where Neo refuses to help the agents,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: so they bug him and then release him, and then
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Neo gets another call from Morpheus and Morpheus is like
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: you're the one, and he's like, what does that mean?
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And then Trinity and a couple other people switch and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: APOC pick Neo up. They debug him in the other
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: scene I can't watch um and then they take him
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to meet more Pheus, who we see in the Flesh
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: for the first time. He's played by Laurence Fishburne. Morpheus
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: gives Neo the opportunity to choose between taking a blue
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: pill and a red pill. Now, the blue pill will
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: let Neo to continue on with his life as he's
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: been living in and forget all about Morpheus and the Matrix,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: but the red pill will give him access to the truth. Right,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: and nobody ever thought about that idea again, like that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: never came. No one has ever, No one has used that.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: That's fun, imature, nefarious reasons even a little bit. No, okay,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So Neo takes the red pill and then Morpheus shows
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: him what the Matrix is. Basically, the Matrix is a
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: computer simulation that most humans are plugged into so that
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: they don't know what's actually happening, which is that it's
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: two years in the future and the artificially intelligent machines
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: grow humans like crops and use them as batteries to
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: power They're like post apocalyptic machine world. So all the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: humans are plugged into this simulation, which basically simulates reality
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: or some version of reality and that's what the matrix is.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So Morpheus and his crew unplugged Neo from the matrix.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: So we see him in this like pod thing that's
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: full of who I love when he's in the goo.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I'm a simple person, I like when he's in the give.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: This is another scene where I was like, well, this
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: is just what life is like. Somebody unplugs you and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: wake up in a pile of go Like that didn't
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: even registered for me. A how matter of factly that
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: is presented where it's like, well, now he's in goo,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: and then cut to the next scene he's out of
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the goo. Now, yeah, it is what it is, and yeah,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: so they take him out of the goo and they
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: bring him aboard Morpheusis ship, the Nubuchadnezzer. We meet the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: rest of the crew, which is Cipher, that's Joey Pants,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Joe Pantaliano, Mouse, Tank, and Dozer, who have all either
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: been unplugged from the matrix or, in the case of
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Tank and Dozer, they were born in a human society
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: called Zion and we're never plugged in to begin with.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So Neo learns all this stuff and has difficulty accepting
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the whole situation at first, but then he comes to
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: accept it and starts learning more about the matrix, how
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: to manipulate the laws of physics inside of it, how
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to do kung fu, he learns how to jump really far,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: things like that, and then Morpheus also explains that the
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: agents like Agent Smith a K. Hugo Weaving, are the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: sentient programs that can kind of move throughout the matrix,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and they're basically designed to like keep order, and they
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: are the main antagonistic force against the people like Morpheus
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and his crew while they're inside the matrix. Right. Morpheus
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: also tells Neo about a prophecy that the oracle made
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: about the one. Basically, someone would be able to destroy
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the matrix and the war against the machines and bring
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: freedom to the humans, and as it's already been suggested,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Morpheus believes Neo to be the one. Yeah, that's a
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: really short walk. You just have to move, oh in
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: front of an andy, Like, you don't have to do
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that much work. I feel like it shouldn't have taken
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: them that long, Right, it's true, it's written in the stars.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I do appreciate that Neo is an anagram for one,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: not unlike my name. Caitlin Durante is an anagram for
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for such things as Latin dancer, U t I, nine tips, Dracula,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and my favorite, Lauren D Titanic, Lauren D. I got
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to look this up. I'm looking myself up there. They
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: haven't done it in a while. Wait, and I think
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I always get cranky when anagrams come up, because all
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: mines suck. But you have every all of the vowels
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: in your dose your middle name. No, okay, yeah, mine, don't.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I think that's cheating, that's yeah. But yeah, let let
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: me let me know if either of you discover any
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: impressive anagrams of your name. In the meantime, we learned
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that Cipher is a trader. He's the informant who has
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: been working with the agents and who is going to
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: sell out Morpheus because the agents want the access codes
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to the main frame of that human city Zion to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: destroy the human population there. After getting a lot of
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Joey Pants's facial hair, I'm like, well, I don't know
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: what I expected in regards to whether he was going
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: to be a hero or a villain, Like, okay, right,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: he just looks like a like a like a sad
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: dad who came home from his office job, and it's like,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: my office job is fighting the machines, and I just
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: want to join the machine. The machines have such good
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: meats at their machine restaurants. He's like, I actually get
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: along with the machine software guys much better, So I'm
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: just gonna hang out with them. I think about this
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: all the time. If the Matrix is real and we
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: are all plugged into a simulation. But then we learned
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: about how it is actually a prison for our minds
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: if given the opportunity to be freed from it. But
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: then to live a life that seems very dangerous, and
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: like the quality of living doesn't seem that great, seems
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: cold and dark, and you have to eat like goog
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: all the time. Like I'm like, I don't know what
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I want to live in the Matrix. I did think
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: it was interesting that the like I mean, the world
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: is so carefully built out, and I like, we get
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: all these like little questions that I would have as
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: a viewer that they just like answer in text of like,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it's dangerous to tell people about the matrix
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: when there a certain age, which was something that I
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: thought of it like, oh yeah, that's like, if your
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: brain is fully formed, do you want to learn that
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: everything you've ever known as a lie? Probably not. Probably not.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: You probably couldn't handle it. And and that's also why
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I like Mouse so much. I also like Mouse because
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: he kind of looks like We'll Poulter. But also I
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: also like us because he's like kind I mean, he's
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: outside of the matrix, buties like the food sucks here
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: and I want to have sex, and I'm like, yeah,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: i'd feel the same way. I designed a lady computer
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: program for me to have sex with and that's cool,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: little rascal, and then he like explodes to death. I
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: know we're not bringing the sequels in, really, but the
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: second movie suggests everyone in Zion just just fo Yeah,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: so maybe it was more of a personal issue for Mouse.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Is he just happened to not be fucking poor Mouse?
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: But I just that scene where he turns to Neo
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and he's just like, this food is bad. I'm horny,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Like I love this classic Mouse. Okay, So then Morpheus
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: takes Neo into the Matrix to see the Oracle to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: hopefully confirm that Neo is in fact the one, but
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the Oracle tells Neo that he actually isn't the one,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and it's implied that it's because he does not yet
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: believe that he's the one. On their way back out
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: of the matrix Um, where they like have to answer
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: phones in specific places to get safely disconnected, agents ambush
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Neo Morpheus, Trinity and the rest of the crew and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: they kidnapped Morpheus. So Neo Trinity and everyone else tries
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to get back, but Cipher is sabotaging them and he
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: kills Apoc and Switch. And also this is shortly before
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: this mouse gets shot by the agents and Sarah ammoniously
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: moved because he was too horny to live that mouse
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: he had to go. Makes me sad anytime anyone. I mean,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: they really do it an amazing job of building out
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the side characters that I'm like, oh, I think I've
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: maybe heard this character speak three or four lines of dialogue,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: but I'm still absolutely gutted when they're killed totally. So
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: much of it is the is the visuals, Like they're
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: such distinct looking characters, they don't blend into each other,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: especially for it's it's a somewhat diverse cast, so you
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: have like a really strong feeling for who everybody is,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: even if you've only heard them talk two or three times,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: and mostly they just talked about how they were horny, right, yeah, Okay.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So meanwhile, Agent Smith is trying to break Morpheus to
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: get access to these codes to Zion. They're basically like
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: trying to hack his brain. And since keeping Zion safe
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: is the most important thing that any of these characters
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: can do, Neo, Trinity, and Tank consider pulling the plug
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: on Morpheus so he doesn't give up these mainframe codes
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: to Zion. But then Neo is like, no, there's got
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to be another way, so he and Trinity go back
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: into the Matrix to try to save Morpheus and fight
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the agents, and then what follows is a couple fight
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: sequences where Neo is dodging bullets, Trinity is flying a helicopter.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: They managed to save Morpheus, so you can picture what
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: it looks like. You've all seen because you've seen it
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: referred to in every piece of media since then. Then
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Neo gets stuck in the Matrix and has to face
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: off one on one with Agent Smith. They fight, and
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: then Agent Smith gets the upper hand and shoots Neo
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a bunch of times and he dies, but Trinity who
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: is back in the real world on Morpheus's ship. It's like, Neo,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: you can't be dead because the oracle told me I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: would fall in love with the one, and I love you,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: so you're the one, and that means that you can't
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: be dead, and that brings Neo back to life. This
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: is so often written off as like, you know, the obligatory,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the woman falls in love with the male love interest,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and I like, textually that's true, but it's such a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: fucking lesbian moment. It's so much. It's just so much like, oh,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I know, I've known you for a couple of days,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure we're going to get married, and like,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: you know, nine months from now they're going to break up,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: but right now, yes, absolutely, it's true love. I mean
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I never really questioned it. I always bought it. I
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: was just like, Yep, she loves him, and I mean,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: who wouldn't love Keanu Reeves when he shows up and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: it is all hot and amazing. Neo and Trinity are
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: just two girls who met at a at a party
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: at Barnard and just like hit it off, spent the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: next week together, and now they've been together for twenties.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Thing years, similar to how Rose and Jack of Titanic
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Fame of the Titanic of the Titanic famously historically is
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: another iconic lesbian romance. Absolutely about Actually this is a
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: total tangent. But the director of Portrait of a Lady
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: am Fire, Sleen Shama. If I didn't interview with her
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: box if you find it, she talks about how she
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: modeled her movie on Titanic. Yeah, yeah, wait reference we
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: talked on that episode on Portrait of the Medium Fire. Awesome.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I like when I I just love when like quote
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: unquote art filmmakers are like, no, of course I watch
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: fucking Titanic, Like I don't be ridiculous. Come on. So anyway,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: so Trinity professing her love to an unconscious Neo brings
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Neo back to life, and so then in the Matrix,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: he is able to finally defeat Agent Smith and proves
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that he is the one. And then the movie ends
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: with Neo talking to someone on a pay phone. It
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: seems to be that he's like talking to the Matrix itself.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: He hangs up the phone, Rage against the Machine starts
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: playing and flies away. I didn't know that the movie
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: ended on Rage against the Machine and anytime I was
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: watching it with Caitlin, I was like, anytime Rage Against
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the Machine comes on, I'm instantly like in the backseat
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of my uncle's car, Like it's just instantaneous. We're late
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: to school, he's mad, he's singing the lyrics. We're fucked.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love that. I love that ending.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: It is also the most about the movie. It is. Yeah,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: it is literally just like what if we had what
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: if we had a nine in this movie? That and
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the scene where Neo has like followed the white Rabbit
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: tattoo lady to the club and Rob Zombie is playing
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: those are the two like, Yes, this movie is extremely
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: from and it's it's obviously like all the tech, the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: cell phones and stuff is very the Nokia phone that
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: comes out down. Yeah, every time Nokia got a shout out,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I was like, good for them, Good for them. They
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they don't know that they're living in the best year
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: that they're ever going to have right now, Let's just
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: let them have it. I feel like Matrix four should
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: bring Nokia back, like they should just yeah they If
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: anything could it would be the fourth Matrix movie. It
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: will completely revitalize the Nokia brand. One of my great
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: dreams is to interview Lana Wachowski. She's famously pressed, shot,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: it's never going to happen, But I would just ask
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: her about Nokia. I'd just be like, Heylan, Like, that's
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: one of the things I hit Lana. I want to
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: know how you feel about Nokia. Do you want to
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: bring back the brand? Like? Are you concerned about their
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: their market share? You know? I think we I think
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: we have a lot in company. Um let's take a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: quick break and then we will come right back to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: discuss and we're back, all right, Where shall we begin, friends,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: where do you want to start? Well? Um, so, in
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: in recent years, kind of in lieu of both which
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Houseki is coming out as trans women. The Matrix, especially
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: the first movie has widely been interpreted as a trans allegory,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: which Emily you have written about, and I was just
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: wondering if you could speak to that more, speak to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: your interpretation of the film as a trans metaphor. We'll
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: be linking to your essay. You have no pressure to
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: completely reiterate your essay, but actually I'm just going to
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: pull it up and read it right. Yeah, that would
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: actually be amazing. I mean, the basic idea of it
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: is that if you were trans or even just like
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: gender nonconforming, gender curious, whatever, going online was like this
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: revolutionary new way to explore like who's your real self,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: who's the person that you actually want to be? And
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and for many many, many many years, it's been rumored
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: that the Witch Howskis wanted switch within the film to
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: be a woman within the matrix and a man within reality,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and Warner Brothers was like, no, and Kiana Reeves, I
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: think actually like just confirmed that that's true, this sort
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: of long standing rumor. When when I wrote my piece,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I had like tracked it down to a couple of
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: people where I was like, Okay, I feel like it's
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: probably true, but like I could never verified and like
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Kianu now has confirmed it. Thank you Kiana for yeah, um,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: but yeah it is. It is a movie about, you know,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: living a dual life. It is a movie about feeling
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: like one person well you know, you're perceived as another.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And it is very much driven by um is very
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: much driven by these ideas of duality, and like there
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: are just like little things like when Neo finds Trinity
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: in the club, he says something like I wasn't expecting
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: you to be a woman, and she says most guys
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: don't um. And at the end, when Agent Smith is
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: you know, beating up Neo, he continues to call Neo
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Mr Anderson, and Neo says, my name is Neo. It's
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty classic dead naming allegory. And of course
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: there's the famous thing of like, at the time the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: movie was made out, the pills that contained estrogen were read,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: so taking the red pill was estrogen or whatever. I think.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: And I say this as like the person that brought
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of this into the mainstream by writing that essay.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I think it is a little overstated that Wachowski is
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: like Lily Wachowski has given an interview where she was like,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I was not unconsciously thinking about that at the time.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Now I see how it filtered in. But like creating
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: this idea that like everything and it is an intentional allegory,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I think kind of cheapens the movie and also cheapens
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: trans storytelling in a lot of ways. But the thing
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: that I think is is most trans about it is
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: that the second that Neo learns that this one thing
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: about his life is a lie, he becomes a communist.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: So um he he's just like I'm going to tear
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: down modern society and blah blah blah blah blah. Like
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it is the thing I think gets lost a little
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: bit and discussions of this film is how incredibly incredibly
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: leftist it is, especially for and the sequels go even
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: further in that regard. But yeah, like I think it
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: is inescapable that there is a huge trans allegory read
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of this film. I'm just always very cautious of Like,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: it's not the only read of this movie that is valid.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Just because two trans women made it doesn't mean the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: only way you can interpret it is as a trans allegory.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: That's just one of many ratings that sits alongside others,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and like that that's not me saying that to you.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: That's me saying that to the internet, which is now,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: which is now, Like if you go on Twitter, they're like,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: here's this is a this is a thing. All trans
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: people know is if you go on Twitter and you say,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: did you know the Matrix was a trans allegory made
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: by two trans women and here's the reasons, you will
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: get three thousand retweets in like an hour. Becausist people,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: This blows their fucking minds. They're just like, what the
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: matrix I've seen that movie? Am I trans now? And
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: then hopefully that like opens a door in their brain
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: and they think about it. But yeah, it is. It
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: is the thing, and I worry that it's the same
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: thing that happened with the red Pill thing, which I'm
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: sure we're going to we'll get into where the whole
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: thing is, like, this is what the movie is about,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and like, no movie this good is about one thing.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: So yes, trans allegory, but don't I wouldn't just boil
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: it down to that except on Twitter if I want
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: to get retweets. I mean, if you need some engagement,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it's always going to be there in your back pocket,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: and exactly I can. I'll take that for view. Thank
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: thank you for for for kind of unpacking that I
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: think that it is, like, um, it's been interesting to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: watch the I mean even in truly the five years
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: that I was not watching this movie, the conversation around
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: this movie has changed so significantly, and a lot of
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: it is because of your work, And I think it
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: is like fascinating how many different ways there are to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: look at this movie and how the leftist read really
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: stuck out to meet this time as well, and which
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: makes it I think even more baffling and like awful
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: that the red Pill discussion went the way it did
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: because it's like, well, he's clearly being radicalized in a
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: very particular direction. Did you watch the movie? Yeah, I
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: remember when that piece published the Matrix piece on the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary of the movie, so b March nineteen. I
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: just know when the Matrix came out. That's a thing
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: that I just know. Um, there were so many people
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: who tweeted that piece out, who like very prominent names
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: within journalism, within the media, etcetera, who were just like,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: I thought this movie was a conservative screen because it
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: had been like taken over by the red Pill people,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, they'd seen the Matrix, but they hadn't
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: seen it in twenty years or whatever, so it had
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: like calcified in their mind based on who was obsessed
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: with it. So I do like the fact that there
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: is this trans reading of it now because it has
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: liberated the movie from this sort of fate it was
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: going to meet. That would be similar to something like
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: fight Club, where it is now just totally defined by
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: its bad fans, even though you know it is not
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: necessarily the movie they're selling it as right, And I
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: think I think it's been really cool to Um, I
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: don't know, I'm curious of in your thoughts and this
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: as well, Emily, how Lana and Lily Wachowski have kind
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: of engaged with the trans reading of the movie where
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: it feels like I like their I like their style
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: of like responding to stuff like this a lot, because
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: it seems like they never bring up new reads of
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: the movie, but it's brought to them and they're like,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, that's like that is like, UM, I
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: don't know. I think that that the way that they
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: engage with fans of the Matrix is so smart because
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: it's not like they're resisting doing so at all, but
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: they're all also not like, I don't know, going the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: other way that directors do sometimes where they're over engaging
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and creating new cannon and I don't know, I just
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: they're so fucking cool. It's wild. Lily, Lily Witchusky works
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: on this really great showtime show called Work in Progress, Um,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and I got a chance to talk to her. I
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: got a chance to talk to her a couple of
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: years ago for that show, and I was like, how
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: do I not just make this interview about the Matrix?
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Because she had the other people that work on that
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: show with her there, so I had to also ask
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: them questions, and I finally came up with, how is this,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: you know, this tiny little TV show that you make
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: basically independently, how is that any continuum with the Matrix?
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And her answer was basically just like, I'm always trying
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: to talk about the same things and it doesn't matter
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the size of the story. And I was like, thank you,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Lily Witchowski, that's a great answer to that question, so amazing. Yeah,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: I just to kind of go back to the idea
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that a piece of media like this, especially because the
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: director's intent was not specifically at the time to make
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: this trans allegory. Because they're both trans women, it stands
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to reason that they might have written certain just little
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: details or themes or something like that into the story
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: kind of unconsciously, almost or subconsciously, but as you stated,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: because it wasn't like deliberately created as this specific allegory
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: from a very intentional place. Because there are some movies
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: that are like, whatever, what's his fate? Darren Aronofsky being like, yeah,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: mother exclamation point is that you've got like charts behind them.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: He's like, the allegory is very precise. You're like yeah,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and then you watch the movie and you're like, what
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: do you even what are you trying to say here?
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: But like, the thing with a lot of metaphor and
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: allegory found in art and in narratives is that it
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily intentional, um, which does mean that it is
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: open to interpretation. And I think that's just like a
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: really cool thing about this movie and about the franchise,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: and not only that the movie explores all these like
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: philosophical things. I remember I took a class as a
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: freshman in college and wrote a paper about the matrix.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure you can imagine how brilliant of a
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: piece of writing that was. But it was a class
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: called like Philosophy, Art and Film, and you had to
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: like watch a movie and then take like a philosopher's
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: philosophy and then apply it to the movie. So I
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: don't even know what philosophy I was trying to like
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: attach to the matrix, but I remember I was I
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I'm so freaking deep right now,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I'm so about this movie is about choice and it's
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: about duality, and it's about fate or what if there's
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: not fate, and like just like all this stuff, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like this movie is just
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: so rich in that way that it is open to
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of interpretations and a lot of analysis from
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: many different perspectives. So our eighteen year old self sort
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of totally vibe that's what you're saying. Just just talks
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: talks the matrix and be like, you know what's kind
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: of about every philosophy, right, That's like part of what
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: makes this movie so cool and why I feel like
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: there there are so many different lenses to view with
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: its like there is a trans allegory in here. There
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: is a like leftist radicalization in there, and it's because
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: it's so unique to who these filmmakers are. So it's like,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: of course all this stuff is showing up. And I like,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are two of the most distinct filmmakers
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: in the entire world, like and and I really like,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I mean just truly, as a new convert to the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: matrix fandom, I was so blown away and impressed with
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: how many I mean you said now Aronofsky is stuck
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: in my mind because this is what I struggle with
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: with him in certain cases, as like, you know, the
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Waaskis are able to take so much complicated stuff and
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: make it fun and engaging to watch and it's moving
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the story, where like other filmmakers are like really getting
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: bogged down and trying to let you know that they've
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: read a book and you're like it's fine, Like I
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: believe you, but I'm so bored and I don't know.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: They're just they're so fucking smart. Um, you know, I think, um,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: this is the famously a movie, Um that it blends
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of influences. You know, it blends in anime,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: at blends in also known as kung fu movies, It
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: blends in like like there's a lot of James Cameron
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: in this movie, which I don't know that I every
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: time I rewatched him, Like this is like this is
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: very on a line with like Aliens or True Lies
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: or some of those movies. And I think that people
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: miss how many like intellectual influences are also in there,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and like so like the trance stuff is in there,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the pilosophy stuff is in there, but also just like
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: they clearly had read a lot of you know, Gnome
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Chompski and stuff that just gets dropped in there. But
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: it's all in the package of this huge, big budget
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: action movie that totally works as an action movie. You
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: can detach from all of that and still enjoy this.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: It's and I think that's why it's so perfect is
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: because it works on like sixteen levels at once. I
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: read on our favorite scholarly journal Wikipedia that the Lilian
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Lana Wichowski required the cast to be able to explain
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: what the Matrix is and they made them read and
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to pronounce this correctly, but simulacra and
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: simulation from French philosopher Jean bald God Jean or something.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I do not speak French, but um yeah, the Witch
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: House kis were like, Kianu Reeves, We're going to require
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: that you understand a lot of heavy philosophy to be
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: able to be in this movie. I love that. And now,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: just like knowing what sort of person Kianu rees is,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: at least in the public facing way, you're just like,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: he was so down for that. I don't know. There
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: we talked about this in the Matrix episode that no
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: longer exists, but I used to work at a bookstore
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: as my first I worked at book Soup in l
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: A and that was my first job when I moved here.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And Kianu Reeves would come every Wednesday night on his
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: motorcycle and get a new book and Sudoku puzzles and
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: he's a he's a bookhead. I think it's so cool
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: that that they gave him homework. I also just like,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: as someone who does not have the confidence to give
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: someone homework, I love that the witch House skis were like, Yeah,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: you're gonna need to get a library card and really
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: put in some hours because the test is on Monday.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Before I would agree to come on the show, I
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: required you both to read Jock Alldy yards uh similar
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: cromin Simulation. So I'd like to leave like a ten
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: minute discussion of that right now. And what your thoughts were? Yes, yeah,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: so I thought it was really good. I liked it.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite plot twist? I thought it was a
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: derivative if you're asking me. I liked when Simulacra and
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Simulation met for the first time. I thought it was
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: so I love when they kiss at the end. So romantic,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I know. And you're like, Simulation loved Simulacra so much
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: the whole time, and Simulacra had no idea, but then
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: when they heard it, they were It was just I
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: thought it was beautiful. Another iconic lesbian romance exactly. I
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: did think it was a little weird when it was
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: revealed that they were the same person, but that's also
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: iconic lesbian cinema. So yeah, I I you know, I
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: liked the duality. I liked the tone, I liked the ideas,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and I loved reading the index. Also, we're all we're
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: all going to have somebody with high as skywriter above
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: our houses to say reads Simulation, you assholes reads I
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: dare you? Oh my gosh, I yeah, I just god,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: I love I mean, there is a part of that
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: anecdote that makes me feel like I'm being like I
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: was like, oh yeah, this is this is kind of
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: just a simulation of being in the d s A
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: where everyone's like, have you read this book, and you're like,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I haven't. I just want everyone to have health insurance.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The thing that this is this is A
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: tweeted about this several times. The thing that like like
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: most makes me stand out at like when I hang
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: out with with other leftists, is like, I have super
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: normy pop culture days. I'm yeah, well you know, I like,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: you know, these extremely mainstream HBO shows and they're like,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: what about this? And I don't know. That's fine too.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: You want to talk about six USh and everybody, right right,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I know, it's just I, um the leftist. I mean,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I love him to death. And make room for us
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: basic gals because we have something to bring to the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: table too. Yeah, you want to listen to Taylor Swift together.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: You want to recruit people into the movement, you gotta
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: be able to talk about what happened on Succession last week. Sorry, um,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: let's take another quick break and then we will come
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: back for more discussion, and we're back. One last comment
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: on the homework section. I just like that that section
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: ends with Carrie and Moss commented that she had difficulty
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: with this process. Kotu was like, yes, more books, and
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: She's like, I did not sign up for this. I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: thought I was going to be wearing a jacket and fighting.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how much of her fighting
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: in the movie is like stunt people, but it seems
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: like a lot of the actors were like trained in
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: martial arts and doing a lot of their own stunts
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: and fight choreography, which is very impressed by. So she
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: was probably just busy learning like martial arts, and she
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: didn't have time to read a book, much like us.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: I remember Laurence Fishburne was on Hannibal and Um I
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: talked to Brian Fuller a lot around that show, and
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: he was like, sometime between season one and season two,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Lawrence fishburn came to him and was like, listen, Briant,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: I have all this kung fu training from the Matrix.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Can I get in a fight? And like, there's an
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: amazing fight in season two that was inspired entirely by
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: him being like, Brian Fuller, I know how to fight,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Please let me fight. So, yeah, they did a lot
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: of their own stuff. Yeah, that's so cool. I guess
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: if I knew how to do kung fu, I would
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: just try to work it into whatever I did for
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the rest of my life. Also, that's so cool. Really
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: hard to do in an audio medium, is the thing.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I would definitely try and work. At end
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: of season three of Our yeah, I mean just just
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: again leak leak the zoom call, you know, our hair
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: looks great. We have kung fu skills to show off.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: What are we doing? I wanted to talk about the
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: film itself, the narrative, the characters, because I think we've
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: got an interesting cast of characters here, and I think
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons the movie holds up as well
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: as it does. I think one of the reasons that
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I was so attached to it as a young person
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: is like the badassary of Trinity. And this was like
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the bulk of our conversation on the again first version
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: of this episode that no longer exists. But um, the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: tapes we should we should drop. We still have the
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: audio file in our Google drive. We should drop a
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: little because that was fun for our listeners to go
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: back and be like, wow, Jamie didn't make a definitive
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: statement the whole I am interesting. So yeah, maybe on
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: our Patreon will like leak a couple of minutes or something.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Shame anyways, But um, I feel almost like simple being like, yeah,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Trinity is so cool and badass, and like watching her
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: fight competently and like know how to hack, and like, no,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: she's just she's equipped with with a lot of skills.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: But I never felt that she fell into like the
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Merry Sue type. I like it's implied that she's had
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: extensive training to Like, the more you get to know
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: her character, it's like, you know, how why why she
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: can do what she does? Write different characters, and it's
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: often like the villains are constantly underestimating her. Also where
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: there's like the movie opens on that sequence where there's
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: like a cop who's like, oh, we can handle one
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: little girl, and then Agent Smith, who know who Trinity
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: is and like understands the extent of her capabilities, is like, no, Lieutenant,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: your men are already dead. And that was an amazing
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Hugo Weaving impression. Thank you so much. That was good.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: That was good. How did those gorgeous lips just like,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: just like Mr Hugo does Hugo Leaving weavings. Lips are
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: so distracting in this movie, And I like in a
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: good way, but I was just like, I just wasn't
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: expecting those beautiful lips out that whole time. Wow, there's
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: a part at the very end it's like the final
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: battle between him and Neo, and again he's constantly calling
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Neo Mr Anderson throughout the whole movie, and his voice
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: gets really gravelly at one point, and he's just like
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Mr Randerson, It's incredible, and then like Neo Neo kind
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: of like flexes and like you see dust come off
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: of his shirt and then he just like starts to
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: be Agent Smith's ass uh, it's so good anyway. My
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: point is people people are often underestimating trinity, which is
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: something that many women can identify with. Um, even Neo,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned Emily Um, there's that scene where he's like, oh,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: you're the Trinity who cracked the I R S D
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: base and she's like, yes, but that was a long
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: time ago. I'm humble. And then he's like, oh, I
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: just thought you were a guy, and she's like most
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: guys do. Um. I don't know, just like those little
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: nuggets in there, they're kind of like not like throwaway
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: moments really, but just like little details that I found
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: made that character just like especially relatable and and I
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: like that it's like they're not I don't know. There
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: are certain movies where it's like those moments come off
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: as extremely over the top, and like I feel like
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: we've talked about a lot of action movies where there's
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: like the like you're a googoogo girl, like in the
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: middle of a scene. But it's just like, even though
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: that moment happens, it's just a natural part of the scene,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and it's not like the reaction from Neo isn't like
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I found out that like a woman is an incredible
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: hacker and I'm upset about it. He's just like, Oh,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: I guess my assumption was wrong. And then the scene
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: continues and it's like, Oh, I didn't realize that. What
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: a relief that is to watch someone react like that.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: The sympathy of that moment in that scene is with Trinity,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: and that's why it works because you're like, you're like, oh,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: she's been underestimated. That fucking sucks because I already know
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: she can kick people in the face, you know or whatever.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: You mentioning how how much hacking is in this movie
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: reminds me. This is other influence in the film that's
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: totally been forgotten, which is mid nineties movies about the
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Internet that trying to like personify like this is just
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Sonder blocks the Net, but like a little bit better,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, the net. We should cover the net.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: We should cover the net. We've covered hack. I'll come
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: on to talk about the net anytime, please come back
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: into the net. Oh my god. Um. There's another small
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: moment that's like again very fleeting, but just like relatable
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and and I really appreciated it where Neo has taken
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the red pill. They're kind of like preparing him to
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: be unplugged from the matrix and like Trinity is hooking
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: him up to a bunch of like apparatus and Neo
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: is just like, you did all this to Trinity and
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: she was just like mm hmmm. So like it was
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: just like a nice moment where he like recognizes that
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: she probably put in all of this effort and like
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: did all this work and like set up this whole thing,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: especially now that he knows that she's the one who,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: like how's all these amazing like hacking and computer skills.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: And then she's just like uh huh, yeah I did that,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: like very matter of fact ye, And he's just like cool.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: And because like so many movies, like you said, Jamie,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: there would be if we saw a woman like doing
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: something impressive, or we saw like you know, kicking or
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: hacking or something, the guys would be like what boner right, right, yeah,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: and then they'd like instantly fall in love with her,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: and they were like jaws would drop and they just
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: like wouldn't know how to turn into that corny cartoon
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: wolf right, and they just wouldn't know how to comprehend that,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: like a woman is capable of something, especially something that
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: they assume would be something that only a man could do.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: So yeah, just these like little moments that we like
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: learn things about her character, we learn about her abilities,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: and it's just presented a very matter of factly and
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: in a way that like Neo immediately accepts and there
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: is I think, um, some of those moments where people
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: are like, whoa Trinity, you can do things? Um, they
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: feel so much like studio notes. They feel so much
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: like somebody at the exact level was like, well, if
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: she's with all these computers, someone has to note that
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: she did that, and that's unusual because she's a girl,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And so they put that in the script and like
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: most directors would make a big moment of that. But
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: like the Witch, how skis, even if they were not
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: aware of their transness at the time, their sympathies are
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: always with Trinity because they are in fact women, uh,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: And like that makes those moments play because you're not
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: like sitting there and being like, oh my god, this
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: is so condescending because it's it is like a thing
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: that would have been condescending in any other movie with
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the exact same dialogue. It's just like how they wait
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: that scene. I was. I was. I was kind of
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: challenged by a lot of moments in the movie for
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: that exact reason, where it's like on paper, if you
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: hear like a similar thing with with Joey Pants, when
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: you find out that Joey Pants has been lusting after
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Trinity was. At first, it being my first time encountering
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: this plot point, I was like, Oh cool, we're adding
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: in a spiteful ex boyfriend character to the one woman
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: we're going to get to know during this movie, Like
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: where is this gonna go? But the way I don't know.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: I generally felt like the way that that storyline play out.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I just feel like almost any other director would have
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: implied that Trinity had somehow brought this upon herself, that
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: she could have handled rejecting Joey Pants in a different
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: way that would have prevented this outcome. But this movie
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't go for that at all. It presents the spiteful
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Joey Pants ex boyfriend, of which there are unfortunately many
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: in the world, and does not blame the woman who
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: is being raged at for what is happening, which again
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: is just like I feel like that just wasn't happening
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: a lot in movies at that time, and I was
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: I ended up being kind of pleasantly surprised by I mean,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and again, it's like, that's scraps, but it it. I
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: was surprised that was how that story kind of played out.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: What if every shitty, spiteful ex boyfriend turned into a
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: clone of Joe Pantoliano, like Agent Smith overtaking someone in
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the matrix. Now that's a movie, I hope. I hope
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: that's Resurrections that they just had start showing it. I
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: did want to talk a little bit about the romantic
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: subplot between Trinity and Neo, because that's the one aspect
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: of this movie where I get a little I don't know,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: I mean yeah, entering it in, I feel like it
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: stood out to me a little bit more because I
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: didn't have any nostalgia for the movie, and also because
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: we recently covered speed in this movie, which ends with
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Kanu getting a little a little slurp at the end
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: a plot resolving slurp if you will. Yeah, my main gripes,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: I don't even hate that it's there. You know, movies
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: be movies, and movies have hetero romantic subplots in them often,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: but I don't there there are heterosexual I know. Is
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: that's still a thing. God, I'm actually writing standout material
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: about this as we speak, But um my gripes with
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: it are that Neo being brought back to life by
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: like Trinity's love and kiss to me that almost read
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: is like because it's a it's a surprise kiss of
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Trinity kissing Neo while he's unconscious, like the prince in
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: snow White bringing back to life, like that whole fairytale thing.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: It's like why you're like, don't don't kiss an unconscious
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: person they cannot consent and stop showing that in movies. Also,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: um my other question I'm interested to hear people's thoughts
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: about this, is so the oracle prophesied that or does
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: that a word prophecied? Made a prophecy, she did a prophecy.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: She did she did a prophecy that Trinity would fall
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: in love and that that man would be the one.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: And then that ends up being true. My question is,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: does it feel like that kind of removes agency from
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: Trinity or is that not how prophecies work? No, I do,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I My feeling on that
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: was like, if we're I, Trinity receiving my prophecy, of
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: which you seem to only get one, I would be
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: sort of let down that the prophecy seemed to have
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: actually not that much to do with me, and more
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: like a second prophecy for a different person. Like I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: do think that there's like that trope that you see
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: a million times of like a woman's love will you know,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: it's like Helen of troy Ship. You know, a woman's
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: love will resolve the plot or the war, whatever it is,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: that's definitely present here. I don't know, I mean in
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: terms of agency, I guess I hadn't really considered that,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: But I think that that's where of a testament to Like,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: it feels so clear in the plot that Trinity and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: and EEO should be together that if I felt like
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: there wasn't chemistry between those characters, um and that I
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: wanted them to kiss so badly, maybe maybe that would
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: have told me. I don't know that it does then
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I mean when you think about the prophecy that Morpheus received,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: which was you're going to find the one. Neo's prophecy
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: is you are the one as long as you believe
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that you're the one, and once you believe that you're
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: the one, then you're the one. Those are prophecies that
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: have to do with them, right. And then Trinity's prophecy
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: is You're going to fall in love with a man,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: which feels it feels like a very gendered choice. But again,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: I don't even hate that the love stories there, but
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: it does, know, I mean, I like the love story.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I do think that the two sequels really do a
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: lot to further sell it. And I'm always like reading
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: who those two characters become back onto the first movie,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: but I remember I was very much like, yeah, I
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: don't know this love story. I I think they have
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: good chemistry, but I'm not sure it was needed. But
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: like Matrix Reloaded especially has some great stuff for those
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: two characters to sort of bounce off of each other.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like if it wasn't for their chemistry, I
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: don't think it would work. Fortunately they have amazing chemistry. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: I do. I do feel like there are there are
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: some kind of and Emily, once you brought up studio notes,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: now I can't stop thinking of, like, well, at what
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: you know? I now I want to blame everything I
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: didn't love about the movie on studio notes, but who knows.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I do feel like it would have been just as
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: easy and it wouldn't have impacted the story for them
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: to not get together in that way and be like
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: a team. And I think that that would have been
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: just as strong a choice and would have worked completely fine,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: and the love story didn't have to be there. I
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: didn't hate that it was there, but I felt like, yeah,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: my my main thing was like we especially because the
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: movie starts with just a long introduction to how fucking
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: cool and capable and brilliant Trinity is for her to
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: get uh message like that from the oracle and then
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: just have it bear out and not have Trinity, I
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: mean she it's I thought it was interesting because in
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: the movie she seems kind of annoyed that that is
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: what she was told, or like very conflicted of like
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: that's what I have to learn, like because it just
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: we know, like we've seen how much she can do.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: It doesn't quite make sense that her fate would be
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: so limited in the way that it's presented. There's a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: great piece on the sadly defunct website that dissolved by
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: um Tasha Robinson about this very thing about how many
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: movies have a basically a trinity character who's badass and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: capable and can do anything, and then her story ends
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: up being but also she falls in love with the guy,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: and the Matrix actually does a pretty good job with
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: that idea, and it's sort of the innovator of that trope,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: which is I think why in some ways it gets
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: away with it. But then by the time she wrote
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: it in, it's just like everywhere and it's not doing anything.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: It's just like sitting there taking up space and having
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the illusion of strong women characters while never actually having
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: to create a strong women character. They're creating the trappings
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: of one without actually having to make a full character.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: By the way, do you think people go to the
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: oracle and get just like really boring prophecies? Do you
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: think the oracles ever just like Jamie, you've seen the
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: most beautiful duck you'll ever see already, Like, do you
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: think that ever just comes up? And then I would
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: just walk into traffic afterwards, I'd be like, well, thanks
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: a lot, I hope so I well, we'll get to
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the oracle, whole, whole whole discussion to be had there.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I God, that's my that's my worst fear is to
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: encounter someone who's just like, yeah, your best days are
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: very much behind you, so just write it out. But yeah,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, Jamie you pointed out the movie opens with this,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: like the whole sequence showcasing Trinity and her skills. Like
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: for this action movie to open on an action set piece,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: which is not uncommon for an action movie, but for
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: that action set piece to center around a woman and
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a woman who's not even the protagonist, because you would
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: expect that from something like Laura Croft tomb Raider or
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: something like that. But we get this whole set piece
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: where we see a woman fighting and kicking ass, and
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: she doesn't even end up being the protagonist of the narrative.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: I think is like, I don't know where else I've
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: ever seen that. I don't think really anywhere. Yeah, I
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: think just to kind of jump back to how yeah,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: before this, and especially like action movies and action franchises,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: the one woman character who we get to know pretty well,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: would be framed only as the romantic interest who maybe
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: gets like dragged along for the ride, but isn't participating
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: in an any of the action or the plot herself,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: and it's just kind of like present for the man
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: to eventually kiss at the end. Whereas this movie, and
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know there are other examples before this,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: but like I feel like this is one of the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: ones that like kind of popularized or like actually gave
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: the woman more agency, more to do, more skills, and
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: actually allowed her to participate in the plot in more
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: meaningful ways, but still couldn't quite stick the landing on
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: given her the full story. Right, there's there's really before
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: this movie. There is. If you're a woman in a movie,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: you are just an incredible badass. Woman in an action movie,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: you're just an incredible badass. Usually there's not a man around,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: like the kind of the one exception I'm thinking of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: right now is um Linda Hamilton's and Terminator to but
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: even like in the first Terminator, she falls in love
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: with this guy and has sex with him, you know whatever,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: or you are the love interest, you know um, So
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: this is the first movie that tries to blend those
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: two but it is very much like at the end
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: they have to pick one of those two corridors and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: they pick the wrong one. To my mind, it's messy
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: and it's and it's like we're it's not even like
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: we're suggesting that women who can execute perfect fight choreography
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: and hack a computer don't deserve love if they want
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: love or and they want a relationship, But it's like
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: more the way that it's executed and how what we're
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: told in the first half of the movie is what
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: makes her special, isn't what makes her special or relevant
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to the plot by the end, And that is like
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that all like played in and
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: she wants a boyfriend. Amazing, great love that, but yeah,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Definitely a little bit messy, but still
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I mean I keep every time I like Peel, the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: need to qualify it at every turn as like, but
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: it's doing way better than any other movie was doing
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: at this time, like by quite a bit. So I
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: feel like, yeah, that's there's a lot of product of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: its time. Zenous to that choice along the lines of
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: this being a product of its time. This is a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: movie from as we've stated at nine nine is just
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: clogged with movies that are about, well, we've reached the
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: end of history capitalism one and everything's great. Why do
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: I feel hollow inside? And like there's like five or
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: six that come out in even more if you include
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand. But the Matrix is the one that's held
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: up best to my mind because it has this larger
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: critique of everything feels empty because you have been misled
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: by corporations and governments and all these systems to think
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: that you do not have any actual human connection. And
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: the truth is you should have human connection. You should
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: move to a city at the center of the earth
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: and just funck everyone you see, Like that is the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: message of these movies. But like you know, you compare
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: it to something like American Beauty, which one best picture
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: that year, And it's just that that vision of like
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: what it means to be alive is like so shallow,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: and this movie's vision of what it means to be
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: alive is so rich and fascinating and weird and complicated.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: And um, I think that is to the credit of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: the Witch, how skis whatever stumbles they may have made
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: along the way. Sure, I totally yeah. I just love Trinity,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: and I also love how there. I don't know the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: way that the characters are presented in this movie. I
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: know it's just like a part of the aesthetic of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: this world as it is. But the women in this
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: world are not aggressively sexualized. You know. Everyone is basically
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: wearing the same exact outfit. Everyone has a variation on
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: the same exact haircut, and then everyone has the jawline
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: to pull off that haircut. And don't don't get us wrong,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: Trinity is very sexy. But yes, I agree everyone sexually
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: everyone's sexually am sexy, but yeah, not overtly sexualized. Yeah,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: it's kind know that it is kind of that nineties
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Internet aesthetic where it's like, well, online everyone's the same.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Everyone just kind of looks the same, has the same
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: vibe on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: whatever that cartoon was at the time. Like, um, and
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: I when I've watched the trailer for this there's a
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: lot more less homogeneity, you know, within that world. And
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's because now we understand the Internet can
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: be as terrible as real life too, if not worse.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: I wanted to uh, we even talked too much about Morpheus,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: yet I wanted to talk about Morpheus a little bit.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, because he's amazing, he's great, um,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: But there was as I was going back to it,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: so I was doing the always interesting but sometimes unpleasant
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: task of going back to the original round of criticism
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: for this movie in the late nineties, going into kind
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: of like movie blogs of the early two thousands, and
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: there was, I think, especially in the earlier years of
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: this movie, a fair amount of criticism around mystical black
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: character tropes used in the writing of Morpheus's character as
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: well as the oracle. UM. So I kind of wanted
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: to uh open the floor on on that topic to
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, the criticism that I was seeing and we
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: can um link this in the description as well, is
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: that and we've discussed this, I mean we we just
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: discussed this on the show in our full Court Miracle
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: episode or that troupe couldn't be more different movies, but
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: the trope is at play to varying degrees in both
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: of these movies that are made by and you know,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: made and written by white filmmakers, in which essentially black
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: character appears as this mystical fairy godmother plot advancement character
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: for the chosen white protagonist, whether that be Neo or
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: the kid in Full Court Miracle. You know, it just
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: it just all depends um. And I mean I I
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: think that it's absolutely a valid criticism of the way
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: that those characters are written. Not the worst example, but
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: um certainly is present. I think Originally, I mean, the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: term was originally used by Spike Lee in two thousand
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and one, and I have an old Salon article up
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: here which really takes me back. But the character is
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: being cited. When this term was first coined. Was Kuba
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Gooding Jr. In What Dreams May Come, which is a
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: movie I haven't seen that's about a spirit guide helping
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Robin Williams rescue his wife from hell. Question mark um
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: will Smith in the Legend of Bagger vans Uh Laurence
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: Fishburne in The Matrix, which is described as in this
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: as obi Wana. Kiana Reeves is Luke Skywalker, and Michael
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, in which he plays
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: a man on death Row who has healing powers and
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: heels white characters. Do you want to know the Supper
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Eyes twist of What Dreams May Come? What Cooper Gooding Jr.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: Is playing Robin williams son in disguise to like lead
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: him through the afterlife, because if it was his actual son,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Robin Williams wouldn't like go along with it. I don't know,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: it's very weird. I have never heard of this movie,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: and but um, yeah, so I did. I did want to,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: you know, just bring that criticism up, because it's uh,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: something that comes up quite a bit in movies still.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: But I think in a high density of movies of
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: this kind of stretch of years in the late nineties
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: into their early two thousands, sure it does. One thing
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: I like about the casting of the fourth movie is
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: it seems, yes, they have abdual Matine playing who is
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: obviously the Morpheus character. Um, but they have a bunch
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: of other actors of color and different roles that look
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: like they're going to be all kind of over the map,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: and I think that will help with this issue. I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: do think I think that like this is obviously a
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: valid and important criticism of the film. I do think
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: that there is the thing of you know, they get
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: considered a lot of different actors for the role of Morpheus.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: They settled on Ward's fishburn, should they when they settled
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: on him, did they settle on him because they had
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: certain you know, racist stereotypical ideas that you know, we're
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: in their heads already, you know, we can't know that.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: But I do think once you've cast a black actor
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: in a role like this, you do have sort of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: the burden of going back over the script and being like, Okay,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: are there ways we can complicate this? Are other ways
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: we can make it more interesting? That said, I think
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: that Morpheus is nowhere near Kuba cutting juniors. Like he's
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: a fully realized human being, and like, sometimes the tropes
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: are bad because they we just lean on the tropes,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: and sometimes the tropes exist because we need certain tropes
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: to tell us worries. We're not saying we need this one.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: But Morpheus is a fully realized human being, and I
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: think that keeps him from falling into the worst examples
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: of this. The thing that and again it's like we're
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: we're three white women here, and I want to be clear,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: extremely white. When I said big Greece witherspin energy, I
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: was describing myself. Uh, but but I did, I mean
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: the only thing that this is even like pushing back
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: at all. But like Will Smith almost played Neo is
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: another thing that I kind of took into consideration when
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: I was just kind of going through this criticism is
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: I think that I totally agree with the Emily where
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: it is on the filmmakers once they've made their casting
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: decisions to consider, you know, whether intended or not, what
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: might be coming across, and and take that into consideration
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: with how characters are presented and how their their storylines unfold.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: But it does seem like the cast I mean, reading
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: about the casting process for The Matrix outside of this
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: discussion is just very interesting. Will Smith has made so
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: many YouTube videos about how he almost took his part.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: He's still mad about it. There's one in particular that
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: like involves some animation and he like it's so funny.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: He's spending money telling people that he was almost in
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: the Matrix, Like it's funny, it's amazing. So I I
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: think that you know, where the casting dead land. It's
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: a valid criticism and and you know, I think we're
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: being made now, Like if this movie was coming out now,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: it would be something that would be taken into account
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: carefully because Spike Lee made this criticism of all of
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: these movies. So yeah, and I definitely think the Oracle
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: does fall a bit more into that trope, for I mean,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: because we know nothing about her. She's in one scene,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: and everything we know about her is that she seems
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: to have these like kind of otherworldly clairvoyant capabilities that
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: no one else has. So yeah, she is presented as
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: this very like mystical figure. I love that performer though.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Gloria Foster so good and so there's something so warm
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: about her and like I wish we'd gotten ten million
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: more performances from her. She's so good. Yeah, she's also
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: in the Matrix Reloaded, and then I believe that actor
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: died before they shot Revolutions, but the character is still
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: there and they actually comment on like why she looks
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: different because she gets a different actor gets cast to
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: play the Oracle in Matrix Revolutions. But um, yeah, that
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: actor was incredible and like funny too in a movie
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have a ton of like very light calming scenes.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, And and the set design,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: the kitchen, the green kitchen that she's in is so
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know. She's she's good, she's very good, but
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: I do think also cleanly falls into that chap. Yeah,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: I just saw that Will Smith turned this movie down
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: to do Wild Wild West. Yeah, yes, isn't it. So
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: that's why he's so bad about it and he'll never
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: get over it is because he didn't just turn it
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: down to do a different good movie. He turned it
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: down to do because of my favorite bad movies. Yeah,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: we'll send you the link to the video where he
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: like lays out the whole story. It's very funny. He
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: was just kind of like a skeptical of the script,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: I think, And he also didn't I think he didn't
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: want to be typecast as like the sci fi action
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: guy because he had already been in Men in Black
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: and Independence Day. So yeah, it's well, well, we'll share
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: the link to everybody of that video, but it'll make
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: sense on paper. But then when you know that he
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: turned down the Matrix, that is funny. And I think
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: it would have I mean, I wouldn't trade Keian you
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: as Neo for for anyone, but I do I do
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: like to think of like Will Smith and Laurence Fishburne
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: would have been I mean, it would have been very different,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: but it would have been cool. It would have been good. Well,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. It wouldn't have been Laurence Fishburne. They
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: had Val Kilmer in mind to play Morpheus, had it
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: been Will Smith got cast. I have to go back
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: and watch Will Smith's cursed YouTube video about this. I
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: forgot about that. But even though these tropes are present
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: in this movie, I would say that this is a
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: surprisingly diverse cast for a late a late nineties action movie.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: And I think it gets even more diverse as the
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: movies go on, because in the two sequels a ton
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: of new characters are introduced, maybe even too many, I
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: would argue, but most of them are people of color,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: especially the characters who are like fighting for the resistance,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: like who are like inhabitants of Zion, are like mostly
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: people of color. Do you think it bugs Will Smith?
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: Because Jada Pinkett Smith is in the two sequels and
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: like she just holds it over him all that time,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: as I did consider that guy and have they we
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: know that they have some some issues that they need
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: to work out in public. They have to uh there.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to Sorry. I know we're having every
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: and extremely academic discuss I just wanted to go through
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: the other casting stuff because I always forget how kind
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of wild it was. Um so yeah, Will Smith said,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I would rather do Wild Wild West, one of the
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: taking one of the biggest els in all of casting history.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage turned it down due to family obligations. Who
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: knows what that means. Uh. Leonardo DiCaprio originally accepted the part,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: but then said that he did too many visual effects
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: in Titanic and he didn't want to do it anymore.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: Then the studio was like Keanu Reeves who got the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: role over Johnny Depp, who I guess is who the
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: witch how skis wanted for this role. And then there
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: was a side quest where they sent the screenplay to
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Sandra Bullock and we're going to rewrite Neo to be
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: a woman, which I guess didn't happen, but I was like, oh,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: that's interest think, there's just really the net. It would
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: just have been the net. It could have been the net.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: I yeah, so you know, that's a lot of information
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: all at once. I would have loved Neo as a woman,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: especially because we talked about this a lot, where there
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: are a Brazilian Chosen One narratives as movies and very
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: few of them are about a woman, so that would
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: have been very cool. But at the same time. I
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: love Kano as Neo, I know, and and for Trinity. Sorry,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: it's just it's really interesting. Janet Jackson was considered for Trinity,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: and Samahak and Jada Pinkett Smith were also considered, and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: then um didn't do it, but then Jada came in later. Anyways,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Janet Jackson is such a fucking good movie actress and
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: she's only made just a handful of films and she's
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: just really good. Come on, Janet, I want to like,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: I want Hollywood to cast Janet more often or I
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. It sounds like she was
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: pretty bummed about not getting to do the main tricks. Yeah,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: but yeah again. American action franchises have usually a pretty
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: big problem with casting mostly white actors. But again, the matrix,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: even the first movie is doing better than most. Between
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: the protagonist Neo played by Kiana Reeves, who is coded
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: white I think a lot of times in in movies,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: UM he is of European, Chinese, and Polynesian ancestry, so
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: he's multiracial. So between Kanu Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus, the
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: actors who play Tank and Dozer, the actor who plays
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Apoc Julian Arjanga is Maori again just a more diverse
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: cast than most action movies of this time, and more
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: representative of what a futuristic leftist society would look like.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: So it makes narrative sense and world building sends in
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: a way that a lot of movies ignore is true
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: and like this is this has nothing to do with
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the film's racial diversity, but I think in terms of
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: gender presentation diversity, obviously this movie is very androgynous across
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: the board. But belindam glorious, which the character who was
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: originally sort of intended is translate there, nobody was nobody
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: was styled like that in an action movie at the time,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: Like she's just so there's just such an an androgynous,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: nonconforming energy just sort of pouring off of her totally.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: And I really, I mean, I just and this is
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: kind of just like a compliment to the movie. But
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: the way that the crew of the ship, which I'm
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: not going to try to say because I'm not going
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: to say it right, but the way that the crew
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: works together, I just I just really like how they
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: interact with each other. Where like you were saying earlier
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: in this episode, only like everyone has a distinct personality
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: even when you don't hear them speak very much. Everyone
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: knows what their role is. But I just I don't
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: know the way that the movie is written and they're
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: used so thoughtfully to like, oh, this person is talking
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: behind Morpheus is back a little bit, or like the
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: way that Trinity clearly has this deep respect for Morpheus
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: but is sometimes like, well he's wrong about that though,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: like he's wrong and he is being shortsighted, and just
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, I really love when there's a
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: group of characters who clearly hold a lot of love
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: and respect for each other, but also we are constantly
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: talking about each other um in a way that is
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: just like very effortless, and in this completely bizarro world,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: feels like real and like actual dynamics that you would
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: see in a group of friends who you know, the
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: fate of the world is not hinged on. Is it
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: fair to say that part of the trans allegory is
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: that like this group of people is like each other's
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: chosen family. Yeah, that's I think that that is very
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: um there is a queerness to it that is very
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: I think interesting and I don't know how intentional, but
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: definitely subconsciously intentional, intentional. I'm thinking about how they're making
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: so many TV shows set in like movie universes now,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: and like a show just sort of set on any
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: given ship in the Matrix universe where they're just like
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: hanging out and complaining about each other and occasionally fighting
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: spider robots. Brad. I'd watch that, I would watch. That
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: would be incredible. Yeah. The one thing I didn't watch
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: in preparation for this was Animatrix, which I haven't seen
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: at all, and I've heard it's good and I think
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: I just need to sit down and commit to it.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: But it's really hard to see now. I think it's
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: on HBO Max. It's on HBO Max. Okay, so I
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: just for a long time it was hard to see. Yeah,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: it seems to be accessible now, so I'm going to
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: go check it out. But um oh, I was going
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: to say, going back to the discussion of gender expression
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: and presentation of certain characters, Trinity's character design and aesthetic
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: is also what you would expect as the main female
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: character in an action movie who also plays the role
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: of the love interest of the male hero. Her clothes
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: and haircut are I would say pretty gender neutral. You know,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: she doesn't have this long flowing hair that's completely impractical
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: to fight bad guys with. And she's not like made
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: up in a bunch of makeup the way that, again,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of women would be in an action franchise,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: because the function that a lot of women serve in
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: an action franchise is to like be eye candy for
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: what the studios assume is going to be a mostly
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: hetero male audience. But they don't stylize Trinity that way,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: and it wouldn't make sense that she would like be
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: all made up when she's like flying around in the Nebuchadnezzar.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: But they also don't make her up that way when
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: she's like in the Matrix either, which I thought was
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: interesting and cool. They in fact even make her a
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: little less glamorous in the sequels, like if that's an all,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: Like I love how stripped down the visuals of this
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: just just constantly are in terms of not trying to
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: make anyone movie pretty. There of course incredibly attractive, but
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: they don't like overstate that attractiveness, right yeah, I mean,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: And again it's just like the Wakis are so confident
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: when they make a choice, they make it so hard
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: that it's like, yeah, we're just gonna let the hot
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: people be hot and not you know, they're all going
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: to wear the same outfit. We don't need to embellish it.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: Like we're just gonna let the jawlines do what they
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: do and fall where they may, and it's going to
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: be sexy because it is. Like I was just thinking
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: about the bullet time thing where the camera swings all
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: the way around. I like the other early major use
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: of this technology was for a gap commercial like really
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: that came out at the holiday as. Yeah, it was
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: like they were doing a swing dance or something. Oh yeah,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: I remember that. I cannot remember if the gap ad
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: predates the Matrix or the Matrix predates the gap at
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: because I don't think that bullet time was invented for
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: the Matrix, but I think it was like a thing
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: that they pulled in that other people had also come
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: up with. But I would not be surprised if it
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: would be great if the gap AD came first and
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: like everyone in the Matrix was like we missed it
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: by like two months, um, But I do think the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Matrix came first, So I would love sitting in a
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: movie theater. Here's someone lean over and be like, they're
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: just ripping off that gap commercial. I saw so derivative
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: of that gap commercial. Unbelievable. UM. I wanted to really
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: quickly touch on just because and we can kind of
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: blow through this, but because the red pill discussion snowballed
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: out in the way that it did, I just wanted
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: to quickly touch on not even UM. I mean, I'm
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: assuming if you listen to the show, you're aware of
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: the wild misinterpretation that the term red pill had taken,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: where it's intended to be some reveal of a great
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: truth and then was co opted by right wing weirdos
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: who were like, yeah, and the truth is that straight
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: white guys are oppressed, and you're like, that's not the
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: one that was being referred to. UM. But I did
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: just want to um quickly. It seems like the Wachowski's,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, the Witchowskis have responded to this, but I
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: think the best exchange was from Lily Wichowski back in May,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: because that's when Elon Musk tweeted take the red Pill,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: and then Ivanka Trump retweeted it saying taken, and then
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: Lily Wachowski replied by saying funk both of you, which
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: I think is really all you need to know. That's
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: that that's the story, and that show an icon. I
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: remember I covered the early days of gamer Gate, which
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: is the reactionary movement that basically folved into the Trump
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: campaign UM, and they were all talking about the red Pill,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I feel like you haven't actually
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: watched the Matrix, and like at the time, I was like,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: this will dispel this if I just I'm like, no,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: the Matrix is a very different theme, but it didn't
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: work for some reason. To this day, the gap ad
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: does predate the mat I can't believe it. Okay, I
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: don't like the Matrix anymore. Derivative. The tech that made
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: up bullet time has been around since like the dawn
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: of cinema. People have been like, if we put a
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: bunch of cameras around something in film it from all
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: those angles, then we can But like computers were required
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: to like actually simulate moving around, and the gap AD
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: just like got there first. But the term bullet time
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: specifically was coined for the Matrix. So God, I want
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: to see that gap commercial now. I don't think I've
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: ever seen it. Yeah, I mean i'd have to link
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: it in the description. I say that five hundred times
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: an episode, and then I have to go find it.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: And it's awful. I'm posting. I'm posting the bullet time
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: at in chat. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Um.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: Does anyone have anything else they would like to talk
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: about in regards to the Matrix? That's all I had,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah. I just wanted to state that I
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: have found my anagram and it's a Warden fever filmy. Wow,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: that's really okay. Get the merch. Get the merch going amazing.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: Mine I couldn't find my mine all suck. I don't
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: know what's wrong. My I got the wrong letters. Jamie.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Just come up with the hacker name for yourself, and
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: then I know. I used to do a whole show
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: about hackers, but I didn't know what I was talking about,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: so I've had to stop doing the show. But maybe
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: that name will be more in agrammable. It's true, it's
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: just a thought. I'll work on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: We've had this conversation before on the other Matrix episode
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: that has been lost to time, about whether or not
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: this movie passes the Bechdel test. Yeah, and I feel
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: I don't remember what we concluded, and I did not
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: remember to pay attention to whether or not it passes
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: when I was watching it this time around. I think
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: it's a barely pass situation due to a quick exchange
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: that Trinity and Switch have in the car when Neo's
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: got the bug all scooting around in his guts. It's
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: possible that he's the subtext of that conversation. But I'm
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: inclined to just want to give this movie anything we can.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: But I didn't know that they have like one or
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: two exchanges they are just between the two of them
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: that I believe are about the bug. They're about the bug,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: but the bug is in Neo, so I don't know
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: about it. I mean, we've all got a bug inside
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: of us somewhere, so technically that's true, the Bug and
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: the Bug famously genderless, genderless icon the Bug, the Bug. Yeah,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: And then I remember talking about how there's a conversation
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: where when Cipher is sabotaging them and when he kills
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: Switch and Apoc, he's talking to Trinity and he's like,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: if there's anything terribly important you have to say to Switch,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: say it now. And then before Trinity can say anything
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: to switch and then maybe pass the Bechdel test. Uh,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: cipher kills switch. So he really doesn't want women to
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: talk to each other. Yeah, that's why he's not an ally,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: not because he's murdering people. Now, technically, you're right, this
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: movie does barely pass because the bug is genderless. But
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: when you consider that Neo and Trinity are both trans lesbians,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: then it passes so much flying colors. Let's go with that.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: I just I just want to give this movie nice. Thanks, Jamie.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you like it. I was not sure
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: if you would because I know you're famously not an
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: action movie fan. But it's not just an action movie.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: There's so much coming with so much more, and they
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: have a little horny Will Poulter character. I'm like, you
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: know what, I like the movie. It's good. No, I
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: really loved it. There is this on the website that
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: exists in service of the Bechtel test, which is I
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: think wrong quite a bit of the time. But spectel
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: test dot com there is such an extensive conversation arguing
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: about whether this movie passes the Bechtel test. No one
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: seems to agree. I just pulled it up and people
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: do talk about that scene in the car, and people
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: are arguing about what we were just talking about of like,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: well the bug in the which, honestly, if you have
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: to get I feel like our rule of thumb is like,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: if you have to get that far in the weeds
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: about it, it probably doesn't test the Recktel test if
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: you have to like split hairs like that. But I
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: think under Emily's qualification it does pass, and let's not
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: worry about it. I'll just go on that site and
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: I'll be like, no, listen, everyone in this movie is
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: a trans lesbian. Passes every test. The whole movie passes. Yeah. Also,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: as we always say that, you know, the Bechtel test
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: is not the end all be all for anything. It's
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: just a jumping off point. What is the end all
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: be all is the nipple scale? Yes, which is our
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: metric zero. Really appreciated your visceral reaction of hear us out. Technically,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: this movie has obviously I know what we're going to
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: do here, but this I was just thinking about how
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: this movie has a whole bunch of other nipples on
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: your back, Like those are just kind of got some
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: back nipples. They've got back nipples. You've got armed nipples,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: You've got the back of the head nipple. There's a
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: lot um wowskis. Know what we wanted. It's nipples and
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: it's like hard plastic black Witchy saw Joel Schumacher nipples
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: and we're like, we could, we can do more wreaking
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: to Okay, So zero to five nipples based on how
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: the movie fares examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, Gosh,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: me loving this movie so deeply might cloud my judgment
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: a bit here, But I love that there are multiple
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: different reads of this movie, one of them being this
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: really interesting trans allegory. I love that this is a
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: major franchise directed by trans women, which hopefully paves the
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: way for there to be more transvisibility on screen of
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: actual trans people and not just it all being a
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: metaphor that features all siss people. You know that that's
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: like the goal that we're aiming for, right, is just
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: like more visibility and hopefully things don't have to be
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: coded and um steeped in metaphor and and things like that.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: But it was nine to Trinity being a character who
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: I always loved and admired, and that was so Cool
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: and I love just everything about the damn movie. I'm
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: going to give it four nipples plus maybe also a
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: half nipple on top of that. Is that too much? Yeah?
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: We we do give halves and sometimes even quarter nipples.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: Get into the decimals if you need to. You know,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: it's point three through three repeating, um, whatever it needs
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: to be. I mean maybe I'm being too generous, but again,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: I love this movie. I think it holds up and
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out four and a half nipples done, love,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Who are you giving your nipples too? I'm going to
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: give one to Keanu Reeves, who is the best man alive.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give one to Gloria Foster, who plays
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: the Cool. I'll give one nipple to Blenda McClory, who
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: plays Switch. I'll give one nipple to Laurence Fishburn. And
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: I'll give my half nipple to the little Black Cat,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: who we see twice in the deja vu scene, Little Flee.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: He's just like my cat. Yeah, so for and half
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: nipples boom. I'm going to go for and half as well,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: mostly because I'm like, I like this movie so much.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: What a what a long standing edging experience of saying
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: I was going to watch this movie, never doing it,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: lying out my ass and then learning that I loved
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: it and I'm excited to watch it again, and I'm
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: excited to watch the new one too, Jimmie, let's go together.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: We should. Oh yeah, let's go because I know it's
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: it's coming out on HBO Max, but it seems like
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: something that you should see. I would love to, so yeah,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: I I'll echo what you're saying there, Caitlin. There are
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: certainly like dated elements to certain things of the plot,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: but you know, it's as far as movies from this
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: year goes. I mean, what more can you ask for?
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: And it's also just I don't know, it's like such
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: a movie. Does that make sense? You know, it's such
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: a movie movie. And I was just interested in every
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: second and everyone was so unique, even though they all
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: kind of like look the same, but that also they
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: didn't and there was a lot of diversity, and they're like,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: I just it's so fun. I'm excited to watch this
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: movie again and not have to take notes this time.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: It's going to be fun. Yeah. Uh so, I'm gonna
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: give it for and a half nipples. I'll give one
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: to Trinity. I'll give one to the Oracle. I'm gonna
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: give one to Mouse. Sorry, uh loved mouse, loved mouse.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: I think we really should have paused more to he
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: was he wanted to cheeseburg and he was horny. Love him.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: I'll give half a nipple to Hugo Weaving's lips, and
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: I'll give my last nipple to the witch House key sisters.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: I'm how about you. Well, listen it sounds you know
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: if I come back on here and do the net,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, if I give the Matrix anything less
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: than five, I'm going to feel like I'm insulting it
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: when I come on here and do the net and
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, like two and a half,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: you know, Like, so I'm giving it. I'm giving it
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: to full five. I'm giving it to full five. I think,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: especially for its era, it is groundbreaking and impressive and
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: that it mostly holds up today. And you can like
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: quibble with some of the casting choices. You can quibble with,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: like it's presentation of transness, etcetera, but like it still
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: holds up in a way that like most other action
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: movies of this era, don't like you think about this
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: came out to say, just a couple of months before
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: UM Star Wars Episode one, and you're just like, those
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: are those movies are from different planets entirely. So I'm
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: going to give a nipple to carry In Moss because
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: she's she's the best. I'll give one to Kianu. Kiano deserves.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: He only has one nipple right now. He needs to
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: needs to nipples. Yeah, that's good for him. Uh you
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: know what I got. I gotta give one to the
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: Witch House Ki sisters, who are just the best and
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: some of my favorite filmmakers of all time. And you know,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: I just want to hang out with them so they
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: seem so cool. I want to um give a nipple
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: to Bill Pope's cinematography, which is legitimately groundbreaking, change the world,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: et cetera. I'm gonna give a I'm going to split
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: my last nipple one into I'm sorry, I'm breaking the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: roles to get a half nipple to the Bug because
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: we love the book. I'm going to give my other
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: half nipple to producer Joel Silver, not because I actually like,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh wow, great Joel Silver, though he did
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: get this movie made when like a lot of producers
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have. But because I like the image of someone
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: like knocking on his door in the middle of the
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: night and he comes and looks down and there's just
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: half a nipple laying on his doorstep. I think I
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: just like that image. So Joel Silver, you get half
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: a nipple. I bet he appreciates it. But yeah, he
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: first made a view it as a threat, but then
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: once he gave him the context he needed, I think
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: he'd come around. He'd be so happy. It's like that
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: part in the Matrix when like Neo is rejecting this
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: whole thing and he's like, I don't believe it. Let
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: me out here, and then he barfs all over the
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: floor and then he collapsed his face first into his
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: own barf. But then like in the next scene, he's like, Okay,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: I guess it's fine. Perfect the agreeable guy that Emily.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us and for being here.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: Come back for the net, come back for anything you
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I'd love to come back. I
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: had a blast. Good. Where can people check out your writing?
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: Follow you on social media? Plug anything you want to plug.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at twitter dot com, slash Emily V
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: d w um, I get up to all sorts of nonsense.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: They're actually less because I've mostly locked out of Twitter,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: but I do tweet every song for the best look
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: at me and yeah, my writing appears vox dot com.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: I also have a newsletter where I just write some
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: of my weirder ideas. That's Emily vdW dot letter, Drop
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: dot com. I co create Right Show, Run et cetera,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: occasionally play a whale in the scripted fiction podcast Arden.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: It is about two women who solve Colt cases and
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: try not to fall in love. Um. It is a comedy,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: but it's also about my weird drauma. Um so that
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: hooray uh and you can I. I published a book
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago that I still bring up
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: with Monsters of the Week, complete critical companion to the
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: X Files. You could find it in at various booksellers. Amazing,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming yet. Truly, you're one
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: of my favorite writers in the world, and I'm so
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: glad that you could be here with us. Thank you
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: so much. I love this show, and um, I'm glad
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: that I could make it and talk about nipples. So
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: amazing come back for the net. I would love to um.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. At spectel cast.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: You can subscribe to our Patreon a k A Matreon
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: at patreon dot com, slash pecktel Cast. You get to
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: catalog of over one hundred bonus episodes. And that's all
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: for five dollars a month. We're doing some cursed holiday
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: favorites this month, surprise, and you can get speaking of
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: holidays if you're capitalism NG, you can go to t
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: public dot com slash the pytel cast and pick up
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: some merch or not. We won't know, and it's up
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: to you. And and what's a good way to end
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: this episode? Um? What is? What is neo? Okay? Neo?
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: At the very end, he's just like, Okay, oh, I
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: know you're out there and I'm going to show these
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: people what you don't want them to see. And then
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: he hangs up the phone and it's likely do they're
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: turn Can you add in the rage against the machine
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: at the end of this episode? Yes? How many seconds
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: can you get away with of like an audio clip
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: before you get sued for copyright stuff? We'll tie, We'll
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: take it off Mike who knows uh all right? Click
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: click on