I spent most of Sunday stoned and so bored my right hand was on cooldown for the day. So I go downspin to the Media Center and fire up Gateway's Plex instance to find something entertaining.

And I realized that with all the TVTropes I've consumed, and my own memory's media optimization, I felt...BORED... with my 6 gigs of movies, TV, and anime. Because it felt like I had experienced it all before hand. Which I had. I generally don't waste storage space on stuff I don't enjoy. But this was different. it was a kind of ennui at "I've seen all this before, nothing's surprising, what am I even doing down here?"

So I boost again with Northern Lights in the reactor and start watching The Matrix. Cause as much as I liked it, and thought about it since it came out, I hadn't actually watched through the trilogy in about 10 years.

And I realized that there was a lot more going on in this movie. And I was really blown by how much I could see after 20 YEARS of life after the first Matrix dropped in theaters. I was thinking about doing this one on one in meatspace, but I know I can get kind of intense about things. And 2 people spoke up and asked for it. So buckle up and strap in, fuckers. Time for one more trip down the Rabbit hole. (and please bear with me. I haven't chosen to write an essay like this since I failed out of college. Also, if this is shit you've already figured out, please don't hate me for being a slow bitch.)

The Matrix is a 1999 movie starring Keanu "Dorian Gray Ted 'Theodore' Logan" Reeves, Carrie=Anne "Aria T'Loak" Moss, Lawrence "Cowboy Curtis" Fishburne, and Hugo "Mitzy Rex Elrond Red Skull" Weaving. Written and directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski, production design by Owen Paterson, Visual Effects supervised by Jon Gaeta, and fight choreographed by Master Woo-Ping Yuen. When it came out, it blew the whole world's fucking mind, giving the masses new fuel for their philosophical musings (if they had them at all). Questions like "What is reality?" and "Could that have already happened?" I think what blew my 15-year-old mind at the time was seeing academic publications and intellectual think pieces reference and analyze what for me at the time was merely an adrenalin filled thrill right full of awesome techno music, mind-nuking special effects, a freaking gorgeous industrial and apocalyptic dystopian aesthetic I had never seen before, and to what 15 year old me was a pretty original story.

Watching it last night, The Matrix wasn't just all that. I could finally see it as something new, and probably what Lilly and Lana wanted KA-15 to see: A story of queer internet nerd revenge, chosen community and the threats against it, both from within, and without, and that the power of love is strong enough to make the hopeless fight against systemic oppression (including gender) possible to win.

I'm going to do my best to not just retell the plot and story beats cause we've ALL seen this movie. But I'll do my best to keep this articulate and coherent.

I first started picking up on the gender anarchy vibes during Neo's introduction to Morpheus and he's discussing fate and the nature of the Matrix "The Matrix is all around you. You see it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you watch your television, when you pay your taxes" (which is also just a lovely call back to Neo's meeting with Agent Smith after the Agent drops down his Ominous Government Surveillance Hard Copy Folder (TVTropes.org, "You can do nothing and sit at your computer and your name goes through like 15 computers a day." Cereal Killer was spacey, but damn did he know things) and runs down the details of Neo's Orthosona including paying taxes and helping his landlady carry out her garbage.)

Neo is in this position because he has started questioning the things he has grown up with, delving further and further into dark corners and using what little spare time and funds he has on his search for answers to what feels to him is a pretty important existential question. Trinity, someone else who has recognized a familiar pattern of behavior in Neo that she had gone through herself punches into his sphere of isolation to send him a message of validation and direction and gives him an opportunity for an in-person meeting.

This club. This club/bar that Choi and Dujour bring Neo too is kinda wild. Rob Zombie digging in dragulas while weird kinkypeople in their tight shiny outfits are having a good time, and Neo, the ultimate nerd stands on the wall, in his dark normal fabric, just feeling out of place in the whole environment until Trinity (who looks the same as everyone else in the club) breaks through his self-imposed isolation again, doing her best to subvert and divert his expectations and questions to get to her point "Please just listen." You are here, but you are looking for the wrong thing. I know cause I was looking for the wrong thing too. And just as she gives him her homerun mic drop...

The orthocosm and capitalism barge in, wailing a shrill harsh alarm to wake his ass up. Late for work. When the movie came out, I (and a lot of my friends latched onto this crossfader-perfect transition cut that both passes time and changes location so smoothly, but last night, I just saw it as how quickly and without warning the drag and weight of the "real world" can Kool-aid Man their way into your life, especially when you were focused on something much more important.

At work, Neo gets dressed down by a Suit in his suit office. The Suit is comfortable, condescending, and full of authority. I also thought it was telling how his suit very closely matched the uniform of the Agents. A way for the movie to show you visually that oppressors are everywhere and can look very comfortable in their uniforms, as opposed to Neo's suit, which obviously doesn't fit well and makes him feel physically uncomfortable. His cube is a sharp contrast to his hacking den in his shitty apartment. His den is full of clutter and nerd-debris: empty coffee cups, trash, books and other stuff strewn about. changes made to the environment as he has spend his time there. The cube is barely decorated or personalized in anyway. It shows how much of an un-individual the system sees Neo as.

And then, once more, Neo's personal life intrudes, breaking through his isolation in the form of a phone call, delivered by UPS right to his cube (The call knows where you live, TVTropes.org) and here is where Neo transitions from cut-scene to tutorial level. Morpheus teaches Neo the movement, stealth, and QTE mechanics via voice over while Neo does his best to follow directions. He fails the QTE, but since this is the tutorial level he only looses his phone and his connection to Morpheus. And then gets arrested, dragged back through the cube farm (how humiliating) and thrown into the back of a g-car for his interrogation by another Suit. This one is such a good tool of the system that it is allowed to have a name. But since it's part of the system, it must be as generic as possible. and that is how Neo (and the audience) are introduced to Smith. He is tall, imposing, and looks so at home in his uniform that we never see him in anything else (except when he goes undercover, but we're not talking about Revolutions yet) This is where the Ominous Government Surveillance Hard Copy Folder shows up. And then the nightmare/fetish fuel kicks in. Neo looses his ability to speak. Neo's ability /to/ speak is _taken_away. Not even by Smith or his backup dancers, but by the very system they work for. Neo can't fight against it, can resist it and is genuinely horrified as his own body betrays him. And then he his held down and forced to watch as he gets turned into a Trojan horse of the system to further its own goals.

You don't see males held down very often in movies, and when you do, its really visually telling you that something is really strong. because males shouldn't be held down. they should be able to fight and struggle and do /something/ to reclaim agency and when they can't, when they are shown struggling against something that shouldn't be happening and loosing anyway... Yeah. Smith and the Smiths raped Neo. I said it.

And then he wakes up. again. NightmareCcatapulting (tvtropes.org again!) in his own bed before Morpheus contacts him again. He knows breaking into the phones and calling is a risk, especially as he _knows_ Neo is now a security risk since he got arrested, but Morph is a calculating man and is betting on Neo's nature to override caution and carefulness. In war, chances must be taken. They have consequences and don't always work out as expected, but they have to be taken anyway.

Anywho, Trinity, Switch, and Apoc pick Neo up under a bridge in the rain (so Noir! Much Cyberpunk, very evocative) and take him to the meeting. Along the way, Switch gives him a pretty badass, check your privilege End-user agreement at the business end of a 9 and Neo, feeling intimidated, almost bails. But Trinity, who always seems to be the one breaking through Neo's self-imposed isolation keeps him in the car.

And then they have to deprogram him, plunging sharp pointy shocking bits into his guts to get rid of the nasty bugs put under his skin by the system. And of course Neo is shocked and shook realizing he had this nasty thing inside him. And internalized problematics can be pretty big blindspots and having them exposed and pulled out can be a pretty traumatic and painful experience, so it was nice seeing that played out. if only all hurtful things could be pulled out through your navel after shocking them into submission.

One of the things that I really loved was how much this movie predicted and shaped the mindset of the interent and nerd culture. Here is this massive, insanely pervasive tool that can be used as a terribly great weapon of liberation (in that it can be used for communication and coordination) and oppression (surveillance, communication, and coordination again) and that the people who are skilled in its use have power. And in the Matrix, the ones that skilled are Minorities and the disenfranchised. Look at Morpheus' crew from this meeting and Neo's rebirth. Apoc (pretty sure he was supposed to be coded latino) Switch, (Trans. Forget about the Executive Meddling) Trinity (a woman, still struggling to get recognition for her technical skills. Hacked the IRS and everyone thinks she's a guy) Mouse (the youngest; twitchy nervous, but still full of enthusiasm and wonder, even if he's a horny, lazy programmer. He's still the first to throw down (and get gunned down, but later for that) Back on the Neb, their operator and mission control is Tank (Black) and their medic/healer is his big brother Dozer (also black) Given that, you might expect me to be upset with Neo barging in as the white male savior, and I kind of am (what the heck, Will Smith. Bet you feel real dumb doing Wild Wild West now) I also balance that with knowing how much Neo relies on his support group to get shit done. He definitely doesn't make it through the first movie on his own.

Which is clearly shown once we hit the go-button on the dial-up sequence and ride the silver mirror vore ride down Neo's throat into a warm red womb. Neo's pod actually looks like a nice a properly engineered object. The physical space is kept warm and comfortable by the red goo, his bodies physical needs are kept up with multiple intravenous cables and plugs for localized care. (Interesting notion about how invasive technology has to be in order to keep track of all the messiness and issues a single human body creates. Humans are shit to engineer around. they are soft and irritating and they get fucking everywhere.)

Neo is barely able to break the seal on his pod and look in horror at the power banks where humanity is hooked up and living out their lives in their unwoke state,before he is neck-lifted by a machine he's never seen before, inspected by criteria he doesn't understand, and discarded, literally flushed along with what ever warmth and comfort was being provided by his womb-pod and send careening through tunnels that certainly haven't been checked for broken bits, sanitation or anything else that should be done for a safe and enjoyable waterslide experience. Neo gets to experience birth for the second time, pushed out from warmth and comfort and safety into a cold, uncomfortable uncaring and scary looking world he doesn't understand and chucked away as soon as the system reads him as "no longer useful" with weak, undeveloped and atrophied muscles he can't make work how he's used to them working, he fumbles in what must me a rank and cold pool of liquid (this close to the power towers, he's probably swimming in humanity's collective waste. And they don't even know or care that he's drowning in it, cause they're occupied with their own lives.

An just as he's getting overwhelmed and drowning the shit and piss of humanity and the waste of the machines they made, Neo's chosen family rescues him, uplifting him, and bringing him up into the light of community and solidarity and acceptance. And into the new struggle for survival, which, while certainly more intense than his previous life, is also much more focused in scope.

Part 2 coming once I get home from work.