No it isn't. Perhaps it was intended to be and perhaps there was an allegorical meaning in earlier drafts, but the films are in fact perfectly straightforward.
Why insist on such a shallow reading?
Because it's a shallow movie.
Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory
21–24 of 24 posts
Re: Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory
#22I don't really get the sense of this from the movie. The movie is straight up Gnosticism in a cyberpunk form, in the sense it appeared in during history. Kind of an offshoot of Christianity. You even get the main villain being the demiurge with Neo as the Gnostic Christ who frees us from the evil God's reign through his death. there's a lot of gnostic concepts, such as the world being an illusion that is only reveale…
Neither of the Wachowskis had transitioned when they made the Matrix. Many trans people don't go through life before transition knowing they're trans. They have an omnipresent feeling that something is deeply wrong, but they can't put it into words. Much like Neo at the beginning of the Matrix.
Re: Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory
#23Re: Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory
#24Gotta hand it to the Wachowskis, they've really put dedication into the Matrix mythos. 20 years later and long since it's end they're STILL commited to making it stupider. If you actually watch the video. It's all about a bunch of general themes and tropes featured in most works of fiction that can be easily twisted to whatever the interpreter desires. In this case, it's their after the fact transition. "It speaks to…
The movie is about Thomas Anderson, who lives a secret life as Neo by night. He feels there is something deeply wrong with his experience, but he doesn't know why. He endlessly searches the internet, looking for other people with the same feelings. He is interrogated by agents, who silence him and reject his chosen identity as Neo. He is then freed by a group of (pretty queer dressing) rebels, who offer him the truth…
I stand by my "universal themes that are easy to project on" argument (Feelings of not fitting in, being silenced by THE MAN (Conspiracies were popular in the 90's), Agents and peers calling you by your legal name instead of your online username, rising up against the enemy and proving them wrong) but I feel there are some specific points not addressed by this
The ragtag band of rebels Neo joins are all dressed in black trenchcoats and leather because it was fashionable at the time. (See: Blade, The Crow, The X-Files, Sin City, Hackers etc.) This would be like saying that the rebels in Half Life 2 were LGBT coded because they all wore denim. (And oddly enough all identify with the lambda symbol)
Premarin comes in multiple colours including BLUE, green, yellow and white. Medicine is colour coded by design. It's statistically unremarkable that a brand of oestrogen happened to have a red OR blue variation.
Neo does indeed go through complicated surgery. His surgery is to make him look identical to how he looked previously except he now has a cooler haircut, shades and wears more leather.
Also, none of this is even vaguely referenced in the article or video. That's not me knocking you @rhinoceraptor. That's me knocking whoever wrote the OP article.