Follow the white rabbit with Begin Transmission
Review of Begin Transmission - The trans allegories of The Matrix by Tilly Bridges
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I'm not the biggest fan of the Matrix. Bullet time was amazing, but action films, guns, and explosions don't draw me in. The movie didn't make sense to me either. But with several trans folk in my family, I have been on a journey to learn about trans experience from those who experience it: in this case, Tilly Bridges and the Wachowski sisters.
The form of the book is a scene-by-scene breakdown of each of the four Matrix movies in order, analyzing the trans allegories of each film. I watched each movie with my family and then read each section afterward. Although Bridges follows a thread of trans themes through each film, she notes that her reading does not exhaust the themes of the movies. The test of any allegorical reading is if the work makes more sense after hearing it than before. By the time I got to Matrix Resurrections, I had gotten pretty good at picking up the themes, but I appreciated reading about ones that I missed.
To be clear, this is not a dry academic analysis of themes. Instead, Bridges invites the reader on a journey, to follow the white rabbit with her. Early on, she calls out the experience of gender euphoria as something which both trans and cis people experience: "it's elation, joy, happiness at being yourself, being at home in your body, feeling absolutely and totally you" (46). I'm learning to recognize such moments in my life: wearing a colorful bucket hat, colorful polos, or colorful socks (I basically love color). She asks cis people to reflect on the harms the gender binary has done to them, and graciously welcomes allies in rejecting the bigotry and narrowness of a reduced way of looking at the world.
As a cis het man, I have experienced a lifetime of threats and bullying caused because I transgressed some gender norm. From being called gay in grade school for singing in the Christmas play, to being bullied because I didn't like fighting or sports. I remember a roommate in grad school calling me out because I valued becoming a father over having an important career. I even caught some flak at work because I blogged about seeing the Barbie movie (a movie, by the way, which Bridges points out on her Trans Tuesdays podcast and blog deliberately follows the template of The Matrix).
So, thanks to Tilly Bridges for publishing this book and allowing me to benefit from her experiences, to learn from her reading of The Matrix movies, and to accompany me in understanding this strange world we live in.