fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4379 ]

That movie is a mess and inspired the Red Pill hate movement.

God damn, that's spicy. God damn. Are you seriously blaming the movie for the Red Pill movement's misappropriation of a single particularly iconic image from it? There's no thematic connection between the film, and their belief system.

Actually the core concept of taking a "pill" that changes your entire worldview is directly lifted from the film, inspiring pills of several colors that describe various niche hate movements.

The Black Pill for example is how Incels describe their nihilistic perception of reality.

In the film, the protagonists fight against "the Machines" with a vast arsenal of automatic weapons and artillery. It's no coincidence then that many Incels have committed mass shootings.

There's also a widespread belief in "NPC's", people who don't deserve to live as they are so "indoctrinated" by mainstream society that they are essentially zombies.

Many in these movements even question reality to such a disturbing degree that they actually do believe that they are living in a computer simulation and their victims are literal NPC bots.

It's not at all a philosophically deep film, but the grim aesthetics and warped violence absolutely appeal to young men in geek culture who feel ostracized and disenfranchised by feminism and multiculturalism.

Also the movie is very ugly and desaturated with awful dialogue.

Animatrix was good though.

I think what anon means is that the movie wasn't made to promote the ideology of the people who now use that language. If the concept of "taking the red pill" had never existed, the people who call themselves "red pill" and "black pill" would still exist with all their hateful beliefs, they'd just call themselves something else. We know this because they already call themselves tons of other things, such as incels, MGTOW, MRAs, PUAs, alt-right, alt-lite, and on and on. The movie didn't create the belief system, they just took a term from it because it was a popular movie and they think the concept tracks.

They borrow terms from a lot of things, because they're not very creative. NPCs are a thing in video games. Their use of the term is just plain old solipsism with a veneer of pop culture applied. But that doesn't make video games bad or wrong, just as the Matrix isn't to blame for Red Pill jackasses.

Actually the core concept of taking a "pill" that changes your entire worldview is directly lifted from the film, inspiring pills of several colors that describe various niche hate movements. The Black Pill for example is how Incels describe their nihilistic perception of reality.

This is simply them taking up a specific image from the film, not them being influenced by the actual themes. And in fact, it's an image for a basic concept (of conversion and seeing the world through new eyes) that far predates the movie itself - IIRC the movie might actually reference Alice In Wonderland in the scene in question, for Pete's sake.

In the film, the protagonists fight against "the Machines" with a vast arsenal of automatic weapons and artillery. It's no coincidence then that many Incels have committed mass shootings.

This seems like a tenuous and wildly overbroad connection, to say the least.

It's not at all a philosophically deep film, but the grim aesthetics and warped violence absolutely appeal to young men in geek culture who feel ostracized and disenfranchised by feminism and multiculturalism.

All that they've done is taken a visually and aesthetically striking movie, and hijacked its images for their own, fundamentally unrelated purposes.

Whether or not you think the film is deep, the philosophical issues that it's dealing with are basically as old as the Western tradition. I haven't studied the movies in depth, so my interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt - you probably need to deal with Reloaded and Revolutions to really understand whatever it is that they're trying to do. But the basic ideas here - the idea that what we see is illusory and there's some deeper underlying reality, and that the ability to look past that illusion and see the true nature of reality is of fundamental importance - those ideas are as old as Plato and Socrates. It takes that in some post-modern directions, and it's also really interested in sheer embodied human existence and physicality.

And none of that really connects to the ideals of the Red Pill or Black Pill movement. I mean, if the movie has any thesis on gender, it's probably much more closely linked to trans* and queer themes (note also that the creators are literally two trans women). I don't think that you can really go and find a thematic linking between the movies and the actual thought of the alt-right - if the best you can do is that they're action movies where people get shot with guns, that's not a very compelling argument.

I don't really know what to tell you here.

Also the movie is very ugly and desaturated with awful dialogue.

Well, horses for courses, taste is taste.

NAYRT: Yeah, it's pretty much par for the course for alt-right folks to grab a meme or two and completely miss the meaning of a work.

SA: I mean before The Matrix, there was Bound, a story about two women who love each other getting rid of an abusive husband (with sex scenes written and choreographed by Susie Bright.)

DA

They're not misappropriating a iconic image. The red pill wakes people up and the blue one keeps people asleep. You take the red pill, you become woke and you get to see the world as it really is, how terrible it is, how everyone's a mindless pawn being controlled by automation and now you have to fight against the evil automated machine empire that's controlling everything and keeping everyone else asleep while you, the person who took the red pill and a handful of others know the truth.

Don't get me wrong. I am not blaming a bunch of shitty behavior from a bunch of shitty people on these movies. They are 100% responsible for their own actions and their own inability to find healthy ways to deal with their feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. But they're not just naming their pathetic movement after an iconic image, and yes, there is a connection between the films and their ideology.

They're not misappropriating a iconic image. The red pill wakes people up and the blue one keeps people asleep. You take the red pill, you become woke and you get to see the world as it really is, how terrible it is, how everyone's a mindless pawn being controlled by automation and now you have to fight against the evil automated machine empire that's controlling everything and keeping everyone else asleep while you, the person who took the red pill and a handful of others know the truth.

I don't think they're misinterpreting the image itself. They understand the red-pill blue-pill thing correctly, but the problem is that they're looking at it in isolation from the rest of the film. And the actual movie doesn't agree with their ideology at all.

The basic concept of becoming woke, and seeing the world as it really is, and having to fight for the truth that only you can understand - that really isn't unique to The Matrix, or to the Red Pill folks. The red-pill blue-pill thing is a very memorable image, one that's interesting and modern and contemporary. But the concept underneath it is common to a bunch of different things. It's the general experience of being converted to any new worldview - whether that's a religion, or an ideology, or a philosophy, or whatever. Some of the details change but the basic concept is pretty widespread.

And honestly I don't really see any other, deeper connection between the films and the ideology. But IDK.

DA: I agree, although I think one of the Wachowski weak spots is that their religious and political metaphors are rarely clearly developed. I mean, I got their point that The Matrix is about dharma and cyclic history, especially after they did it all over again in Cloud Atlas. But I can also see how a lot of people just don't get that and project their own biases onto the metaphor.

"and yes, there is a connection between the films and their ideology."

You mean that there is a connection between a movie made by two transgender women that was strongly inspired by their struggle as transgender women in the society telling them they ought to look and act like men, and a far right ideology? That's an interesting way to look at it.

[ SECRET POST #4379 ]

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