Lilly Wachowski, the co-director and co-writer of “The Matrix” franchise, hit back at MAGA members co-opting the “red pill” concept from her movies for their political messaging.
The filmmaker addressed the situation on Thursday’s episode of the “So True with Caleb Hearon” podcast, where she noted she wasn’t surprised by MAGA’s decision to take on “The Matrix” moment since “right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything.”
“They appropriate left-wing points of view and they mutate them for their own propaganda, for their own to obfuscate what the real message is,” she added. “This is what fascism does. And so, of course, that’s going to happen.”
MAGA voices have reworked the “red pill” moment from “The Matrix” by suggesting the film scene, where Neo (Keanu Reeves) breaks free from the simulated world thanks to the aforementioned pill, is a metaphor for waking up from political compulsion.
Wachowski further noted: “They take these ideas that are generally acknowledged as questions or investigations or truisms about humanity and life and they turn them to something else so that they remove the weight of what those things represent.”
That being said, Wachowski made it clear she isn’t trying to stop people from using her “red pill” metaphor, explaining she can’t control the way people choose to interpret her work.
“You have to let go of your work,” she said. “People are gonna interpret it however they interpret it. I look at all of the crazy, mutant theories around ‘The Matrix’ films and the crazy ideologies that those films helped create and I just go, ‘What are you doing?! No! That’s wrong!’ But I have to let it go … You’re never gonna be able to make absolutely every person believe what you initially intended.”
Watch Wachowski’s full interview above.
