In a recent appearance on the So True with Caleb Hearon podcast, Lilly Wachowski is asked about co-directing 1999’s “The Matrix,” and how the right has basically hijacked the “red pill” movement for their own benefit.
The scene in question happens when Neo (Keanu Reeves) is offered the blue pill, which would let him return to his ordinary life, or the red pill, which would awaken him to the “real world.”
In broader right-wing communities, “red-pilled” typically means a person has come to believe in conservative or anti-establishment viewpoints, often after previously being liberal. It’s used to suggest someone has “woken up” to what they see as the truth about politics, media, or government.
After much anger towards this “hijacking,” Lily has come to terms with it, accepting that it’s out there, with people using it whichever they want, but at the same time, slyly taking a potshot at MAGA:
You have to let go of your work. People are gonna interpret it however they interpret it […] 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. This is what fascism does…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.
I have no issue whatsoever with the fact that “Red Pill” has taken on different meanings for different people. Just let it be. Interpretation is an integral part of art, and whether you agree with what is being interpreted or not, it means it’s doing its job.
Fact remains that art is subjective—what resonates with one person might mean something entirely different to another. When a work tries to convey the exact same meaning to everyone, it usually ends up as… well, mediocre art.
“The Matrix” captured the zeitgeist like almost no other sci-fi movie before or after it, leading to two highly profitable—if clunky—sequels in the early 2000s. Ever since then, it’s been a downward spiral for the Wachowskis. The last film Lily directed was 2015’s “Jupiter Ascending,” which reportedly lost Warner Bros over $100M.