The Matrix: Red Pill, Lead Pill
New Essay at FilmFisher
Perhaps the most iconic scene in The Matrix (even more than “I know kung fu”) comes at the end of the first act. The disaffected hacker Thomas Anderson, alias Neo (Keanu Reeves) – hounded by malevolent Agents and seeking the answer to the existential question “What is the Matrix?” – finally comes before the wise and enigmatic sage Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who offers him a choice. Morpheus presents Neo with two pills: one red, one blue. If he takes the blue pill, he will return to his old life of ignorance; if he takes the red pill, he will learn a truth that radically transforms his life. Upon choosing the red pill, Neo is pulled out of the virtual reality of the Matrix and into the real world.
The red pill is such a potent, easy-to-swallow image that it has become a staple of the modern lexicon. As far as pop culture concepts go, “taking the red pill” is almost as ubiquitous and generally understood as “using the Force.” (Among other things, it has been co-opted into contemporary political discourse in recent years.) We can all intuitively grasp what it means, and what it feels like, to “take the red pill” – to experience an epiphany in which scales fall from our eyes and we suddenly see how the world “really works” in a way that shifts and colors all previous understanding.