Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Now that you’ve got the needed context, we’re going to dive into the movie itself and show you what PJ Torokvei had to say about being trans in: THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF REAL GENIUS, part 2!
If you missed that needed context, you really must first read PART 1. You have to understand all of that to truly understand what’s going on in the actual allegory that we’re about to discuss.
I’ve tried to grab timestamps when I could, as close to the moment I’m talking about. This isn’t as dense as The Matrix, or Barbie, or I Saw the TV Glow, due to PJ Torokvei’s trans voice being one among many cis voices, but you’ll see it shine through.
Before we dive in by timestamps, let’s talk a little about the characters (and especially their names, because there is a lot going on there!).
The movie is about Mitch’s acceptance of himself and his own transness. It’s not as explicit or as strong and clean as Neo’s journey in the first Matrix movie, but again that’s because here there is only one trans voice among many cis voices. But that’s the allegorical journey he’s on. “Mitch” derives from “Mitchell” which derives from “Michael”… one of God’s archangels. “Michael” even means “like God” (sort of).
What do you think that means? Welllll…
Allegorically, Chris Knight is a trans person who accepted their truth and is living out and proud, and Mitch is in awe of that, the way so many of us trans folks are in awe of those who came before us, before we come out ourselves.
“Chris” derives from Christ/Christian, and “Knight” is self-explanatory. And do you see what that’s telling you about Mitch?
Chris is a warrior for what he believes in (being trans and living out and proud). And Mitch is like Chris. That they also work in the broader sense of the movie’s surface “rejecting conformity and embracing individuality” theme makes sense, because that broader theme is actually about the trans theme underneath.
But see what I mean by this being intentional? You don’t accidentally pick those names. And if you think somehow you do accidentally choose those names, wellllll…
Hollyfeld is Mitch’s future, trapped in the closet. If you pay attention, you’ll see there’s a skeleton hanging in that closet for no good reason. But it’s important, because that future trapped in the closet is like death.
Holly is often seen as a symbol of eternal life, and it apparently became associated with Christmas as its sharp leaves were symbolic of Christ’s crown of thorns, and the red berries symbolic of Christ’s blood. Hmmm…
Jordan doesn’t conform to what you’d “expect” traditionally feminine students in the 1980s to look like. Her name is gender neutral, like Chris. She’s the only real woman in the movie, in that she isn’t there just for a joke and has her own goals and motivations. She’s a character, the others are mostly plot devices.
Allllso note that “Jordan” is the river Christ was baptized in. Jordan will be important to Mitch’s self-discovery and acceptance of (and becoming) his true self.
Now look, I’m not Christian, but Mitch/Chris/Hollyfeld/Jordan having names that all relate to Christianity had to be intentional. They are all of one/the same – but it’s not that they’re Christian, it’s that they’re trans. Hollyfeld and Jordan both play a super important part in the allegory. Read on!
Hathaway is sort of our stand-in for transphobic society. Not as directly as Smith was in The Matrix or the CEO in Barbie, but here he’s definitely the representation of everything wrong with the world.
“Hathaway” roughly means “near a heath,” and a heath is a wasteland, or uncultivated land with poor soil and drainage, but depending on which origin you trace it back to could also mean something similar to “war battle.” So what you get is antagonism and violence, where there is nothing of value. This is what’s to be found in the hate that bigoted cis white men peddle. And his name has nothing to do with all the Christ-related names, which are about peace and acceptance. Pretty telling!
Kent is a self-hating trans person, who has allied himself with the transphobes in power and rejected his truth for access to that power (very much like The Merovingian in The Matrix). “Kent” is also the past-tense version of “ken,” which means recognizing, knowing, and understanding something. So in the past Kent recognized and understood his truth (that he’s trans)! But he rejected it and was rewarded for doing so.
Okay, time for timestamps! Let’s go!
03:59 – After the opening movie-within-the-movie about the Crossbow orbital laser, a dude in this room full of powerful cis men asks what another thinks of it. The reply: “I think there weren’t enough girls in it.” This isn’t intended in terms of equality, but sexualization.
That isn’t explicitly trans, but knowing PJ was a trans woman writer that everyone thought was a cis man writer, how many times do you think she heard that exact reply while writing for movies and television in the 1980s and ‘90s? As writer Ian Boothby pointed out in part one, Real Genius is remarkably unsexist given similar movies of the time. This is what happens when you have a trans woman writing it (and a cis woman directing it).
04:29 – Referring to the Crossbow orbital laser (meant for assassinations), one of the dudes says: “So it’s both immoral and unethical?” And then they all laugh, ha ha, so funny. Much like the Matrix movies and Barbie, this is showing you what the cis white men in power think about the rest of us.
They do not care if something is wrong so long as it upholds their status and the social pecking order with them at the top.
05:10 – There is but one cis Black man in the room, and he is the one who objects and opts out of the idea of giving these men the power to eliminate anyone they want. As with the Agents and every other person of power in The Matrix, cis white men are the source of the problem. They’re the ones who established this system of oppression.
05:35 – After the lone Black man nopes out, one of the white men says he: “…used to be a good man. Afraid we’re going to have to eliminate George.”
They allowed him into their circle when they thought he upheld their beliefs in their own superiority, but as soon as he told them what they were doing was wrong, he had to go. One of the old dudes immediately leaves, as if to imply George was going to be killed right then.
This speaks to the fear of marginalized people standing up to those in power, especially the fear of coming out (doubly so in the 1980s), and what’ll happen if you do. Because coming out as trans is a direct threat to the lies cis white men established to keep themselves in power. And you see it right now, in 2025, with these same cis white men in power working to strip trans people of our rights. We prove the cis binary is a lie (see THE FALSE DICHOTOMY), and that’s what the entire system of white supremacist oppression is built on.
06:10 – We meet Hathaway. He’s getting asked for autographs, showing you he’s well liked by the general population, even though he immediately demonstrates what an asshole he is. Bigotry was somewhat celebrated in the past.
Even more than it is now, as hard as that is to think about.
06:29 – We get Mitch’s intro, and you see right away his parents don’t understand him. It’s literally like he speaks a different language. Because he’s trans and they’re cis.
08:19 – Mitch: “They’re really all right, it’s just sometimes they have no idea what I’m talking about.” Is there a clearer description of family and friends that you love, but who just cannot understand who you are?
Remember from part one, in the letter written by Stan Brooks after PJ’s death, he talked about not really understanding who she was or what it meant to be trans, and continually deadnamed and misgendered her out of ignorance. Mr. Brooks, at least, continued to love PJ as a friend.
08:28 – Mitch doesn’t have many friends, and thinks he intimidates other kids. He’s an outcast, he feels like he doesn’t fit in and nobody likes him. This is life for a lot of trans people, pretending to be cis and being very bad at it while our GENDER DYSPHORIA keeps us isolated.
08:50 – Hathaway thinks he and Mitch are alike, and is honoring Mitch by getting him accepted to Pacific Tech at such a young age. He wants Mitch on his team, to be cis like him. Society sees the outcast and wants to mold him into the person it wants him to be.
Mitch thinks this is what he wants, because he’s been told by society that’s who he should be. “You’re a cis guy, this is what cis guys do!” And so he goes along because that must be true. What else could there be? All of gendered society isn’t built on lies, right? Babes, see TRANS TRAUMA 2: SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING for more.
09:00 – Mitch is going to be working with Chris Knight, a legend. Mitch already knows of and is kind of awed by Chris.
09:05 – Cut to Chris and we immediately see even from his shoes that he does not dress like those around him, or like you’d expect. He does not conform. A trans person.
09:15 – And just in case the shoes weren’t enough, you get his subversive shirt and his alien bobble headband. He doesn’t care that society thinks he looks ridiculous and not like they want him to, he’s more comfortable being his true self. “I love toxic waste” on his shirt. This thing society says is toxic waste (being trans)? I’m gonna love it.
09:23 – The cis white dude in the suit pulls open the door for Chris, but Chris pushes in the other door on his own. He doesn’t want the path society has laid out for him, he’s going to make his own way. Cis? No thanks, that’s not who I am.
09:50 – Chris is introduced to Sherry and Mike. Chris immediately undercuts Mike, the cis white man’s, boasting. Takes him down a peg. Chris is charming, disarming, witty. Sherry, a woman, finds that entertaining. Almost like cis women are hurt by the false binary too…
Mike has no comments about Chris’ manner of dress… until he learns that Chris knows the flaws in his project, and then instantly moves to insulting him. Your deviation from the norm will only be tolerated (by some) if you know your place and don’t threaten their power.
Sherry here is also instantly into Chris. The surface of the movie posits this as her just liking to seduce the smartest minds in the country, but she’s used in a very clever way as part of the allegory later on. Just remember the woman liked the out and confident trans person.
10:00 – Chris apologizes for the alien bobble headband with a joke, “I didn’t want you to think I was stuffy. You know, no fun. All brain, no penis.” NO PENIS. Sure he didn’t mean it literally, but… do you think… that line is by accident in a movie written by a trans woman, that is about transness?
Chris appears as a cis man, right? So this is showing you right away his transness is one of the ways he doesn’t conform. It’s kind of like how “trans” is in the very opening shot of The Matrix. It’s right there. Are you paying attention?
10:31 – As the stuffy cis white dude leaves, he mentions to Chris that Sherry will answer his questions about anything, like dress codes. Hey, trans person, your clothes and presentation don’t meet our expectations. Fix it.
10:40 – Cis white dude says Chris is one of the ten finest minds in the country. Chris: “Someday I hope to be two of them.” This could mean he is of two minds aka has a duality? Was raised as cis but is actually trans?
I can’t really parse it, but there could be something there. But also sometimes a joke is just a joke. But there’s more here. This is showing you Chris is a member of a small minority…trans people!
Remember we’re maybe 1% of the population by our present best estimates. The actual percentage is likely higher due to some trans people not being out (or knowing they’re trans yet), but we’re still a very small percentage of the population.
And Sherry is clearly into “the smartest people in the country,” the smallest minority in the population. Does this make her a chaser? Yep. They’ve been around for as long as trans women have been – forever.
This isn’t saying trans people are smarter than everyone else by default (though we can see the cis binary matrix of society better than anyone else), that’s just how the allegory works in this one moment so you understand what Sherry’s about for later.
If you need a reminder, see the essay on CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN. The movie doesn’t really have anything to say about chasers, even though it features one. What’s important is what it uses Sherry to say in terms of the overall allegory, and that has nothing to do with chasers. It’s a ways off yet, but we’ll get there.
11:25 – Mitch meets Gene, who teaches at Pacific Tech. Gene says they’ve been told to expect great things from Mitch.
11:50 – Gene wants to give Mitch advice but seems confused, addled. Gene sees transness in Mitch, like he sees it in himself (this gets confirmed later!). But Gene hasn’t self-accepted and doesn’t know how to help someone self-actualize when he hasn’t been able to help himself. It’s an egg recognizing another egg (eggs are what we call trans people who don’t know they’re trans yet).
12:02 – As Mitch walks, someone asks him “where’s the funeral?” I think the movie wants us to think that’s due to the suit he’s wearing, but as a trans woman pretending to be a cis man, suits were hell for me. They made me feel like dying because they’re the most heavily male-coded clothing around. I suspect PJ felt that, too. See HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.
12:38 – Mitch gets to his dorm and… his clothes are missing. We later learn Chris took them and put them away. Chris is already trying to show Mitch that those men’s clothes are not for you.
12:43 – Chris’ side of the room is messy, chaotic, and we again see that he does not conform.
12:52 – Hollyfeld enters Mitch’s room, disappears into the closet. Note he’s dressed similarly to Mitch, but has a beard and his hair is longer. Remember that Hollyfeld is Mitch’s future… this is you in twenty years, trapped in the closet.
13:16 – Mitch: “What kind of a place is this?” This isn’t the world he’s used to, and things don’t work the same. It doesn’t make sense to him. It speaks to waking up to why the world feels wrong when your egg starts cracking and you discover your transness.
13:19 – Chris: “Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself?” Chris is upside down and talking about flight. This is foreshadowing that he’s going to reverse Mitch’s ideas about the world and it will free him of the societal restraints holding him down. Flight is used as a metaphor for GENDER EUPHORIA in The Matrix films, and I even described my first experience with it the same way in BODY HACKING.
Dysphoria is so oppressive and legit feels like a weight on you, so when it lessens, you feel… lighter. Like you could fly.
But if gravity reversed itself, Chris doesn’t know how he’d keep the change in his pockets until he realizes: nudity means he wouldn’t lose his change. To me, this is saying that the way to not lose the changes you want to keep is to be naked and completely honest with yourself.
13:30 – During the conversation Chris continues to not conform (they’re jokes, but they’re all about not conforming to your expectations). He asks Mitch if he’d like to use his “penis stretcher” and Mitch says “No!”
Is that because it’d be dangerous? Or is it because penis size has often been used as a sign of “manliness” and that’s the last thing Mitch wants… to be more of a man? I’M JUST SAYIN’.
13:50 – Chris wants to “avoid responsibility,” all the obligations and expectations society saddles you with so you will conform and perform your assigned gender correctly.
13:59 – Chris: “You see, Mitch, I used to be you.” Chris used to be an egg, a trans person who didn’t know they were trans and hadn’t self-accepted. Are you seeing how so much of this is so very trans when you know what to look for? You’ll see this pop up again later, when Mitch’s journey is almost complete!
14:14 – Chris wanted to reconnect with his old self (an early in transition Mitch), so he put Mitch’s clothes away for him… in the bottom drawer, and he threw the sports jacket away. He’s already pushing Mitch along the path of acceptance and realization of his true self. Those clothes are not for him.
14:35 – Chris’ drone breaks out of the room, shatters a window. Chris: “Would you classify that as a launch problem or a design problem?” Did things go wrong because you were “designed incorrectly,” or because you were sent off into the world incorrectly?
Are the feelings you have about not being a cis man because you were born with a body that’s not right for you, or because society used that body to tell you who you had to be without deviation? It can be both. And either way it shatters societal expectations.
15:29 – Not only is Hathaway working with the cis white men in power to develop their weapon, he’s committing fraud and stealing from the project. He’s unethical in every regard. There is nothing good about the wrong mold society tries to force us into. It’s irredeemable.
16:58 – Kent! He’s a self-hating trans person, the kind that’ll sell out himself and all the rest of us for access to power. And you get that right from his line, “When Jerry (Hathaway) is not here, you do what I say. It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.” You see right here that he has gained power and status by rejecting his transness.
17:48 – Mitch is introduced to the group and is Hathaway’s new favorite. Chris didn’t show up because he didn’t feel like it. Everyone in the group is subservient and deferential to Hathaway… except Chris. Which tracks with everything we’ve learned so far.
17:53 – Hathaway says he’s surprised one of the students stopped stuttering, and he replies “I’ve been giving myself shock treatments.” What’s a stutter? Something about you that you didn’t ask for but is part of you, like transness. And did you know… shock treatments also used to be used to try and “cure” transness as part of abhorrent “conversion therapy”? Look what this person did to themselves for access to power. It’s an incredibly dark line.
19:24 – Mitch is already more relaxed and dressing more comfortably, this is the first time we’ve seen him not in a suit. Chris has already inspired Mitch to move along the path to self-acceptance and actualization, away from “typical man.”
Seeing other trans people out and living their lives, and finding joy, inspires others to do the same. I’ve said it a million times. So many trans women, and trans women writers, made me believe I could do it too. And it’s part of the reason why the Republicans in power want to erase trans people from public life, because if nobody can see us or learn about us, how will they know they’re trans too? I didn’t know trans was a thing a human could be until well into adulthood, after the body horror of the wrong puberty had wreaked havoc on my body.
Next time we’re going to talk about Chris’s dream (oh, THE DREAM!), lyrics, and nonconformity! Don’t miss it, because you need it to really understand the amazing message at the end of it all.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com