 |
| Dante "Tex" Gill |
Body Talk is an ongoing series of conversations about Transgender Cinema as we prepare to write our book "Corpses, Fools and Monsters: An Examination of Transgender Cinema:. This installment is on the question of Cisgender actors playing Transgender characters.
WILLOW
MACLAY : Caden,
it was about three weeks ago when news dropped that Scarlett
Johansson was going to play Dante
“Tex” Gill
in a movie about his life entitled, "Rub and Tug" and for
the most part cisgender people seemed surprised that there was a
controversy. This is just the latest example of a cisgender actor
playing a transgender person in a movie through outdated cross-gender
casting, but the major difference here is that Scarlett
actually stepped down from the role, but the film sadly, doesn't seem
to be going forward.
I'll admit that I was dubious of Rupert Sanders being allowed to make
anything that could be considered a motion picture again, but it's
frustrating that this movie has just proven that for mainstream
Hollywood it's either cis actors playing trans characters or nothing
at all. Typically, it's cis men playing trans women, the legacy of
which has been nothing short of damning, but this would have
realistically been the first mainstream film about a trans man since
Boys
Don't Cry,
which we've already crucified.
Rub and Tug
likely would've been compromised under any circumstances due to
Sanders complete lack of talent, but I want to hear your thoughts on
this issue, and later in this discussion we'll get into the history
of cisgender actors playing transgender characters.
CADEN GARDNER: The
Rub & Tug
press release initially seemed to be dubious about Dante “Tex”
Gill’s life story being a trans one. Tex
Gill identified as a man,
It appeared that those working on the film saw it as an Albert Nobbs
situation where a cis woman disguises herself as a man for societal
reasons rather than the root cause of gender dysphoria. There was an
instant ferocity in the internet blowback after the film was
announced, to which Johansson foolishly said: “Tell
them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and
Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment”.
This statement is essentially a defence built around the status quo
of cis actors in these roles, and the ways in which they’ve been
accepted by prestigious film and television voting boards. It is
interesting that Johansson never mentioned an instance of a trans man
role. She only brings up Huffman, a cis woman playing a trans woman,
and Tambor and Leto, cis men, both playing trans women. It was
incredibly tone-deaf. Johansson and her people definitely were
leaning on the fact that Hollywood has given permission for her and
other cis actors to take these roles like masks and costumes and
bypass hiring a trans actor for the role. Honestly, when I got wind
of Lukas Dhont’s Award winning film at Cannes, Girl,
I found myself slightly taken aback by that film being cis actor in a
trans role. I thought we were past this. I thought A
Fantastic Woman and
Tangerine
were signifiers: films that got critical plaudits and made noise on
the Hollywood industry radar. I thought that cross-gender casting was
becoming something of the past and that we were going to be getting
more trans stories as played with trans actors. I felt so naïve to
have thought that. So when this announcement happened, I was hurt by
the news of the casting , but even moreso by how Johansson handled
our criticism. I wanted the project to sink once she made that
statement and frankly, I am glad it is gone. Then of course, through
this whole controversy, I heard from cis people who seemed confused,
as you said, by why this would be controversy. It was after all,
‘just acting’, according to them. I had many arguments over this
casting dating back to Girl
mostly on the conceit
of casting and this continued with Rub
& Tug, going from
trans women as the target of this mis-casting to trans men. It was
exhausting, and frankly, I felt even less heard and understood
(Editor’s note: Take a look at how many trans women, including
myself, who were asked to cover this issue compared to trans men). I
felt many cis people, consciously or not, showed their true colors in
reacting to this debacle. They seem mad that I wanted this project to
sink given the circumstances. I’ll just repeat for this piece my
reasons that I restated over and over: I do not know a trans man,
myself included, who wants their life story told from the perspective
of a woman. I do not know a trans woman that wants their life story portrayed by a man.
I do not think this is at all
difficult to understand but what I am noticing is the power of
telling stories on the screen, be it television and film, is that cis
people do not want to abdicate a sliver of control. They are
interested in our stories but on their terms. This was just another
case. It died, but I doubt it will be the last time.
WM: You
nailed it with that last paragraph. I, similarly, thought we were
past this with the release of both Tangerine
and A Fantastic Woman.
I
don’t like AFW,
but that’s not because of Daniela Vega, who is excellent, but
because the film is only interested in her oppression through
redemption. I thought there would be a shift where we slowly chipped
away at preconceptions of transness on screen, but that doesn't seem
to be the case in mainstream Hollywood. Television is a little bit
different, and we'll get to that later, but when there's money on the
line they only want big money stars. I found that to be an awkward
excuse as well, where cis people would say things like "it can't
get made unless it has a big star attached and there are no trans
stars that an average person wants to watch" I saw that excuse a
lot and it was mildly humorous because they pointed out the problem
without realizing it. There are no trans stars and the reason for
that is they won't fucking cast people like us. You can’t become a
star if you’re not even given the chance to compete. There has to
be a starting point, somewhere, in mainstream movies. We're still
waiting for that to happen.
 |
| A Fantastic Woman (2017) |
wm cont: I
was asked by the CBC to be a guest on their film program for Q Radio
on this very topic,
and there was 100s of comments in my mentions afterwards like "I
guess superheroes can only play superheroes" or whatever, but if
they had actually taken the time to listen to me they would have
known my reasoning that I'll repeat now: "if you would find it
ridiculous for Colin Firth to play the Queen of England in
cross-gender casting or any other man playing a woman, why make an
exception for transgender people? If it's because you don't actually
see us as who we are then that's a problem you have to fix." Cis
people know in their heart of hearts if they REALLY consider us as
who we say we are, and this whole ordeal has pointed me in the
direction of a lot of people who don't see us as the gender we are,
but the one we were assigned at birth. Hollywood thinks that way.
CG: Yeah,
and cis people really gave us no solution when they essentially asked
us to wait our turn. When is that happening? What exactly is your
idea of progress for our community? They do not answer because they
do not know or they do not care. When there is this opportunity
available to tell a trans story, why should we not speak out and
protest this when there are actors in our community who could play
Tex Gill? Again, they will just say it is acting, and then mention
things like ‘I don’t need an actor having cancer to play a
character with cancer’ because I totally like my gender dysphoria
compared to a deadly disease, truly. There are no trans stars but
there can be if given the opportunity. I would rather see some
Hollywood player, be it a major Hollywood producer, or an actor,
actress, or director with cachet push to tell these stories. If it
means, loading the cast with known names but in the service of also
raising the profile of the trans actor at the center with their story
being told, I can support that. Instead it is more or less stuff like
the ScarJo controversy and something similarly with her Avengers
co-star Mark Ruffalo producing an independent film called Anything
about a trans woman sex worker played by…. Matt Bomer. Ruffalo
assured us he “got
woke” when
pushback to his film’s casting led him to watch one trans web
series, but the casting and movie still happened. It is just so
ridiculous but I suppose I should be thrilled that people were aware
about the controversy and pushing back, but it also just seemed like
this was people attuned to ScarJo stepping into shit once more in
their eyes rather than just focusing on the casting problem itself.
At least that was how I saw it and why I fear this will still happen
again in the future.
It’s really rare for Hollywood
to tell a transgender story or even feature a transgender character.
They need to recalibrate. All of these performances are going to look
offensive in one hundred years. The industry is having another kind
of identity crisis with their current filmmaking models. There exist
only two modes and no in-betweens. You have the big studio action
tentpoles for the spring and summer and the others are prestige
films, the so-called “Oscar bait” dramas that give the studios
their air of respectability in the fall and winter. It’s there
where we see transgender stories. This decade we have seen a wave of
prestige films that included trans people as a major part of the
narrative, if not the very center of the film. But, as you mentioned,
these films were the compromised versions of a trans story. I am
talking about The Danish Girl and Dallas Buyer’s Club
and the performances given by Eddie Redmayne and Jared Leto. I should
be unsurprised that people seem to think that the culture at large-
or rather, the extremely narrow and privileged sect of the Academy of
Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences- rewarding these performances was
a signifier of the supposed quality and authenticity in these
performances, but they were deeply surprised to find out that trans
people hated these performances.
 |
| The Danish Girl |
WM: I
think there's this notion that we should be happy we're served a
meal, even if it's fried dog shit. That's what it feels like to me
when these movies come out. They cloak themselves in respectability
politics or messages and position themselves as important movies for
our cause, but any lasting positive impact almost never happens.
Images inform culture and if the only image of trans womanhood is a
guy in drag then that's all we're going to be, but my body flies in
the direct face of these notions. I have the hormone levels of a cis
woman, breasts that grew from my body through estrogen, same as any
cis woman, a pair of XX chromosomes, because I'm intersex, no adam's
apple to speak of and if I may be vain for a moment, absolutely
killer legs. But even if I didn't pass and didn't have these things I
still wouldn't have a body like Eddie Redmayne's or Jared Leto's. My
body is different. Our bodies are different. Trans women aren't built
like cis men and Trans men aren't built like cis women, but I think
some cis people are a little surprised by that truth, and have been
very slow to learn. We’re
still getting articles about the shock and awe of trans women being
able to breast feed for example,
when
we’ve been doing this for a long time.
I want to get into the nuts and
bolts of these performances and why they don't work. Let's start with
Eddie Redmayne, who plays trans woman, Lili Elbe. Redmayne plays her
like an alcoholic with sensory disorder and a paraphilia for things
like stockings and lingerie. Redmayne's conception of womanhood is
ORGASMIC, with heaving exterior moans and blurred vision. A trans
woman if she were on the verge of climax at the very notion of
womanhood. Like a fictionmania fetish story made real, and Tom Hooper
directs it with cinematic form that feels like dried semen on hosery.
It's a gross movie, and Redmayne's gigantic expressive acting
shutters any way to understand the interior of Elbe's life or who she
was as a person. The portrait of Elbe is one of an insane fetishist
who died reaching for the perfect orgasm to meet her fetish of
surface level womanhood. It’s telling that the final image of the
movie restructures her as a piece of fabric that gets blown away in
the wind. I suppose one could argue that is a happy ending if you’re
sadistic and only watch these movies out of sheer exhibitionist
curiosity, but in truth it's offensive. I'm not sure any actor
could have saved this movie as it was conceived, but the end product
is maybe the worst possible depiction of transness I've ever seen and
Redmayne's performance somehow tops Leto's mid-crucifixion martyr
with a death wish and a perfect bikini wax in the equally bad, but
somehow not as awful, Dallas Buyer's Club.
 |
| The Danish Girl |
CG:
Redmayne’s idea of gender dysphoria is so indicating and
contorting in ways that feels like a bad 1960s sci-fi TV serial. The
trembling his character has in reaching down below her waist,
particularly in that scene where Lili goes to a peep show and mimics
the cis women performer, is so laughable and infuriating all at once.
The film treats the character’s male presentation and female
presentation like two separate identities and womanhood for Lili in
this film is getting an uncomfortable proposition from Ben Whishaw
(Editor’s note: Poor Ben Whishaw) or wearing an androgynous
pantsuit out in the park trailed by two gawking men straight out of a
Tex Avery cartoon. Then there is the central relationship of Lili and
her wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander) where the triggering moment that
sets this whole “journey” in motion is Gerda making Lili pose
with a dress for her painting. I should note that even if the casting
was done better, The Danish Girl is a truly reductive portrait
of two famous artists. The film manages to trivialize their
relationship and turn these two real-life Bohemians into neurotic
messes who want to play house, but a very constrained conservative
one. There are several bedroom scenes of Lili assuming more
femininity with Gerda, and is treated like a fetish object. Again,
back to the 60s sci-fi TV camp that is happening with this
performance, Redmayne treats contact with the dress like a mad
scientist who gets exposed to his deadly formula that now spreads
disease through the body. It is all so preformative and exaggerated,
dialed up into something that by the end renders Lili Elbe as someone
so glum and upsetting in a really reductive, useless way. She’s
Icarus flying too closely to the sun, but that’s most films about
trans people made by cis filmmakers.
Martyrdom and transness are
interlinked in these films and that extends to Jared Leto as Rayon.
Where Lili Elbe was a real person, albeit The
Danish Girl was
speculative fiction by a writer and the adaptation even further
twists a lot of facts, Dallas
Buyer’s Club made a
fictional composite character of Rayon. According to screenwriter
Craig Borten, the creation of that character came from research in
interviewing trans AIDS activists. And
yet, the leaked script that I saw of Dallas Buyer’s Club constantly
spoke of Rayon in male pronouns and referred to the character as a
cross-dresser.
Even if the final product presented a trans woman you have the fact
that Rayon is misgendered and deadnamed constantly, even referred by
McConaughey’s protagonist as ‘Mr. Man’. You can say that is the
product of the time but with the exception of one moment, Rayon
almost never pushes back or reacts in a way of hurt in being
dehumanized this way. Additionally, the film hardly ever explores her
story. We get bedroom décor of T. Rex and glam rock (my kingdom for
a Todd Haynes trans movie), assuming that’s her connection to queer
life. She frequents gay bars of Texas that are apparently chill with
trans women. And what of Rayon’s life? Well, she puts on a full
male presentation, an ill-fitting suit, to ask her father for money.
Rayon left a charmed life and that moment is treated like a cheap
revelation that is only in the service of the central protagonist’s
story. Rayon returned to Ray (Matthew McConaughey) to get her father
to give her money from her life insurance policy to pay off her debts
with her homophobe turned friend and business partner Ron. Rayon’s
story is treated so superficially: a series of various wigs, cheap
makeup, faux fur coats, and mirror shots. Cis people love showing us
looking in mirrors, particularly in giving ourselves a pep talk about
our looks but it is best to see us completely exposed. Except you
know, Redmayne and Leto do not have trans bodies. It is a man in a
dress and every mirror shot underlines that over and over. Those
mirror shots confirm for me I am watching bullshit but apparently for
cis people it’s revelatory, but in truth, they are looking at
something that is not us by their own design. It’s their conception
of transness, not our reality.
 |
| Dallas Buyers Club |
WM: It's
a dissection, piece by piece, an outfit, something to construct
rather than something inherent. To show a trans woman with real
breasts would be to say that this isn't an act. Rayon is built,
rather than someone who is.
And
Leto did absolutely nothing to dispel these notions with his waxing
comments and general method
acting macho swagger of playing woman. A fake woman, but that’s
trans women at the movies. These movies aren't even about trans
women. They're about tragic men who died because they followed a
foolish notion that they could become women. These movies for a
second don't treat these characters as women. Not at all. I'm not
sure any of the films we are discussing during this series does, but
some of our other examples we will get to like Dog
Day Afternoon, at
least have a current of decency throughout.
I want to get to your mirrors
comment now, because that's the resolute language of transness in the
cinema as conceived by cis people. It's a model of vanity, a
reflection of who these people "truly" are, and a way in
which to try and slam together something resembling a metaphor image,
even with no real depth. It isn't just trans women who get this
treatment either. We've brought Boys Don't Cry up before, but
the scene where Hillary Swank as Brandon Teena poses in front of full
length mirror so we can see the full dimensions of Swank's body is
one of the most dangerous ever put in cinema with regards to
transness, because it unravels identity and points a giant fucking
arrow in visual language to Swank's dickless briefs. It's genitals as
destiny, forever and ever amen. On the opposite side of things
there's a scene that is almost identical to Swank's in Under the
Skin, a film we both love, and it has completely different
intent. In that scene it's a realization that the alien's (Scarlett
Johansson) body is hers, warts and all, and how she can find an
identity in herself. It isn't directly saying there's anything wrong
with her body or something is amiss. It's just hers, bathed in amber
lighting as Mica Levi's music swells to something resembling warmth
for the first time in the film. The visual language of that scene is
acceptance. The visual language of Boys Don't Cry, Dallas Buyer's
Club and others is political posturing and genital hysteria.
 |
| Boys Don't Cry |
 |
| Under the Skin |
CG: I want to get back to
your comment about Jared Leto and method acting. I absolutely think
the whole ‘living as a different gender’ (and let me note that is
not what gender dysphoria is, gender dysphoria is being at odds with
the sex you are assigned at birth) concept and conceit is something
that absolutely appeals to actors in the same way that playing an
athlete or packing on a lot of weight does. They want their Robert
DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull moment but to me it just
comes off as Robert Downey Jr’s performance of Kirk Lazarus in
Tropic Thunder. They are suffering for their craft and want
the plaudits and the credit for playing us, but they do not seem to
care about how offensive it is and that it is not their role to play.
What they are doing is something in the Hollywood tradition of a
different kind that is closer to red face, yellow face, and black
face. They are crafting something based in makeup and appearance-
through their lens, of course- all on a surface level in playing
somebody they are not innate nor inherently. It is something that
Hollywood allowed and gives them permission to do until consumers
back off and then it suddenly is acknowledged how bad it is and was,
and only then does it get condemned. It did not suddenly become that
but was built on years and decades of mistreatment and
misrepresentation that included dangerous stereotypes and even
well-meaning portrayals in prestigious films of the time period that
were trying to get awards. These are problems and particular errors
in casting that are entrenched in Hollywood history and there is a
certain level of complicity to be found in actors not really
understanding the trans experience. Laverne Cox and Trace Lysette are
out there, but are actively ignored in favour of cis men looking to
make their name. They see it as a challenge to ‘lose themselves’
in the role and in their day to day life through method acting.
Joke’s on them, I only saw fucking Jared Leto in a dress.
 |
| Laverne Cox |
 |
| Trace Lysette |
WM: It’s
frustrating to say the least. When Dallas
Buyer’s Club was
initially released I had been out as a trans woman for a couple
years, but I was still living at home with my parents. My mom wanted
to see the movie, because she was a rabid fan of all things Matthew
McConaughey. He’s one of her thirst actors, but her rental of this
movie worried me, because I knew there’d be questions afterwards
that I’d have to answer. My parents knew I was transgender and here
they were watching this movie which co-signed all their anxieties
about who I was, and frequently when we’d get into fights my Dad
would dangle Rayon in front of me as “that faggot in the movie”.
That was their image of transness. These things stick, and I’m not
sure cis people 100% realize when that happens. Culturally, when you
bring up transness you’re still likely to get comments about
Buffalo Bill in The
Silence of the Lambs, and
while we both like that movie you cannot deny that the image has
stuck.
CG:
Now to return this
discussion on mirrors, Swank’s bagging briefs in Boys
Don’t Cry still makes me wince
on memory. Most of the rare occurrences of trans men in movies have
images like that one. BDC is genesis. The films I bring up in this
case are 3 Generations
by Gaby Dellal and 52 Tuesdays
by Sophie Hyde. Like Boys Don’t Cry these movies are about trans
men and are directed by cis women and well, I could definitely tell
these were by people outside of my life experiences. The trans men in
these movies are, Elle Fanning playing a trans teen in 3 Generations,
and Del Herbert-Jane as a trans man who is dealing with transitioning
amid having the worst teenage daughter (Tilda
Cobham-Hervey) in
human existence. The funny thing about these two movies are that they
check off every conceivable box of a trans narrative: there are many
mirror shots and body shots of these actresses getting masc, by
leaning in on the revelation and transitioning as the entire story.
Boys Don’t Cry made
the choice of a cis woman in a trans man role because Brandon Teena
was by reports too poor to go on hormones and these films also have
cheats in their fictional narratives in justifying cis actress in a
trans man role and keeping her around during the whole damn movie.
3 Generations
makes the entire conflict around Ray (Elle Fanning) getting a consent
form signed by both of his parents to start hormones. His mother
(Naomi Watts) supports him, but remains conflicted, and his distant
father (Tate Donovan) does not whatsoever. Every instance of physical
transition happens offscreen. Elle Fanning is so lost in trying to
convey maleness, masculinity, and expressing something about having a
trans body, and there’s the obligatory mirror shots and a dramatic
haircut you’d find in movies of this type.
 |
| 3 Generations |
52 Tuesdays
was more infuriating. I will admit that I have an age disconnect to
trans men of a certain age, some of whom went through motherhood
before transitioning, and that made me wonder if I ever had a chance
of liking this movie. However, this film thought it could pull a fast
one and had a Deus Ex Masc-hina. They outright refuse to have this
character transition, because James (Del Herbert-Jane) has a rare
condition. The character stops taking testosterone so you don’t see
him develop any more masculine traits that you see and hear early on,
like his voice dropping or putting on muscle mass. This is why I
hate transition narratives. They never ring true and yes, it is a
dramatic experience of changes it is not just the only story or the
only form of transition that we do when we come out. Physical
transition is just one part of it and despite films keying in on
that, they all seem to fail. It never feels real, just contrivances
looking from the outside and never feeling that somebody like us has
a grip on these narratives. Brandon Teena passed before hormone
replacement therapy to the point where he had girlfriends, but we
don’t focus on how that happened. That isn’t physical. That’s
something else altogether.
 |
| 52 Tuesdays |
WM:
Oh my god, I love you for
coming up with Dues Ex Masc-hina. Can we just use that forever? The
thing that always blows my mind about these movies is that these
characters have next to nothing in terms of an interior self, and
isn't that supposed to be one of the things an actor looks for in a
role? As of late these performances are just gymnastics, showy,
mastubratory acting that has no depth whatsoever. It's like saying
"look at my abs, it took so much work!" and Leto has always
done this sort of performance. Somehow he's worse in Chapter
27. Somehow he's worse in
Suicide Squad. The
fact that we've let him stick around is the greatest sin of the
millennial goths who popularized 30 Seconds to Mars in the first
place.
I
admittedly, haven't seen these movies about trans men, but your
description of them sounds painful. One thing that has always
bothered me is the logical fallacy of cross gender casting when it
comes to trans people. If we absolutely must show the entire
transitional process in the movie or have flashbacks then wouldn't it
make the most sense to let the trans actor play the previous version
of themselves? Because realistically if a cis man can play a trans
woman in a movie then wouldn't that same line of thinking apply for
trans women playing a more masculine version of themselves
pre-transition? Because if this is all about transformation then why
does it not apply to us? We’re the masters of that shit, aren’t
we? I've said it before and I'll say it again: mainstream transgender
depiction is vulture cinema for cisgender actors to make their name.
It doesn't matter if a real life trans person died, a cis person will
be there to pick up their mantle and tell it like it is. Barf. And It
has only gotten worse in the last 5 years with increased visibility.
We're in the mainstream now, so we can be sold. Not art by us, but
art sold to us by cis people. We're just another demographic, but we
don't watch these movies. We hate these movies. So how do we fix that
problem? I honestly don't think they care. It was better in the 60s,
70s and 80s for trans depiction than it is now in some respects and
that's absurd. In 2018 Candy Darling would not get to play a cis
woman in anything, but that happened in the late 60s. Hypothetically,
if all things were perfect and there was job equality in the field I
wouldn’t have a problem with a cisgender woman playing a
transgender woman or a cisgender man playing a transgender man. My
issue is when you put a man in front of me and call him a woman.
Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining. That’s when
you lose me in this day and age.
 |
| Candy Darling |
 |
| Stephen Dorff in I Shot Andy Warhol |
CG:
It raises the question
(and I think we know the answer) that Hollywood has no clue what the
difference is at all between somebody trans versus some dude who puts
on a dress to play trans. Granted words have changed over time and
what people considered cross-dressers, drag queens, and transvestites
were and are trans women. I question how the late Holly Woodlawn and
Candy Darling could have made a mark in culture in transcending the
films they were in and rubbing shoulders with A-listers at clubs, but
film then has this dead period of nobody from the mainstream or the
underground to take their place and follow in their footsteps. Even
when the likes of a Mya Taylor come along she and many other trans
actresses get pushed aside for men to play these roles, sometimes in
the very stories of these figures. Stephen Dorff played Candy Darling
in I Shot Andy Warhol,
which is still wild to me. Given Candy’s whole relationship to
hormone replacement therapy that casting is something I doubt she
would have given approval.
WM:
Stephen
Dorff playing Candy has always bothered me. In a piece I
wrote on Women in Revolt I
talked bout this a little bit, but every single cinematic portrait of
her has characterized her as a man, and she detested that completely.
It's even more tragic if you consider the lyrics to the Velvet
Underground song "Candy Says", specifically the stanza that
asks "I'd
like to know completely, what others so discretely talk about, what
do you think I'd see if I could walk away from me?".
The answer to that question in terms of Hollywood is that they saw
her as a man at worst and a drag queen at best. That's the real truth
of the matter at hand: to cross-gender cast in these roles is to
cosign societal notions that our gender is fake. We aren't who we say
we are.
CG:
It does become clear that
it seems the rare ways for a trans movie to get what it is doing
right is not just hire a trans consultant or a trans coach, but also
have creative pull, beyond the role of a consultant. The
Danish Girl and TransAmerica
had trans consultants, but spare me if you think those films are
about our community. For me Tangerine
worked because the actresses had some say. Even if there is
well-meaning intent in telling a trans story, having us absent leaves
some major probability that things will be amiss and just flat-out
wrong. This can even happen when telling a true story like Dog
Day Afternoon, a film that I
love, and still a film where I do find it admirable on certain levels
for even engaging with a trans love story, and having a character
talk about having gender dysphoria. But you know, screenwriter Frank
Pierson and director Sidney Lumet preferred going with Chris Sarandon
for the trans role (John Waters player and trans woman Elizabeth
Coffey did try out for the part but did not get it, supposedly for
being seen as too feminine) and they saw the character as being
closer to transvestite than transsexual despite well, the whole plot
of the bank robbery being set in motion was to pay for the
character’s sex change. Despite all of this I feel like that is a
product of the time and that it was still significant and important
that the details of the story were not completely white washed even
if some of it in hindsight is now awkwardly presented. I am also not
the biggest fan of Chris Sarandon’s whole body language in the
film, constantly clutching his robe, although the character’s major
tell-off about Pacino’s character whining that ‘he’s dying’
when he is the architect of his problems and the problems of others
showed the movie wanting its audience to side with the trans
character. That’s powerful. Sure, when her trans status is revealed
a cop tries and fails to hold back a laugh, it is still a product of
its time in many ways. My
trans therapist told me that many trans people, himself included, in
that time could see that film, while having some healthy criticisms
of the performance, presenting their life experience on screen
without animus.
 |
| Dog Day Afternoon |
 |
| Elizabeth Coffey |
WM:
I
really want to dive into Dog
Day Afternoon
now, because I think it's the only film we're talking about in this
segment that we actually both love a lot. Despite loving that film, I
do have some criticisms. I, too, am not particularly fond of Chris
Sarandon's robe clutching, woman on the verge of collapse at any
given second neurotic wife. I don't love that, and think that
Elizabeth Coffey would have likely been better in the role, because
she would have cut through what little bullshit there is in that
film. I find it depressing that Coffey was turned down because she
was too pretty, and that, if anything, should be our obvious entry
point into the image of trans women in mainstream cinema. Coffey
isn't the only trans actor who has run into the "you're
too pretty to be trans"
problem. They don't want a pretty trans woman, because they see us as
men and if we appear like any other woman on screen that disrupts the
narrative, even if that is the truth. That's where they keep us at a
distance.
All
this being said, I think Dog Day Afternoon
is a near masterpiece, Sarandon's wonky body language and the
frustrating 5 o' clock shadow aside. It's a shook up 2 litter bottle
of pop ready to burst at any second and its centre is a man (Al
Pacino) who is going to any lengths to get surgery for the woman he
loves, because the world has fucked them over and it costs too much
for any poor person to afford. That’s real. I appreciate Lumet
including the title card for Elizabeth Eden stating she's "now a
woman". The language is old, but the sentiment is there, and it
is a happy ending in cinematic terms.
I
do think there's a scene in the movie that honestly mirrors our
experiences with trans casting and it's with John Cazale's character
insisting he isn't a homosexual when that is announced on TV. He
protests, but there it is on TV, something he asserts is wrong, but
that is now the narrative. With us, we can look at the screen and say
"that's not us" with cross-gender casting, we can look like
cis people, and in Candy Darling's case look like a fucking
supermodel and they're still going to run back into the arms of the
men in dresses trope.
CG:
Lumet’s direction to
Sarandon, after going through many bad casting auditions for the
character of Leon
(the character’s name in
the movie. The real life woman was Elizabeth
Eden) saw the character as a full-blown neurotic, tragic Tennessee
Williams heroine(Editor’s note: Tennessee Williams cast Candy
Darling as the lead in one of his play, Small Craft).
Lumet
wanted the character
played as an exasperated housewife. The
results are Chris Sarandon being closer to sitcom matriarchs like
Edith Bunker or Weezy Jefferson,
but I think Lumet’s note was not a bad one. You
do still feel these two- Pacino and Sarandon’s characters- have a
very domesticated relationship and they are not playing dress up, it
is real and so are their arguments, miscommunications, and doomed
quality. It is normative but does not strive for, ‘They’re just
like us!’ type of pleading to the audience. Lumet and Pierson were
extremely aware of the need to still be delicate in telling this
story that had the potential to not be taken seriously. Lumet was
furious about how audience test-screenings took the relationship and
the images of the “gay” wedding in the film’s newscast
segments. But they were showing these two people getting married and
one of them has committed this crime on behalf of the other, even if
she did not want him to do this for her. Those were the facts of the
case and they were put on-screen, that while still imperfect, are at
the center of a truly excellent film.
And
I love that the title card at the end of the movie as you said,
places the real Elizabeth Eden in a much better place, especially
compared to everyone else in the movie. She has moved on, her
romantic partner went to jail, Sonny’s ex-wife, who he does not
care about at all, are in the welfare system to raise her children.
You come off with the impression that the 'freak' that some
characters and even some of the audience previously snickered at by
the end has her life together much more together than one expects or
is conditioned to assume with trans characters, based on so many
tropes. And a lot of those tropes that you and I have seen came after
Dog Day Afternoon.
 |
| Elizabeth Eden |
WM:
It's strange to me, that
Dog Day had little effect in reshaping how we see transgender cinema.
There wasn't a huge call for Hollywood to shift afterward. Where
changes did happen to some degree, and DDA had some effect, was in
pretty broad interpretations of queer cinema involving gay men.
Cruising, I think is a
bastard son of DDA in some respects.
I
love that phone call between the two. Lumet just moves back and forth
between close-up and for a moment the heist element slips away. It's
just two people talking, like they always have, and sharing a
language and rhythm of their own. Pacino is excellent, but if there
is an argument to be made for Sarandon it's in this scene. It gives
us a window into their relationship, and "why" he's doing
this for her. They have a rhythm that he and his ex-wife do not. It's
theirs, warts and all, and he wouldn't be doing this if there wasn't
something between them. Elizabeth Eden sadly passed away from AIDS in
the 1980s, and even if Sarandon looks nothing like her she at least
gets that note at the end of the movie and Sonny did use his money
that he got from the film to pay for her sex change surgery. It's an
epic love story, a total fucking anomaly in cinema with transgender
elements and one of the only films with cross-gender casting I'll go
to bat for, even with some minor complaints here and there. I love
Dog Day Afternoon, and
a lot of it would still even be radical to this day, but Hollywood
would never make this movie now. It's too complicated, messy and
real. That, and the fact that Disney controls everything now.
CG:
Dog Day Afternoon
would
not be made by a major studio today. It would not be made with the
level of talent in front of and behind the camera as it did in 1975.
That would not happen. I
think 1970s America cinema, despite so many of my favourite films
coming from that era, were admittedly heavily hetero-masculine. Dog
Day Afternoon even feels like an anomaly as far as having one of the
biggest stars in an explicit LGBTQ relationship. There may have been
international cinema (Fassbinder) and underground cinema with LGBTQ
characters getting more attention, but what took over were stuff for
the masses that pushed aside that level of visibility for our
community. After Jaws and Star Wars, Hollywood became heavily
invested in monoculture and as a result were less audacious in
telling narratives of characters off the beaten path. Trans figures
like Candy Darling (although she passed in 1974), Holly Woodlawn, and
even a trans punk rock singer like Jayne County was emerging (who
would appear in films, like the incredibly great German queer film,
City of Lost Souls) may have had presence in the culture as far as
being photographed, subjects of visual art and music, but they were
not really breaking out in feature films that were beyond the
underground cinema. What
can we conclude over why this happened? Well, Hollywood’s ultimate
1970s downer ending was the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was elected and
there was conforming to this ideal of the lost nuclear family from
decades ago. Hollywood was not Ronald Reagan conservative, but they
still had to placate to conservative audiences and a universal
culture, but LGBT people were not part of that, and you’d be
hard-pressed to say we are today. There were still thriving pockets
of culture in the LGBT community at the time- as we see in Paris
Is Burning- but it was
subterranean, not the type of visibility available at your
neighborhood multiplex. If you were gay or trans, well, then film
treatments of you at that time by Hollywood were pretty retrograde.
Afterwards you had the HIV/AIDS crisis and hysteria based on
prejudice and ignorance from mainstream society. Not to mention drug
epidemics that was met with ineffectual, ‘Just Say No’ campaigns.
Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis died, and so did many like her. To be
different then meant the possibility of the world turning their back
on you and that also included a lot of visual media. The gap of
suddenly having very little visual media looking into the trans
experience brought further ignorance and misunderstanding. It is
really an indictment on American popular culture that the only times
there could be anything remotely close to a trans presence in pop
culture was by appearing on Phil Donahue and not really being seen as
a person, but as some anthropological subject. Come see the bearded
lady.
 |
| John Lithgow in The World According to Garp |
WM:
To chart transgender
cinema in Hollywood is difficult, because there are these gigantic
gaps where there is nothing. You'd get an occasional film here and
there like The World According to Garp
(which I like), but Lithgow's portrayal isn't the main plot line in
that movie or anything. Lithgow took the role with dignity and had no
foolish aspirations towards becoming acting royalty through
transness, which is appreciated. He is fine in context of the period
and the practices of the 1980s. He does not touch Karen Black in 5
and Dime, but who does?
I
like that you mention Phil Donahue, because I think it was around the
mid-80s when the trap narrative, or GOTCHA, reveal started popping up
in movies, and we're going to get to that in our next instalment in
Body Talk, but it became such an overbearing presentation of
transness. It was a trick. You never even had a character like
Sarandon's in DDA who was openly trans from the start but these later
examinations of transness in post, and that was popularized to some
degree by Psycho, but
really came into fruition with The Crying Game
whose revel overpowered the rest of the movie in a cultural sense
later being spoofed by Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,
WWF Monday Night Raw
and Family Guy while also giving reason for Jerry Springer’s entire
existence. It's hard to talk about that movie without its cultural
placement as THE trap film, but Jaye Davidson isn't horrendous as
Dil. It's one of the more put together characterizations of a trans
woman being played by a cis man. She's very much her own woman. I
just wish a trans woman could have been given the right to make her
name off of a movie that was about to be wildly popular, even if its
popularity and staying power are dubious in context.
CG:
I love The
World According To Garp. What’s
significant about that is the film is playing in this wild, quirky
key a la Harold & Maude
was that everybody from George Roy Hill to Robin Williams to Glenn
Close to Lithgow were all so game into adapting the John Irving novel
to the big screen. The Irving novel states that Roberta is a trans
woman and provides her a biography as an ex-football player whose
knowledge of the game gets ignored for her decision to transition and
cannot get a job announcing football games. She is not this
distrusting character with a secret. She’s open and Irving posits
her as somebody the reader the audience should like because, ‘Garp
loved her’, in Irving’s own prose. There are so many insane
things that happen in the film as far as plot and character arcs that
Roberta just is a character among the chaos. As far as Lithgow’s
casting, the character is funny but Lithgow does not make Roberta a
joke, but a funny character with feelings and ambitions, more than a
device for the more central characters and more than a quirky
ornament for the film. It’s casting for the time, but given what we
have seen about trans military service members it is not unheard of
that trans women can come from hyper-masculine environments and sure,
I do like to imagine how that casting would have looked like with a
real trans woman but Lithgow is pretty good. That said let’s not
get this twisted. One good characterization does not open the doors
for so many terrible ones before and after, especially after.
WM:
The
fact that Roberta even has a dream is note-worthy, because that’s
rare in portraits of trans women. In Tangerine,
Alexandra
(Mya Taylor) wants to become a singer, but beyond her can you think
of any other examples? I can’t. In these movies trans women seem to
want to just file into line as a stereotype, which is not the case.
Yes, I want to be a wife and mother, but I also want to be known as a
writer my entire life. I have dreams to keep challenging myself to
get better. What does Redmayne’s Lili Elbe want to do in The
Danish Girl? She
wants to be a girl and sell clothes. She doesn’t have to paint
anymore! (p.s. that’s sexist)
 |
| Mya Taylor in Tangerine |
CG:
In
a culture that birthed Jerry Springer, ‘A chick with a dick’ type
of retrograde presentations of transness offricially become a
revulsion and a joke. Livelihoods become plot twists, secrets and
marks of those individuals being untrustworthy. Even before The
Crying Game
and Ace Ventura:
Pet Detective,
there was the otherwise very junk food comedy Soapdish
that spoofed soap operas with a top of the line ensemble cast. In
that movie, the third act includes revealing Cathy Moriarty’s
plotting, backstabbing villain to
have be a trans woman leading to
Garry Marshall’s television executive character to exclaim, ‘She’s
a boy’ and Robert Downey Jr.’s character, who was sexually
involved with Moriarty’s character being on the verge of vomiting-
quite similar to how Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura reacted to finding
out Sean Young’s character was previously the vindictive ex-Miami
Dolphins place kicker and Stephen Rea’s Fergus in The Crying Game
finding out Dil is a trans woman. Gosh, a lot of men throwing up over
this type of revelation.
The Crying Game’s
whole plot takes a while to reveal itself but then takes over the
whole movie, and there is no way to talk around it. Then it just
became a Miramax (fuck Harvey Weinstein) pushed commercial phenomenon
and there was a lot of critical complicity. I found out the twist of
this movie before seeing it, and a lot of that film got its mileage
from critics like Roger
Ebert writing these coy reveals and winking to their readers with a,
‘Trust
me. You’ll want to see this and tell your friends to see this but
make sure to let them go in cold about that twist’. I cannot really
say Neil Jordan’s film transcends that trapping as in the script of
the film, it does make the revelation pretty much a conflict for Dil
and Fergus and the script does write the scene as a, ‘She is really
a man’ type of hushed tone but with an explosive revelation. I
think Jaye Davidson gives the character a lot of dignity and depth
but feels very at odds with the writing. Dil defends herself from
Rea’s simultaneous initial rejection and allured fascination over
her. Still, the film does something similar in having Dil in male
form and that is when it gets maybe even more infuriating than the
genitals reveal. I know of trans people put in that unfortunate
position of having to wear clothing of the gender they were assigned
at birth even as they identify trans, but here it is taken as a,
‘Well, she can live this double agent type of femme fatale because
she’s really only wearing different clothing’. The character
loses a lot of power towards the end and even her living, not dying
like a martyr, is based on Fergus stopping her from offing herself,
and frankly, it getting to that point in the film where Dil is
suddenly a shifty, suicidal, mentally unstable person feels so
uncharacteristic and an 180 degree switch from the sultry, seductive,
confident, independent woman that viewers fir saw. That is not really
on Davidson but unfortunate writing built off of several
misunderstandings and misrepresentations.
 |
| The Crying Game |
WM:
The Crying Game is
frustrating, because there's a version of that movie they could have
realistically written, and chose not to where the character was this
sultry femme fatale. In those terms Dil stands on her own in this
characterization, because it's not like you can point to other
examples where trans women played these types of characters. The
writing undoes a lot of the good will established earlier on though
like you said, and I'm in complete agreement with your other
statement that these performances that have existed in the past and
are contextually acceptable doesn't mean that it's okay to walk back
down this path again today. Trans people have always been acting and
for transgender cinema to truly feel lived in and authentic we have
to actually be here don't we?
I
want to shift gears slightly to what film looks like when we are
present by talking about a couple movies and a few recent television
shows. I have not seen Pose yet, because acquiring FX in Canada is
tricky and expensive, but I have watched Sense8,
which was spearheaded by The Wachowski sisters and there are
transgender actors playing transgender characters. I was really drawn
into Jamie Clayton's character Nomi and wrote
about her briefly on Curtsies and Hand Grenades as
a kind of revelation to finally see someone with a body and a history
like mine on the screen. I cannot undersell the magnitude in which it
affected me to see her in that role. I could only describe it as
feeling like a blanket. Nomi’s character went through some shit
with her parents so she felt real to me, but it was also this
realization where I came to grips with the fact that it was possible
to no longer be invisible. It had a profound meaning for me similar
to Laura Jane Grace coming out and being mentioned on the cover of
Rolling Stone magazine. These were early moments in my own history as
a transgender woman that I'll never forget. I never realized how
important it was to see myself on screen, because it had never
happened with me before, but I finally felt that with Jamie Clayton
in Sense8
and I think she's great in the role. A totally perfect fit for The
Wachowskis world of underdogs and connected human experiences.
CG:
Pose
is incredibly important remedy for the previously billed- by the
mainstream entertainment press and not by the trans community, to be
clear- ‘groundbreaking’ television series for trans people,
Transparent. Despite
that show giving exposure to various kinds of trans actresses, it was
always still based on compromise in casting Jeffrey Tambor (editor’s
note: Fuck Jeffrey Tambor) as Maura. Pose
is unique and remarkable for doing a few things that on paper seem so
simple. It centers trans people in front of the camera and that is
boosted by the quality of writing and directing by trans people
behind the camera (previously mentioned in Body Talk Silas Howard,
who directed an episode, while Lady J wrote episodes, and Janet Mock
did both). Pose
carries a lot of responsibility in covering the 1980s ballroom scene
in giving an incredible amount of visibility that most people can
only reference Paris Is Burning,
if they even saw that at all. And then of course it is carrying the
responsibility of opening doors for trans actresses and trans talent
in our presence. I knew of Mock, Lady J, and Howard before this show,
although that doesn’t mean the entire Pose
audience did and I hope that means more opportunities, and I hope
this means more talent behind and in front of the camera get to be
part of projecs in production. I know of a few other shows that have
a trans actor or even a trans person on their writing staff, but I
would like to see those experiences centered like Pose.
I do not want Pose to
be the only game in town because at some point, it is not going to be
on. Then what?
 |
| Pose |
I
will also note that yes, Sense8
also existed and luckily, despite being short-lived got a proper
sendoff recently. The Wachowskis are so earnest and both Lana and
Lily definitely used their experiences in their trans identity to
inform Jamie Clayton’s character. That whole argument she gets
prodded into by a TERF-like figure, calling her a ‘colonizer’ on
her gender feels like something that only we usually experience
online and off-line in certain spaces. I felt similarly with Pose
where multiple characters had
anxiety about being misgendered even in supposedly ‘open-minded’
places or feeling the wrath of their family members who harbor
disdain for them transitioning. It goes a long way to have characters
on-screen and know that what they are doing and saying works because
they not only get you,
they are you.
We
are real. I do think sometimes these discussions reveal that they
don’t actually see us. We are treated like an abstract concept
sometimes and so I thought it was important for our community to put
our foot down on the ScarJo matter. I still felt like some people
were not convinced and just think we were selfish for protesting this
and I also felt like trans men in media still feel under-served.
Netflix’s Queer Eye notably had a trans man makeover and while it
had its bumps and was imperfect, I really felt like Skyler, the trans
man, having his journey and story in plain view on Netflix was a good
antidote to a lot of the bullshit that surrounded Rub &
Tug. Still, not everybody has
Netflix and it is clear that some people still do not get trans
stories. It makes sense since they are spoon-fed some terrible,
undercooked, inauthentic, and very much harmful narratives about our
experiences.
 |
| Sense8 |
WM:
I think that's our most
important point. SEE US.
LISTEN TO US. It is not
incredibly hard. If 50,000 trans people say this casting is fucked
maybe we know what we're talking about? I think you hit the nail on
the head by saying that cisgender people sometimes think of us as
abstract concepts. There was a poll recently where a high percentage
of people said they didn't know a transgender person firsthand. I
find these results unsurprising, but illuminating in how they view
us. How can they possibly care if we're not real? The truth of the
matter is that we're flesh and blood just like everyone else. We have
wants and desires and needs. Our place in the world is informed by
our experiences that we've had with gender, dysphoria and
presentation and we have interesting stories to tell about lives that
are sorely under-served. It's hard to imagine a transgender life
going into old age, because no such image exists. It's hard to even
exist as a trans person, because there's little format or structure
for how to get there without direct help, because there's little
cultural awareness of our issues. We only exist in the past tense in
art. Our unique experiences are going to influence the kind of cinema
that gets made about people like us, but Cinema also has a chance to
shift the narrative. The ball is in their court on this one and if
they continue to play dirty we're going to speak up. We'll stop when
they start actually listening to us. We’re still waiting....
