So do you guys know why The Danish Girl is getting a lot of hate? Because it's a cis actor portraying a trans chatacter?
Okay, so, yes, Eddie Redmayne being a cis male playing a trans female has been causing some problems, but that’s not the biggest issue I’ve seen with people re:The Danish Girl. This might be kind of long, but I have a lot of feelings on this topic and I really liked the Danish Girl, so sorry.
Most of the hate towards the Danish Girl (and any trans centered movie, really. Big Boys Don’t Cry comes to mind as another recent example) is that people in the trans community (especially tumblr) want trans centered movies that tell their personal story (weather it be transition or after transition or whatever). They want to see their story told exactly how they want it told, no exceptions. And that’s a big problem, because every trans person tells their own story. And it’s an even bigger problem because the people upset, the tumblerinas who bitch the loudest? They’re almost middle-class, white, liberals from liberal areas who have very similar stories and it’s almost always a very smooth transition for them. They want to tell the story after transition, because to them, that’s what being trans is to them. For most trans people, the transition defines them. They lose friends, they gain friends, they lose family, they could lose jobs, the list goes on and on. It’s a long difficult period and you come out stronger on the other side. For the liberal tumblrinas, it generally much simpler then that. It’s easier to gain acceptance, maybe your grandmother stops talking to you, but generally it isn’t as earth shattering as it is for people who don’t live in those same liberal areas and have that same level of support.
In terms of the Danish Girl, it really accurately shows transitioning. I started to cry. My friend who saw it and is trans started to cry. It was a powerful moving story, because it got so much right. The shame, the fear, the ups and downs, the doctors who just don’t get it (oh god, the doctors. Don’t get me started on them.). I went in thinking it was going to be an okay movie, but it ended up so much more and was so validating to see someone struggle in the same way I was. It’s fine to dress up as the opposite sex sometimes, to wear makeup or bind your chest, as long as you’re only playing at being the opposite gender. When you think you actually are, it becomes a whole different ball game. It was so accurate it hurt. But I didn’t go in expecting my story to be told. I knew it was going to be about transition, because Lili Elbe died before she completed her own. (Not like how the movie shows, but I digress.)
A lot of what the people bitching went into see was their own story being told. And maybe transition wasn’t as hard for them (and that’s fine. It’s doesn’t make them less trans.). But when they see that their story isn’t being told, they throw a fit. They want Lili to have only been called she pronouns, even though that isn’t realistic. They want Lili to have only been called Lili even though that isn’t realistic. They want her to have been seen as a women the whole movie, because they have mostly always been seen as the opposite gender since they came out. But that’s not the story.
And then there’s a wish fulfillment aspect of it. They want to see this idolized version of the world on the screen, where Lili is immediately accepted. They want to see a perfect world because that’s what they want to world to be like. They get angry when the actual hardships of being trans are shown on screen, because they don’t want everyone to think that trans lives are only sad and hard. But the Danish Girl didn’t do that. Lili struggled, yes, but there were happy moments too. When she worked at a perfume counter and was seen as a women, got to live as a women, she was happy. The movie showed that living and being seen as a women made Lili happy, even if she had to work hard to get there. If you don’t think so, we didn’t see the same movie.
Finally, I think they were trying to find something wrong with it. It’s an outrage machine, basically. People constantly want to find problems with things, even if there’s not really a point to. They aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy.
Overall, I loved the Danish Girl. It was an amazing movie. Go see it.
