The Cinephale @thecinephale - Tumblr Blog

“I wanted to be single so I could explore my sexuality. Instead I was exploring other people’s.”

I haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been busy writing elsewhere. Most recently I wrote about my new TV obsession Sex Education for Autostraddle.

Check it out!

#Sex Education #Sex Education Netflix #Netflix Sex Education #Otis Milburne #Maeve Wiley #personal essay #Autostraddle #trans #transgender #sex #lesbian sex #masturbation #LGBTQIA

Best Movies of 2018

My favorite movies of the year were rough around the edges. Ambitious, personal works that were messy and real. There were a lot of big films this year that I personally didn't like that much (or at all), but I really love this list of films and I hope you check them out.

Still need to See: Bird Box, Border, Cold War, Custody, Dark River, I Am Not a Witch, On the Basis of Sex, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Summer '93, The Third Murder, Tyrel, Unsane, Where Hands Touch, Where is Kyra?

Films I didn't prioritize because someone involved has behaved in a way that makes me uninterested in their work: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, The Death of Stalin, The House That Jack Built, A Simple Favor

Really Liked: -Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland) -Blockers (dir. Kay Cannon) -Crazy Rich Asians (dir. Jon Chu) -Destroyer (dir. Karyn Kusama) -Let the Sunshine In (dir. Claire Denis) -Mary Poppins Returns (dir. Rob Marshall) -Mission: Impossible - Fallout (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) -The Rider (dir. Chloé Zhao) -Private Life (dir. Tamara Jenkins) -Skate Kitchen (dir. Crystal Moselle) -We the Animals (dir. Jeremiah Zagar) -You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsay)

Really Really Liked: -Eighth Grade (dir. Bo Burnham) -Happy as Lazzaro (dir. Alice Rohrwacher) -Leave No Trace (dir. Debra Granik) -Love, Simon (dir. Greg Berlanti) -Mary Queen of Scots (dir. Josie Rourke) -Nancy (dir. Christina Choe) -On Body and Soul (dir. Ildikó Enyedi) -Tully (dir. Jason Reitman)

Loved:

10. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Finally. Proof that Hollywood doesn’t have to choose between style, substance, and entertainment. Black Panther was the biggest film of the year and also one of the best. With stunning cinematography by Rachel Morrison, inspired costumes by Ruth E. Carter, and an album of the year worthy soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar, Ryan Coogler has broken through the Marvel machine to make something truly special. And like all the best superhero movies the supporting cast is incredible, Letitia Wright being the obvious standout, along with moral foils Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong'o. This is everything I want from big budget filmmaking and it's such an exciting relief to be reminded that it's possible.

9. The Tale (dir. Jennifer Fox)

The Hollywood Reporter recently published an article about the 16-year-old girl who inspired Woody Allen's Manhattan. The woman, reflecting on her time with the director and known child molester, is unsure how to frame their time together. She was underage and knowing what she knows now about Allen, their affair feels different. But at the time she was in love. Reading this article, I felt overwhelming gratitude for filmmaker Jennifer Fox and The Tale, a painful and important movie about her own teenage love affair, about her own rape. Fox's vulnerability and skill not only make this a great movie, but a truly life-changing experience. There is one moment in particular that uses cinema in a way I've never seen before. This is by no means an easy film to watch, but it's really worthwhile if you can handle it.

8. Dirty Computer (dir. Janelle Monáe & others)

This "emotion picture" available to watch on YouTube strikes such a moving balance between pure joy, harsh reality, and cautious hope. Its very existence is a sign that its optimism is not misplaced. Musicians have become some of our greatest auteurs with voices and stories Hollywood would otherwise ignore. Janelle Monáe along with Chuck Lightning, Emma Westenberg, Alan Ferguson, and Lacey Duke created a film that is at once a sci-fi epic, a visual album, a public coming out, a celebration of queerness/Blackness/femaleness, and an ode to everybody different. This year was bleak and nothing brought me more comfort than this movie, this album, and obsessing over Monáe and star Tessa Thompson's relationship.

7. Good Manners (dir. Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra)

Come for the lesbian werewolf musical fairy tale genre mashup, stay for the complicated explorations of race, class, and parenthood. This movie is overflowing with so many ideas, cinematically and thematically, it's thrilling to watch it all fit together. It's so rare to watch a movie and have literally no idea where it's going and I will cherish the experience of my first viewing (I literally SCREAMED at one moment in a crowded theatre, seriously) while also hungrily rewatching to unpack everything that's going on. I can't promise it will all work for you, but I can promise you won't be bored.

6. Shirkers (dir. Sandi Tan)

As a teenager Sandi Tan made a feature film with her friends and an enigmatic mentor. Imagined as the start of a Singapore New Wave, their dreams were crushed when the mentor vanished with the film reels. Now decades later, Tan's documentary recalls the experience… with the help of the recovered reels. Part memoir/part mystery/part lost cinema classic, Shirkers is about youthful creativity, exploitation, and so much more. Ultimately this is a portrait of an art form. Within its 95 minutes it encapsulates everything movies can do and everything movies take. It's currently streaming on Netflix and a must-watch for anyone who makes movies or cares about how they're made.

5. Widows (dir. Steve McQueen)

Like a Michael Mann movie if Michael Mann cared about things other than digital cameras, Steve McQueen's cold and stellar heist movie lacks subtlety in all the best ways. Led by Viola Davis this candidate for greatest movie cast ever of all time ever does not disappoint. Everybody is so, so good, and it's thrilling to watch this kind of 1970s American genre film through a point of view that doesn't belong to white men. There's a lot to unpack here, with character, plot, and theme, and I've only seen it once, but that was enough to know that this is a capital G Great movie.

4. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (dir. Desiree Akhavan)

Not every queer person has gone to conversion therapy, but I'd guess most of us have doubted our feelings and our identities. What could have easily been a more serious But I'm a Cheerleader instead finds its own purpose, its own humor, and ultimately exists as a still relevant portrayal of the gaslighting we continue to face for just being ourselves. Chloë Grace Moretz gives one of the best performances of the year as the equal parts cool and vulnerable Cameron and my love for writer/director Desiree Akhavan knows no bounds. NOTE: Sasha Lane plays a character who is disabled and Forrest Goodluck plays a character who is Two-Spirit despite not being so themselves. Considering how good the film is otherwise I dream of a version with a supporting cast who understand the experience of their characters.

3. If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins)

Like the masterpiece of a novel it's based on, Barry Jenkins third film is an overwhelming tribute to life in the face of despair. Instead of offering hope, instead of suggesting that being Black in America will someday be easier, Beale Street shows how love, romantic and familial, can provide temporary escape and a reason for being. The entire cast is incredible and gorgeous. Every frame is lush, the score is beautiful, and the moments of joy are as moving as the moments of pain. We are so lucky to be alive while Barry Jenkins is making movies.

2. Shoplifters (dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda)

I went into Kore-Eda's Palme d'Or winning tribute to chosen family ready to feel grateful for my own chosen family. The friends, mentors, beauticians(!), doctors(!!) who have loved and supported me and made me feel like I wasn't alone these past few years. That happened. But what surprised me was how much it made me appreciate my biological family as well. Like the houses in my favorite TV show of the year, Pose, the makeshift family of Shoplifters ends up being like any other. There are clashing personalities, there are frustrations, there are fights. But more than anything there is care, there is self-sacrifice, there is love. Community is not defined by perfection. Family is not defined by perfection. Kore-Eda has spent much of his career asking the question, "What is family?" and this film provides the least and most satisfying answers.

1. In Between (dir. Maysaloun Hamoud)

I loved my favorite movie of the year so deeply that a one paragraph pitch just won't do. Fortunately, the best site on the entire online, Autostraddle, had me write a gushy review. Read it here or if you're already convinced watch In Between free on Kanopy and then read it: https://www.autostraddle.com/in-between-review-the-super-gay-super-feminist-film-no-ones-talking-about-444114/

Television!

Extremely honorable mentions like how is there so much good TV these all deserve to be in the top ten: BoJack Horseman (S5), High Maintenance (S2), Insecure (S3), Jane the Virgin (S4), Random Acts of Flyness (S1), Sharp Objects, Supergirl (S4), Take My Wife (S2)

10. Killing Eve (S1) 9. Atlanta (S2) 8. The Good Place (S2/3) 7. The Americans (S6) 6. The Bisexual (S1) 5. ACS: The Assassination of Gianni Versace 4. Queen Sugar (S3) 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (S3/S4) 2. Vida (S1) 1. Pose (S1)

Super Girl: The Effort to Look Female

Harrisonburg is not rural Virginia. It’s a city. It inhabits over 50,000 people, includes James Madison University, and has gone Democrat every presidential election since 2008. Still, I spent the last few weeks with my stomach in knots, working out a strategy for my weekend there. While the wedding I was attending was right on the JMU campus, our Airbnb was deeper into Rockingham County, my girlfriend’s grandma lives in Stuart’s Draft, and we had to drive through all sorts of places to get there and back from Brooklyn.

And as my friend Kelly said, “It’s a college town, sure, but there IS a Cracker Barrel.”

***

Next week marks my one year on hormones. Some trans people call this a second birthday, but for me that date is too nebulous. Do I claim the doctor’s appointment that acted as a first consultation? Or the first time I let a green oval of estrogen slowly dissolve under my tongue? Maybe it’s a month further when my bloodwork came back normal and I began taking a proper dosage?

I prefer to think of transitioning as a process with many beginnings. If I had to pick a date, it would be May 12, 2017, when I fully came out to myself. But even this erases the person I was at 16 who dressed in drag for the first time.

A year on hormones doesn’t feel like a landmark. It feels like I’m running out of time. Everyone is different, but I know generally there’s a timeline of when changes occur and when they stop. Some people claim it’s a four year process, but most people see the majority of changes in the first two years. I’m halfway there.

***

Sunday night the first trans superhero appeared in mainstream media. Nicole Maines portrayed the character of Nia Nal on The CW’s Supergirl in its fourth season premiere. Like hormone birthdays, this monumental event can’t be reduced to a single day. Nia isn’t a superhero yet, for now just a reporter working under Kara/Supergirl. And her transness has not been discussed. Both are known because they were announced at Comic Con back in July. The first trans superhero in mainstream media, played by a trans actress.

Nicole Maines knew she was trans when she was 3 years old. By the time she was able to vote, Maines had successfully sued her school district, ensuring basic human rights for all transgender students in her home state of Maine. The CW’s marketing team has played up the “real life hero plays on-screen hero” angle and they’re not wrong.

I knew I was trans 20 years later in my life, after I’d finished my first puberty and voted in two presidential elections. Maines and I have drastically different experiences of transness, and yet I spent the last several months watching 65 episodes of Supergirl (plus crossovers!) to prepare for her debut this week. Sure, most trans women don’t look like Nicole Maines. Most cis women don’t look like Melissa Benoist. This is how this works.

***

Once I decided to go on this trip to Virginia, I also had to decide how I was going to present. I’ve been, as they say, full-time since February. Some days I just wear jeans and a t-shirt, like most women, but it’s been a long time since I’ve actively pretended to be a man. It always made me feel awful and as my breasts grew (now at a C cup!) it became more and more difficult. My girlfriend’s extended family knew she was dating a woman, but didn’t know I was trans. I felt up to the challenge. This weekend I was just a woman. Period.

It’s been my experience that the most mindlessly validating individuals are those I’d least expect: catcallers and the elderly. My guess is they have limited knowledge of transness and classically feminine signifiers like a skirt or long hair makes their animal brain think woman. Of course, if they notice their “mistake” the catcallers will be especially cruel. Still, these experiences factored into my expectation that a high femme presentation would get me through this weekend.

I have no idea what I look like. I’m not sure I ever will. Intellectually I know my face has feminized, but I don’t know how much. I don’t know why sometimes I get correctly gendered, but mostly not. I don’t know if people are just humoring me or saying what they’re supposed to or being kind when they say “Miss.”

I appreciate this effort, but it’s not what I want. I want to look in the mirror and see a woman, I want the people in my life to look at me and see a woman, and I want strangers to look at me and see a woman.

In Virginia, nobody saw a woman.

***

The most trans-related scene in Nicole Maines’ first episode didn’t feature her at all. Martian J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood), recently retired, has joined an alien support group. While Supergirl has previously leaned hard on the alien as immigrant analogy, this scene isn’t the first time the show has equated alien status with queerness. Season two introduced an underground alien bar that was obviously meant to evoke the historic haven of the gay bar.

An alien that looks human begins by saying he’s at the group to share his happiness. “For the first time since I’ve been on this planet I feel like I fit in,” he says with a smile. “And it’s because of this.” He taps a device on the side of his head that reveals his true alien form, before switching back to the human veneer.

An older alien who looks human but has pointed ears and tusks on his forearms pushes back. “Who decides what’s normal? Why should we have to wear these devices that change our appearance so we can be tolerated?”

The first alien responds with the obvious: “Well, that’s easy for you to say. You just look like a Tolkien fan.”

***

Whether we want to look cis and whether we have the ability to look cis is certain to be a heated topic between trans people, because it’s often a heated topic within ourselves. Everyone is taking stock of what they have and what they want. And sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish what we truly need to feel okay and what society tells us we need. I identify as a binary trans woman, not because I believe in the gender binary, but because I’m close enough that I can live (for now) with that conformity. The more gender non-conforming you naturally are and the more gender non-conforming you desire to be the more external pressure you’ll receive.

I’m 5’5 and 110 pounds and within my first three months on hormones I’d developed breasts. These are my natural privileges. My body hair, facial hair, and Adam’s apple are my negatives. The curly hair on my head and my masculine but not that masculine face are up for debate. Every week I get an hour of electrolysis done on my face, which is the process of hot needles and tweezers manually killing every hair follicle. It’s more painful than it sounds. I’m one year into this process and have at least another year left. It costs $75 per session and my ability to afford that at all is another privilege, while the huge chunk of my income that takes up is another negative.

My facial hair is my biggest insecurity and whenever I get misgendered I assume that’s the reason. My mom regularly insists it’s my Adam’s apple and if I would just get that surgically reduced I’d be able to “pass.” The truth is probably more complex. A mix between stubble, the Adam’s apple, and the small characteristics that are targeted in a comprehensive surgical process known as Facial Feminization Surgery.

I’ve never wanted FFS. I can’t even decide if I want the Adam’s apple surgery. Going on hormones was such an easy, obvious choice for me, but these surgeries can feel like a betrayal of my transness. I don’t want to look cis. But I do want to look like a woman. I’ve started to worry that for the rest of the world those will always be the same thing.

Due to my size I thought I would be like the alien who looks pretty normal but just has tusks on his arms. I could proudly be like, “Look at my tusks/Adam’s apple! I’m an alien/trans. Deal with it.” Maybe I’m really the other alien, whose life is consumed by their alien status unless they change themselves. Or maybe we’re all both aliens and the support group is our minds. Two sides debating, one that looks in the mirror and sees a woman with some unique qualities, another that looks in the mirror and sees a man who needs to change.

***

I wasn’t misgendered until halfway through the wedding reception. I certainly got stares, but it was unclear whether those were lesbian couple stares or transgender stares. I chose to think lesbian couple. Last week my electrologist worked under my jaw so I could wear a full face of makeup. I wore a blue and white Kate Spade dress that was conservative yet flattering. I had on heels and my hair was up. It was the most femme I’ve ever looked. If a random catcaller correctly gendered me the week before when I was wearing a sweatshirt and no makeup, then surely my gender had registered now.

Again, the goal is not that no one knows I’m trans. The goal is for people, without thinking, to say “she.” If afterwards they go “Hmm is this one of those transgendereds I’ve read about?” then fine. But I want to win over the gut instinct. I know this is wrong. Our identities shouldn’t require any external validation. But they do.

Once I began interacting with people and there was cause to gender me, I did about 50/50. But even when correct there was a pause. I suddenly felt very foolish. This idea I had that I was my harshest critic, that the man I saw in the mirror would look like a woman to these Virginians, was painfully misguided. I look how I look. It will continue to change gradually as I continue hormones and electrolysis, and this may or may not change how others perceive me. I can then choose to alter my appearance further with surgeries or, simply, accept the way I look.

***

“There’s nothing slight about fashion,” Nia says pitching a story. “It’s one of the most visceral forms of art. What we choose to wear tells a story about who we are.” A trans woman believing in the power of presentation is not exactly groundbreaking. But the show has always been filled with clichés that work because they’re true.

What struck me most watching Maines’ debut was the immediate fondness I had for her. This, of course, has as much to do with talent and charisma as it does transness. Maines injects Nia with an immediate likability, an awkwardness that recalls season one Kara, but with an added vulnerability. I’d framed this character as a necessary first step. Sure, she looks like Nicole Maines… still a trans superhero! But watching her on screen I became very aware that I don’t know Nicole’s insecurities and I don’t know Nia’s. I don’t know anybody’s experience of transness except my own. I don’t even know what gender is or what it means to be trans. Nobody does. We may craft personal narratives to decipher our wants and needs. Cis society may craft narratives to understand, or, more commonly, to erase. But we don’t know. I don’t know why sometimes I look one way to some people and a different way to other people. I don’t know why I have some insecurities and not others. I don’t know why some clothes feel good. Or why some do not.

What I do know is that it felt good to see Nicole Maines on screen. I know that when Kara looked at her and said, “Oh my God. You’re me,” I thought, no. She’s me.

#Supergirl #trans #transgender #Nicole Maines #Melissa Benoist #Nia Nal #Kara Danvers #LGBTQIA #The CW #CWOpentoAll #weddings #cisnormativity #gender nonconformity #trans woman #trans women #gender dysphoria

Happy Birthday, Shirley Wood!

I will never know if Ed Wood was a woman. It’s likely that he never even knew. While the history of gay and lesbian cinema finds its grey areas in potential subtext, the history of trans cinema is an unsolvable puzzle of projection. Some Old Hollywood actor we know and love was probably trans. Some famous auteur would likely identify as non-binary if they were born in 2018 instead of 1918. There’s no way of knowing. As a trans woman, I may spin fan faction among friends as an attempt to justify my existence, but I’d be weary to retroactively claim any actor or director who didn’t have the chance to self-identify.

Except one. Because only one actor/director made a movie about being trans.

Like most of Ed Wood’s work, Glen or Glenda has been routinely mocked. Despite a slight cult following for its camp elements, Wood’s first feature film is written off as weird nonsense made by the “worst director of all time.” But for anyone who has transitioned, or anyone who has any knowledge of transitioning, Glen or Glenda is a singular achievement.

When viewed as experimental autobiography by an early trans filmmaker, Glen or Glenda suddenly looks less like an average B-movie and more like the work of Maya Deren. While the film jumps between genres, sci-fi to social issue picture to education film, its best sequence is total surrealism. As Glen (played by Wood) prepares to come out to his fiancé Barbara (played by Dolores Fuller, Wood’s real-life fiancé) he sinks into a nightmare of gender expectations. An unsettling voice recites the “puppy dog tails” nursery rhyme. The devil watches as they get married. Women are gagged, tied up, and raped. Parents, teachers, and former classmates mock him.

This frightening sequence gives way to a very simple coming out scene. Glen explains his situation and Barbara affirms her love for him. Even after a doctor says he is curable Barbara insists she will stand by him if the cure does not work.

Glen or Glenda is ultimately a fantasy. Ed Wood was never “cured” and Fuller soon left her. She spent her whole life switching between her life as Ed and her alter ego Shirley. The open-minded world of the film has never existed. Wood drank herself to death at 54.

I will never know if Shirley Wood was a woman. And yet, I do.

#Shirley Wood #Ed Wood #LGBTQ Cinema #queer cinema #experimental #trans cinema #trans #transgender #LGBTQIA #Maya Deren #underrated #Bela Lugosi #Dolores Fuller #gender dysphoria #Sorry for using your deadname Shirley maybe someday we won't have to

Faith in a Queerer Power: ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’ and ‘Novitiate’

*vague spoilers*

I was raised in the Church of American Suburbia. I had a very secure upper middle class adolescence in a community known for its good schools. Families competed to have the best names on their cars and clothes and who you were mattered less than who people thought you were. It was the late 2000s and it was okay to be gay. As long as you didn’t talk about it.

When I think about the reasons I’ve hated and hate myself, when I wonder how it took until I was 23 to even be aware of my transness, and still when I question if I really am who I feel I am, I think of my safe town. I was raised Jewish, but as a Reform Jew my day to day was not dictated by religion. My bible was the suburbs.

*** Most people know the term, gaslighting, comes from the play, Gaslight and its subsequent film adaptations. It’s a taut thriller about a man who covers up a murder by convincing his wife she is mentally ill. His main tactic is hiding their things and insisting she’s stolen them. She loses her grasp on reality, or, more accurately, she loses her grasp on her own reality.

Under an administration that lies more often than not, the term has gained a resurgence, used and misused often. But it’s important to remember that gaslighting isn’t just lying to someone. Like in the play, it’s a concerted effort to destabilize someone’s grasp on truth.

For too many of us, gaslighting is a tenant of queer experience. Whether shamed by a religious institution or simply brainwashed by society, most of us have doubted our feelings, or, at the very least, our identities.

*** Desiree Akhavan’s new film The Miseducation of Cameron Post portrays the most extreme example of this queer gaslighting: conversion therapy. Chloë Grace Moretz plays Cameron who is sent to God’s Promise after she’s caught having sex with her best friend during the Homecoming Dance.

The beginning of the movie fulfills the fantasy of any teen who has ever listened to Haylely Kiyoko’s “Sleepover” a dozen times in a row… or whatever the early 90s version of that was. They make eyes at each other during their pastor’s moralizing, they furiously makeout during Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts, and they deadeye their way through photos with their boyfriends.

The Homecoming sex scene is long and passionate. It captures the overwhelming all-consuming lust of adolescence. Cameron and her best friend press their faces together as if it’s possible to combine molecules.

And then she goes to God’s Promise.

Here they clinically call her feelings SSA (same sex attraction). They give Cameron a letter from her friend accusing her of taking advantage. They tell her that not only is she not a homosexual, but nobody is a homosexual. They insist that normalcy is possible for her, and who wouldn’t want to be normal?

The strength of the film is that these efforts work. Cameron is headstrong and stubborn and yet she begins to doubt. The other strength of the film is that Cameron is portrayed as a real teen and her captors as normal adults. These qualities make the film more than a remake of But I’m a Cheerleader with Akhavan’s unique brand of humor. They make the film about us all. Any gay person assumed to be straight, any non-binary person told there are only two genders, any queer person informed that it’s okay to be queer, just not that kind of queer, just not in that way.

I spent my life being told I was a boy. And on my worst days I still believe them.

*** Religion is a common enemy in stories about queerness, both fiction and non-fiction. But last year’s Novitiate, written and directed by Maggie Betts, suggests that the two concepts can actually be quite similar.

The film is about Kathleen, a young woman who decides to become a nun despite growing up in an atheistic household. Kathleen wants to feel loved and with no interest in boys she turns to God. She is driven by faith… and an especially attractive nun at her Catholic school.

Her mom is furious and here the parallels between Kathleen’s faith and a queer teen experience are most obvious. “Well I don’t get it! It doesn’t even make sense in love with God!” her mom yells with tears in her eyes. And she might as well be saying, “It doesn’t even make sense in love with another girl!” When Kathleen is just a child her mom calls religion silly before telling Kathleen she can make up her own mind when she’s older. This too is akin to a common queer experience. A parent may suggest it’s okay to be gay and in the same breath call gay people gross or weird or outcasts.

Once Kathleen is at the convent, her mother comes to visit and it’s clear she’s really trying to understand. But her remarks about the décor and the tears in her eyes communicate plenty. Watching this scene, I thought of my own parents, so much better than most, but still stinging me with their transparent emotions, their misguided comments. The gaslighting may be less conscious, but the effects remain the same.

When Kathleen has a dirty dream about a new novice, it’s revealed that her faith may in part be a mask for her queerness. But the film allows the religious narrative to continue through Melissa Leo’s frightening Reverend Mother. While a villain to the girls, her humanity is revealed in private as she grapples with Vatican II, new rules passed by Pope John XXIII that downgraded the status of nuns. When revealing these changes to the other nuns, tears in her eyes, she says, “The church gave me my work, my community, even my identity.” And now the men in the church are telling her that her beliefs are false, that who she has been for 40 years was a lie.

Unfortunately, Reverend Mother does not make the connection between her identity as a nun and Kathleen’s identity as queer. When Kathleen confesses her now physical relationship with the other novice, she is deeply shamed. Kathleen insists, “I don’t think it was a sin because it didn’t feel like a sin.” But Reverend Mother does not care about Kathleen’s point of view. She demands that she crawl on all fours and ask her sisters for penance.

I understood this scene deeply. Since coming out, I’ve been told that the burden I’m placing on others is great. Even among some who accept me and view me as a woman, I am told how difficult this was on them or how difficult this must be on others. I’m told that I should be grateful when people don’t abandon me. I’m told to grovel for simply being who I am.

*** The miracle of these two films is that they provide a solution to this loss of faith. They suggest a new religion, one that can certainly exist alongside more conventional churches, but a religion all the same. They suggest a religion of queerness.

If religion is a collection of beliefs, the experience of faith, and the forming of community, these films show that all three are possible, nay essential, for living as queer. The belief that being gay, being trans, or being whatever label feels good is real. The faith in oneself that we know our feelings and our thoughts better than anyone else. A community of others who can help us know that we are not alone. This is the Church of Queer.

The final shot of Cameron Post shows Cameron with her two best friends driving away to a new life. The final shot of Novitiate shows Kathleen looking up at a priest but really looking inside herself. Like any congregant our faith may waiver. But if we trust ourselves and trust our communities we can unlearn a false reality and find salvation together.

Brushing the Trans Away: ’Ace Ventura’ and ‘Pose’

Have you seen Ace Venture: Pet Detective? How about Family Guy? The Naked Gun 33 1/3? The Crying Game?

Only one of those is known for its transgender character. Or, rather, it’s known for a ten second clip where one character sees another character’s penis and then goes into the bathroom to vomit. The rest of the movie is actually pretty touching. It’s not the best trans representation, but it’s also far from the penis-forward marketing campaign Harvey Weinstein launched in 1992.

It’s not the other three titles listed above.

Maybe you don’t even remember there being trans characters in those three titles. Maybe like me you haven’t seen those two movies or an episode of that show for several years.

But you’ve probably seen them, at least one of them.

What these titles have in common is a scene where a cisgender man finds out that a woman he kissed is trans. In each instance the man vomits. A riff on The Crying Game certainly, but without any of the tenderness and forgiveness and love that fills the 45 minutes following “the twist.”

The scene in Ace Ventura is quite extended. And for some reason the vomiting isn’t really what stuck with me all these years. Nor the burning of his clothes, nor the crying naked in the shower, grossly meant to mirror the common sexual assault survivor trope. What’s stuck with me all these years is the teeth brushing. The vigorous, desperate teeth brushing followed by the gorging on a tube of toothpaste. Trying so very hard to scrub her out of his mouth.

(Watch the scene at the bottom of this post.)

***

After just one episode, Pose, the new show on FX, has done so much. Hell, before it premiered it did so much. Just seeing the posters around New York City has personally improved my day to day mood these past few weeks.

I feel uncomfortable labeling things “firsts.” So often “first” really means first to be recognized by cis straight white people of a certain economic class. Trans people have existed since people have existed and while cinema is an artform that lends itself to gatekeeping there have still been trans artists telling trans stories long before our current era.

But Pose is certainly the first major network TV show with this many trans actors and this many trans creatives. And it’s especially exciting that it’s about trans women of color, since the shows that have probably come closest, Sense8 and Transparent, centered white trans women. It’s thrilling to watch actors who I’d mostly seen in supporting roles be front and center, to see actors who I’d seen on stage or in readings or in a web series, get work that’s worthy of their talents at this production level.

I have no grasp of what Pose will accomplish but I’m so grateful already. No show should have the pressure of being the “first” nor that of changing any sort of landscape. I just hope these amazing artists get to keep telling their stories on their own terms.

*** Okay, but what does this have to do with Ace Ventura? Well, there’s a scene in the first episode of Pose that felt like a cleansing of that damaging cinematic memory. I don’t know if it was a direct response or just a coincidence but my brain immediately made the connection and felt relief.

One of two requisite cis white male characters is Stan, a young father of two recently employed by the future 45th president of the United States. Stan is also (secretly) drawn to trans women, or maybe he’s just drawn to Angel, played by the amazing Indya Moore (watch this year’s Saturday Church to see Moore and Pose lead Mj Rodriguez steal all their scenes). Angel is a sex worker and Stan picks her up one evening. They spend a lovely evening together, lying next to one another in an upscale hotel room talking about their hopes and dreams. When he drops her off they share a passionate, tender kiss.

Cut to Stan in his bathroom pulling an Ace Ventura, brushing his teeth like attraction and plaque are one in the same. This isn’t a pleasant moment. But it’s unpleasant in a markedly different way than the scene in Ace Ventura. There’s no joke. There’s just shame. Instead of the medium framing behind Ventura, we’re tight on Stan’s mouth. We feel the harshness of the brushing. And it feels like such a self-destructive, and absurd, response to the touching scenes we just witnessed.

(Watch the scene at the bottom of this post.)

Now there’s an argument that he’s only reacting this way because he feels he’s cheated on his wife. That’s a part of it. But it ignores the stigma in our society around attraction to trans women, a stigma that results in several deaths each year of trans women of color.

***

That’s the key point here. A movie like Ace Ventura may have filled me with self-loathing, it may have contributed to how long it took to come out. But that’s the least of it. Scenes like that, language like that, contributes to death. Straight men who feel insecure about their sexuality are incredibly dangerous.

Maybe it’s odd in a show as celebratory and emotional and exciting as Pose to single out a harsh moment featuring a cis white guy. But this moment, and its connection to the moment in Ace Ventura, clarified to me just what this show can accomplish, along with the work of other trans film artists like Sydney Freeland, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, Yance Ford, Rhys Ernst, Zackary Drucker, and Silas Howard, who directed a later episode of Pose and has a movie, A Kid Like Jake, out right now (not to mention sooo many others).

We can write back and write forward. We can reframe our lives and the lives of those we know in a way that’s real or aspirational or both. We won’t be able to change how trans and gender nonconforming bodies were portrayed in the first hundred years of mainstream cinema, but we can determine how we’re portrayed in the next hundred.

Pose is one giant step.

#Pose #FX #Ryan Murphy #transgender #LGBTQIA #queer cinema #Janet Mock #Our Lady J #Ace Ventura: Pet Detective #The Crying Game #Indya Moore #Evan Peters #Mj Rodriguez #Silas Howard

The Eye of ‘Vida’: Breaking Down the Cinematography of This Year’s Best New Show

I began watching Starz’s new show Vida because its creator, Tanya Saracho, wrote for Looking, a show I loved and recommended profusely for its too short two season and a movie run.

I also began watching because Vida has an all Latinx writers’ room (the first show ever to) in a TV world where the majority of writers’ rooms are still entirely white.

And finally I began watching because with One Mississippi and I Love Dick canceled and Sense8 and Transparent wrapping up, I wanted more queer TV.

Well, three episodes in it has not disappointed. It’s funny and emotional and complicated and in episode 3 has a queer sex scene that really, truly rivals the best sex scenes I’ve ever seen on screen. But I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about the show’s cinematography.

***

Too often when work is made by someone who isn’t a cis straight white man or about someone who isn’t a cis straight white man, the conversation is about just that. And these conversations should happen. It’s exciting to see oneself on screen for the first time and it’s important to highlight how easy inclusive hiring can be.

But what’s often lost in these discussions is craft. And, of course, if someone who isn’t a cis straight white man is being hired to work on a TV show it’s likely because they were so damn good they just couldn’t be ignored. Sure, there are occasions where the craft doesn’t match the content. But usually when a movie or TV show excites me because of its on screen or behind the scenes representation it’s often also just really, really, really good.

The first time I watched the first three episodes of Vida I was too involved in the story and characters to pay much attention to what it was doing formally. But when I rewatched them with my partner I was struck by cinematographer Carmen Cabana’s interesting and effective camerawork. My initial viewing experience had been deeply shaped by what the camera was doing and I hadn’t even noticed. That is good cinematography.

***

Some of Cabana’s work is stunning in an obvious way. There are moments in the show that have a heightened quality and the lighting and framing and lens choice in these moments creates some very screen-grabbable images.

Here are a few from the pilot.

With their symmetry and stylized lighting these images very much align with our idea of “good” cinematography. These are the kinds of moments film students would ache to get into their reel.

They’re also not how every scene should look.

Good cinematography isn’t just about pretty or striking images. It’s about visual storytelling. Choices being made that best enhance each scene in this specific work to support plot or character.

What separates Vida from the average show is the precision in which its most basic scenes are shot. To demonstrate this I’m going to breakdown what I’d say is the simplest shot scene in the pilot.

The vast majority of the cinematography in Vida is handheld so this would be easier in video form but I have a blog not a vlog so bear with me.

***

This scene comes 21.5 minutes into the episode. Two of the main characters, Lyn and Emma, are eating lunch at a small restaurant. Or, more accurately, Emma is eating lunch and Lynn is watching. Their mother has died, so they’re both back home in East Los Angeles and during this scene they discuss Lyn’s quasi-boyfriend, Lyn’s new business venture, and what to do with their mother’s bar/apartment complex.

There are five basic reoccurring shots in this scene, all handheld.

Wide, Close-Up 1, Insert, Medium-Wide, Close-Up 2. Simple.

But the variants of these shots, given the handheld movements, actually result in dozens of distinct images that illicit different feelings based on what’s happening in the scene.

Handheld cinematography is widely overused. Yes, it can create a certain energy and allow the actors more freedom to move around, but it can also feel really sloppy and distracting. Handheld cinematography isn’t a substitute for planning, but rather requires an even greater precision in its execution.

Since I wasn’t on set I don’t know whether the details of movements were carefully planned, or if Carmen Cabana and her team are just naturally brilliant. My guess is it’s a combination of the two.

Not only does the camera float and land, shift and capture in subtle and creative ways in the more kinetic, complicated scenes. Even here each shot variant feels precise.

***

Let’s just focus on the wide shot. The key changes that occur are the amount of headroom the characters have and who is more on the edge of the frame.

Lyn gets a text and looks concerned. Emma asks if the text is from “Jupiter” even though she likely knows Lyn’s boyfriend is named Juniper. There is minimal headroom.

Lyn responds to Emma’s dig with a laugh, rather than getting upset. We get more headroom.

Lyn tells Emma that she and Juniper are opening a store. Emma responds, “Oh God.” Less headroom.

This approach continues throughout the shot. When there’s an increase in tension the camera dips, creating a trapped, claustrophobic feeling. When the tension is alleviated the camera goes back up creating a more standard, visually pleasing frame.

The other shift that occurs throughout the scene is which character is more on the edge of the frame. Whoever is more at risk of being cut off, the more we identify with the other person. This is accentuated by the wooden shutters that block Emma, adding to this effect since Lyn is more frequently whose point of view we’re in while we watch Emma eat.

Even in the three shots above we can see how the camera has shifted from totally in Lyn’s POV to a bit more balanced. At the start of the scene Lyn is receiving a text message and Emma is in her own world eating the food. But as they talk we begin to identify a bit more with Emma’s perception of Lyn’s lover and career choice.

This only increases as Lyn begins to describe her new business venture of “Aztec inspired lotions.” Emma is almost fully centered which aides in aligning the audience with her perception/dismissal of what Lyn is saying.

But when Emma brings up a failed business Lyn previously tried and we can see the hurt on Lyn’s face, we begin to move back in the opposite direction. Both of Lyn’s business ideas may seem stupid but she’s genuinely hurt by what her sister has said. By shifting the camera slightly back into her POV, we feel that hurt and see Emma’s laughing as unnecessarily cruel.

In addition to these two reoccurring techniques there are more nuanced changes that occur, especially in the close-ups, that I can’t even begin to analyze. But I know how they make me feel.

***

The first time I watched this episode I barely noticed the cinematography except that it was handheld and that there were a few notable images like the ones at the top. This is good.

There are only three more episodes in Vida’s short first season and I won’t be thinking about this at all while I watch them. Carmen Cabana’s work blends together with the excellent writing and performances and other technical elements to create an immersive world. Film is a collaborative art form for a reason. The best movies and TV shows don’t have one aspect that outshines all the others. Each component makes each other component better.

Vida has this balance of craftsmanship and is telling several stories we rarely see on TV. So, um, watch it? Please? All my favorite queer shows get canceled after one or two seasons, so maybe let’s prevent that this time?

Thanks bunches. Enjoy!

#Vida #Starz #Carmen Cabana #Latinx #LGBTQIA #Tanya Saracho #Melissa Barrera #Mishel Prada #Looking #Cinematography

Free Suggestions!

Often discussions around #MeToo and not separating art from artists is framed as a loss. Putting aside the very tangible personal and professional losses of the accusers, people lament no longer being able to revisit a favorite movie or TV show or feeling conflicted about seeing a favorite artist’s next work.

I want to reframe this discussion.

Several years ago I began seeking out work made by people who aren’t cis straight white men and I’ve discovered worlds of cinema that rival anything in the canon. Yes, it’s a bummer to lose artists you love, but it also leaves room for new artists, and, let me tell you, there are soooo many good artists to discover.

So here’s my offer. If you like or reblog this post and comment or message with a movie or TV show you like but no longer want to support, I will write back with a similar movie or TV show that I think you’ll also like but that’s made by a (as far as we know) non-abusive person who is a woman, POC, LGBTQIA, disabled, or (GASP!) fits into several of those identities.

We do not need these men. And I want to prove that to you while still celebrating cinema!

#Free Suggestions #Me Too #Abuse #Sexual Harassment #Times Up

Jeffrey Tambor Paid for a Profile in The Hollywood Reporter and Instead of Crying and Screaming and Punching Things I Wrote About It: An Essay

Transparent is the reason I came out of the closet. This is not a particularly cool thing to admit. From its conception plenty of people in the trans community balked at its very existence. Finally a show about trans people and it stars Jeffrey fucking Tambor, it’s mainly about his character’s cis family, and everybody is white and wealthy. But I didn’t know about the backlash. Because I didn’t know any trans people. I’d just heard about a buzzy new show on Amazon.com of all places. That was the discussion in the media.

I loved the first season, but it was the second and third seasons that really grabbed hold of me. I came out before the fourth. I have some guesses as to why this is. The later seasons brought more focus to trans characters played by trans people, a trans writer was added to the staff, and showrunner Jill Soloway began exploring their own genderqueerness. It became less about a cis male actor in drag, like every other trans woman portrayal I’d seen, and more about accurately portraying trans people, living lives, being themselves.

Trace Lysette, especially, left an impression on me. During the third season, the writers gave her a storyline worthy of her talents and it became clear this supporting character could, in a fairer universe, carry her own show.

But in our universe Tambor was the lead. And he was great. His performance had none of the painfully false tics of other well-intentioned cis men like Eddie Redmayne or Jared Leto. It really felt like a necessary step. Tambor was needed to get this show made. But now this show had changed the landscape. The next show about a trans person wouldn’t just focus on transition and it wouldn’t star a cis actor. Tambor, himself, seemed to understand the complicated nature of his position in queer TV history. During his last Emmy acceptance speech for playing Maura Pfefferman, he said, “I would be happy if I were the last cisgender male to play a transgender female.”

The truth is we don’t know the celebrities we watch and follow. The truth is we don’t even know the people in our own lives. We place our trust in figures and the people around us because it’s the only way to live. We make judgement calls. We form relationships, with artists, with friends. We choose to trust. Sometimes this trust is broken.

***

After Van Barnes, Tambor’s former assistant, and the aforementioned Trace Lysette came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him, a third woman came forward. Makeup artist Tamara Delbridge, who is cisgender, described an experience where Tambor grabbed her and kissed her on the lips. This story was left out of the recent Hollywood Reporter puff profile of Tambor.

Instead a narrative is expertly crafted. Trans people were upset by Tambor’s initial casting. The set was an open, physical place. Two trans women used this to frame normal behavior as sexual harassment and take Tambor down. The word coup is used several times, most disappointingly, by Jill’s sister and co-writer, Faith Soloway.

I have follow-up questions.

How was the coup organized? Did Barnes and Lysette hatch it on their own or were they given this assignment by the higher ups in the all-powerful Transgender Federation? Ha. Ha.

What I really want to know is if Tambor showed similar behavior towards his cisgender co-stars. Behavior such as belittling sexual comments to both women, pressing his genitals against Lysette, and watching Barnes sleep. If this really is a case of an open set and “normal” behavior (which leads to a whole other conversation) then Amy Landecker and Gaby Hoffman and Judith Light must have tons of stories. So far, none have surfaced.

Instead it seems that Tambor targeted those without privilege, those who knew that if they lost their jobs on Transparent they may be unable to find another elsewhere. This is how this works. It’s idiotic when Lena Dunham steps forward to say she knows a man on her writing staff didn’t assault somebody because he was always nice to her. Of course he wouldn’t assault his fucking boss! Of course Tom Brokaw was not going to harass Rachel Maddow! The lack of understanding around power dynamics and Predatory Men 101™ is baffling. Whether consciously or not, Tambor knew who he could pull this shit with and who he couldn’t.

He chose wisely.

***

A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to join a women filmmakers FaceBook group. My partner had encouraged me to join months ago, but I felt insecure about so officially declaring myself in a women’s only space. This wasn’t the messaging of the group (their inclusivity is made very clear in their bio), it was just internalized shame. What if they figure out that I really am just a mentally ill man in a dress and feel like I was trying to trick them?? Just the usual socially conditioned feelings of trans womanhood not being womanhood.

But I joined. And I was met with a lovely message from one of the admins who is a friend and collaborator of mine.

A week later another admin posted about a meet-up event. They were going to IFC Center to see The Death of Stalin, because IFC is currently showing women fillmmakers’ short films before their main screenings. Putting aside the fact that they could’ve chosen two features actually directed by women, Zama and Let the Sunshine In, The Death of Stalin is directed by a white dude, co-written with five other white dudes, and stars, drumroll please, Jeffrey Tambor.

I’m not trying to call out this group which is an amazing, amazing resource that I’m happy to now be a part of. I’m not even trying to call out the admin who I don’t know that started the event. The same way I have no desire to call out the various podcasts I listen to that discussed the Tambor allegations with a very different tone than some other #MeToo reports. I’m not calling anyone out, because none of us really decide what we deem important. The culture does. And the culture privileges maleness, cisness, straightness, whiteness, and able bodies. Most of us have gaps whether we want to or not. As a trans woman this case is not my gap, but my focus. I have other gaps. Just as we choose who to trust, we choose who to forgive.

But I want to acknowledge who has power, who had power on that set, and who has power now to hire The Hollywood Reporter to give them a photo shoot and reduce one of their accusers to a sex change and a suicide attempt. Jeffrey Tambor will be fine. The Death of Stalin was an indie hit. The new season of Arrested Development will be called a return to form. And his career will carry on as normal.

Meanwhile, Van Barnes has left the industry and Trace Lysette is not booking work.

***

The reason why Jill Soloway was one of my heroes is because they don’t just want to join the system, they want to change the system. Their goals were and are as lofty as mine. We want to reinvent how movies and television are made. We want to reinvent what stories are told and who gets to tell them. We want to topple the patriarchy (as their production company, Topple, explicitly says). Anyone who knows anything about this industry knows how Quixotic these goals are. But they are so very worthwhile. I’m living proof.

Jill Soloway and their team changed my life. They also created an environment that hurt some of the very people they aimed to lift up and empower. That’s for them to work out. Some of the quotes in this Hollywood Reporter piece from Jill and Faith Soloway really hurt me. But I place most of the blame on the perpetrator rather than those who may be complicit. I also don’t trust how those quotes were framed considering the rampant misogyny and transphobia of profile writer Seth Abramovitch (who was fired from Gawker for using the n-word! fun fact!). Again, that’s a judgement call I’m making. Probably due to my adoration for Soloway’s work. Maybe this is one of my gaps.

But, like Soloway, I do plan to accomplish my goals. Like Soloway, I plan on creating work on my own terms in as safe and inclusive an environment as possible. And like Soloway, sometimes I might fail. Acknowledging failure is part of the work. Transparent will not be the last show about trans people. Pose comes out next month! Transparent won’t even be the last show Soloway makes. Transparent’s legacy may have been altered by these revelations but I am part of its legacy and I’m still here. That is not Tambor’s to take away. That’s mine. And someday when I’m making my own television show I will cast Trace Lysette. Because of her courage, sure, but mostly because she’s a fucking great actor.

Magic Mike XXL: Masculinity Worth Appreciating

I saw the first Magic Mike with my sister the summer before I left for college. I remember this day the way I remember just about everyday I’ve spent alone with my sister. I remember the day we spent visiting her favorite “spots” right before I started high school. I remember when we got into a hip NYC club because she looked like her even though I looked like me. I remember the difficult lunch we had my first visit back after coming out as trans. I spent most of my life with my sister, usually our parents were there or nearby. But once she learned to drive, the days alone, I remember all of those. This day, in June, in 2012, we were seeing Magic Mike.

There were two men in the theatre, sheepish looking boyfriends whose body language and facial expressions tried to make clear that they were just being good sports. Otherwise it was all women, ages ranging, ready to express their sexuality in public, an experience rarely allowed. My sister commented several times how weird it was to be seeing this with her little brother. I deflected with discussion about Steven Soderbergh and his varied filmography, abuzz with the comfort and confusion I’d always feel when in majority-women spaces.

The movie was fine. Soderbergh knows how to shoot and edit, Channing Tatum knows how to dance, and Matthew McConaughey knows how to chew scenery. But in making two films about the sex industry, Soderbergh failed to understand the difference between what men and women audiences are regularly given. It’s subversive to send a bunch of horny guys into The Girlfriend Experience wanting to see Sasha Grey fuck and then giving them a cold film about economics. But doing the same to a bunch of horny women wanting to see Channing and the gang is just… disappointing.

Still there were enough abs to keep the audience relatively happy, and I left the theatre with the excited feeling that I’d gotten away with something. The same feeling I always had when I’d hang out with my sister and her friends, the same feeling I’d have any time I managed to be around groups of girls, conversations, car rides, karaoke rooms. While I never felt fully relaxed, I did feel more comfortable. It was as much about being near women as it was about being away from men.

***

We talk a lot about trans women’s relationship towards femininity. Every corny movie with a trans femme youth has her trying on makeup, heels, painting her nails. My experience was certainly filled with a lifelong admiration towards girls and women that fluctuated between envy and lust, admiration and resentment. I obsessively loved women and then turned on them when I felt dissatisfied. I convinced myself that relationships needed to be romantic, because I confused the deep desire to consume their bodies, their fashion, their entire being as a sexual impulse rather than one of imitation. I ruined so many friendships this way.

But what we talk about less is how much of my life was spent with masculinity, immersed in it, confused by it, desperate to understand how to embody it. I know some trans women have clarity from a young age that they are girls and it’s just a matter of others accepting it. But that was not my experience. My discomfort with boyhood and attraction to girlhood never seemed like something I could embrace. Instead I felt a pressure and desire to adjust those attractions, to be a boy and then a man to the best of my ability.

I’m fortunate to have a father who is sensitive and kind. I’m also fortunate to have a father who coached my baseball and soccer teams throughout most of my childhood. Sports became something that was undeniably masculine but that I also loved. I may have watched my sister’s dance classes with envy, but I also found genuine pleasure in being on the field, being physical and focused and competitive. It helped that my dad always prioritized sportsmanship, team spirit, and fun over winning. The league recognized this and rewarded him with the absolute worst players they could find. Our team of misfits may have frustrated me at times, but it also allowed me to think of sports as an exercise in empathy rather than a terrifying world of standards and punishments. I wonder now how many other boys on those teams were queer. I know at least one.

My positive experience with sports allowed me to navigate my early childhood fairly unscathed. I was bullied incessantly by other boys (and even some other girls) probably picking up on something about me. And my “crushes” (as I’d wrongly call them) on girls were intense to the point of all-consuming obsession. But my immense discomfort towards masculinity didn’t really start until middle school, until puberty.

I couldn’t figure out what masculinity even was. I knew certain expectations placed on me and felt like they were all terrible. I was supposed to objectify women. That was the most obvious. The grosser I could get when talking about the girls I “liked” the more I’d be accepted. I was also supposed to be aggressive. Physically. I was not supposed to cry. Or show any emotion. It wasn’t enough that I liked sports. I was supposed to only like sports. If someone was my friend that meant they made fun of me in front of our other friends and the proper response was to make fun of them back. Or hit them.

Some of this is just middle school. But a lot of it carried over into high school and beyond. My new friends cared more about theatre than sports, but if you’ve ever watched two 17-year-old boys fight over who gets what part in Julius Caesar you’d realize it’s all the same. *** The summer before I came out, the greatest sequel of all time graced our movie screens: Magic Mike XXL.

This masterpiece of masculinity is a modern-day Old Hollywood musical. Blah blah La La Land blah blah. Go watch On the Town and it becomes clear those musicals are about 1) hot guys, 2) tight pants, 3) great dancing. XXL is pure, sex-positive joy from beginning to end. It abandons the thematic and narrative overwroughtness of the original and makes a new statement: Celebrating female sexuality and non-toxic masculinity is what’s truly radical.

As a lesbian, I’ll leave discussions of the former to others (now that The Toast is gone I’m not sure where Roxane Gay’s review went, it’s really worth hunting down). But as a trans woman, who spent my whole life trying to understand masculinity, this movie was a goddamn revelation. The way the men celebrate women is lovely and sexy and new, but the way they celebrate each other is what really stood out to me.

The men in Magic Mike XXL are masculine. They embody so many of those basic, oversimplified middle school traits I listed above. And yet. It looks good on them. They’re physical, they rag on each other, they trade crude remarks about women. But they also support each other. They discuss their goals and varied interests. They talk out conflicts. Their discussion of women is crude but not objectifying. And they’re comfortable enough in their sexuality and gender to participate in a drag show. Watching XXL, I didn’t feel any closer to masculinity, but for the first time I found it something worth aspiring to. Social pressure was no longer the only thing pushing me towards it, and, as a result, it soon became clear I was never meant to achieve it.

Since coming out, I’ve had the good fortune of befriending some trans men and non-binary individuals who align with certain elements of masculinity and manhood. In these people I tend to see this same sort of Magic Mike XXL version of masculinity. I see it in my dad. I see it in a few cis male friends. I spent my life hating masculinity, but now I see its potential.

***

Last week I went to Thirst Aid Kit’s screening of Magic Mike XXL at the Alamo Drafthouse. Thirst Aid Kit is a podcast hosted by Bim Adewunmi and Nichole Perkins and is really a must-listen if you’re a person who enjoys lusting after men (and if you aren’t it’s still a good time). They provided fake money to throw at the screen and bingo cards with squares like “Mike grabs his crotch.” Cocktails were served throughout and we were encouraged to hoot, wallop, and moan as we saw fit.

It’s been about six years since I sat in that regular movie theatre with my sister cherishing what felt like girl time. And here I was, again in a majority-women space, watching Channing Tatum grind. This time I felt comfortable, and also, finally, relaxed.

As a trans person, I’ve been forced to examine my gender, to wrestle with masculinity and femininity and ultimately decide what elements of both appeal to me and who I personally am. In a time when cis men are feeling increasingly confused about their place in the world, I wonder what might happen if they also had to ponder their identity. I wonder what might happen if they had to reconsider their own definitions of masculinity. I wonder what an all cis straight male screening of Magic Mike XXL might look like and what it might achieve.

Some need to thirst. Others need to learn. This movie does it all. <3

#Magic Mike #Magic Mike XXL #masculinity #toxic masculinity #femininity #trans #transgender #LGBTQIA #Channing Tatum #Steven Soderbergh #Thirst Aid Kit #Alamo Drafthouse #Bim Adewunmi #Nichole Perkins

Murderers Who Fuck: Morality and Representation in Swoon and The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Alfred Hitchcock was one of the bad ones. He was a notorious bully who had little if any respect for his collaborators, especially the actresses. Hitchcock was, to say the least, heterosexual. His obsession with women often seen on screen was even more present in his personal and on-set life. The worst (known) example is the emotional and sexual abuse of Tippi Hedren that ultimately ended her career. This is all to say, Alfred Hitchcock is certainly one of the least likely figures in the history of queer cinema. Yet, for better or worse, he’s also one of the most important.

Hitchcock’s obsession with women was part of a larger interest in various psychosexual behavior. Starting with The Lodger, a silent film many consider his first masterpiece, Hitchcock cast out gay actors (or as out as one could be in the 20s) to play leads and villains within scripts that were themselves rather coded. Films like Rebecca, Rope, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho all feature major queer characters. And while I struggle to get over Psycho inadvertently beginning the toxic trend of trans women killers in film, I absolutely adore the devilish queerness of the others. That’s the big question though. The trend of queer people, especially trans women, being portrayed as killers is one of the most damaging cases of misrepresentation in media. So how can I so adore a misogynistic, heterosexual director who only featured queer people as murderers?

***

We can maybe find the answer in Tom Kalin’s 1992 New Queer Cinema classic, Swoon (co-written by Hilton Als). Like Hitchcock’s Rope, Swoon takes its inspiration from the famous Leopold and Loeb case. In 1924 two male lovers decided to kill a fourteen-year-old boy… just because they could. The lack of motive and salacious details of homosexuality turned this into one of the most famous cases of the 20th century, inspiring several books, Rope, and a third movie, 1959’s Compulsion. When Kalin’s film came out it inspired a large amount of backlash, and continues to do so when it gets screened. Why, when so few films have been made about gay people, did a third film need to be made about these gay killers? Isn’t it dangerous to continue to spread these stereotypes, especially in 1992 in the midst of the AIDS crisis?

Tom Kalin responded: “I believe in equal opportunity homicide. I also want to claim the right to kill with rage and murder for irrational reasons and obsessive passion in the same way heterosexuals have had the latitude to do so in the history of storytelling since storytelling has begun.”

One needs only to watch the sanitized plea that is the following year’s AIDS film Philadelphia to know what culture Kalin was pushing against. There’s a removal of sexuality from homosexuality and insistence of Sydney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner level perfection demanded for any progress. And Kalin was saying “fuck you” to that. He’s right. The entire genre of film noir is filled with cases of sympathetic straight people committing all sorts of horrific acts. Kalin, and Greg Araki with his film The Living End (also 1992), asked, why can’t there be a gay Double Indemnity? Why can’t there be a gay Bonnie and Clyde?

Of course, there were plenty of coded gay villains in early Hollywood. But Hitchcock was unique in how he portrayed them. Peter Lorre’s sniveling Cairo in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is obviously intended to be gay, but he exists almost solely as a foil to Bogart’s masculine Samuel Spade. He’s not just bad morally, he’s bad narratively. He holds no power, has no arc, is more of an amusement and a plot point than a person. Hitchcock’s villains had power and their queerness was present on screen. There is a clear love and clear sexuality in Rope and Rebecca. We see fully developed desires even when, like Mrs. Danvers, they’re a supporting character. They’re not jokes. They’re complicated, damaged, sometimes evil, often tragic, human beings. Cairo is gay because he’s effeminate and weak. The leads of Rope are gay because they’re fucking each other.

Swoon takes this approach into a post-code world. The film has more sex and more love than it does murder. We see Leopold’s romantic obsession with Loeb and understand his motive the same way we understand the allure of Barbara Stanwyck or Faye Dunaway. Kalin also emphasizes the way people were as appalled by their homosexuality as they were their murder. This is highlighted in a particularly telling scene where all of the women in the courtroom are asked to leave when homosexuality is being discussed after being allowed to stay for the gruesome details of the real crime. Suddenly the film suggests something rather startling. If Leopold and Loeb were raised to believe their homosexuality, an integral part of themselves, was an unforgivable sin, then how were they supposed to know any better with other moral questions? Maybe murder, like fucking, would feel good and right once it happened. Kalin doesn’t go as far as declaring this, but he does ask the question. And while it’s fascinating and liberating it’s also incredibly dangerous. Not because Swoon was going to inspire a bunch of queer people to go become killers, but because it might give homophobic audience members exactly the excuse they were looking for.

Swoon made $340,000 at the box office. Philadelphia made $77 million. While the cultural impact of Hitchcock’s filmography is unclear, I think it’s fair to say Swoon played mostly to gay and gay-friendly audiences who safely grappled with the questions posed. But how could a similar work play to a contemporary mainstream audience? Is it possible to raise these issues on a larger scale without scaring off the straights? How could that be done? It took until this year to find out.

***

My main goal in writing 750 words on an early 90s art film was to convince you all to watch American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Bare with me. I’m a much better film nerd than I am social media influencer. But I’m here to say Ryan Murphy’s follow up to the blockbuster People vs. OJ, is a masterpiece of queer storytelling and television in general.

I knew almost nothing about Versace or his killer Andrew Cunanan prior to watching the show. But its initially messy, eventually brilliant, structure takes care of this. The show begins with Versace’s death and essentially works backwards, so the entire audience knows just about everything that’s going to happen before we see what came before. This immediately desensationalizes the story, removing the element of surprise and replacing it with character development and a suspenseful dread. Hitchcock’s famously scoffed at surprise in favor of suspense (google his bomb under the table example if you didn’t go to film school).

While the format is certainly bold, the show’s greatest narrative trick is how little it’s actually about the titular fashion designer. The first episode promises an OJ-style star-studded look at Versace (Ricky Martin as his lover! Penelope Cruz as his sister!), but then he just about disappears. The show becomes almost exclusively about Cunanan and the other victims. And oh what a character Cunanan turns out to be. They may both be based on real people, but it’s impossible not to see Rope and Swoon’s takes on Richard Loeb in Darren Criss’s wonderful portrayal of Cunanan. They share a sociopathic arrogance that’s as captivating as it is terrifying. With the nine-hour time frame we’re able to see Andrew both as the classic charming serial killer and a pathetic, rejected man who desperately wants love, acceptance, and validation. The show is also incredibly responsible in its portrayal of his violence, not dwelling on the gore, but still creating some of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen on television. We may grow to understand Cunanan, we may sympathize with him, but the show will not let us forget what he did.

Andrew was gay. And his homosexuality plays a key role in his modus operandi. It factors into his unquenchable desire for acceptance and it determined who his victims were. A self-hating romantic rival, a disinterested ex-lover, a closeted married man, a celebrity whose success allowed him to be himself. The character of Andrew Cunanan is pretty much a perfect queer villain. Not only does he have the dangerously seductive Hitchcock intrigue, but his life and crimes are intrinsically connected to his sexuality. It’s fascinating to watch, but we’re no longer talking about a black and white, avant-garde indie film. This is the follow-up to an FX series that won nine Emmy awards. Even if it didn’t build the same buzz (which it unfortunately has not) many eyes would be on this show, many belonging to straight people. A character like Andrew Cunanan suddenly becomes rather dangerous representation, especially when shown in this full and human of a way.

And this is where the show really succeeds. Because Andrew is not the only gay character the show cares about. Nor is it only Andrew and Versace, whose celebrity would automatically create a remove from the audience. No. Because three out of four of Cunanan’s other victims were themselves gay, and the show makes sure to devote entire episodes to Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, and Lee Miglin. It also spends time with Cunanan’s one-time sugar daddy Norman Blachford, Cunanan’s drug-addicted acquaintance Ronnie Holston, and Versace’s longtime lover Antonio D’Amico. Through these characters the show is able to deeply explore such varied queer issues as being a gay marine during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, expectations of masculinity, closeted marriages, self-hatred, coming out to family, coming out at work, poverty, sex work, and lack of security when you are unable to legally marry your partner. Yes, Cunanan is allowed to be the full, terrifying villain he was, but the show’s humanizing of various queer archetypes and individuals doesn’t stop there. It solves the problem of potentially negative representation by balancing it with plenty of positive representation, and, more importantly, plenty of neutral representation.

***

During Versace’s finale, Ronnie Holston is being interrogated about Andrew’s whereabouts when he says the following: “You know the truth is. You were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting. You’re so used to us lurking in the shadows. And, you know, most of us, we oblige. People like me, we drift away, we get sick, nobody cares. But Andrew was vain. He wanted you to know about his pain. He wanted you to hear. He wanted you to know about being born a lie. Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”

Homophobia in no way justifies Andrew’s crimes. But it partially explains them. And in all of these examples from Hitchcock to Swoon to this show, it’s incredibly liberating to see characters who completely disregard respectability politics in the most extreme of ways. Not because any of these people should be admired, but because we deserve to see the full scope of our humanity on screen like straight white people get to all the time. Evil and cruelty are a part of that humanity whether we like it or not. I’m not saying let’s print Andrew Cunanan’s face on a t-shirt like a misguided teenage boy with A Clockwork Orange. But Andrew Cunanan was a real person, Leopold and Loeb were real people. They are a part of queer history.

We deserve to see our entire history on-screen.

#American Crime Story #The Assassination of Gianni Versace #Swoon #Alfred Hitchcock #Rope #Tom Kalin #Ryan Murphy #Rebecca #Strangers on a Train #Psycho #Double Indemnity #Bonnie and Clyde #film noir #LGBTQIA #Queer Representation #FX #Darren Criss

Wendy Carlos is Trans

I was waiting in line for the Rhea Butcher show at Union Hall like the queer person I am, googling “trans women with curly hair” like the insecure trans woman I am, when I made a rather startling discovery.

I did not find a listicle exactly to my interests so instead I clicked through the rather basic “Famous Transgender People” on one of those websites that’s more about ad space than content. It had the usual suspects. Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner, Chaz Bono, Marsha P. Johnson. But then bam. Wendy Carlos.

Wendy Carlos?? The composer of The Shining?? My first thought was this random non website had made a mistake and was just listing... all famous people? That’s how deep my disbelief went. Because if Stanley Kubrick’s multiple time composer was a trans woman I would know it. How could I not? Like most young cinephiles, Stanley Kubrick was one of my Gods when I was a kid. I not only watched all of his movies (including his documentary shorts and Fear and Desire) but I also read several books about him and his collaborators. I was obsessed. How in all that time, or at the very least in the months since coming out when I’ve been desperately holding onto any representation I can find, how would I not know that Wendy Carlos is trans?

I went quickly to her Wikipedia page. And holy shit that website was right. Wendy Carlos is trans.

The first thing I felt was anger. I didn’t begin transitioning until I was 23 and didn’t even really come out to myself until then. I grew up vaguely knowing trans people were a thing, but my clearest childhood memories of us were Buffalo Bill and an employee at our local Baja Fresh who my friends mocked relentlessly. I suddenly imagined an alternate universe where I knew Wendy Carlos was trans, where a biography had been written about her and during my Kubrick phase I could’ve bought it from a Barnes & Noble without raising too many eyebrows. An alternate universe where I could have been myself in middle school, in high school, shit, at least in college. Who knows? Self-hatred is powerful and the messaging I had was the messaging I had. Maybe one successful trans woman in my periphery would not have been enough. But maybe...

I stopped regretting the pace at which I’ve transitioned many months ago. I realized that maybe it all worked out. I’m an adult in a queer friendly city living with my partner and I was really able to come out and transition safely on my own terms. So regretting the timeline is not only unhelpful, but maybe even misguided. Still this revelation shook me.

Maybe it has to do as much with the general cultural erasure as it does with the personal erasure. I generally tried to stay quiet on the recent RuPaul controversy because I don’t perform drag, I’m white, and there are others who know far more about the history of drag than I do. But what bothered me most was the non-trans response of calling RuPaul’s “trans women can’t be drag queens” old-fashioned. It’s not old-fashioned. It’s revisionist. Trans women are integral to the history of drag. Trans women are integral to the history of queer culture and activism. Trans women are integral to history. We have always, always been here.

I’m torn because I do think as trans people we should have the opportunity to be known for our accomplishments and not just our transness. But let’s not erase the transness of accomplished people.

It’s meant so much to me the last few months catching up on Morgan M. Page’s podcast One from the Vaults. Every episode recounts the history of one (or several related) trans individuals throughout history. It’s entertaining, well-researched, and just... amazing! Every episode makes me feel more okay with myself. There’s a pressure (possibly self-imposed) as a trans person to disregard society and be proud to be iconoclastic. But sometimes it’s just nice to be reminded that you’re normal, that you’re okay, that you’re human. I’m still figuring out what representation exactly means to me and to us all, but I know that history is important. I know it matters to see oneself in others and be seen. I know that once my anger of it coming a decade later than it could have subsided, the realization that Wendy Carlos is trans made me feel good.

So shoutout to Wendy Carlos. I hope someday you get the biography you deserve. ❤️

#Wendy Carlos #Stanley Kubrick #transgender #trans #LGBTQIA #representation #Queer Representation #A Clockwork Orange #The Shining #Tron #Rhea Butcher #RuPaul #RuPaul's Drag Race #history #Morgan M. Page #One from the Vaults

How Do We Solve a Problem Like Andrew Garfield?

This isn’t a persuasive essay. This isn’t a take down or a hot take. This isn’t a think piece. It’s a feel piece.

***

The Boys in the Band was a landmark of gay theatre and gay film. The Mart Crowley play and subsequent William Friedkin film was one of the first widely seen portrayals of openly gay life on stage and on screen. The wide array of mostly white, mostly wealthy men are given the liberty to be imperfect, even cruel, while always maintaining their humanity. It explored real issues facing gay individuals and did so in a way that was nuanced and emotional. The ensemble cast was the same for the play and the film and it was mostly made up of gay men, many whom would die from AIDS-related diseases. There was one straight exception: Cliff Gorman. He was also the only member of the cast to win an Obie Award (like the Tony’s but for Off-Broadway) which he received for playing Emory, the most flamboyant of the characters.

I began with a disclaimer, because I don’t quite know how to parse out my feelings around the topic of straight actors playing gay roles. I can certainly think of several instances where it didn’t bother me at all, most recently Nick Robinson giving a wonderful lead performance in Love, Simon. But sometimes it flat out ruins a piece for me. Sometimes I feel deeply offended. I can’t defend this feeling. I can’t explain why I felt zero chemistry between Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, but tons between Jake Gylenhaal and Heath Ledger. I can’t explain why Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk felt like total posturing, but Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Capote broke my heart. Maybe I just like some performances more than others. But this doesn’t explain the feeling in my gut of being disappointed at best and mocked at worse. It gets especially confusing when queer audiences constantly disagree about which representation feels accurate, which straight performers succeed and which fail (for example, I bet my lack of investment in Call Me By Your Name already lost half of my readers).

This is not exclusive to men. Julianne Moore and Toni Collette in The Hours painfully ruin my favorite scenes in the book and the recent revival of She’s Gotta Have It had the straightest queer women I’ve ever seen. But the key difference is straight audiences think flamboyant gay men are entertaining. They have zero interest in butch lesbians. This means that straight women often feel wrong when romantic with another woman, but they aren’t given the same opportunity to feel wrong when they’re just existing. This wrongness I’m describing is most commonly felt when I see straight actors playing (trying to play) gay men who are loud and feminine. Think Jonathan from new Queer Eye. Think Prior Walter from Angels in America.

***

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to see the recent revival of Angels with Andrew Garfield in the role of Prior. Sometimes with especially important works of theatre, I’ll hold out on reading them in hopes to have my first experience be on stage. I had to wait a really long time, but I’m so glad that I did. I was sitting in the fourth row and got to do parts one and two in one day and it was really an incredible way to first experience one of the great works of theatre. But I felt surprisingly little emotion. Intellectually it was one of the best theatre going experiences of my life. The play is obviously incredible. It’s so complex and nuanced I purchased a book about it in between parts so I could start reading right after. But in many ways Prior is the heart of the play. And the only thing Garfield made me feel was anger. Not at Reagan. Or society. Or Louis. At him.

I admit that I went into the play with a bit of bias. Eight years ago I loved Andrew Garfield. Between Never Let Me Go and The Social Network, he was one of my favorite young actors. I even liked him as Spider-Man. But in recent years he’s made a series of decisions and given a series of performances that turned me off. The hyper-masculine overwroughtness of Silence left me less than impressed. His decision to work with well known assaulter, racist, and anti-Semite Mel Gibson deeply offended me, as did his decision to (unsuccessfully) grovel for an Oscar playing a person with a disability in Breathe. And some may forget that before these movies Garfield played another queer character. He previously appeared as a tortured trans woman in the video for Arcade Fire’s “We Exist.”

The issue of cis actors playing trans parts is totally different from straight actors playing gay parts. When a cis man plays a trans woman it contributes to the idea that trans women are just men in drag, gay men tricking straight men into having sex with them. This can often lead to violence. At least 28 trans people were murdered last year, the majority of whom were women of color. I do not believe it is unfair to say Eddie Redmayne and Jared Leto contributed to a culture that allowed that to happen. I do feel differently when a cis woman, say Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, plays a trans woman. There are so few parts for trans actors that it seems like until producers will cast them as cis, trans characters should go to trans actors. But eventually I think I’ll feel about cis women playing trans women and cis men playing trans men the way I currently do about straight actors and gay parts. Begrudged discomfort.

But Andrew Garfield is not a cis woman. He’s a cis man. And I have to wonder what prompted this movie star to so badly want to portray a trans woman that he begged to be in a music video. To quote the video’s director, David Wilson: “Before I got on the call, I thought, Is this the right person– should we be using a transgender person? But then getting on the phone with Andrew, and Andrew’s commitment and passion for the project was just overwhelming. For an actor of that caliber to be emotionally invested in a music video is a very special thing. It just completely made sense.” It does make sense. In the video, Garfield gets to show off a range of abilities. He gets to dress up. He gets to carry himself in a feminine way. He gets to cry. He gets to feel alone. He gets to be beaten up. He gets to be inspired. He gets to perform. What actor doesn’t want to perform? Or maybe the better question is, which actors get to perform? I don’t see Andrew Rannells or Jesse Tyler Ferguson being offered Scorsese men or straight superheroes in between queer roles. As a straight man, Garfield has the privilege to jump back and forth.

In many ways, Garfield’s portrayal of Prior feels like a spiritual sequel to the Arcade Fire video. He once again gets to be feminine, he gets to be sick, he gets to be abandoned, he gets to wrestle a Goddman angel, and he gets to be sassy. It’s a dream role for any actor and Garfield clearly relishes every second he gets on stage, every moment he gets to reach far outside himself.

It all rang so, so false.

***

Garfield is the only openly straight actor playing a gay part in this revival. Nathan Lane plays Roy Cohn and Lee Pace plays Joe. I can’t find any information on the sexualities of Nathan Stewart-Jarret or James McCardle who play Belize and Louis, but again that’s hardly the point. It’s absurd to think we need to check who every actor is sleeping with before casting them in a role. The key is that with Stewart-Jarret and McCardle they felt like they were playing Belize, a person, and Louis, a person. Garfield felt like he was playing gay. There’s a performative quality to his flamboyance that seems to suggest choice to Garfield. The only reason Prior acts the way he does (feminine) and Joe acts the way that he does (masculine) is because Prior is putting on a show for the world. But that’s bullshit.

Neither femininity nor masculinity give legitimacy to gayness. If you’re gay, you’re gay. But there certainly are gay men who are more naturally flamboyant. I really appreciated the scene in Love, Simon between Simon and the other out gay kid at his school. Ethan, played by out gay actor, Clark Moore, didn’t have Simon’s privilege of hiding. Whether he wanted it or not his natural way of being outed him to the world. Like Prior, Ethan is feminine and often has a pithy comeback in the face of oppression. There’s no performance. That’s just Ethan. I’m sure this is how Prior Walter should feel. But for Garfield, Prior isn’t a person. Prior is an acting challenge.

***

The following is a portion of the play’s final monologue: “This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.”

Tony Kushner wrote this monologue for out gay actor Stephen Spinella to recite in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Much has changed since then but the message still feels needed. Donald Trump is president and surveys show LGBTQ+ acceptance has gone down for the first time in four years. Every time Andrew Garfield said the word “we” it hurt me. Us. We. We. We. I had to grip the armrests to keep me from standing up and shouting, “You are not us. You are not we.”

Next month, The Boys in the Band comes to Broadway for the first time, fifty years after it opened Off-Broadway. The revival is directed by out gay actor and director Joe Mantello who originated the role of Louis in Angels in America and the cast is filled with gay actor royalty. Robin de Jesús will play Emory. I don’t know how he’ll compare to Cliff Gorman. I’m not sure what the critics will say. I’m not sure if he’ll win an award. But I know I’ll be in the theatre watching. And I know his Emory will be a real human person. That’s all I want to see.

#Andrew Garfield #Angels in America #LGBTQIA #Queer Representation #The Boys in the Band #We Exist #Arcade Fire #Love Simon #Tony Kushner

Love, Simon and the Limitations of Allyship

*mild Love, Simon spoilers*

The key scene in Love, Simon, the first gay teen movie from a major studio, comes midway through the film when Simon questions why he’s expected to come out as gay, but nobody is expected to come out as straight. There’s a montage of his straight friends coming out to their parents and facing the various reactions a gay kid might receive. The comedy of this scene is pretty soft, but the point acts as a firm rebuke to anyone who questions whether this film holds importance or whether all communities still have a long way to go towards LGBTQ+ acceptance.

I’m not going to waste too much time getting into the arguments about whether this movie is “needed” or whether it’s inclusive enough or whether it’s fluff. I will say that I personally loved it as an emotional experience and as a film. It’s funny, well plotted, well acted, wonderfully sentimental, and has a perfectly teenage soundtrack. There really is room in the world of cinema for mainstream movies, and there’s even more room for a wide array of queer coming of age films.

That all said what I’d really like to focus on is Love, Simon’s portrayal of allies. Because this is where the film surprised me in its depth. It’s set up in the very first moments that Simon has a “perfect” family. His parents are beautiful, wealthy, and liberal and he has a close relationship with his sister. And if his family seems idealized that’s nothing compared to his friend group. Oh how lovely to spend your adolescence with a small group of funny, kind, attractive people picking up ice coffee and listening to Bleachers. I was fully under the impression that high school friend meant someone who was mean to you. But I digress.

A lot has been made about whether Simon’s life is too perfect for him to connect with other queer people (personally, no, but I also do share many of his privileges). But what this discussion is missing is the brilliance of allowing straight audience members to see themselves in so-called perfection. Straight audiences everywhere can look at these people and say, yes this is the type of parent I am, or, yes, this is the type of friend I am. Or even, yes, this is the type of assistant vice principal I am. And then the movie slowly shows that even still they aren’t enough.

I hate the word “ally.” I hate it because being aware and being thoughtful do not exist on a binary. Identifying as an ally feels loaded with a self-congratulation that will never be earned. Because there are not simply allies and non-allies. Maybe there are people who try and people who don’t and even a third category of people who are actively malicious. But those categories blend together and are far more complicated than just “good” and “bad.” My relationship to race and my whiteness was completely changed by something Heben Nigatu said on an episode of Another Round. I wish I remembered the exact episode so I could properly quote her, but the gist was that white people need to accept the discomfort of never doing the right thing. There is not a selection of books to read or community service to do or protests to attend or podcasts to listen to that should assuage discomfort. Because white supremacy and our white supremacist society should make us uncomfortable. I have to live in that. And the discomfort I may feel is nothing compared to what someone directly affected is feeling.

With the exception of the two over the top bullies I’m sure every straight character in Love, Simon would identify as an ally. And my point is not to go through one by one and explain why they aren’t. Rather, like the scene I first mentioned, it’s to call attention to the inequity of our society and therefore reveal the impossibility of any one individual existing outside that framework.

Let’s start with Vice Principal Worth. I still distinguish principal vs. principle by remembering “the principal is your pal” and that absurdity is Worth’s dream. He prides himself on being relatable and supportive. And while relatable was never in the cards, he does at least appear supportive. A sign in his office reads, “Open Door, Open Ears.” But from the beginning he tries to relate to Simon guy to guy, which, to him, means heterosexual guy to heterosexual guy. He wears a pride flag pin after Simon is outed but he also feels the need to clarify to Simon that he isn’t gay. He then automatically assumes Simon must be dating the other out gay person at the school. But most of the audience recognizes all of this. Worth is the cartoonish ally every good liberal knows not to be. That’s mostly because we’re in Simon’s point of view. A lot of people act like Worth or have certain Worth-y moments and wouldn’t otherwise realize it.

It’s a bit more complicated with Simon’s family. His dad makes a similar mistake to Worth in trying to relate to Simon through heterosexuality. He makes a crack about Gigi Hadid to show he’s the cool dad and references homosexuality on TV in a way that isn’t flat out offensive but shows a clear othering. When Simon comes out his dad doesn’t say much of anything and he looks clearly upset. Simon’s mom also doesn’t say much. And Simon’s sister suggests he deny his outing to avoid the high school drama. All three of them eventually have very heartwarming moments with Simon where they make sure he knows he’s accepted and loved. But during those initial days and during the years of seemingly innocuous heteronormativity, Simon had to seriously contend with the possibility that his family wouldn’t love him for who he is. There are certainly ways even this family could be better, but they could never be perfect, because our world is what it is. The film allows the audience to feel what it’s like to be Simon which allows them to see that his family’s “pretty damn good” reactions are still really upsetting and insufficient.

And this leads us to his friends. One of my favorite things about the movie is how harsh Simon’s friends are on him. I’m not going to get into all the plot mechanics, but Simon is being blackmailed and in order to not be outed he manipulates his friends in some really cruel ways (there’s a reason multiple teen comedies based their plots on Shakespeare). I was worried once he came out his friends would understand why he did what he did and forgive him. But they don’t. They confront him and he apologizes and they stay mad at him for a bit. I not only felt like that was realistic, but it also felt fair. And so I was totally surprised when a cis, straight friend of mine disagreed. He even went as far as saying to Simon’s best friend, “get the fuck over yourself.” That’s when I realized what this movie had accomplished. It actually showed how incredibly difficult being in the closet and coming out is even for someone with all the privilege in the world. It also showed how a heteronormative society will not only hurt a queer person but all of the people in their life. It says both of those things, but prioritizes the experience of the queer person and that’s what’s so important.

I’m so lucky to be a Simon. My coming out has been mostly met with love and acceptance from friends, from family, and, as of last week, even from my employer. But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. Because until our society is less heteronormative and cisnormative even the most well meaning person still falls short. And this isn’t meant as a criticism of individuals. It’s a criticism of the society. Nigatu’s point was not that white people should give up trying to be better, just that perfection is unattainable when our surroundings are so imperfect. So straight and cis people, keep being or trying to be like the people in Simon’s life. That’s the first step to changing this society. But I’m also really glad this movie exists. I’m glad it exists for its over the top, melt your heart, make you cry love story. And I’m glad it exists for showing that even this version of coming out still has its realities.

#Love Simon #Coming Out #LGBTQIA #allies #ally #allyship #Nick Robinson #heternormativity #cisnormativity #transgender

Redefining Romance with The Shape of Water and On Body and Soul

By the time Katharine and I met in November of 2015 I didn’t care about romance. This word that had consumed me since I was a child no longer made any sense. My celibate adolescence was spent scribbling love poems and consuming movies like (500) Days of Summer, Beginners, and Annie Hall. But I’d since realized my poetry sucked and that Woody Allen’s body of work was nothing to admire. I was casually sleeping with a close friend and grappling with the absence of a core part of my identity. Ever since I was four and told my sister’s best friend I had a crush on her, liking girls and turning that like into a personal narrative was part of me. It was my way of being close to women and how I’d come to terms with what kind of man I could be. I wasn’t effeminate, I was sensitive. I wasn’t girly, I was romantic.

And yet after years of crafting yarns from ordinary, or even non-existent, experiences, I was about to have my first truly cinematic meet-cute. Katharine and I met at Sleep No More during her very first performance. A friend of mine who worked there had been trying to get me to go for nearly a year and finally this night, for some reason, I caved. During the show I had four one-on-ones, immersive show lingo for private moments with performers, and I was more than satisfied with my experience. The show was just about over when I saw her, sitting on a suitcase at the end of an empty hall. Unsure if she was a performer or a tired audience member I slowly crept toward her. She stood up, took my hand, and we had a one-on-one. Later at the bar, my friend introduced us and we spent the rest of the night talking. A week later we were on a train together headed upstate.

This story is romantic in every way I could’ve hoped for as a teenager. And yet what I remember most from these weeks is the joy I felt getting to know Katharine. I was honestly a bit embarrassed having met her at Sleep No More since that place thrives off of people’s sometimes toxic fantasies. Especially because none of it felt that grand. I didn’t even think our first conversation could possibly be romantic until my friend asked me why I didn’t get her number. Our first date was upstate because she mentioned wanting to get out of the city before it got too cold and it seemed like a good idea. I didn’t know that she was the one. It was a date. I’d been on many first dates and planned to go on more. And while I did like her, I wasn’t obsessive. I liked her more on our second date than our first, and on our third date than our second, and today I’m more obsessed with her than I’ve ever been before.

There is a really simple explanation for this. Something about maturity and real, adult relationships. But this alone assumes that what I’d grown out of was romance, when in fact what I was really grappling with was male, heteronormative romance. I’d confronted the behaviors I’d copied for so long and realized they didn’t fit with who I was. But now what? A year and a half after Katharine and I met I came out to her and began transitioning.

***

It’s been a relief coming out, like I was holding my breath my entire life and can finally inhale and exhale like everyone else. So much of my life makes sense now in a way that it never did and I never thought it would. And one of the most rewarding aspects of my personal transition has been transitioning Katharine and I’s relationship as well, going from a seemingly heterosexual relationship to an openly lesbian one. There’s both liberation and emptiness in a relationship that is free from the vast majority of messaging received. Everything from fairy tales to Cosmo to the oeuvre of a known child molester has a lot less power when none of that stuff was ever meant to represent you. But there’s a reason why people enjoy that stuff. It feels good to be seen and it’s a relief to sink into fantasy. And while I’ve embraced the general umbrella by binge watching The L Word with Katharine and finally understanding my deep connection to Fun Home, Carol, and The Watermelon Woman, there’s still a searching for a love story like ours. A love story that feels outside of normalcy, that feels confusing and difficult and complicated yet ultimately just as fantastical and lovely. And it can’t just be solved by, say, a trans love story. I’d certainly welcome more of those (for now shout out to Sense8 and Her Story), but it’s deeper than that.

***

Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a ridiculous movie. That it’s currently the Oscar frontrunner is honestly astounding. Yes, it’s impeccably shot, designed, scored, written, and acted, but it’s also a movie that I’m at a loss to defend. On his podcast Keep It wonderful culture writer Ira Madison III was making fun of the movie and impersonated Octavia Spencer’s character with a simple “You fucking that fish?” I burst out laughing. Because it’s hilarious and because the scene in the movie isn’t actually that far off!

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, the film is about a mute woman named Eliza (the always great Sally Hawkins) who works as a cleaner at a government facility during the Cold War. The US attains a creature simply called “Amphibian Man” and Eliza falls in love with him (them?). So it’s sort of like Beauty and the Beast if Beast never really spoke, there was explicit sex, and Belle had a black best friend and a gay neighbor. There’s also a subplot with some Russians. And a musical number.

It’s goofy as hell and yet I spent a large portion of the movie in tears. It reached its scaly arm down my throat and grabbed my heart. Any moment where the Amphibian Man was on screen I had a voice in my head that just kept repeating, “That’s me. That’s me.” Now I don’t know what it says about where I’m at in my transition that I have an easier time relating to a fish man than Jamie Clayton’s awesome trans hacker on Sense8, but alas it’s the truth. Because if I’m being honest, I usually don’t feel like I’m being perceived as a woman, I rarely even feel like I’m being perceived as trans, but I do feel like I’m being perceived as a creature.

Watching Eliza not only fall in love with Amphibian Man but be the instigator of the relationship felt revolutionary and comforting in equal measure. Returning to Beauty and the Beast (also King Kong, also everything like this), it’s usually the creature that kidnaps or captures the virginal lady and has to convince her to love him. This always feels a little gross and undercuts the message of acceptance. But here Eliza is a sexual woman. From the beginning it’s shown that masturbation is a part of her daily routine. She doesn’t fall for the Amphibian Man because of a repressed desire. She falls for the creature because she feels a connection. She wants to help them live a life of freedom alongside her. She wants to teach the Amphibian Man how to live in her world because it would bring her happiness.

Katharine didn’t rescue me from a lab. But she has helped me escape… something. She has helped introduce me to a confusing world of feminine expectations and desires that feel comfortable and natural and also confusing and impossible. And above all else she has done this because she loves me. She isn’t still dating me because she’s a good person (no matter what other cis-es like to suggest). She’s still dating me because she sees me for who I am and loves me. I’m insecure about a lot of things, but I know this to be true and it means everything to me.

***

Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul, another Oscar nominee (a longshot in the Foreign Film category) has faced a similar reaction to Del Toro’s film. It won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, yet almost every review even when positive points out the film’s silly weirdness. Also a love story, this time between two humans, Enyedi’s first film in 18 years is about a pair of employees at a slaughterhouse who realize that they’re somehow having the exact same dream about two deer. The people are Endre, the emotionally detached manager with a disabled left arm, and Mária, the new quality control inspector who is autistic and quickly becomes the butt of her coworkers’ jokes.

Again, I understand the reaction. The very concept of a love story at a slaughterhouse (featuring graphic scenes of slaughter) is already a stretch. Add the hokiness of nocturnal destiny, a subplot involving stolen bull Viagra, some deeply unpleasant narrative turns, and a formal approach as reserved as its leads, it’s unsurprising that many don’t know how to receive this film. It’s too open-hearted for the arthouse yet it’s not exactly fine-tuned for Nicholas Sparks. But for me, this film lived up to its title and infiltrated my body and soul, I connected deeply, and wept softly. And I’ve been unable to shake it, that initial feeling only growing since the first viewing.

There is an obvious contrast between the dream sequences with Endre and Mária as deer and the real life sequences of animals in cages having their guts torn out. It’s easy to read this simply as a statement between the purity of their love and the harshness of the rest of the world. But this ignores the unreality of the deer scenes and the specificity of animal imagery. Because a main thread through the film is that Mária and Endre don’t know how to be animals. Or in other words: Endre does not know how to be a man and Mária does not know how to be a woman.

The two male foils to Endre are his best friend, Jenö, and a new hire, Sanyi. Jenö is married and despite proselytizing the merits of keeping women in their place he does whatever his wife wants. Endre watches with the remove of a scientist as Jenö carries out a charade where he is able to assert his supposed masculinity while filling his more passive role. Sanyi, on the other hand, is naturally alpha, flirting with every female co-worker and ignoring his male superiors. Endre seems to pity Jenö and resent Sanyi, but it quickly becomes clear that who he has the most disgust for is himself. He grows wildly defensive when he is caught ogling a woman, insisting that he simply looked like all men would. The woman didn’t even seem to notice and doesn’t seem to care. He then declares multiple times later in the film that he would prefer to remove love and sex from his life rather than deal with the impossibility of filling the role of “man” in these encounters. He’s given up on it all until he meets Mária.

Mária also has two foils, Klára, a voluptuous psychologist who interviews everyone after the bull Viagra incident, and Zsóka, the oldest employee at the slaughterhouse. Klára is everything Mária is not. She’s comfortable in her body and comfortable around men. She expresses her feelings, sometimes even to the point of aggression. When Mária retells Endre’s dream, she is unable to push back against Klára’s anger or defend herself. Zsóka, who is even more comfortable with her sexuality than Klára, is much kinder to Mária. Instead of judging, she attempts to coach her in the ways of womanhood. This, of course, means posture, how to walk and talk, and, most importantly, what clothes to wear. Mária attempts to master these skills, like she does later with sex, with an obsessive precision.

Mária’s experience of gender is intrinsically tied to her autism. Her lack of awareness in how to act as a woman is similar to her struggle to generally fit in as a person. I’m hesitant to find symbolism in her character or draw parallels between our lives since her experience is so different from my own. But in my unqualified opinion the film treats Mária with a respect and fullness that leaves her as open to analysis and connection as any other character. It’s not autism that becomes ingrained in the semiotics of the film but rather the world around this one autistic character, the world around Mária. And I couldn’t help but feel parallels both to Endre’s attempts at manhood and Mária’s learning of womanhood. I couldn’t help but watch this relationship unfolding in a harsh world and think of my own. Mária and Endre’s budding romance faces plenty of conflict throughout the film but there’s an overwhelming feeling of destiny between them. The conflicts are not a result of their incongruity but rather the difficulties and pressures of their surroundings. Any conflicts within themselves are related to their individual difficulties with the world at large.

The dream sequences aren’t just beautiful and serene. They are otherworldly. Literally. The plane on which Mária and Endre connect is outside of real life. Their connection is dependent on both of them finding it within themselves to detach from their discomfort with society. In their dreams it is easy, but in life that’s really hard. Because it’s not healthy to completely detach (as fun as rainy days cuddling can be). The necessity is being able to carry on normal life with your partner and face a mutual unbelonging from our world. From our ableist world. From our gendered world. From our heteronormative world. From our transphobic world.

My connection to this film is reliant both on its silly romanticism and its severe honesty. Because that’s how I feel. Being with Katharine feels like it’s on another plane of being, in how I feel about her, in how happy it makes me to be near her, and yet real life can be really hard. This film shows the beauty in getting through that hardship with another person, the pressures it can place on a relationship, and the ultimate reward of working through it all together.

***

The Shape of Water and On Body and Soul have allowed me to articulate something about myself and my relationship that I’d previously failed to do. They taught me that romance, not just love but gooey-eyed, goofy capital R Romance, can be for all of us. That romantic doesn’t have to mean arrogant poems or chasing after girls in the rain. It can mean connecting with somebody when you feel less than human, it can mean facing a society that doesn’t want you with the help of another. And, most importantly, that this can all be silly and over-the-top in a way that will make half the audience laugh and half the audience cry. These films destroyed a line between romance and mature relationship that I’d taken as fact even though my own relationship is such an obvious combination of the two. They allowed me to see myself in a new way, to see Katharine in a new way, and to appreciate our relationship even more than I already did.

So I’ll say it here. On social media, like an adolescent that will someday regret such an embarrassing overshare. I’m deeply, madly, overwhelmingly in love.

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

#Valentine's Day #The Shape of Water #On Body and Soul #love stories #queer love #Guillermo Del Toro #Ildikó Enyedi #LGBTQIA #trans #transgender

Paddington’s Transphobia

I write on this topic knowing the average cis response will be accusations of over-sensitivity, questions about policing comedy, and a desperate plea to let something, anything, heartwarming children’s film Paddington and its sequel Paddington 2 of all things, be pure.

And while I’d fight back in full force if these arguments were made on behalf of say Ace Ventura’s transphobia, when it comes to these two movies I don’t fully disagree. Part of my trans experience is being very self-doubting and self-critical when bothered by things I feel like I should be able to just ignore.

But, despite my best efforts, it consumed my experience of these two movies. And a week after seeing the sequel I’m still thinking about it. So bear with me.

***

For anyone who doesn’t know, Paddington, is based on a series of children’s books about an anthropomorphic bear from Peru called Paddington who comes to London and loves marmalade. Both movies have a really positive message about immigration and general human kindness. The second film even has some commentary about prison reform. Sure, they are very traditionally British and very white and aren’t exactly the true pinnacle of progressive values. But as far as children’s films go they are very positive and also simply very good movies.

Alas, this brings me to one small scene in the first film. I’m not going to get into the winding plot, but the father of the family Paddington is staying with dresses like a cleaning lady in order to break into the Geographers Guild archives. The male guard not realizing this “woman” is a man in drag flirts with him. He calls him hot and when they’re fleeing says, “Stop that sexy woman!”

Part of the reason this may seem so innocuous is because of how common it is in comedy, especially British comedy. There are two main sources for the “humor” in scenes like these. The first is how apparently terrible the man is at being a woman. We’re supposed to laugh at how absurd Hugh Bonneville, in this case, looks in a dress and makeup. The second joke is that this other guy is wildly attracted to the “woman.” It’s funny that someone could think this man looks like a woman and that he could be attracted to that woman.

Because I’m 5′5, fairly petite, and upper middle class there’s a decent chance that at some point I’ll be “passable” as cis. But this isn’t a privilege a lot of trans people have. Maybe they just naturally look more masculine than I do (or are a trans man who is naturally feminine) or maybe they don’t have the money that I (barely) do for stuff like hair removal or surgery or maybe they don’t have the access to healthcare and hormones that I do or maybe they don’t feel safe starting a medical transition and only want to present truthfully in certain circumstances or maybe they’re non-binary and a beard and a dress is what makes them feel most comfortable. All these possibilities and more are valid. None of us deserve to feel less than. And speaking personally, even though being “passable” may be in my future, transitioning is a long process and I’m very much not there yet. I shouldn’t have to feel badly during the many years of my medical transition.

***

The first time I wore a dress in public I thought about Monty Python. At home, I felt great. Even though I was wearing my girlfriend’s dress so it didn’t really fit and I was foolish enough to put on heels, it felt right. I hadn’t started electrolysis so my 2 o’clock shadow was going strong and I hadn’t figured out how to do my makeup yet, but I really, truly thought I looked pretty good. The dress seemed to shape my body in a way that looked feminine in my dimly lit closet and the possibility of being an attractive woman felt real to me for the first time. I rushed out of my apartment worried about being seen by my landlord (I still do this) and stumbled down my block. Regret started bubbling up inside me and then I locked eyes with someone. It was like the dream where you suddenly realize you’re naked. My mind just started flashing: Monty Python. Monty Python. Monty Python.

British comedy certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on the man in a dress trope and Monty Python isn’t the only British comedy. But it’s such a staple of their work and it’s pretty much always the joke itself. That’s the thing. The very act of someone who looks male wearing a dress is supposed to be funny. And when I wore a dress I felt like a joke and still when I wear a dress I feel like a joke. There’s a reason I tend to prefer skirts.

***

The real life feminist bookstore where Portlandia shot their Feminist Bookstore sketches released a statement in 2016 that included the following:

The Women and Women First segments that are filmed at In Other Words are trans-antagonistic and trans-misogynist and have only become more offensive as the show goes on. ‘LOL Fred Armisen in a wig and a dress’ is a deeply shitty joke whose sole punchline throws trans femmes under the bus by holding up their gender presentation for mockery and ridicule.

I’m not aware if anyone who works at this bookstore is trans and if they are I understand their response. Men wearing women’s clothes is such a common comedic trope I don’t blame someone for being sensitive to this issue. But I personally want to push back against this claim. Yes, Fred Armisen plays a woman in these sketches, as he does in many other sketches (Carrie Brownstein plays multiple men throughout the series as well). But the joke is not that he looks funny in women’s clothes. The sketches are poking fun at a certain type of radical feminist that lacks self-awareness despite very clear world-awareness.

The second episode of their current season, the 8th and last, had the feminists try to start a women’s health clinic in a shared work space. The joke is not that Armisen is playing a woman. The joke is they have no medical experience and a shared work space is an absurd place to have any type of health clinic. That’s the difference.

***

Last Friday, I only had work in the morning so I planned to do laundry, go to therapy, and then go see Paddington 2. I liked the first film a lot save that one scene and the sequel was getting even better reviews (it’s currently the best reviewed movie in Rotten Tomatoes history). My usual laundromat was closed so I lugged my clothes to another one nearby. I was wearing a gender neutral sweater, jeans, and sneakers. My only queer giveaways were my painted nails and the women’s clothes among my laundry (half were my girlfriend’s anyways). So unlike a lot of moments in my day, I did not walk in with my guard up at all.

“Gays will not stop shoving themselves in our faces. I’m so tired of it. They’re everywhere. Even in commercials during soap operas. Even at the laundromat.” A middle aged woman on the phone was staring right at me. My heart sunk as I tried to think of something pithy and cool to say. But instead I kept my mouth shut and tried to put my clothes in the washer as quickly as possible. The woman went on to tell her phone, “When judgement day comes they’re going to act like they didn’t know better. But they do. They know better.”

As far as harassment goes, this was fairly innocuous. I didn’t feel physically threatened by the woman and I was clocked as gay, not trans, which is automatically safer. But it stuck with me because I felt bad about how sad this silly woman made me feel. I felt bad that I hadn’t thought of something clever to say to her. I felt bad that I hadn’t said something to stick up for myself and my community when in a situation where it was safe to do so.

I texted a friend who had already seen Paddington 2 asking if there was anything racist or homophobic because I was particularly not in the mood for bullshit. He responded: Hm there’s a joke carried over from the first film where a security guard is attracted to Hugh Grant in drag after being attracted to Hugh Bonneville in drag in the first film... That’s all I can think of.

Seriously???? They carried the joke over?? After therapy I was feeling better, so I stuck with my plan and did see the film. I waited anxiously through the first half for the scene to arrive. Thankfully it was much quicker this time around. Hugh Grant is dressed as a nun and the guard just comments that he saw an unusually attractive nun. If the other scene wasn’t in the first film I would have cringed but not written a damn essay about it. Still, the desire to bring that joke back shows that the director and co-writer Paul King certainly hasn’t realized the error of his ways in the last three years. And how could he? The only mention I could find of the first film’s transphobia was the movie review in the San Francisco Chronicle. Much more attention was paid to the harsh rating the scene and others got the film because of “innuendo.”

***

I don’t think Paul King is going to read my under-100-followers Tumblr, but I want to do my part in making this a part of the conversation around the films. Because the argument that these are just kids films and shouldn’t be taken seriously is really the opposite of how I feel. My theatre was filled with children who whether they knew it or not were absorbing what was on screen. That’s why it’s so great that the overall message of the film is pro-immigration and overall kindness. But it’s a statistical fact that multiple trans kids went to see Paddington and Paddington 2. And probably even more gay kids who might absorb the joke simply as “It’s funny that this man finds another man attractive.”

Those kids matter. And someday one of those kids shouldn’t have to think about Paddington the first time she wears a dress in public.

#Paddington #Paddington 2 #transphobia #trans representation #queer representation #Monty Python #Portlandia #Hugh Bonneville #Hugh Grant #Paul King

Even though it ended less than a decade ago, The L Word was made on a different planet. That’s because the last ten years have seen changes in the LGBTQIA community that could fill decades. The show is endlessly fascinating and I’m sure I’ll write about it again once I finish (I’m currently two seasons in), but I quickly wanted to touch upon the two probably trans characters introduced in the first season. I say probably trans because the characters on the show don’t seem to have any grasp on the complexities of gender (hell, they can barely handle Alice being bisexual) so the word “transgender” is almost never used.

The first character is named Lisa and they identify as a male lesbian. The main cast of characters doesn’t really know what to do with Lisa but they’re fairly welcoming. Alice dates them briefly and there’s a scene that at the time may have been intended as humorous but now reads as really tragic. Alice and Lisa are having sex at a party and Lisa wants to use a strap-on. Alice gets annoyed saying that he has the real thing and that he needs to accept he’s a man. They break up soon after.

The other character is Ivan. First introduced as a drag king, it becomes increasingly clear that he prefers to present as male full time. He and Kit, who is straight, have a really touching relationship that ultimately doesn’t work out not because Kit isn’t open to Ivan as a man, but because Ivan is embarrassed when Kit walks in on him before he’s gotten dressed.

My girlfriend started watching the show before me and warned that the show was backwards enough about gender that it may be more upsetting than fun. But I haven’t found that to be the case at all. The reason why these two dated portrayals of transness still work is because the show treats both characters as people. There is certainly a lot of transphobia among the other characters, but the show doesn’t make any commentary. It just presents these people that feel real and grounded and gives them real emotional moments. When Alice tells Lisa they’re a man, the look on Lisa’s face is heartbreaking. Ivan’s embarrassment feels equally understandable and misguided. Kit isn’t judging, but that can’t be said for the rest of this world. So while characters may make comments that sting, it feels very honest to the time, and Lisa and Ivan are never the butt of any jokes.

When The L Word comes back this year or next I hope they add a trans lesbian to the main cast of characters. But even in the original show it’s clear that trans people have always been around. We maybe weren’t talked about explicitly but we were present enough to have two storylines in the first season of a 2004 lesbian-focused show.

#The L Word #Lisa #Ivan Aycock #queer representation #transgender #LGBTQIA

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