Queer Issue: On the Upcoming Stonewall Film and the Absence of Historical Transgender or Transsexual Characters on Film

By now, the fact that the soon to be released Stonewall movie directed by Roland Emmerich minimizes the contributions of transgender women of color and that key figures such as Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major are entirely absent, is fairly well known.

However let's recap things briefly. While the film is yet to be released, and thus could look very different from the previews and promotional material, the signs are not currently all that promising. The main cast is mainly white and the trailer focuses on a white gay male character who appears to be responsible for (in the movie) actually starting the riots. Although, I never heard the version where a brick thrown threw a window was what started the riots, but um, okay.

Admittedly, the trailer could be misleading, and the cast, as billed, is not reflective of who actually gets to play major parts in the film. Also, there is a character listed as Marsha P. Johnson on the film's IMDB, which will mean that Marsha P. Johnson will be the second transgender woman of color to have a character based on her appear in a major motion picture. The first (that I am aware of) being Lady Chablis in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

I have often bemoaned the straightening out of historical LGB characters when they are presented on the silver screen. A process in which bisexual or pansexual characters will either be presented as engaging in only heterosexual copulings, or the same sex partners will be minimized or ignored. If they character was gay or lesbian, then they will either wind up bisexual on screen or straight, depending.

However, I have increasingly come to notice the actual absence of characters on film based on historical or real life transgender or transsexual people.

Thus I tried putting together a list of all mainstream feature films that actually featured such characters. Documentaries are excluded. Stories based on a real life story where the transgender character was fictional were also excluded (ie: Dallas Buyers Club).

Here is the list:

-Queen Christina (1933)
-The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970)
-Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
-Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1977)
-Boys Don't Cry (1999)

Upcoming Movies:
-Stonewall (2015)
-The Danish Girl (2015)

I may be missing a few. I can't claim to be an expert on foreign films for example. And many early silent movies have been lost altogether. But even if there are a few examples that I'm missing, that's still a pretty pathetic list. If there are any, let me know, and I'll add them in.

But as it stands, of these examples, one is the story of a trans-man who ends up dead (Boys Don't Cry). Two are famous for primarily being transgender or transsexual (The Christine Jorgensen Story and Queen Christina. The remaining two characters are incidental to the main story (Dog Day Afternoon and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil).

Not that there is anything wrong with presenting the stories of tragedy within the LGBTQ or cases where the character is famous for being LGBTQ, but there needs to be a point where we move past that.

Consider as a point of comparison, the number of movies based on the lie of Ed Gein (who was not in any way transgender in real life), in which characters who were based on him (or his murder spree) are shown cross dressing or attempting to obtain sex change operations. There are 5 of them that I am aware of. (Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe.) Add in sequels and the Gus Van Sant Psycho remake, and these films easily outnumber the films featuring historical transgender characters.

It's worth pointing out that there isn't exactly an absence of historical transgender or transsexual people to tell stories about. The fact that Sylvia Rivera has never shown up in a mainstream film in spite of (almost now) two films about the Stonewall Riots, is itself disheartening.
A few examples:
-Alan L. Hart: Saved thousand of lives by innovating the use of x-rays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.
-King Ashurbanipal: Developed one of the largest collection of cuneiform documents ever and had a card catalog to find material. In plain talk: He invented the library.
-Karen Ulane: Was fired by Eastern Airlines for undergoing gender affirmation surgery and sued the airline in court before dying an airplane crash.
-We'Wha: A famous Zuni Native American who met President Groover Cleveland.
-Lynn Conway: Computer scientist whose innovations are still used in modern computers and transgender activist.
-Chevalier d'Eon: French spy and member of the Secret du Roi.
-Elagabalus: Roman Emperor who developed such a scandalous reputation that he had damnatio memoriae (the erasure of a Roman's official public record and very rarely done) applied to him.

At the end of the day, it's important to note that the stories of people across the LGBTQ spectrum are told (this should go without saying right?). We are starting to see inroads being made with prominent films featuring cisgender LGB characters based on historical figures getting made and widespread distribution. The Imitation Game being the most recent example. However, the lack of portrayals of historical transgender or transsexual individuals on film (and arguably elsewhere) is an issue that needs to be rectified.

Queer Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending
Directors: The Wachowskis
Writers: The Wachowskis
Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatumn, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton

Overview
Jupiter Ascending is a mess and not in a good way. This represents the weakest entry into The Wachowskis filmography that I have had to opportunity to see, due to this film falling far shorter than usual with regards to the high ambitions that The Wachowskis usually set for the stories that they tell. Then there is the tricky matter of the main villain, Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne), falling prey to sexist and transphobic tropes.

Synopsis
Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is an ordinary young woman, working a dead end job as a cleaning lady in her family's business. When her cousin encourages her to donate her eggs at a fertility clinic, she goes, only for the medical attendants to turn into aliens and try to kill her. Fortunately, she is then kidnapped-slash-rescued by a strange being who calls himself Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) who informs her that her reality is a computer generated dreamworld designed to turn human beings into batteries, or uh rather... that earth is a farm maintained by aliens who harvest humans so they can have eternal youth. It also turns out that there are a lot of planets like that out there. Oh and we humans were genetically engineered by the aliens with their DNA, which they spliced onto a native species in order to create us. Also, Jupiter is the reincarnation of the Abrasax siblings mother, who was murdered. And Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) is the one who inherited Earth and wants to start the harvesting, like right now. Meanwhile Jupiter and Caine are (supposedly) falling in love, while Jupiter tries to claim her title to Earth.

The Queering
There are times when Jupiter Ascending almost manages to achieve the ambitious goals set out for itself by the Wachowskis, but the end result is more disaster than the intriguing space adventure it aims for. There are parts that show off an intricately developed universe, complex characters, the development of philosophical themes, and even bits of intriguing social commentary. Then there are parts that are just confusing and too often, the Wachowskis simply seem to want to show off that they know how to handle a special effects budget.

In the past, the Wachowskis have shown the ability to combine the examination of philosophical themes, even while blowing stuff up real good. Even their post-Matrix material is better than the reputation it has received. Cloud Atlas suffered a bit from over-editing, but still managed to hold itself together and The Matrix sequels while a step down from the first, still managed to tell coherent and engaging stories.

Jupiter Ascending on the other hand, does not hold together so well. Much of the important plot points feel rushed, the big action scenes tend towards the incoherent and confusing, and the universe all of this is set in feels half developed. In spite of the fact that the story drags, there were times when I wanted more time spent explaining how this particular universe worked and to character development as well. The relationships and motivations of the Abrasax siblings in particular felt under-developed (a situation not helped much by the fact that they always spoke softly in half-whispers with each other). Furthermore, the fact that we are never shown exactly what a harvesting of a planet looks likely (merely the results) makes audience investment in the central conflict that much harder.

In Jupiter Ascending's defense, there are a couple of interesting ideas presented, even if they are half developed. The concept of creating sentient life to lengthen the lifespans of other beings, is not that far removed from the creation of savior siblings, where a child is created via in vitro fertilization and is expected to donate cells and tissues for an older sibling with a fatal disease. In other words, the technology for doing what is presented as science fiction here, not only exists, but is already being utilized. I'm not sure if the Wachowskis actually intended for their to be any parallels here, but they are worth pointing out.

As it is, the characters and situation itself are both interesting, even if they are only half developed.

However, there is one awkward element that I want to point out. The main villain, Balem, is presented as being both extremely effeminate and having an obsession with his mother (and thus by default, he also has an obsession with Jupiter Jones). Note: Lana Wachowski said that the story was inspired by The Odessey but with regards to greek mythology, the Oedipal Complexing going on is lot more obvious than anything else. Anyways, the point being is that Balem is queer coded in some pretty obvious ways.

Now, one trope regarding transgender villains that I have pointed out before, is that trans villains (who are almost always woman) are always presented as not only deceptive, but as actively stealing the bodies and or identities (among other things) of woman. Now, while Balem is not presented as transgender, he is still an obviously effeminate, queer coded villain, who actively seeks to steal an entire planet from a female character. Between the use of human bodies to create a fountain-of-youth type substance and Balem's mother obsession, several uncomfortable parallels end up being created with extremely transphobic films such as Psycho (where the titular character is also obsessed with his mother) and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (an alternate take on the story where Dr. Jekyll uses female hormones in order lengthen his lifespan and winds up killing numerous female sex workers in order to obtain them)

What makes this particularly awkward is that Lana Wachowski (who co-directed along side her brother Andy Wachowski) is herself transgender.

Admittedly, there are a few problems with trying to paint Jupiter Ascending into a transphobic corner. As close as it comes to paralleling one transphobic trope, there are numerous others that it avoids. Balem never engages in deception to obtain what he wants, but instead shows himself resorting to force to get it. Instead, there is only one Abrasax sibling who resorts to deception, and he was shown engaging in sex play with several female looking alien type characters. Furthermore, Balem doesn't want to steal anyone's body to assist with a gender transition type process (as was done by the main villain in The X-Files: I Want to Believe but merely to extend his life. Even if the specific person he is trying to steal the planet from is a woman, the bodies that the fountain-of-youth substance is made from are going to inevitably have to come from males, females, and anyone otherwise outside the gender binary. Thus, due to this generality, one could argue that the trope of "trans women stealing from women" is technically avoided.

When I first saw the previews for Jupiter Ascending part of me was interested in seeing a female lead in an action heavy film being made by a direction team of whom one half is a woman. As it is, whenever a woman is made the lead of an action film, it inevitably ends up being a member of (as Mr. Cranky put it in his review of Underworld: Evolution) "'hot chicks in skimpy or skin-tight outfits beating the crap out of things' genre."

However, while Mila Kunis plays the role with spunk and determination and the character does get to display both a degree of autonomy and show off her intellect (she manages to memorize most of the universes legal code in what could not have been more than a few hours time). There is even a bit during the climax where she is shown risking life and limb to remove members of her family from a dangerous situation. However, for all the ways Jupiter Jones parallels "The Hero's Quest" (that is, the story hero who comes from a humble background to be revealed to have an important role in grand events) she still tends to wind up a mere damsel in distress to be rescued by Caine.

As it is, he potential for Jupiter Jones to be a female hero is wasted, like so many of the other potentially intriguing elements of this story.

Recommendation
Not quite worth ascending to Jupiter in order to see, but might be worth taking a reasonably priced commercial space flight (if those were to ever be developed at some point in the near future).

The Rating
2 and 1/2 stars out of 4.

Trailer


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Queer Issue: The Box Trolls, Same Sex Parents, and the Never Ending Parade of Gender Transgressive Villains.

In the grand scheme of things, there are plenty of little details that can escape my attention. I didn't know until last night, for example, that the original teaser trailer for The Boxtrolls featured same sex parenting.

The trailer opens with an anonymous narrator intoning, "Sometimes there's a mother, sometimes a mother and a father, sometimes there's a father and a father, sometimes both fathers are mothers."

It appears then that the makers of ParaNorman (the first children's movie to feature an openly gay character) are still willing to continue pushing against homophobic boundaries.

This is a good thing.

Here is the trailer for those who are curious:


My partner and I watched The Boxtrolls the other night and while it at times evokes some of the better elements of ParaNorman, there were some other elements I want to comment on. I don't plan on writing a review, as I was watching it while playing on my laptop and thus was not fully paying attention to the film

The basic story revolves around Eggs, a human boy being raised by Boxtrolls, a sentient group of trolls who are vilified and hunted by the citizens of Cheesebridge. Thus it would appear that the references to same sex parenting in the teaser trailer are rather apt.

This too is good.

However, in a plot twist, it turns out that the head Snatcher (the group tasked with hunting down the Boxtrolls) is also a cross-dressing cabaret singer, who uses his secondary identity to help vilify the Boxtrolls via over the top theatrical performances.

This is not a good thing.

On one hand we are fortunately spared any over the top transphobic Ace Ventura-esque reactions. Eggs doesn't react much of all to the revelation, nor does any one else. And in what I think is a first, this is a first cross-dresser baddie who is shown stealing anything from any female characters. The closest he comes is trying to steal a truly feminine white hat from the mayor.

As it is, the White Hats (which represent the upper crust of Cheesebridge and are presented in the most fay terms possible) are what provide motivation to the Snatchers. As it is, the Snatchers work assiduously to join the ranks of the White Hats, and thus the Snatchers are the ones who spend the most time fanning the flames of hatred against the Boxtrolls.

There are definitely a few interesting subtexts regarding class roles going on here.

On the other hand, I am not sure what the point of the whole The-Head-Snatcher-Sometimes-Dresses-Up-Like-A-Woman sub-plot was. It does, however, do a pretty good job of reinforcing the idea that trans people are deceptive. In fact, deceptiveness is pretty much the character's defining character trait. When Eggs first shows up on the surface of Cheesebridge, and sees the Snatchers putting on his anti-Boxtroll propaganda piece, his immediate reaction to the drag performance is to label it as fraudulent.

In fact, Eggs attempting to reveal the head snatcher as a "fraud" pretty much sums up the rest of the movie. The final scene of the movie has Eggs exhorting the head Snatcher to "stay true to his own nature" and that it doesn't matter what the Snatcher wears or eats.

This is *not* a good subtext.

In fact, it's a pretty shitty subtext, precisely given the constant stream of transphobic rhetoric that transgender people should "stay true to their nature" and not try to live as the gender they identify as and instead live as the gender they were assigned by society.

Honestly, I don't know what more to say about all of this. ParaNorman was groundbreaking, and the same can be said about the trailer for The Boxtrolls. Too bad the actual movie The Boxtrolls delivers such a problematic message.

Queer Review: Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Writers: Brian Clemens. Allegedly based on the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Luis Stevenson.
Cast: Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, Susan Brodrick, Dorothy Alison, Ivor Dean, Philip Madoc, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Tony Calvin

Overview
A gory retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the Hammer Horror film Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde inserts numerous transphobic elements into the classic tale and also uses the trope of female transgender villains as thieves of womanhood. The story also blends bits of history, such as references to the Jack the Ripper murders in addition to including the characters Burke and Hare.

Synopsis
Dr. Jekyll (Ralph Bates) has reached a point in his research where he believes that he can find a cure for most of the common disease and ailments that plague mankind. The catch is that he also realizes that it will take him many decades to complete this research. To solve this problem, he begins harvesting female hormones from deceased female corpses and begins utilizing two thugs by the names of Burke and Hare (Ivor Dean and Tony Calvin) do so. Instead of extending Dr. Jekylls' life, the hormones end up turning him into a woman (which leads to the requisite Hammer Horror nudity). He winds up explaining away his new identity as Ms. Hyde, Dr. Jekylls' sister, to his inquisitive neighbors. Ms. Hyde however, winds up completely dominating Dr. Jekyll and soon takes up stalking and murdering female prostitutes in the same manner as Jack the Ripper, just in order to maintain a fresh supply of female hormones.

The Queering
No one would mistake Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde for a historical bio pic revealing the "true" story behind the infamous Jack the Ripper murder cases. However, in that it clearly draws inspiration from historical events, can be seen writing queer identity onto a historical villain where no hard evidence of one previously existed. As I have previously noted, the only time history is guaranteed to remember someone as being a member of the LGBTQ community is when they kill someone. If you are queer and do something heroic, good luck with history remembering your true identity. However, being heinously evil is a great method for coming out of the closet, even for those who are 100% straight.

This is of course on top of all the more overtly transphobic elements. In this case, the filmmakers appear to be promoting the idea that transgender or transsexual woman can only become "true" woman by stealing something from other woman. In this case, female hormones. TERFs (trans exclusive radical feminists) will love it.

It is possible of course, to get lost in a debate as to whether or not the character of Dr. Jekyll is supposed to represent an actual transgender or transsexual individual. After all, he (the character) continues to maintain his masculine identity after starting the female hormones, rather than being written as an individual whose gender identity does not align with the one they were assigned to at birth. That is, the story is not about a "true" transgender or transsexual individual. However, I think this would ignore the obvious intent of stories involving gender non-conforming characters. That is, not only are they intended to associate gender non-conforming behavior with general evilness, but they also get to promote the idea that there is no "true" transgender or transsexual identity (along with other misguided mistruths about transgender and transsexual identity). To put it another way, the filmmakers get two shots off at transgender and transsexual identities for the price of one.

In a more philosophical vain, I found myself wondering about about the ethics of what Dr. Jekyll was attempting to do with his research. He believes he can find cures for most of the most common diseases and thus end a great deal of suffering for humanity. While this itself is a little arrogant, his solution for expanding his lifespan to complete his research is a little out there. Most researchers in the real world would do as much as they could in their natural life, then hope succeeding generations of scientists and doctors would be able to complete it. This being a Hammer Horror film, Dr. Jekyll naturally chooses the most horrific (not to mention unethical) option available to him. Although I suppose pointing out the absurdity of his motivations in this case makes about as much sense as using female hormones to extend ones lifespan because women live longer than men.

Recommendation
It would probably have been a lot more fun to have been operated on by Jack Ripper than to see the transphobic mess that is Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

The Rating
2 stars out of 4.

Trailer


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Queer Issue: Moral Dilemma: Would You Work For a Homophobic or Transphobic Employer?

Recently, my partner and myself moved from Pennsylvania to Minnesota, due to a job my partner was offered teaching Corrections for Minnesota State University. My partner is from the mid-west, so the cultural shock is not quiet so great for him, but I personally don't think that I will ever get used to hearing "soda" referred to as "pop". Also, I'm used to there always being hills or tall buildings around, so the wide open sky is a little off-putting for me. As it is, one reason for the lack of posts recently, is that I have been getting used to the area and am still trying to figure my way around a new location.

Otherwise, I'm doing fine and am finishing up my B.A. degree in Criminology for Wilkes University. I ended up having to take incompletes in two classes in the spring semester, so I'm finishing up my work for those while I search for a job here in Minnesota. I also am in the application process for a job at a local newspaper writing as a freelancer.

However, I am still looking elsewhere for work and recently came across an add for a staff position at a homeless shelter. At first glance the position looked good. The hours for the shifts they were hiring for were a little inconvenient, the pay was not great, but I figured it would be a good chance to obtain valuable experience working for a cause I believe is important. Plus I already have a lot of work and volunteer experience that would make me appear to be an ideal candidate for the position. Everything seemed set. Then I looked up the address in the ad.

As it turns out, the organization in question is one that has a history of discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community. The name of the organization isn't relevant, but for the record, this organization has both turned away homeless LGBTQ people seeking their services and there is at least one documented case of an employee being fired after coming out as LGBTQ that I am aware of. Also, at one point there was a link on their website to a virulently homophobic organization.

It is perhaps also worth pointing out that the link was taken down when it was pointed out to the organization and I could (if I wanted to name the organization in question) point to several news articles talking about the organization claiming they would mend their ways. However, a brief search turned up no news articles about the organization actually creating concrete policies to eliminate discrimination against the LGBTQ community, so it seems unlikely that such change has occurred.

Which brings me to my dilemma, it is possible that the local chapter does not discriminate against LGBTQ people and if the local head honcho was open minded, I might be able to get hired. But if I was hired by this organization, what would the implications be?

There are more than a few ways of looking at this issue. For example, the field of law enforcement and the criminal justice system have a reputation for being particularly homophobic and transphobic (in addition to engaging in other forms of prejudice) and thus one might reasonably question why an LGBTQ person would seek employment as a police officer or other wise within the criminal justice system. But the reputation of law enforcement officers in this case might be misleading that homophobia and transphobia (in addition to other forms of prejudice) are prevalent (or at least present) in just about every other career field imaginable, from science and medicine, to higher education, to politics and government.

One of the key features of systemic forms of discrimination and prejudice is that they are, well... systemic, and in general, it would be virtually impossible to find a career in which they would not be present.

But can a career choice be compared to working for a specific employer? This is the question that gives me pause. There are further complications here as well, namely that as far as I can tell, this organization runs the only homeless shelter for a long way around and thus an argument could be made that it would be better to have me working for this organization than not, as hypothetically, I could potentially work from within to make the local chapter more queer friendly so to speak. This latter choice is definitely a gamble though.

But at the end of the day, I simply do not like being put in this position in the first place. I want to work and put the skills that I have gathered during my life to good use. The choice of having to let them go to waste (if I am unable to find steady work elsewhere) or putting them to a use in a situation that might potentially increase homophobia and transphobia in our society is not a choice I look forward to making.

Queer Issue: Gay Nazis and Transgender Serial Killers: How Filmmakers Queer up Historical Villainy

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a film that depicts 4 Italian fascists torturing, and ultimately murdering a group of innocent youth. In spite of it being hailed as the most controversial film of all time, I find it little more than a mere curiosity. Defenders of Salo claim that it is an edgy and radical indictment of Italian Fascism. Others just call it torture porn. I myself fall into the latter category although I would also addd that it is unfortunately as queerphobic a film as they come.

I have not in fact watched Salo all the way through, I fast forwarded through the Circle of Shit sequence. But the rest of the film is only just about as unwatchable. I tried watching it a second time at one point, only to make it far enough through to feel confident that my earlier reading of the film was not entirely incorrect. Honestly, the Pasolini appears to have included no greater message in Salo other than people can be horribly cruel to each other. Or maybe it was supposed to be that Fascism creates an particularly virulent setting for people to become especially horribly cruel. In either case my response is, "excuse me while I call in Captain Obvious for a rescue mission".

Salo is particularly problematic with regards to the depictions of the Italian Fascists engaging in same sex activity, sodomy, and rape. Rape is rape, wether the victim is male or female but Pasolini depicts the Italian Fascists raping of the male characters as representing particularly heinous behavior. From the way these scenes are filmed, it is clear that Pasolini intends for we, the audience to be just that much more shocked by the male on male activity, over the other scenes of torture, rape, and general depravity. For this reason, I cannot agree with the claim that Salo represents a "radical" vision, but instead I must stress the point the point that it presents a completely conventional viewpoint with regards to sexual politics.

Just as Salo presents it's sexually liberated libertines as unmistikably queer, so too does The Damned present the NAZI SA Sturmabteilung as engaging in a gay orgy, with the officers pairing off before being disposed of on the Night of Long Knives. This is on top of The Damned's most ardent NAZI supporter, Martin, being shown engaging in a variety of queer behaviors, including his iconic drag impersonation of Marlene Dietrich.

Then there is Germany, Year Zero, which includes a NAZI trying to seduce his young charge into joining the NAZI and Homosexual lifestyles. Germany, Year Zero by the way, is apparently prestigious enough to be given a Criterion Release.

Of course, mainstream films (if Salo and The Damned can be considered mainstream) are not the only ones to link same sex desire to Nazism, pretty much every Nazi sexploitation flick (a genre which includes titles such as Love Camp Number 9 and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, includes at least one lesbian officer amongst the NAZI's ranks.

Of course, both the NAZI's and Italian fascists persecuted those they caught engaging in same sex activities. After the Night of Long Knives and the assignation of Ernst Röhm (the openly gay commandant of the SA), the NAZI's stepped up their persecution. In the end, around 15,000 men and women would be imprisoned in camps such as Buchenwald. There they would be the victims of medical experiments, including efforts to create ex-gay therapies.

By using homophobia to condemn fascism, filmmakers commit the ironic sin of promoting a message easily found at any neo-Nazi rally.

Which brings us to the way transgender characters are presented, particularly the image of the transgender serial killer. This is an image that continues to persist up to the present day. The serial killer Ed Gein has served as inspiration for films such as Silence of the Lambs and Psycho. More recently, The X-Files: I Want to Believe paid homage to Silence of the Lambs by borrowing (or ripping off, depending on ones perspective) the plot of Silence of the Lambs, although it should be noted that the villain of I Want to Believe bore little resemblance to Gein.

But once again we have the issue of history and cinema being at odds with one another, for there is almost no evidence that Ed Gein was transgender or engaged in gender non-conforming behaviors. Instead the story of him trying to wear female body parts appears to have been created entirely out of media sensationalism.

Contrast the above examples to the frequency of stories of LGBTQ historical figures who managed to achieve greatness but who inevitably wound up being straightened out when it came time to tell their stories on film. Enigma wrote out Alan Turing from the story of the development of the Enigma machine altogether, the device which helped crack German codes used during World War II and (potentially) saved thousands of lives. Apparently, on the silver screen queers can only be Nazis, we cannot fight them.

More recently, Dallas Buyers Club took a bisexual hero in the fight against AIDS, Ron Woodroof, and presented him as straight.

When it comes depictions of transgender and transsexual historical figures, it gets worse, as their stories typically never making it to Hollywood in the first place. Their is a distinct paucity of transgender historical figures in motion pictures. Mike Newall's Stonewall never mentioned Sylvia Rivera, nor had any character that could act as a stand in, and it looks as if Roland Emmerich's upcoming Stonewall flick will follow a similar path.

Remember this, when people argue that films don't have to present an individuals sexual orientation, it's not so simple as presenting a character as straight or queer when the patterns of who gets straightened out and who does not, is not random. When Hollywood only presents queers as killers or NAZI's, while ignoring the stories where we are the heroes, it does nothing but reinforce the message that we are dangerous, creepy, and immoral. But the LGBTQ community is not composed (at least entirely) of killers and Nazi's, in spite of what some apparently want the public to believe. There are heroes amongst our ranks and it is important that their stories get told as well. But it is also important to remember that the villainy attributed to us, is all too frequently exaggerated.

Queer Issue: The Unfortunate Straightening Out of Hollywood Redux

It is easy to get caught up in analysis of LGBTQ related films that focus on movies in isolation without consideration of larger patterns. But those larger patterns can be more revealing than any in depth analysis of a single film can accomplish. When it comes to the presentation of characters based on LGBTQ historical figures, there are plenty of examples of films that have had no problems presenting their characters sexual orientation and gender identities with a reasonable degree of accuracy. There are also plenty of films that have even exaggerated the queerness of their characters, while on the opposite end of this issue are those that have downplayed or straightened out the sexualities and gender identities of LGBTQ historical figures.

The question then becomes, in what situations are LGBTQ historical figures most likely to retain their sexualities and gender identities or have them exaggerated and when are they going to be straightened out?

To analyze this issue, I divided up films based on LGBTQ historical figures into the following categories: Killers, Criminals and Other Villains, Neutral, LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers, Artists, and Generally Heroic. I also included films that presented certain historical figures as queer, even if the gender identity or sexuality of the historical figure has not been well established or is otherwise known. In order to include as wide a range of films as possible in this analysis, I have included films that are heavily fictionalized or merely used certain historical figures for inspiration. Films in this category are marked with a ✦. Films made during the Hays Code, which banned depictions of same sex sexuality, are marked with an asterisk.

Here are how the results broke down:

Killers
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Kill Your Darlings
Monster
I Shot Andy Warhol
Swoon
Heavenly Creatures
The Krays
Bloody Mama
Braveheart
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Deranged
Elephant

Psycho*✦
Silence of the Lambs✦
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde✦
Salò✦
The Damned✦
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS✦
Texas Chainsaw Massacre✦

Straightened Out:
Rope*
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith✦

Criminals and Other Villains
Accurate or Exaggerated:
I Love You Phillip Morris
Dog Day Afternoon
Boys Don’t Cry

Bent✦
South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut✦
Angels in America✦

Straightened Out
Mommie Dearest

Neutral
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Queen Christina
Philomena

Straightened Out

LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Milk
Kinsey
The Christine Jorgensen Story

Straightened Out:

Artists
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Wilde
Capote
Howl
Gods and Monsters
Ed Wood
Love is the Devil
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
Frida
The Hours

Straightened Out
De-Lovely
The Libertine
Anonymous
Saving Mr. Banks
Cabaret
Quills

Shadow of the Vampire✦
Night and Day*
The Agony and the Ecstasy*

Generally Heroic
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Alexander
J. Edgar

Straightened Out:
Dallas Buyers Club
Silkwood
A Beautiful Mind
Enigma

Lawrence of Arabia*

Percentages (Excluding fictionalized cases and films made during the Hays Code):

Killers: 100% Accurate
Criminals and Other Villains: 75% Accurate
Neutral: 100% Accurate
LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers: 100% Accurate
Artists: 60% Accurate
Generally Heroic: 33% Accurate

Conclusion
If a queer individual wants their sexuality or gender identity to be presented accurately by Hollywood, kill someone, become an LGBTQ activist or do nothing noteworthy. You also stand a pretty good chance of your sexuality and gender identity being presented accurately if you choose a non-homicidal life of crime. However, if you want to become an artist or do something influential outside the LGBTQ community, you better be prepared to play Hollywoods' heterosexualization lottery.

Setting the Record Queer: Stonewall - Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat the Same Myths About it

I can recall back when I was a young teenager having breakfast one morning when my mom, while flipping through the newspaper said, "I see that Independence Day is rated PG-13".

"Uh uh," I replied, not really paying attention. I had seen trailers galore up until that point and my snobbish teenage self (go figure) had decided that the movie had looked boring and derivative.

"Do you want to see it?" my mom asked.

"No," I answered, although at this point my curiosity was peaked a little. Why would my mom of all people want to see what was essentially a sci-fi shoot-em-up? Well, a shoot-em-up where aliens shoot up major cities with flaming walls of flame.

She shrugged, and said, "Well, I thought it might be educational".

The advertising at the time for Independence Day had been so ubiquitous with giant alien space craft blowing up human civilization that it took took me a moment to realize what was going on here.

"Um.... mom," I replied, "you should know that the movie Independence Day isn't actually about the American Revolution..."

Skip ahead 18 years and the openly gay director of Independence Day Roland Emmerich, is now promising to make a movie about an actual historical event. Specifically the Stonewall Riots that launched the LGBTQ rights movement.

When it comes to getting the history of the Stonewall Riots "correct" I am leary of Emmerich for reasons that have nothing to do with his reputation as a purveyor of derivative action flicks, but because of Emmerichs' involvement in the film Anonymous which relays the story of Shakespeare but is set in an alternative universe where the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship happens to be true. For those unfamiliar with the theory, it posits that William Shakespeare was not the "real" author of the plays, sonnets, and poems now attributed to him. Long story short, it's a conspiracy theory that has little basis in actual historical facts.

What might be the Osfordian Theory's worst sin though, is the way it erases (possibly unintentionally) some of the best evidence that William Shakespeare experienced same sex desire. By this I mean the conspiracy theory here ultimately sets out to explain why Shakespeare dedicated his romantic sonnets to a man by eliminating the possibility that the dedication was romantically inclined. As such the Oxford Theory posits that the dedications are evidence for the conspiracy, rather then the icky possibility that one the finest English writers ever (or so English scholars say, I could barely understand him personally) had same sex desires.

What I find troubling at this point in the production (which is set to begin filming this summer) is that thus far it appears to focus on white, gay characters. The IMDB page for the movie lists Jeremy Irvine, Calab Landry Jones, and Karl Glusman as those who have been cast thus far. In addition, the plot is described as:

A young man's political awakening and coming of age during the days and weeks leading up to the Stonewall Riots.

Note that it says "man". Not "trans man". Not a "drag queen". Just "man". Also is it just me or does it sound like this is the plot of the 1995 Stonewall film directed by Nigel Finch? I realize that being about the same event could easily lead to similar plots on their own, but Emmerich sounds like even his historical epic is going to be a rip-off.

Whatever issue Emmerich has with being derivative, historically speaking this is a problem because it means that the next Stonewall Riot flick is going to be regurgitating the erasure of transgender/transsexual and gender non-conforming people of color from queer history. In addition, there is the history of transgender rights activists, such as Sylvia Riveria and Martha P. Johnson, also being erased from the Stonewall Narrative.

Even the films' Facebook page gets in on the act by stating:

"Stonewall" will tell the story of the men and women of the modern Gay Rights movement and the establishment where it all took place: The Stonewall Inn.

And in casting calls for extras for the movie, the only word that shows up is "gay". Not LGBT, not Queer, gays only. Bisexual, lesbian, and Transgender, Transsexual, and gender non-conforming folks need not apply.

Normally, I wouldn't make a big deal out of mere word choice, but the erasure of transgender, transsexual, and gender non-conforming folks in addition to people of color specifically from the Stonewall Narrative has gone on for too long and is simply too extensive to be allowed to pass without comment.

In any case, one can only hope that Emmerichs' Stonewall has more in common with the actual riots than his movie about Will Smith saving the world from aliens had with the American Revolution. Too bad the prospect of that actually happening looks about as good as the world ending in 2012.

Queer Review: Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Dallas Buyers Club
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writers: Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O'Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O'Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne

Overview
A potent story about the development of underground drug markets in the face of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis is undermined by Hollywood's propensity to straighten out LGBTQ heroes and the unfortunate casting of the talented (yes) but otherwise cisgendered actor Jared Leto in the role of a transgender character.

Synopsis
When Ron Woodroof (Mathew McConaughey) is diagnosed as being in the advanced stages of AIDS, he is given 30 days to live by the doctors treating him. Unwilling to accept this prognosis, he begins doing research on his own into the disease and starts taking off-market drugs that had yet to be approved by the FDA. Eventually, after a few complications and with the help of Rayon (Jared Leto) (a transgender woman who is also living with HIV that he meets during one of his hospital visits) Ron forms the Dallas Buyers Club, a program to distribute unapproved drugs that offer promise and hope to those with HIV. While this program is able to help some, it is not long before Ron and Rayon find themselves facing down increasing opposition from the authorities who want to shut down the whole operation.

The Queering
The story of the HIV epidemic is among the most horrifying stories in LGBTQ history. When the first HIV cases were discovered, the disease was deadly and before advanced anti-viral therapies were developed, the prospects of those infected were dark. In the absence of a cure and with so little known about the disease, terror and uncertainty were the characteristics of the day. It was the sort of time that tends to bring out the best and worst in people.

Unfortunately, only glimpses of the real life HIV/AIDS story make it to the big screen. While the essentials behind the actual Dallas Buyers Club formed by Ron Woodroof are approximately accurate, there are few rather problematic changes worth noting. For starters, several people close to the real Ron Woodroof have reported that he was bisexual and not at all bigoted, as depicted in the film. The other issue is that Rayon is made up. While this is not a problem in of itself, the character essentially fills the same role as a "Magic Negro" in that she helps Ron Woodroof to become a better person before winding up dead. This trope, for whatever reason, appears to becoming more often applied to LGBTQ characters, who like the "Magic Negro" serve as inspiration for the heterosexuals before typically winding up dead. Another recent example would be Tom Wilkinson's character in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as well as V for Vendetta which has two examples of LGBTQ characters who serve as inspiration for the main characters before going to the great beyond. Easy A provides a non-deadly example.

In other words, we have a story of a straigt(ened out) dude saving queers with the aid of a magic queer. In the Hollywood imagination, the only true hero allowed is the cis-gendered hetero. Ron is presented as straight and macho as they come. We see him fucking a woman in the opening scene and later on engaging in bull riding. There are few moments in fact, where we are not in some way reminded that Ron is a total hetero. Just for the record and at the risk of repeating myself, I wouldn't mind this so much if it wasn't for the fact that Ron Woodroof was (probably) bisexual.

Then there is the casting of Jared Leto, a cisgendered man, in the role of a transgender woman. There are potential problems with the character, given that while the filmmakers attempt to essay a sympathetic presentation, she still tends to come across as pathetic and weak. While I think it's problematic to ignore the suffering LGBTQ people went through at the height of the AIDS crisis, I find it even more problematic to have a weaker queer character contrasted in such a fashion as is done in this film with a stronger straight(ened out) hetero male. It just doesn't jive. And that's before we get into the problems with the casting of Jared Leto. Generally speaking, acting is about taking on the role of a person not yourself. Therefore, hypothetically speaking, in a world where transgender actors were cast to play cis-gendered roles, there would be no problem with the casting of cis-gendered actors to play transgender roles. The thing is, we don't live in such a world and thus the casting comes across as a blatant form of discrimination at best, if not explicitly transphobic.

On the plus column, the film is actually more than competently made, with the some effective examples of editing being employed to demonstrate Ron's mental functions breaking down as the disease ravages his body. There are also some memorable and evocative scenes, such as one involving Ron walking through an atrium full of butterflies that land on his body. Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, and Jennifer Garner all give strong performances (at least insofar as their roles were written). There are also some interesting philosophical questions raised about the ethics surrounding drug testing when dealing with a disease as fatal as AIDS. How long do you let people die while tests are conducted to ensure the safety of a medication? Is it right to give people sugar pills (while tricking them into thinking they are taking the real thing) simply so researchers can isolate the placebo effect? And as I hinted at earlier, there are certain hints and shadows of the real AIDS/HIV crisis that do make it on screen, such as the scenes which show the fears and anxieties which characterized the era as well as, the extreme desperation of those people who had been infected with the virus in the early days of the epidemic.

At the end of the day though, none of these elements are enough to overcome the ahistorical straightening out that was applied to the story, nor the problematic casting of Jared Leto.

Recommendation
Not worth driving out to Dallas or joining any buyers clubs in order to see, unless one is desperately interested in seeing every film ever made with an LGBTQ character in it.

The Rating
2 out of 4 stars

Trailer


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Queer Issue: Stealing the Sisterhood - The Love Affair Between TERFs and the Hollywood Patriarchy

There is an argument to be made that as a cis-gendered queer man, I am not the best person to discuss the issue that I am about to. But as a person who has watched many a queer movies, there comes a time when certain patterns become so obvious that they bear commenting on. In this particular case, the pattern involves the presentation of trans villains in Hollywood films and how this is reflected in TERF ideology.

Just in case there are people out there who are still unaware of what TERFs are: TERFs stands for Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminism and lest the name does not make it entirely clear, they are an extremely transphobic bunch. The main tenants of TERFdom (as far as I can tell) revolve around the idea that trans woman are not "real" woman and are simply pretending to be such in order to obtain the awesome privilege that comes from being a transgender or transsexual individual. Furthermore there is the concept that trans woman are stealing the entire concept of feminity from "woman born woman". In her book, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male TERFer Janice Raymond states that "All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves".

In the grand scheme of things, TERFs are not really doing anything radical or all that original by promoting such ideology . Rather, they are simply repeating half baked ideas that the Hollywood patriarchy has been pushing for decades.

In Hollywood stories, trans villains frequently make woman their primary target to victimize, stalk, and/or kill. Furthermore, they also take extra steps to appropriate some form of femininity from other woman, either by stealing their clothing, their identities, and in the most extreme cases, their bodies. Furthermore, the idea that these characters are not "real" woman is usually emphacized in some manor.

The most recent example of this is The Lone Ranger, in which one of the bad guys' evil minions runs around stealing womens' clothing and then runs around in said clothing, right before being written out of the story altogether.

Psycho tries to get around the charge of transphobia by having a psychologist state that the main character is suffering from multiple personality disorder, but that does not change the fact that Norman Bates has stolen his mothers' identity and runs around wearing her clothes.

Silence of the Lambs takes a serial killer sociopath and adds the shockingly mundane twist of having the serial killer sociopath also killing woman for their skins, which the character intends to wear. The character also had their gender identity undermined by Dr. Lector who described the character as not a "true" transsexual, even though the character had sought transitive surgery. This line also made me wonder if Dr. Lector had eaten the film's credibility with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective has the baddie bad guy stealing Snowflake the Dolphin along with the identity of a woman hiker who went missing. It is never actually explained in the plot whether or not the baddie bad guy actually killed the hiker or simply took advantage of the situation when she went missing, but that's not a terribly important detail. Also in this case, the character has their female identity undermined by having them take on the identity simply to commit the crime. Also, Jim Carrey's character goes out of his way to humiliate the villain by pointing out that their breast enhancement surgery could have been done "over the weekend" in addition to the disgust he shows at having "kissed a man".

The truth may have been out there in The X-Files: I want to Believe but so was the transphobia when the filmmakers "borrow" the plot of Silence of the Lambs. They even try and one up the transphobia and dramatic tension by having the evil sociopath kidnap a women so he can transplant his head onto her body. This is disappointing, as The X-Files showed that the plot of The Silence of the Lambs could be ripped off sans transphobia in the sublime first season episode "Beyond the Sea". However, it is worth noting that this is the one instance where the characters gender identity is not undermined in any manor.

I thought Dressed to Kill (starring Michael Caine as the gender transgressive killer) was going to avoid the pattern, but then a scene near the end of the Unrated Cut included a bit where the character attacks a female nurse and steals her outfit. I have no idea if this scene is in the original version or not as I did not watch that version. The character however does have their gender identity undermined by having it explained that, while they were in this case a "true" transsexual, they had a male part that tried to block the transition, which in turn lead them to becoming the killer.

One thing that I did not find as frequently in these films is the TERF idea that "trans woman shouldn't use female restrooms/lockerooms/etc. because NOT REAL WOMEN". It only shows up definitively in Psycho and it's famous shower scene. Even if the reason that Norman Bates can access the bathroom is because he is the owner of the hotel, the shower scene can still be seen as giving life to the idea that trans woman present a threat simply through wishing to use the bathroom. Dressed to Kill also features it's trans killer stalking a woman taking a shower (in a scene that is a direct rip off of homage to Psycho) before creepily seducing her. It is also made clear eventually in The X-Files: I Want to Believe that the bad guy used (or rather had his male minion use) a woman's lockerroom at a public gym to track down potential victims.

But Silence of the Lambs, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and The Lone Ranger do not have the characters using their female identities/appearance to invade bathrooms, locker rooms, or any kind of woman only spaces in order to terrorize woman or for any purpose at all for that matter. Thus, if we are to look at this pattern across movies, it really just is not there, even thought I would argue that Psycho definitely represents the idea itself in it's most concrete form.

For the longest time while watching these films, I had a hard time identifying how exactly these films were transphobic. I mean, in order for a movie to demonstrate transphobia by having a transgender or transsexual killer, doesn't your killer need to actually have a transgender or transsexual individual as the killer? As it was, the characters who always ended up being the killers or baddies in these films, never matched the way I have heard transgender and transsexual people that I know talk about their lives and experiences. And I mean that in ways that have nothing to do with the fact these characters are depraved killers/criminals -- as far as I am aware, none of the transgender or transsexual people that I know have committed homicide or have extensive criminal pasts. What I mean is -- discounting drag queens who deliberately mimic celebrities -- that I do not know any transgender or transsexual people who have multiple personality disorder or stole or attempted to copy other peoples identities.

Eventually though, I started to look at these films through the lens of TERF ideology and that's when I came to realize just how negative these films are. One wonders just how long it will be before Hollywood stops promoting TERF ideology on the silver screen.

Queer Issue: Sex Evil! Violence Good!

Alright, it's no secret that violence is practically worshiped in our culture, while anything related to sex or sexuality is shunned.

However, a thousand bucks for the person who can find a more extreme example of this, than the poster I came across today while doing research for an article an transgender serial killers:

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde Poster at Wikipedia

Note how "...victim after victim dies horribly in throat cutting orgy" is an unambiguous selling point, while the idea of seeing someone transform between genders is presented as a warning label.

Actually, it is still a selling point in it's own reverse psychology sort of fashion, but I should point out that the message here still revolves around the idea that changing one's physical sex is somehow shocking and grotesque, as opposed to, I dunno, a medical procedure with no more sociological significance than having one's tonsils or wisdom teeth removed.

That is, one is supposed to find the idea of changing one's sex extremely revolting and shocking, and since that is the reason for seeing most horror films, it becomes the main selling point,

I should probably also point out that this attitude was also shown during the scenes if The Christine Jorgensen Story so was certainly not uncommon during this time, although that goes without saying.

Queer Review: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Director: Tom Shadyac
Writer: Jack Bernstein, Tom Shadyac, and Jim Carrey
Cast: Jim Carrey, Courteney Cox, Sean Young, Tone Loc, Dan Marino, Noble Willingham, Udo Kier

Overview
An overly transphobic and homophobic turd of a film from the mid-90's, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective commits the ultimate sin for a comedy; not only is it offensive, it isn't really all that funny.

Synopsis
When the beloved Miama Dolphins football team mascot (Snowflake) goes missing, the teams publicist Melissa (Courteney Cox) calls upon the services of Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey) to get the aquatic mammal back. His investigation will take him on a bizare path, one filled with twists and surprises.

The Queering
There is a scene in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective where Ace Ventura, while searching for Snowflake, comes across a large aquarium. Instead of an innocent dolphin swimming inside, Ace Ventura finds instead a giant man eating shark. This moment is clearly intended as a sublime metaphor for the films tragic denouement. It's almost as subtle as the one featured in the opening scene where Ace Ventura is shown kicking a package down a hallway, thereby destroying the contents. This scene is clearly meant to tell the audience that the film ahead is an empty, soul eating endeavor that will completely destroy all that is funny or humorous in our world.

Or perhaps not.

So, in any case some of the higher ups for the Bush administration openly cited transgender/transsexual people as a security concern. What's amusing about this, is that they're concern could have easily been based off of a juvenile plot twist from this film. Never mind that if one wanted to change one's identity, it's much easier to change things like eye/hair/skin color then it is to go through the surgical procedures to change one's gender/sex. Height and weight are similarly malleable, but lord knows, nobody ever brings up banning spray on tanning products, hair dye, colored contacts, diet pills, or any of the kinds of surgery one could use to change one's physical stature or THE TERRORISTS WIN.

Sorry, but I digress.

In any case, if there is a transphobic or homophobic trope that this film misses, I cannot think of it. The main "twist" of the film revolves around the fact that one of the characters transitioned from male to female. Or maybe not. It's not clear whether or not the writers are even aware of the possibility of someone wanting to undergo surgery to change their sex for purposes other than deception. So we have "deceptive trans villain". Check.

In one scene we have Jim Carrey wearing a dress in order to intimate to a medical professional that he has a mental illness. This is on top of the numerous times there is dialogue blatantly stating that the villain is mentally ill. So, linking mental illness and transgender and transsexual identities? Check.

Then there is the scene where Ace Ventura gets all upset over the fact that he kissed a person with a dick. When he reveals this little factoid to the other police officers (the villain here also happens to be a police lieutenant) all of the police officers present react negatively, as if they too had been making out with the female lieutenant. So the idea of queer sexuality as gross and disgusting present? Check.

I could go on, but it's really not worth it. In the end, I could not help but think about how Jim Carrey, more than a decade later, would star in the excellent I Love You Phillip Morris. It got me thinking about the number of filmmakers who have worked on incredibly transphobic productions later going on to work on gay friendly ones. For example, Johnathen Demme making Philadelphia following criticism of Silence of the Lambs. Also, there were at least two episodes of The X-Files that could be considered gay friendly (All Things and X-Cops), but I Want to Believe contained an obvious trans villain. Off the top of my head, I could not think of a single counter example of a filmmaker who had worked on a homophobic film and had ever made another one featuring a positive transgender or transsexual character.

Recommendation
This pet detective can only be taken care of properly one way, with a pooper-scooper.

The Rating
Zero out of ****

Trailer


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Queer Review: The X-Files - I Want To Believe (2008)

The X-Files - I Want To Believe
Director: Chris Carter
Writers: Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter
Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Xzibit, Mitch Pileggi, Marco Niccoli, Adam Godley

Overview
This second film in The X-Files franchise is pretty much a fans only endeavor. With some nice atmosphere and well written drama/character interaction, I Want To Believe does at least manage to succeed in being a subtle meditation on the nature of faith and the limits of science. However, there is one problematic element in that the I Want To Believe has a pair of queer villains as it's main bad guys.

Synopsis
When an FBI agent goes missing, Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Agent Mosley Drummy (Xzibit) approach former Agents Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). It turns out that former priest and convicted pedophile Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) has had psychic visions of the kidnapping and Whitney and Drummy want Fox and Scully's help on the case due to their expertise on paranormal phenomenon. Meanwhile, Dr. Scully finds herself fighting a hospital bureaucrat who wants to send a boy with a rare and terminal illness to hospice care, but whom Scully thinks there may be a chance she can save.

The Queering
When The X-Files first started airing back in 1993, it was commented that Dana Scully bore a striking similarity to Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs. A first season episode Beyond the Sea even had Scully forgoing her role as a skeptic in order so that she could more effectively follow the road traveled by Clarice Starling. The plot of I Want to Believe also appears to have been inspired by The Silence of the Lambs, right down to the unfortunate detail of having a psycho transgender villain. It seems even today there are some in Hollywood who still want to promote the idea of changing one's sex/gender via surgery is terrifying on it's own.

In I Want To Believe Joseph Crissman fills the same role plot-wise as Hannibal Lector, although the two are completely different in terms of personality. Scully does get a few interesting moments of interaction with Crissman but I Want To Believe is not on the same psychological level as the Jonathen Demme flick. To be fair though, I did not think Chris Carter was trying to perfectly replicate Silence of the Lambs.

I Want To Believe does succeed as a moody character drama with supernatural overtones. For the devoted X-phile, being able to spend time once again with Scully and Mulder is worth the price of a ticket alone. The issue of faith versus the application of science, which in some ways formed the backbone of the series, is explored in depth here.

What set The X-Files apart from other series about the paranormal was the character of Dana Scully, who functioned primarily as the voice of science and reason. In doing she subverted traditional gender roles since it was Fox who relied on intuition and instincts. However such characters are typically undermined fairly early on in films and TV shows - usually either by shows treating the character as a buffon or by making it obvious that the aliens/conspiracy/ghosts/etc. are "real". I Want To Believe retains the ambiguity and of earlier seasons of The X-Files.

Now during those early years of The X-Files, Scully was typically given a leg to stand on. Rarely did she revert to the role of the believer, it was always Mulder who put forth outrageous theories about what was going on. However, there were several occasions when the character roles would be reversed. Outside of the aforementioned Beyond the Sea these reversals would typically center around matters that invoked the Christian god and specifically, thanks to Scully's Catholicism, the Catholic version. Episodes with overtly religious themes, such as Revelations, would have Scully playing the role of the believer and Mulder the skeptic. I Want To Believe is actually odd in the way that it not only invokes the earliest episode of The X-Files that had Scully acting as a believer in addition to involving the issue of Catholicism, but it still has her playing the role of the skeptic.

However, this is one of the reasons why non-fans are going to have a hard time getting into this. The series mytharc may have been jettisoned, but the character mythos play a big part in understanding why Scully and Mulder act or react the way they do. In particular, the final scene serves as a perfect coda for Dana Scully. It could even be argued that her character arc for the entire series was building towards that one particular moment. However, as a result it's significance will probably be lost on anyone who has not seen more than a few episodes of the TV series.

Recommendation
Primarily for die hard X-Phile believers, but then we've already seen it.

The Rating
*** out of ****

Trailer


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Queer Issue: Transgender/Transsexual vs. the Gay: Let the Oppression Olympics Begin!

I realise that I'm probably going to offend at least a few people with what I'm about to say, but so be it.

Back when marriage equality was going before the NY State Legislature, I can recall how fired up every major pro-gay (I'm not going to say LGBT for reasons that should be obvious shortly) was. My twitter feed was nearly a constant stream of pro-marriage sentiment. Pro-same sex marriage (and anti-same sex marriage) stories abounded across the media. Albany was flooded with supporters. I can recall reading updates on The Bilerico Project from Rev. Emily C. Heath, who came from out of state to show her support in Albany. Gov. Cuomo himself had long since endorsed marriage equality. There was an energy in the air so thick you could have operated an entire gay pride float solely on the sheer rainbow colored exuberance.

Now, a little less than a year later, GENDA was able to pass (for the fourth time) the NY State Assembly, and now needs to pass the Senate in order to become law. For those who are unaware, GENDA provides key protections for Transgender and Transsexual individuals by preventing discrimination based upon gender identity, as well as strengthening hate crime legislation for crimes committed against Transgender/Transsexual. Unfortunately, GENDA faces what could charitably be called an uphill battle in order to become law. Actually, to be more accurate, it's most likely going to be dead on arrival.

Now here's where things get really disturbing. All of the mainstream organizations that put so much effort into marriage equality, now appear to be taking a nice easy rest rather than working to ensure that GENDA at least has a chance at passing. At a time when pro-LGBTQ organizations should be using the momentum gained from the passage of marriage equality in New York State, they instead appear to be applying to the brakes. There is no energy, and barely a whisper of support from any of the mainstream organizations. I have yet to notice a singel pro-GENDA tweet on my twitter feed. I have not heard of any endorsment from Gov. Cuomo and a quick google search turned up nothing.

Furthermore, all of this is occuring with Justice and Equality Day less than a week away, in which GENDA has at least been decided will be the focus. Maybe I'm asking too much, but I do feel the energy is missing. I have not heard of any endorsment from Gov. Cuomo and if there is coalition building going on, it's going on quietly and behind closed doors.

So let me say it: this is complete and utter bullshit. Transgender/Transsexual individuals (even when compared to gays and lesbians) are more likely to be fired from their jobs, be denied housing, or have to deal regularly with the threat of extreme violence. SONDA already exists to protect people from being fired or denied housing based upon sexual orientation, but there exists no such laws to protect against those issues based upon gender identity. That is, it is illegal to deny housing or fire an employee for reasons related to their sexual orientation but perfectly legal to do so based upon gender identity.

Maybe there are reasons for this situation but I'm not interested in hearing them. I'm tempteted to point fingers, but I only have 10. There is no excuse for the lack of effort and the double standards exhibited by the mainstream pro-LGB (and allegedly pro-LGBT) organizations here. There is a long and extensive history of pro-LGB organizations focusing on pro-LGB issues and completely ignoring the needs of Transgender/Transsexual individuals. This history now seems doomed to repeat itself ad nauseum.

If the mainstream organizations could come together and build the necessary coalitions to pass marriage equality in New York, why is it so much harder to pass something much more basic (and more important to the indviduals who would benefit from it) such as GENDA?

Marriage Equality was strongly opposed by multiple organizations, such as National Organization for Marriage, and became a lightening rod of controversy. At this point in time, GENDA has mostly flown under the radar, which at least has prevented it from coming under the same level of scrutiny. Maybe this is part of the strategy being used by the mainstream LGB organizations, keep GENDA's profile low in order to prevent it from earning the same level of scorn.

I really doubt that is the strategy being used though. My sense is that even if GENDA was more in the spotlight, it still would not be facing down the same opposition that marriage equality faced. Try finding clobber verses for the fundamentalists to use against it and you're going to come up short. Furthermore, whereas even state sanctioned marriage is viewed as a religious concept, employment is not typically subject to the same moral scrutiny. In short, I actually think passing GENDA would be easier than marraiage equality, particularly with the momentum that we gained less than a year ago.

Therefore, the question becomes why is it legislation that when compared to marriage equality, should (in theory) be easier to pass and would have a greater impact for the population that has more need of it, be getting the silent treatement?

I have no words other than to say that I am saddened by the mainstream LGB(T?) organizations lack of public support for GENDA. At a time when we could have another victory on our hands, we have only the barest echo of a whisper.

Psycho Addendum

I don't usually do this but after having given the matter some though, I going to revise/take back what I wrot for my review of the film Psycho. When I wrote my review of Psycho, I talked about how Hitchcock's film did not appear to me to be particularly transphobic. However a conversation I had with my partner after the review, has caused me to rethink my position.

Originally, I had posited that the character of Norman Bates did not appear to be transgender, gay, or in anyways queer. Instead I pointed out that Bates was presented as being attracted to woman and a line later in the film explicitely describes him as NOT being a transvestite. I also originally pointed out I could detect no queer subtext.

However, my partner pointed out to me one queer subtext I had over looked, namely that Bates clearly had an obession with his mother, a trait often ascribed to gay men in the 1950's. This is why I think I may have been mistaken originally. So with this in mind, I think that it becomes safe to say that in addition to the stigmitization of mental illness, there is defintely a vein of transphobia in the film Psycho.

Classic Review: Psycho (1960)

Psycho
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Joseph Stefano. Based upon the novel by Robert Bloch.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire

Overview
The granddaddy of all slasher films, Psycho tells the story of a man driven to madness by an overbearing mother, or so it seems so at the beginning.

Synopsis
When Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 from her employer, she flees, only to find herself at the creepy and derelict Bates Motel, run by the pleasant but oddly sinster Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Soon afterwards, a private Detective (Martin Balsam), Marions' boyfriend, Sam Loomis, (John Gavin) along with her sister, Lila (Vera Miles) come to Bates Motel looking for Marion. All of them make startling discoveries about the true nature of the Bates Motel and its' caretaker.

The Queering
Watching Psycho for the first time recently, the old saying that "familiarity breeds contempt" kept running through my head. Unfortunately for Hitchcocks' classic slasher flick, I knew too much of the plot going in and the infamous shower scene failed to do much of anything for me. At the time of the release, Hitchcock took extreme measures to avoid the plot from becoming widely known so as to avoid spoiling the shocking twists. He was quite wise to do this. I spent most of the first part of the film, forcing myself to pay attention and not give into boredom. After the shower scene and my knowledge of the plot dropped off, I became a lot more engaged with the film and Hitchcock's mastery of the cinematic medium became more apparent.

However, given the nature of the villian, I was a little worried that the film was going to engage in some rather overt transphobia. Ultimately, I am not sure that this was he case. Yes, the bad guy does crossdress, (technically speaking) but the behavior in this case is more reflective of multiple personality disorder, than anything to do with the experiences of transgender/transsexual individuals. There's even a line from a psychologist at the end, explicitly stating that the character is not a transvestite. I might otherwise make a point about the problematic terminology used here, but given that Psycho was made in 1960 I don't really feel like it. Furthermore, other than a single instance of limp wristedness, I did not notice any attempt to overly feminize the villian, nor did I discern a queer subtext. Ultimately, the film is much worse when it comes to stigmitizing mental illness and one need look no further than the title for proof of that.

For me, there are also some interesting issues related to the attempts of certain parties to censor Psycho or more precisely, what some censors wanted to censor. Objections were raised over the use of the term "transvestite". The shower scene had one shot of female buttocks removed and some censors were worried that a shot of Curtis's nipples had made it into the final cut. Psycho is also famous for quiet likely containing the first scene where a toilet is being flushed and Hitchcock had to fight hard to make sure that this moment was not cut. Oddly enough, the fact that two people are brutally murdered on screen does not seem to have raised quiet the number of objections as the above items, although some film critics apparantly did protest the graphic violence after the film was relased.

From a technical perspective, Psycho is very well constructed, using complex camerawork and bold editing during key sequences. The image of the Bates Motel and shower scene have become etched into our cultural memory for a reason. Anthony Perkins gives the most chilling performance as Norman Bates - the audience does not need any line about the highway being undertraveled to know that there is a reason why no one stays at the Bates Motel. No one else really is given enough to do to leave much of an impression. I may have been underwhelmed by the lack of suspense to the plot (having forknowledge of what would happen before even seeing this) but I cannot deny Hitchock's genius in constructing this classic.

Recommendation
Anyone with an interest in classic films, horror and slasher flicks, or evenjust generally the history of cinema should drive themselves Psycho in order to see this.

The Rating

Trailer


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