A cisgender woman known for her sexiness
Uh oh – this looks like an outbreak of Problematic:
There are early reports that Scarlett Johansson has been cast to play a trans man in a movie about Dante “Tex” Gill, a mob-connected brothel owner who insistently identified as a man throughout his life. Johansson, a cisgender woman known for her sexiness, is—to put it mildly—a particularly poor choice for such a role.
What what what what? Are we saying sexy women can’t play trans men? So then we’re saying that sexy women can’t be trans men? So we’re saying that sexy = cis and…what? Not-sexy=trans? Blow the whistle! Point the finger!
Transgender activists and writers have often called for trans actors to be cast in trans roles, and I agree that this would be ideal. However, Hollywood does rely on big-name stars to carry big movies, and I’m not aware of any trans actors who have the name recognition of Johansson at the moment. So in lieu of the ideal, I’d like to advance a simple alternative that seems to be very rarely considered: Cast cis men to play trans men, and cis women to play trans women.
But it’s Terribly Problematic to cast cis people to play trans people. Pink News doesn’t approve at all:
You have to hand it to the creators of the Danish Girl… either they didn’t do much research ahead of casting, or they simply didn’t care about the inevitable hostile reaction from trans activists.
‘Dallas Buyers Club’ was roundly criticised for putting an established male actor (Jared Leto) in the role of a trans woman. ‘Transparent’ came under fire for the same (Jeffrey Tambor).
And that was before the sexual harassment allegations appeared.
But anyway, Evan Urquhart isn’t saying put “cis” women in the part but put “cis” men in the part. Because trans men are men just as trans women are women (though the latter are a lot louder than the former), so casting a “cis” man is basically the same thing as casting a trans man. In fact if you think about it, why do we even use those words at all.
Cisgender men can play trans men more realistically than women can because they are, well, men.
So trans men should be getting all the parts that used to be played by “cisgender” men, yeah? Because they’re indistinguishable, so why not?
I’ve personally always thought Robert Downey Jr. would be a great choice to play a trans guy, but I’d be happy to leave casting to the experts if they’d just stop casting women to play men’s roles.
Right? Goddam Hollywood, always giving men’s parts to women while the poor unemployed men can’t even get an understudy gig. If they would just stop casting women.
A cis-gender woman would, on average, look a lot more like a trans-man. Otherwise you may as well be preferring Charlie Chan to Jackie Chan…
But Evan Urqhuart (formerly Vanessa Urqhuart) subscribes to the ideology that That’s Not True – that women don’t look more like trans men than men do.
“women don’t look more like trans men than men do.”
Well they don’t always. Aydian Dowling doesn’t look like a woman for example: https://aydiandowling.com/
I mean if someone just has a vague feeling of being the other gender then that’s one thing, but if somebody actually gets a physical sex change I think it’s fair enough for them to be considered the gender they changed to at that point, and played accordingly. For example, if you were doing a film about Caitlyn Jenner’s current life it would be a little unfair and just wouldn’t really make sense at this point to cast a man wearing a dress.
As far as looks, Hollywood has the most astonishing make up artists, and can make people look like all sorts of things. That’s not hard at all, not for them.
I think we should put women in all the men’s parts, at least until they start writing decent women’s parts in a comparable percentage to men’s parts. Give women all the good lines for once, and let them pull out the gun and put on the tough face.
Fair and unfair in what sense?
There’s a lot of social pressure to pay more attention to trans people, along with a lot of social pressure to treat trans people as indistinguishable from non-trans people. The two are not exactly compatible.
And I’m reading people saying that Gill wasn’t trans anyway.
(Maybe this is a case of posthumous transing.)
Assuming someone did not get very successful surgery and hormone treatments, the people most likely to portray them best are usually going to be the people exposed to the same hormones during puberty. As mentioned, Hollywood’s professionals can take it very, very well from there.
I rather liked this comment on the story in our local media
Hahahaha
This just in: women cannot pretend to be men. Trans people are actually saying this.
#3
True, but BK said ‘on average’ which admits that there will be exceptions.
Anyway, to some extent I agree with your latter point. If someone looks the part, and I didn’t know any better, I would certainly use whatever seems to be the appropriate language when referring to that person. Aydian would certainly be percieved, and hence treated, as a man… I’m not so confident that the story of Caitlyn Jenner should be played by a woman however, based on the same reasoning.
I suppose they call it posthumous transing because deadnaming is taken.
Jenner only resembles a woman in specially posed and manipulated photographs. In random shots taken without his prior knowledge, he looks like a man in make-up.
When it is required for actors to play characters they actually happen to be in real life, then ‘role playing’ is drifting from ‘fiction’ into ‘fitting common stereotypes’ most of the time. The whole point of playing and acting was initially to break out and create a narrative, not to conform to it, even in the name of realism. Not to say we (as a generality), are probably the the worst cases when cause-playing our own roles. Best playing happens when a rare enough alchemy occurs, when producers and actors create something completely new that has more flavour than poor and unimaginative concretion of reality. I have a hard time understanding the modern requirements of complete experience for role play in the American culture, and as my toddler asked recently: “In ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, who’s been playing that raccoon?”
I have enjoyed reading the lists of trans actors put forward, that the producers and directors could have chosen instead of ScarJo.
Chaz Bono, Alex Blue Davis from Grey’s Anatomy and Buck Angel are the front runners.
I am not at all surprised Urquhart wants a man to have the role: I remember the posts here detailing how women could be made to disappear in a genderless world as the solution to “the woman problem”.
The controversy assumes a syllogism:
P1 (major premise): All trans men are men.
P2 (minor premise): Gill was a trans man.
C (conclusion): Gill was a man.
The Slate article by Evan Urquhart claims P2 in the very first sentence:
But that link goes to a 2003 obituary that called “Ms. Gill” an “unabashed lesbian.”
Current year 2018: Nobody writes a list of lesbians to play Gill.
Quoting from the obit:
A butch lesbian or a trans man? Not clear. It’s not as definite as Urqhuart claimed.