Another one bullied out of a job
This is ridiculous.
CNN:
After facing backlash on social media, actress Halle Berry announced on Twitter Monday she is no longer considering portraying a transgender man in an upcoming film role.
Berry apologized after discussing the role over the weekend in an Instagram Live video.
She groveled, is what she did.
Great, let’s insist that only admirals can play admirals, only 200-year-old people can play Victorians, only psychopaths can play psychopaths, only murderers can play murderers, only murder victims can play murder victims…I can’t see any potential difficulties, can you?
LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD said they were pleased Berry listened to the concerns voiced after her discussion of the role and “learned from them.”
“Other powerful people should do the same,” the group said on Twitter. “A good place to start is by watching @Disclosure_Doc to learn about trans representation in media.”
Ok but what about nonbinary representation in media? What about queer representation? What about asexual representation in media?
The Twitter account of the documentary asked Berry to watch the film “first to understand how cis actors like yourself acting in trans roles has major cultural consequences offscreen.”
For real. Also what about all those actors who play nuns and priests and other clerics? What about Jenny Agutter and Judy Parfitt? What right do they have to play nuns when there are real nuns who could do the job? Think about the major cultural consequences that has. And what’s all this about Maggie Smith playing a countess? Who does Helen Mirren think she is playing a cop? Is Joseph Fiennes actually Shakespeare? I don’t think so. What even is acting?
No, absolutely, only people who think they are the sex they are not are qualified to play people who think they are the sex they are not. Fantasy and pretending have to stop somewhere.
I see a bright future for murderers in the movie industry! And bad cops, of course. Not to mention bad cops who are murderers,
Oops, I got distracted in the middle of reading and somehow missed the paragraph where you did make the point about murderers.
It can’t be said too often!
And face it, a transwoman isn’t a man who thinks he’s a woman, he’s a man who says he thinks he’s a woman.Because we can never know for sure what he’s thinking, we can only go by what he’s saying. So who better to portray someone like that than a professional actor?
Bingo!
I’m going to have some words with Helen Mirren. Only a queen should be playing The Queen. Not just any old dame.
What’s puzzling is how this attitude seems to directly contradict the “identity = gender” school of thought.
We correctly no longer think it’s appropriate for white actors to play black or Asian characters, because they lack the physical characteristics associated with those races, makeup isn’t capable of bridging that gap in a realistic, non-stereotypical way, and there are (or should be) plenty of actors of the correct race to play the role anyway.
But none of this is true in the case of trans people. Halle Berry is perfectly capable of physically portraying a transgender man, because according to the theories of trans rights advocates, being a transgender man is purely an internal state of mind and requires no particular physical appearance. In fact, if Halle Berry had announced today that “he” now identified as a man, TRAs would say that makes Berry a man for all purposes, without any changes to clothing or appearance or otherwise required. Indeed, that seems to be a fundamental axiom of TRA doctrine: that there is no test that can be applied, no way to distinguish between someone who is “really” trans and someone who merely claims to be. To claim trans status is to HAVE trans status, we are told. (And to have trans status is to “be” the claimed gender.)
Emulating another person’s internal state is what actors do. Yes, it’s true that Berry would not have had all of the experiences that a “real” trans man would have had — but that’s true of all the examples cited in the OP. Conversely, TRAs insist that it is irrelevant that trans women have not had all of the experiences that cis women have had, e.g. female puberty, menstruation, misogyny. Yet we are told that does not change the rule that “trans women are women.” So do personal experiences matter or not? How come trans women can “be” women without the experiences of biological women, but an actor cannot even PRETEND to be trans without having had the experiences of a trans person?
And finally, it’s just not very realistic to expect trans actors to be cast in every role that calls for a trans character. There just aren’t enough, and aren’t going to be enough, trans roles around to make a major career out of. And the way film financing works is that you don’t raise significant money for a film without a known, bankable star. If you have to cast a trans actor for the lead role, then you’re casting an unknown in your lead, and that seriously limits your ability to raise funds and get your film produced and marketed.
@Screechy Monkey;
An actor “pretending” to be transgender gives the general public the idea that 1.) people might pretend to be transgender when they’re not and 2.) transgender people might just be pretending, to others or even to themselves.
Both possibilities are so anathema they ought to be unthinkable. Halle Berry’s performance might be so good it prompts one or both of those unthinkable thoughts.
@Screechy #7
Excellent comment. Slight digression from:
“makeup isn’t capable of bridging that gap in a realistic, non-stereotypical way”
Makeup is perfectly capable of bridging that gap smoothly and cleanly. Makeup artists and technology are absolutely brilliant. It’s just that they sometimes (often?) do resort to stereotypes, or they aren’t even allowed to try because of the implications and the history.
I think this reinforces your points, actually.
Re trans actors: What part is a trans-identified female actor supposed to play, when not playing a trans character? If this woman looks feminine, is she to portray women? If so, why, and do TRAs have a problem with that? The world of movies has a good number of women playing men and men playing women without it being some kind of special cross-dressing gender-bending role, just a match of an actor to a part.
I don’t see the problem here.
@ Screechy:
But here’s the problem: You’re thinking critically not critically. If you think critically, you’ll realize that thinking critically is just another of the master’s tools, and the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Once you abandon critical thinking, you’ll see that critical thinking leads you right to the TRA position.
Obviously.
@ Sackbut:
This brings up a rather cutting point.
Let’s take as a maxim that actors should only play roles that are consistent with their own cis/trans status. So this means that people who are not trans should not portray trans characters. However, it also means that trans people should not portray non-trans characters. So while this maxim might seem to support trans actors, it actually limits them more than it limits anyone else. Therefore, TRAs should abandon this argument in favor of the liberal perspective that the entire purpose of acting is to embody a person who you are not.
Ah, but NIV, that’s being consistent, and consistency is a tool of cisheteronormative oppression. Of course, transpeople should be free to portray characters, because they are not in the position of power, and their perspective is not normalized through a hegemony of systematic cissexism. Not only that, writers need to write more trans characters so that trans actors can be more authentic in their profession and not be forced to experience the emotional trauma of reenacting their own oppression through portraying non-dysphoric people.
It’s funny. Once you understand the trick, a priori generating the arguments these people use is super easy.
Even the Hollywood Wokerati are probably starting to see that having anything to do with a project that features “trans” in any way is like trying to backstroke through the La Brea Tar Pits. Why do that to yourself?
She was harrassed on social media for repeatedly calling the trans man character she was going to portray, gasp, a woman! Since role playing is a critical element of being trans, I suppose a lot of the trans cultists consider themselves expert drama critics. Evidently Halle couldn’t get deep enough into the part.
SW @13 Exactly, it looks like she (politely) told them to shove off to me. Who needs that.
Third post in a row. Yeesh. So many things to say.
@ Screechy:
Because standpoint epistemology. As people who are not trans are situated in the superior position within an oppressive system, they only have epistemic access to knowledge from that perspective. The situatedness of trans[wo]men, on the other hand, affords access to their own perspective (because of course) and also the non-trans perspective, to which they are privy because the system encodes that perspective in everything.
Well, right up until a transwoman behaves as a predator; then they aren’t really trans, they are just pretending. Because no true Scotsmen, after all.
That one is easy. TWAW. That’s the entire answer, and all you need to know. The problem is, if TWAW, then why can’t any woman play them? Women can play women…if TWAW, then there is no reason why a woman can’t play a transwoman.
Uh, oh, there I go again, with my transphobic desire for consistency and coherence.
I dunno if this goes here, but Borderlands 3 has a woman character played by a trans-man… TV Tropes thinks that makes Lorelei non-binary, but really? You have a woman playing a man playing a woman, and if you told me that it was a woman playing a woman I sure as hell couldn’t tell the difference…
Who fucking knows?
Re #18
Exactly the scenario I was curious about. Thanks. (The character, non-binary, because the actor says she’s a man? Really? Does that make John Travolta’s Edna Turnblad, or Tyler Perry’s Madea, non-binary?)
I was curious about women playing male characters in movies, so I tried searching, and the only genuine example I could find was Linda Hunt’s role in The Year of Living Dangerously, for which she won an Oscar. All the other instances were women playing women who pretended to be or thought they were men.
Soooo… just documentaries and reality shows from now on? Yay.
And that puts me in a bit of a spot…who can I get to star in my ghost play? And then, my play about a cynical tooth fairy? I don’t know the tooth fairy!
I suspect Hollywood is really waking up. Remember “Rub and Tug”?
Variety just ran an article sympathetic to JK Rowling. Unlike much mainstream coverage, this one foregoes the typical genderist framing (you won’t find words like “transphobic” or “anti-trans rights” anywhere in the piece). Instead most of it actually reports what Rowling actually said.
Dare I take this as a sign that the tide is turning?
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/jk-rowling-harry-potter-gay-conversion-therapy-tweets-1234698741/
Sackbut @ 19: Peter Pan – Mary Martin
Albert Nobbs – Glenn Close
I’m Not There – Cate Blanchett
Suspiria – Tilda Swinton
Orloando – Tilda Swinton
Cloud Atlas – Susan Sarandon
Just a small sampling. Glenn Close even has a throwaway appearance as a man that you probably didn’t even notice was her in Hook.
You wrote a ghost play and you didn’t hire a ghostwriter? For shame!
@Sackbut #19:
Tilda Swinton’s done so a few times I think, and Kate Blanchett played a male character in the Bob Dylan-inspired movie. Too lazy to Google :-P
I liked Jared Leto’s portrayal of a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club, I suppose there was some amount of flak about that but I don’t remember. I’m sure they’ll go after all of them retroactively, even the Oscar winning ones.
Maybe? I suspect they’ll be pilloried and will fall back into line with a grovelling apology though.
Nullius, there was also Meryl Streep in Angels in America; not just male, but a rabbi!
Thanks for all the references. I don’t understand why I didn’t find any of those in my searching. I should have remembered Peter Pan, ten lashes with a wet noodle for me.
#7 Screechy
Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, kiddo. Recall that trans actors aren’t limited to roles involving trans characters (over which they have a total monopoly) – they also have access to roles of a character of whichever sex it is they believe themselves to be. Trans actors have their own domain of experience all to themselves, but also have full share in everyone else’s. They’re just… special I guess.