TRANSIBILITY

Throughout the history of television and film, transgender characters, especially transgender women, haven’t always been treated with the same respect that cis characters are usually afforded                                                                                                                                                        

 

Transgender women have often been portrayed as serial killers (Silence Of The Lambs, Dressed to Kill, Sleepaway Camp) or as comedic relief (Soapdish, Ace Ventura).

The year 2005 was an important year for Transgender women in film. The films Breakfast on Pluto and Transamerica were centered on the lives of two trans women who have not yet fully completed the transition. 

 

Breakfast On Pluto stars Cillian Murphy, who plays Patrick. Patrick is biologically a male, but ever since she was little all she wanted was to wear a dress and wear lipstick. Once a teenager, Patrick comes out as transgender and uses the names Kitten and Patricia. The film is set in Northern Ireland in the late 1940s and reflects the attitudes of that time. Kitten experiences ignorant remarks, violence, and is at one point suspected of being a terrorist. Depressed, she is forced into prostitution and is almost killed by a client. Breakfast On Pluto was notable at the time for taking a transgender women’s journey seriously and providing her with a happy ending. 

 

Transamerica stars Felicity Huffman as Bree. A week before her vaginoplasty surgery, Bree gets a call from her son that she had pre-transition who is now in jail, and who she never knew existed until now. Since her son is unaware of her transition, he calls her under her birth name. Bree shows up at prison and pretends to be a Christian missionary. The two embark on a road trip, and her son is unaware of her identity both as a trans woman and as his birth father. Bree also encounters transphobia in the film. While her son eventually finds out and is supportive, it is revealed that Bree’s parents do not approve of her new life once she and her son stay with them. Bree has a happy ending as well, having her vaginoplasty, revealing her identity to her son, and having an enjoyable job as a waitress. 

 

Both films were successful upon their release. Cillian Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe and won an Irish Film and Television Aware for his performance, while Felicity Huffman won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award. These films marked a turning point and showed that films that took transgender women seriously can be successful. 

Another important film for the Transgender community was Dallas Buyers Club, which was released in 2013. While the film centered on Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a straight cisgender man who was diagnosed with AIDS, an important supporting character is Rayon, a transgender woman who is played by Jared Leto. Rayon is also dying from HIV, and her friendship with the initially homophobic and transphobic Ron encourages him to become more compassionate to the LGBT community and encourages him to go to court in order to acquire an illegal drug to combat the disease. 

 

Jared Leto won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Rayon. However, his performance also received a lot of criticism from the transgender community, who wondered why a cisgendered actor was playing a trans woman, and who disliked that Rayon’s main function in the film was to teach and help the main character. As Chelsea Hawkins of Salon Magazine said, “Given that transgender people are invisible in contemporary media, it becomes problematic that Leto is taking the role of a trans person when there are trans actors out there trying to find roles and work. While it’s important to acknowledge that Leto, by taking on the role of Rayon, is drawing attention to the experience of transgender people, it’s also important to recognize that the stories of underrepresented, oft-ignored and -misunderstood communities may be best told by the people who live those lives.” 

 

While television has recently made some progress with positive portrayals of transgender people with series such as Transparent and Orange is the New Black, there have also been some extremely problematic portrayals of transgender women in recent years, often showing them as unstable or manipulative. 

 

One such portrayal was the character of Ava Moore on Nip/Tuck, played by Famke Janssen. Ava initially identified as a gay man who was in love with a surgeon. When she realized that he would never love her due to her being biologically male, asked him to perform reassignment surgery on her. He agreed and they got married. She left after realizing he would never truly love her, and before he could finish her vaginoplasty. This meant that she could not pass herself off as biologically female to any of her sexual partners, so she took on younger sex partners thinking they would be too inexperienced to know. 

 

This fact says a lot about the portrayal of the character, who is frequently shown to be cruel and manipulative. As a fan of the show, I found making this character transgender to be unnecessary and that she would’ve been equally as effective if she had been cisgender. Making her transgender seems to be nothing more then an attempt by the writers to seem edgy or shocking. 

 

Another negative portrayal of a trans woman was the character of Unique, played by Alex Newell, on the show Glee. Unique is a character who switches schools and joins the Mckliney High Glee Club because of their accepting behavior towards her. While she occasionally got redeeming moments as well as moments that delved into the bullying that a transgender student in high school would definitely face, for the most part she is a side character who does nothing more then suffer cruel jokes from the other characters and fails to receive any substantial storylines. One storyline where she was heavily involved ended with her turning out to have Catfished another classmate, contributing further to the trope that transgender characters are manipulative or unstable.

 

Interestingly enough, both Glee and Nip/Tuck share a creator in common, Ryan Murphy, and both shows and their portrayals of these women show his true thoughts on them.

 

While there has been definite progress in how transgender women are portrayed in television and film, shows like Nip/Tuck and Glee show that there is still a common habit of taking the humanity away from transgender characters, and there won’t be full progress until this problem is dealt with.