Post by Ayla on Jan 25, 2016 14:38:49 GMT 8
I was hesitant to transcribe my thoughts on The Danish Girl for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, my reference for depictions of trans men and women in the media is largely a single book: Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl. Would I just be regurgitating her opinions and applying them to the film? If that was the case, why should I not just recommend the book and suggest people see the film to find out for themselves whether it fails or succeeds to render an acceptable portrait of Lili Elbe? A quotation from Julian Barnes seems particularly appropriate to this dilemma:
“If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it’s yours.”
That is a good point: The reading IS mine. Serano does not cover a few of the things that I have concerns about, and I strongly disagree with her solution to the present problem of trans representation: That artists and academics should stop appropriating transsexual identities and experiences until such time as most people are familiar with their work. I dislike the implications of this. Many people have a paucity of experience watching films by women directors. Should that mean male directors should stop casting women at all? The “slippery slope” argument is often misused, but take this to its logical extreme and the only films anyone would make would be those written, acted and directed by only themselves. It would be a considerable hindrance to the advancement of art.
Secondly, have I any right to offer an opinion on how trans people are represented in the media when they can clearly speak for themselves? Well, no, no I don’t. The current onslaught of transphobic sentiment following proposals to remove gender from UK ID, however, make it important for as many people who support the trans community to voice their opinions, to try and stop the malignant spread of misinformation peddled by, and I use this word advisedly, hatemongers. Hopefully it will come across in the ‘respectful, non-exploitative’ way Serano thinks possible when trans people have such a presence in the media that they are unable to be drowned out by cissexual voices. ....
True Story, Biased Biography, Fictional Novel, Adapted Screenplay
One of the most interesting problems The Danish Girl has is that it feels behind the times. There are obvious reasons for this: The story is old, it has been reinterpreted through a biased biography and the novel came out in 2000. Screenwriter Lucinda Coxon started working on an adaptation in 2004 and had a completed script in a couple of years. Whipping Girl, the book I have quoted from extensively, came out in 2007.
The most interesting problem, and one that I think will become more and more common with the speed of communication possible in the modern era, is that the length of its time in development made its representation of the trans experience passé by the time it was released. 2015 was a banner year for trans visibility, if not necessarily for comprehension, prompted most prominently by Caitlyn Jenner coming out in the April. Filming of The Danish Girl began in February 2015. By the end of 2015, Jenner was named as a TIME Person of the Year runner-up, Collins English Dictionary had named transgender as one of its words of the year and Rush Limbaugh has been fooled into thinking tampons for trans women that simulated menstruation were a real thing. I thought The Danish Girl would have a synchronicity with the zeitgeist, a modern outlook on the trans experience, even though it was set in the past, but it did not. It just felt staid.
The Stories We Choose To Tell
There are so many variations on trans perceptions and experiences that choosing to tell only one story will almost necessarily alienate some part of the community. Choose to tell the story of a trans woman, you sideline the experiences of trans men. Choose to tell the story of a heterosexual trans woman, you may fail to evoke empathy from trans lesbians. Choose to tell the story of someone who has sex reassignment surgery, you risk failing to connect with someone who does not intend to undergo such a procedure. Choose to tell the story of a transgender pioneer from history, there will be some part of it that people going through the contemporary trans experience will be unable to relate to.
There are many stories that need to be told about trans people, but I do not believe this was one of them.
horsesallthewaydown.com/2016/01/22/the-danish-girl/
Firstly, my reference for depictions of trans men and women in the media is largely a single book: Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl. Would I just be regurgitating her opinions and applying them to the film? If that was the case, why should I not just recommend the book and suggest people see the film to find out for themselves whether it fails or succeeds to render an acceptable portrait of Lili Elbe? A quotation from Julian Barnes seems particularly appropriate to this dilemma:
“If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it’s yours.”
That is a good point: The reading IS mine. Serano does not cover a few of the things that I have concerns about, and I strongly disagree with her solution to the present problem of trans representation: That artists and academics should stop appropriating transsexual identities and experiences until such time as most people are familiar with their work. I dislike the implications of this. Many people have a paucity of experience watching films by women directors. Should that mean male directors should stop casting women at all? The “slippery slope” argument is often misused, but take this to its logical extreme and the only films anyone would make would be those written, acted and directed by only themselves. It would be a considerable hindrance to the advancement of art.
Secondly, have I any right to offer an opinion on how trans people are represented in the media when they can clearly speak for themselves? Well, no, no I don’t. The current onslaught of transphobic sentiment following proposals to remove gender from UK ID, however, make it important for as many people who support the trans community to voice their opinions, to try and stop the malignant spread of misinformation peddled by, and I use this word advisedly, hatemongers. Hopefully it will come across in the ‘respectful, non-exploitative’ way Serano thinks possible when trans people have such a presence in the media that they are unable to be drowned out by cissexual voices. ....
True Story, Biased Biography, Fictional Novel, Adapted Screenplay
One of the most interesting problems The Danish Girl has is that it feels behind the times. There are obvious reasons for this: The story is old, it has been reinterpreted through a biased biography and the novel came out in 2000. Screenwriter Lucinda Coxon started working on an adaptation in 2004 and had a completed script in a couple of years. Whipping Girl, the book I have quoted from extensively, came out in 2007.
The most interesting problem, and one that I think will become more and more common with the speed of communication possible in the modern era, is that the length of its time in development made its representation of the trans experience passé by the time it was released. 2015 was a banner year for trans visibility, if not necessarily for comprehension, prompted most prominently by Caitlyn Jenner coming out in the April. Filming of The Danish Girl began in February 2015. By the end of 2015, Jenner was named as a TIME Person of the Year runner-up, Collins English Dictionary had named transgender as one of its words of the year and Rush Limbaugh has been fooled into thinking tampons for trans women that simulated menstruation were a real thing. I thought The Danish Girl would have a synchronicity with the zeitgeist, a modern outlook on the trans experience, even though it was set in the past, but it did not. It just felt staid.
The Stories We Choose To Tell
There are so many variations on trans perceptions and experiences that choosing to tell only one story will almost necessarily alienate some part of the community. Choose to tell the story of a trans woman, you sideline the experiences of trans men. Choose to tell the story of a heterosexual trans woman, you may fail to evoke empathy from trans lesbians. Choose to tell the story of someone who has sex reassignment surgery, you risk failing to connect with someone who does not intend to undergo such a procedure. Choose to tell the story of a transgender pioneer from history, there will be some part of it that people going through the contemporary trans experience will be unable to relate to.
There are many stories that need to be told about trans people, but I do not believe this was one of them.
horsesallthewaydown.com/2016/01/22/the-danish-girl/