COMING TRANSGENDER ATTRACTIONS 05/14/99
Available online at www.transgender.org/ncjs/index.html
This is the twenty-sixth update in a series designed to announce upcoming or currently showing movies, plays and entertainment relating in some way to transgender issues on a weekly basis. Formal reviewing will be left to the editors of Transgender Community News or those whom they designate to write reviews.
TELEVISION
On the Drew Carey Show, Wednesdays at 9:00 pm on Channel 6, and at other times, Drew has a cross dressing brother, Steve. Steve is not announced in this week’s TV Guide, but he was in last week’s and played a very important role in the episode shown on May 12.
Joan of Arc, a four hour miniseries starring Leelee Sobieski and Neil Patrick Harris will be showing from 9:00-11:00 pm on Sunday, May 16 and Tuesday May 18 on channel 3. Much ado is being made over the fact that Sobieski, like Joan, is a virgin. Whether the series will show Joan sleeping as one of the men on the hay, or her criticism of the women who followed the armies around and had intercourse with the soldiers, remains to be seen.
Just One of the Guys, starring Joan Hyser, returns on Sunday, May 16, 1999 at 1:30 pm on MAX 17. A girl disguises herself as a boy in the course of a journalism competition.
Peter Sellers is back as Inspector Clouseau in The Return of the Pink Panther, showing on Saturday, May 15, 1999 at 4:30 pm on MAX 17. Clouseau is forced to exchange clothes with a cross dressing criminal. The latter blows herself up, Clouseau receives a good whipping when he returns to his apartment.
William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night will be showing on SHO 64 on Tuesday, May 18, 1999 at 5:00 pm. In Shakespeare’s time, female parts were played by boys, so when Viola dressed up as her twin brother, the Elizabethan audience was treated to a Victoria-Victor effect. The contemporary audience is not, of course, but is treated to a female actress playing Viola playing her brother, making this is a production well worth seeing for the first time-or again.
MOVIES
Elizabeth is still showing in New York-northern New Jersey area theaters, and at various Philadelphia area cinemas. In fact, right now it is showing at bargain rates at the Echelon Mall Cinema in Voorhees, New Jersey, among other locations. In this movie, Elizabeth I of England swears men off forever when she sees the Duc d’Anjou giggling in a dress.
Life is Beautiful, with writer-director-star Roberto Benigni and Nicoleta Braschi, offers one brief flicker of cross-dressing in a comedy in which a father (Guido) seeks to save his son from the holocaust by convincing the boy that he is at a camp involved in a game to win a real tank. The father’s sacrifice in drag matches the mother’s earlier sacrifice of entering the camp, and ensures the boy will live to be reunited with her. In Italian and German with English subtitles for the Italian.
Shakespeare in Love, directed by John Madden, screenplay by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, and starring Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow, began running at numerous area theaters on Christmas Day. In Shakespeare’s time, all actresses were male, so if Viola wishes to act, she will have to play Romeo, not Juliet. Paltrow makes a good Romeo, but the reason for introducing female actresses in this film is less feminism than the desire to convert Shakespeare’s tragedy about star-crossed teenagers into an adult extramarital affair, where Paltrow makes a good Juliet. Now showing at the Echelon Mall Cinema in Voorhees, New Jersey at bargain rates.
NOTE
All three of the above movies have left the major theaters at which they have been playing for months. Those who wish to see them in a cinema should do so while they are still playing, otherwise wait for the videos to come out.
PLAYS
POSSIBLY LAST CHANCE!!! The Westside Theater at 407 West 43rd Street between 9th and 10th in New York City is staging an off-Broadway revival of Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery of Irma Vep which is expected to run until at least MAY 16!!! The drama is designed for two male actors to play all roles, many of which are female, typical for Charles Ludlam plays (some having the reverse situation of all female casts playing all roles, some of which are male). Theater number is 212-315-2244 for schedules and further information.
MUSICAL
Peter Pan, starring Cathy Rigby, began a limited engagement on April 7 at the Gershwin Theater, 222 West 51st Street in New York. J. M. Barrie’s 1904 play was designed for a woman in the title role, the boy who never grows up. Call 212-307-4100 (or 212-398-8383 (800-223-7565) for tickets and information.
OPERA
It probably will be a long wait until fall for a trouser role, but I will "stay tuned."
GRAY AREAS
As a technical note, Daphne advises me that a recent episode of Homicide dealt with a man who murdered in drag. He never appeared on the show drag, but his apparel and wig were offered in evidence. Supposedly, someone was slashed by a man dressed as a nun in a past episode of The Practice. Anyone seeing an episode of a series which involves transgenderism should try to send me the TV Guide description. Most series have reruns, and this will make it easier to be on the look out for these when they occur.
It appears that some major transgender-relevant movies will be leaving area theaters, and it may be a while before other films come along to replace them. Furthermore, because of competition between area cinemas and the tendency of film promoters to favor widely advertised films, some good transgender-relevant movies never came to the Philadelphia area. A good example is Dry Cleaning and another is Those who Love me Will Take the Train. It is interesting to note that state subsidized French movies tended to be low budget, and could thus recoup expenses with smaller showings, in contrast to expensive Hollywood movies which have to appeal to teen audiences and show in most theaters simply to break even. It is also interesting to note that there was a greater variety of art films in the Philadelphia area when such movies were spread out among several smaller theaters. I had hoped that the expansion of the major shower of foreign and art films to three theaters in two states would increase rather than decrease the variety in these genres.
I am going to deal with this contingency in two manners. First, I will keep on writing editorials, digging up older transgender-relevant videos and books. Second, I am going to expand Gray Areas, trying to find transgender issues where they are not so obvious. One area is the portrayal of female roles. This week, The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful, dealing with women’s roles in film, is showing on channel 12 on Sunday, May 15 at 1:30 am. We transgendereds act in real life. Then A League of their Own, dealing with the first women’s baseball league is showing on TBS 23 on Sunday, May 16, 1999 at 9:00 pm and 11:45 pm. A movie which might seem very far removed from our own situation is Leila, in Farsi (Iran) with English subtitles, starting May 14 at Cinema Village on 22 East 22nd Street in Greenwich Village in New York. Leila seems to have everything a woman could wish for, and live a very modern life in her marriage with Reza in contemporary Iran. But it turns out that she is infertile. Her mother in law puts pressure on her son to find a second wife, and on Leila to allow him to do it. We in the United States live in a modern, high tech society-with religious rightists on the Internet and television. Transgenderism is moreover a form of non-reproductive sex.
WHO IS TRANSGENDERED?-2
In the nineteenth update of March 27, 1999, I wrote an editorial commentary to the effect that persons who dress as members of the opposite sex solely for the purpose of committing crimes may not be transgendered. Such men/women never develop the respective female/male personalities. The use of the apparel and appearance of the opposite sex is solely for the purpose of disassociating themselves from certain outrageous actions, and to make it more difficult for the police to apprehend them. In fact, to assume a public identity (public can, of course, be defined in various ways, including simply participating in a transgender organization) as a member of the opposite sex would facilitate identification and capture by law enforcement authorities. On the other hand, I never said that some members of the transgendered flock could not be criminals. I just wonder if the incidence of criminals among transgendereds is significantly lower than among the general population, but establishing whether this is true or not would depend to a considerable extent on how transgendereds are defined and selected.
In the same commentary (or editorial), I nonetheless pointed out that the law judges transgendered persons by those who don dresses and wigs solely to commit crimes, and the perception of transgendereds as "masqueraders" has led to the ridiculous situation of cross dressing by a male being held to be extreme cruelty in New Jersey while wife spanking was not held to constitute this in Iowa. I suggested that the best way to fight the New Jersey ruling would be documentable antenuptial disclosure to the prospective bride of the male’s transgendered nature.
One issue which has surfaced in relation to the aforementioned editorial is that of what some existentialist thinkers term "authenticity." I never used the word authentic in my commentary. I do have a background in philosophy (Ph.D., teaching experience, publications). On the other hand, I have been a critic of existentialism. The question of whether an authentic transgendered person (that is, one who seeks to develop a personality as a member of the opposite of his or her biological sex) is also authentic in the sense of Sartre, Heidegger or Camus would require a forum the transgendered community does not currently provide-a transgendered humanities journal, dealing with subjects such as philosophy, literature, history, art and transgenderism. I tend to think that it would be very easy for an authentic person in the sense of the existentialists to be a criminal. To cite Albert Camus’s The Stranger simply because probably a lot of people have read it, the protagonist Meursault is sentenced to death for what might be termed a depraved heart killing. In jail, awaiting death, he relives his life on the outside, this time more authentically because an end to his life has now been posited by the law. Before he did not live for the moment because he was living as though his life would continue interminably. I really wonder if an advocate of existentialist authenticity could look very favorably on transgenderism. Many existentialists harbor Nietzchean views. Friedrich Nietzsche is famous for saying in Thus Spake Zarathustra, "Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiß die Peitsche nicht!" [You are going to women? Forget not your whip!] But in Human, All too Human, he suggests that a young man find a mother type woman, and the reader wonders on whom the whip is to be used. Nietzsche first adulated then pilloried Richard Wagner, but adored his wife Cosima Wagner even in madness. His objections to feminism seem to be against femininity. Perhaps I can deal with this issue piece by piece in editorials. When I read invitations to solicit TG forum papers, they are often directed toward clinicians, although there are legal forums, too. But there is no place in the transgendered community to present or publish the sort of humanities papers which might shed some light on this issue.
Perhaps what I am about to say below to supplement my remarks on criminality and transgenderism on March 27 may actually shed some light on authenticity. One aspect of authenticity which has been seized upon by psychotherapists is that the patient should be guided by the inner self, not what others think he or she is. About two years after I began cross dressing daily, I sought free counseling from a consulting firm engaged by my company. I decided to wait and see as to whether I would disclose my transgenderism to the therapist. As an aside, the reader should note right away that a therapist working for a consulting firm such as this has a conflict of interest-the therapy should be for my benefit, but my employer is also her employer, and I later wondered whether confidential information was passed. To return to the story, at that time, I was generally drinking a 12 ounce can of beer a day. Sometimes, I had a bit of sherry before dinner, sometimes a bit of brandy after dinner. The therapist kept raising the issue of alcoholism, and wanted to involve my family, where one member had an alcohol problem. Finally I became both irritated and curious. One day asked her if she considered the amount I reported to constitute an alcohol problem. She responded negatively to this question as well as to the question of whether she thought I was underreporting alcohol consumption. Same answer as to whether I ever showed up intoxicated to therapy-or if the company ever reported that I came drunk to work. It finally turned out that her specialty was alcohol therapy-that was all she could do to help me. Her job was to look for drug and alcohol problems among employees. I did not wish to broach the subject of transgenderism with her.
In a directly transgender-related incident, I was a security guard between two professions, and at one site had the distasteful job of employee security. I was stuck guarding an employee exit. One night the suave store detective came back arm and arm with a female security person assigned to guard changing rooms. I had began making purchases of female apparel at other stores a few months before, and maybe they were wise to me. The store detective gleefully boasted that the two had just hounded a male customer out of the lingerie department. As reported, the two kept looking over his shoulder and tittering at him. I just asked them how long this escapade had lasted-an hour. How many lingerie heists had occurred in the history of the store? It turned out that none had ever been reported. There had been a case when a trash bag-wielding gang of about 20 which included men dressed as women and women dressed as men invaded the store one Christmas season, and the police had to be called. Lingerie was not a department they attacked, and the individual the pair just harassed was not cross dressed and was just selecting clothing. Then I began going through all the departments where thefts had been reported (jewelry, rugs, luggage), including some I was supposed to monitor on closed circuit TV. I went through each one individually. If I or someone else needed a detective, did he mean to say that for one hour, no one could have reached one because he was hounding the phantom panty snatcher? The smiles left their faces. Prejudice is costly. But some people will pay the price. Aside from the moral objections, slavery was an economic disaster, but look at how the South defended it.
Anyone seeing transgender-relevant presentations in the arts not reported above may contact me at 609-547-5203 or at through the link which Rachelle has kindly provided. Please send capsule reviews of transgender-relevant television programs not listed above. The show may be over for now, but there might be reruns.
Jennifer Mae Barnes