COMING TRANSGENDER ATTRACTIONS 07/03/99
Available online at http://www.transgender.org/njcs/
Website of the New Jersey Support Group in Washington Crossing
and at Website of the Philadelphia Chapter
website of MOTG
This is the thirty-first 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. The reruns are in full swing. If anyone knows of episodes in which Steve appears where he is not mentioned in capsule reviews in TV Guide and similar notices, please contact me.
The Gods Must Be Crazy, the 1984 South Africa comedy , will be showing on COM 26 at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, July 7, 1999 and at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 8, 1999. The bushman seeking to return the coke bottle which fell from the plane briefly disguises himself as a woman to reconnoiter.
Just One of the Guys, starring Lisa Gottlieb, Joyce Hyser, Clayton Rohner, Billy Jacoby and others will be showing on HBO 14 on Sunday, July 3, 1999 at 11:30 a.m. and on Wednesday, July 7, 1999 at 4:00 p.m. A high school senior who believes that her good looks are keeping her from winning a journalism prize dresses up as a boy and attends a rival high school only to be discovered when love develops between her and the lovelorn boy she is trying to help.
MOVIES
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 fathers sacrifice in drag matches the mothers 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. This movie has left Philadelphia area theaters, but may return, and is probably playing elsewhere.
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 Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares tragedy about star-crossed teenagers into an adult extramarital affair, where Paltrow makes a good Juliet.
Tea with Mussolini, starring Cher and others, now playing at numerous theaters, revolves around a group of eccentric British women nicknamed the scorpioni [scorpions] residing in Florence, Italy before and after World War II, and depicts their struggle against and triumph over the Italian Fascists, the Germans, and order-giving Scots. The women are, of course arrested after Italy declares war on Britain and America. They save one young man, Willfred, by disguising him as a maidservant. Willfred grudgingly puts up with the garb until Georgi, a woman who always wears trousers (and really dresses as a man but for her scarves) insists on dancing with him/her. The movie derives its title from what appears to be some initial British collaboration with and abetting of Mussolinis forces.
NOTE
As Life is Beautiful and Shakespeare in Love (as earlier Elizabeth) fade from area theaters, a new film is on the horizon, Trick due to be released August 8. A spokesman for the Ritz said it would show at at least one Philadelphia Ritz. The Quad Cinema spokeswoman I spoke to knew nothing about it, and neither really did the Ritz spokesman, but the previews suggest that the film concerns varieties of love, mainly gay, but also heterosexual, and that a cross dressing male plays some part in it.
PLAYS
STILL GOING!!! The Westside Theater at 407 West 43rd Street between 9th and 10th in New York City is staging an off-Broadway revival of Charles Ludlams The Mystery of Irma Vep!!! 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. LAST PERFORMANCE JULY 18!!!
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. Barries 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
Nothing this week, but I keep looking.
GRAY AREAS
The Philadelphia area is losing an important book dealer resource, Encore Books. It is not clear exactly why the chain is going out of business. Conversations with employees suggest that Lauriat, Inc., Encores parent company, has sold the chain to a liquidator not because Encore Books is unprofitable, but because Lauriat, Inc. cannot pay its debts (which preexisted its acquisition of Encore) with the booksellers level of profitability. Actually, if individual statements from Jane M. Von Bergen, "One Final Bow, then Encore Books Will Close," Philadelphia Inquirer, June 18, 1999, C1, C7 are rearranged and the emphasis is shifted, this would seem to be the case. It is too bad that the newspaper which serialized America: What Went Wrong? and America: Who Stole the Dream? may not investigate the matter further. I have been in stores where lines of irate customers are demanding to know, "Why is this store really closing?"
It will be harder for me to purchase gift books now. Nonetheless, I did manage to pick up Kevyn Aucoins Making Faces. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997 and a closeout special at a nearby Encore. Early in 1998, I acquired Kevyn Aucoin, The Art of Makeup. New York; Harper Collins, Calloway Editions, 1994. Frankly, The Art of Makeup, combined with Charles Auguste Baud, Harmonie der Gesichtszüge: Eine Studie über Schönheit, kosmetische Gesichtschirurgie und Mienenspiel [The Harmony of the Facial Features: A Study on Beauty, Cosmetic Facial Surgery and Changing Expressions.] Munich: S. Karger, 1982 and our own Jo Ann Roberts, Art and Illusion, plus the assistance of Selma Baker, who runs the Wig Service Shop in Cherry Hill (advertised in Renaissance periodicals) helped me to avoid makeup. I liked the "natural" look on my girlfriends. Jo Ann Roberts work suggested that if my face were a little more oval, I could wear the hair styles I wished. Surprisingly, the page boy of a female friend I used to walk home from school with looked like it would do the trick of imparting to my face the oval shape I desired. When I tried such a wig on at the Wig Service Shop, it worked. Not only that, Selma remarked, "All you need is a bit of pink lipstick to look female." The work of the plastic surgeon Baud (a German translation of the French original) explained why, as the perfect oval is the ideal in plastic reconstruction of womens faces. Aucoin was of great assistance in his discussions of facial sculpting. I have not had a chance to read Making Faces. His discussions of individual make overs under the heading of "A Gathering," and of makeup icons under the heading of "Great Looks" look interesting. Most interesting are his discussions of male make up, for those who wish to improve a masculine look ("Jay," on pages 102-103) and of those who desire the Valentino look (pages 68-69). Aucoin does not address transgenderism directly, but a lot of what he writes could be useful for us. A long time ago, Encore offered a biography of the Chevalier dEon, a male diplomat who lived as a woman at the end of the Eighteenth-early Nineteenth Centuries. Thus, for a short time, there may still be bargains at Encore Books. Hail and farewell.
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, PRISCILLA
Last evening, I rented Just One of the Guys. Maybe most of my readers have seen it. For those who have not, you are really missing a fine film. I was turned off by the visual publicity which depicts Terry, the homme name assumed by the protagonist when she dresses up as a boy, sitting topless in a locker room holding a football helmet over one breast. In the movie, a good looking high school senior who is denied entry into a journalism contests notes that all those who are selected for the finals are males, and apparently hardly the academic cream of the crop. When she confronts her journalism teacher with allegations of sexism, he nonchalantly asks if she ever considered modeling. So, she dresses up as a boy (quite passably) and switches to a rival of her old high school . She is eventually able to enter and triumph in the competition there. Her winning article is about a lovelorn boy she tries to help, who bashes the local bully first intellectually and then physically. His prom date turns out to be the bullys glam girl-but finally, after the pain of the disclosure that Terry is a girl, he realizes who his true love is.
In Tootsie, Dorothy Michaels wins a woman who will not even deign to speak to Michael Dorsey. In Yentl, a void marriage between two women enables two lovers of opposite sex to marry over parental opposition. We transgendereds are more often than not lovelorn. If we have good reasons for being transgendered (I am thinking of when our beloveds feel that we have deceived them), we might be able to avail ourselves of relationship situations of many transgendered films and plays. I hesitate to provide an example regarding unmentionables. I have been doing Internet research for a TG who wishes to make a flapper dress. I also conducted Internet research on dated lingerie and acquired crinolines and pettipants from a square dance apparel company. I was discussing my acquisition with a genetic woman at a meeting recently. When I explained to her that these items were worn by some women I knew and dated or attempted to date back in the Fifties and Sixties, it became possible to discuss the subject. But sometimes this approach will not work. More than ten years ago, I was seeing a woman who was temporarily transferred out of the area for a few months. She wore a distinctive type of thigh high, which I purchased and wore during our phone conversations. When I told her that I could feel her next to me this way, she was shocked. I asked her if she would rather I had gone to a bar and tried to pick a chick up. Well, if the nation is really going to apply Deuteronomy 22:5 (prohibiting cross dressing for both men and women) to the hilt, it should have banned a TV ad in which a woman dons her lovers shirts, billed as being attractive to women, while she is telephoning him. She says, Ive really been thinking a lot about you," and that is all I was doing when I donned the thigh highs and called up my girlfriend. But for a while, we may need ideals like winning a journalism contest or finding work as a actor, or acting or ethical ideals, to overcome our lovers skepticism about our transgendered practices when, "I want to feel you next to me" should suffice.
If you know of transgender-relevant performances not listed here, please notify me by calling 609-547-5203, or by e-mail (through the convenient link at the New Jersey Support Group site) at Please send me the capsule reviews of transgender-relevant television presentations not reported here so that I may be alerted to reruns.
This article is written by Jennifer Mae Barnes E -mail at : |
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