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Here is an interesting article about the use of trans people as horror movie villains
http://www.autostraddle.com/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-trans...
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Comments
Mixed Feelings
I don't entirely agree with the author. First off, I'm not a horror movie devotee - I've never even heard of Insidious 2 or Sleepaway Camp, so I'll confine comments to Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
Those two movies were both superb, which the author recognizes, by the way. I didn't see either villain as trans or even as a crossdresser, to be honest. I'd seen both of them as crazy. Norman Bates was, as the title of the movie implies, psycho. Now, I can see a case that their cross dressing was a sign of their 'otherness,' and a way to make them foreign or chilling, but until reading that article it's not something I'd thought much about. Really, they were good villain due to their insanity. Bates, especially, was a split personality more than a cross dresser - there's a slightly better case for Silence of the Lambs, I grant.
However, that gets into another problem. I don't think there's a problem with a trans or cross dressing villain, provided it's done well. It had become almost a joke in the 90's that you couldn't have a black villain, and it's moved on to other minorities. I want to see positive portrayals as well, but there's no reason not to have good villains too.
While I enjoy, say, Priscilla Queen of the Desert ;), I'm also thrilled to see portrayals that go beyond camp. And that will come with hero and villain roles, and well and badly done ones too. Psycho and Silence are absolutely among the good ones.
Titania
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
I have to agree with you....
In defense of both "Psycho" and "Silence Of The Lambs", the "trans" characters were based on a real individual, Ed Gein. Quite a few people have speculated over the years that he might have been a closeted transperson. Personally, however, I think he committed his too-gruesome-to-mention crimes as a way of symbolically bringing back his demented mother (who he idolized in a Stockholm Syndrome sort of way).
I doubt Hitchcock in particular intended necessarily to demonize transpeople, but to tell a suspenseful story that happened to have a crossdressing element as a plot twist. And as for the character in "Silence Of The Lambs", wasn't it stated at some point that he was turned down for surgery because the psychiatrist determined he wasn't trans? That's a detail that usually gets overlooked.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
PC - politically correct in the movies
It was laughable that for a period, we Brits were cast as the Hollywood 'baddies' because they knew we wouldn't object to being cast as stereotyped villains. As Titania mentioned, it used to be 'people of colour', then there was a period of Germans and so on and so forth.
Even a 'modern' movie twists the real facts for cinematic purposes - 'Argo' depicts the New Zealand and the British embassies as REFUSING 'safety', which is a blatant untruth.
Mind you, all the political anger that is zooming around right now also demonstrates the closing down of objective brain functions and the ability to think clealy.
So the hate-mongers that will grab this anti-T stuff should be treated with the same contempt.
But that does NOT make it easier for us and our other 'sufferers' whether M2F or F2M - and don't those choices support the pure binary?
OOOOOPS
Too much bottled-up intensity is pouring out, and jumbling my train of typing.
I'll back off for a little while.
Di.
Turning it around
I can think of two recent portrayals of TG characters that I thought were well done. Neither in movies, but there you go...
Bring it On (Broadway): The play shares little in common with the movie save the name. Anyway, there's a TG character in the high school who's interesting for the fairly minor role she plays. She's just one of the gang, a supporting role, but played straight (um, as it were). She has one line that plays on her circumstances, when one of the main characters is complaining that she has a hard time and just doesn't fit in, and the TG character responds, in essence, "Really?" Exceptionally well played for the way they let the character just be, and blend into the setting.
Orange is the new Black (Netflix): OK, it's a prison movie, so the character is a prisoner. She stole money for her transition and got caught. She's in a woman's prison, and has a little sub-story of her own where she's got problems keeping up her hormone treatments. It's a very good show overall for the portrayal of the women in the prison, and I found her character nicely developed. She winds up befriending a nun who gives good advice, mostly. It felt to me like the writers intended the hormone story to be her main one, but then liked the character and added on an excellent plot about her relationship with her ex-wife on the outside. I loved that plot too, and thought it was handled well, but it took a while to build up to it.
So, just a few cases I can think of on TG portrayals in media that aren't villains and are, I think, very well done.
Titania
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
As usual, there are many points of view.
You can always add to or subtract from list of horror willains transvestite from "Rocky horror picture show" :-)
On the other hand, in the book "Silence of the lambs" villain was specifically described as not being transsexual. He was assessed for GRS but was found to want it for all of the wrong reasons. So he could have being transgender in the wide sence of word TG, but not transsexual.
On the other hand hockey goalies around the world had to replace their masks with wireframes in early 80th after "Friday the 13th" movie. And I don't see many goalkeepers complaining about their portrayal as evil in movies.
So couple of TG villains does not make everybody to view TG as evil in itself. We have much more potential grief for white cats owners after 007 movies. Or longer straight hair that is signature of evil characters to the degree that it was used to lead viewers to believe that Snape was evil :-)
Also I was considered evil in some cases based on my eye colour. Light blue eyes are used as signature of evil character in hundreds of movies. Now my eyes are darker and more gray than blue, so I'm no longer evil character :-)
Ernst Stavro Blofeld himself
actually resorted to crossdressing in a brief scene in Diamonds Are Forever, as did SPECTRE hitman Jacques Boitier in Thunderball's pre title credits sequence.
I have only seen sleepaway
I have only seen sleepaway camp and I think the scariest part of that movie was the really really bad acting.
Or perhaps it's not just the bad acting...
...but a collection of bad performances made worse by the theater charging $11.50 for a large tub of popcorn and a large Diet Pepsi?
Love, Andrea Lena
keep in mind
Sleepaway camp was from the early 80's so the price wasn't that high.
(what the heck, I'll put there here Spoilers? Just maybe?)
For a bit of fun while watching the movie, play the game of "Is the cop's mustache fake yet" because while filming the movie, the man playing the cop got a commercial job and had to shave, so you can tell near the end that his 'stache is duct tape.
As for Psycho, I always considered Bates as multiple personality disorder. And that Insidious movie was so horrible that I can't bring myself to watch the second one. I mean really, the big bad in it looked like Darth Maul from Star Wars and who haunts people using Tiny Tim's Tiptoe through the tulips?
The number of horror films
Considering the number of "Horror" films, having 4 with villains that are trans, makes me a lot more afraid of the straight people out there. And considering that the only one of those movies that I knew had a man dressing as a woman, Psycho, makes it even less likely. And I never thought of Norman Bates as trans, but as insane.
Only seen Psycho
Of all the movies mentioned I've only seen Psycho. Being a cross-dresser I didn't see Bates as a cross-dresser. As a matter-of-fact in the closing scene Bates sits in the police station, wrapped in a shawl deeply into his mother’s personality letting a fly crawl across his cheek thinking, "I'll show them how harmless I am, I won't even hurt that fly," while one detective asks the police shrink, “So he's a transvestite then?" The reply comes, "No, transvestites dress for the thrill. No he's being his mother," or something to that effect. The insinuation is that transvestites get a sexual thrill, a common misconception of the era, thanks to Magnus Hirschfeld, the German psychiatrist who coined the term. I remember, because that was my first revelation, that there might be other people like me out there and gave me a starting point to research. But the point is the scriptwriter made the distinction between multiple personality disorder and transvestism, stating that Bates' other personality was a woman, IE his mother.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
There is also
The Killing Game and Dressed to Kill, where the trans or cross dressed person is the villain.
Angharad
I seem to remember a movie that...
...judging from the clothing and cars, must have been made in the late fifties or early sixties. A character in that film was a boy who had been raised as a girl. I seem to remember s/he had blond hair (or a wig) in the bouffant style of the time. No one seemed to act like this was anything unusual, and it was rather obvious this was a boy dressed as a girl, because s/he did nothing to make his/her voice sound feminine. But for the life of me I can't remember what the title of the film was. I'm beginning to wonder if I dreamed it.
This is one reason why I hate walking in on the middle of a movie.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel