Why can’t Hollywood get trans characters right?

By Joseph Earp

Those poor folks in Hollywood. They try. They’re like the perennially uncool substitute teacher, trying to casually pose across their desk while spitting lingo more dated than their corduroy pants.

They understand that trans people exist. They haven’t met any, but they know that they’re out there, somewhere, and they discovered this nugget of truth the same way they discovered everything else. They analysed the market.

It doesn’t seem as though they were driven by a burning desire to tell trans stories. Rather, it’s as though they noticed along the way that heart-tugging epics about blighted sectors of society sure do have a tendency to pick up an Oscar or two. And so began the influx of ‘inspiring’ trans stories – films like Dallas Buyers Club and The Danish Girl. Films that martyr trans people. Films determined to turn them into symbols, into signifiers.

Not once does The Danish Girl’s Lili Elbe come across like a real human being. She’s a motivational speech with a heartbeat and a pair of legs; a walking, talking lecture. Though Eddie Redmanye tries hard (gotta get that second Oscar!) he’s a big part of the problem. Largely because he’s not trans, but also because he’s all jerky, frantic posturizing – a straight, white dude’s version of a trans person.

See, here’s the thing: Hollywood are just as insulting when they try hard to be ‘equal’. We ran into the same problem in the late ‘90s, when someone quietly tapped moviemakers on their collective shoulders and told them in a stage whisper that there are folks who out there who like having sex with folks of their own gender.

Immediately, we had the creation of the ‘gay best friend’ archetype. Suddenly, queer characters went from being under represented to being one noted. Every single gay character was sassy, and vain, and nascent.

But it’d be wrong to paint the situation as being totally dire. It’s not one failure after another – a cluster of Hollywood films have actually managed to nail the LGBTQI experience, though they’re films helmed by outsiders. In fact, the film to best transmit the trans experience was made by Hollywood’s true oddball.

He’s not an awards chaser like The Danish Girl’s Tom Hooper or Dallas Buyers Club’s Jean-Marc Vallee. He’s a man who scored his breakout with a film about a goth with scissors for hands – a tousle-mopped weirdo named Tim Burton.

Tim Burton’s Ed Wood is the best film ever made about a trans character, precisely because it’s not really about a trans character. Sure, the piece’s protagonist, Edward D. Wood, likes to dress in his girlfriend’s clothing. But that doesn’t define him, and indeed the majority of the film’s characters merely shrug when he reveals his angora fetish to them.

Ed Wood doesn’t attempt to preach, or make a point. It’s not a film that wants to turn trans people into a political cause, or a movement to be championed.

It’s a film about somebody who so happens to be trans.

And that’s what makes it so special.