Casting call
Scarlett Johansson has withdrawn from the role of a butch lesbian / trans man because of the outrage that the part wasn’t being played by a trans man.
Scarlett Johansson has opted to withdraw from a film in which she was set to play a transgender man after her casting drew criticism from the LGBTQ community.
No, not the “LGBTQ community”; from some people in that “community.”
Johansson had been set to play transgender man Dante “Tex” Gill, who owned a string of massage parlors in Pittsburgh that were fronts for prostitution in the 1970s and 1980s, in a film about his life.
Johansson’s casting, however, came at a moment when the LGBTQ community and allies are encouraging the casting transgender actors in transgender roles.
But it’s also not certain that Gill was a trans man; some say he/she was a butch lesbian who sometimes passed as male for pragmatic reasons.
Anyway. Another big stride in the direction of a more just, peaceful, and verdant world.
Yet somehow her casting in GitS was fine…
As I commented over on Feminist Current, the journalist who broke Brandon’s story has taken up the Gender Ideology party-line. The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon, on TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, however, seems much more convincing than the self-flagellation in the VV.
So where was all this outrage when Eddie Redmayne was cast in “The Danish Girl”? I remember some complaints at the time, but nothing at this level.
BKiSA, her casting in GitS was most assuredly *not* uncontroversial amongst the same sorts of people who are upset over this. It’s quite likely that the pushback from that, as well as the studio’s essentially throwing ScarJo under the bus for it, influenced her decision to withdraw from this project.
Are gay/lesbian actors going to be purdah’d into specific roles?
Good question. Was there any controversy over Benning and Moore in The Kids Are All Right? I don’t recall any, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Is there controversy over the guy who plays Cam in Modern Family? Not that I’ve seen, and if there is it clearly hasn’t been intense enough to persuade the studio to kill him off.
I don’t know, I don’t see this being a winner over the long haul, because producers will just decline to do movies about trans people.
Seth, I saw plenty of online opposition (mostly on Twitter, but also some blog posts) saying that Redmayne and Leto playing trans women in The Danish Girl and Dallas Buyer’s Club, respectively, was damaging/dangerous to/for trans women. I think the backlash may be a bit more vicious for ScarJo, since she doesn’t have male privilege to protect her.
Oh, shoot, I meant also to comment on The Kids Are All Right – I’ve seen plenty of people slamming this movie (more recently, not so much when it came out), because Moore’s character sleeps with Ruffalo’s character, even though she is a lesbian. (Wikipedia, however, says the character is a bisexual, which, if that is mentioned in the movie explicitly, I missed. Anyway, those criticizing the movie act as if sexuality were completely simple and straightforward [no pun intended], and people never get into confusing relationships; and also all art should be perfectly crafted to send only the Approved Messages™. [Approved by whom never seems to get answered directly, but it seems as if trans women, trans men, and “cis” male allies are the only acceptable voices to listen to, based on what Twitterati say. “Cis” women, especially *fear quotes*LESBIANS*fear quotes*, need not apply.])
I kind of sympathize with the criticism though. I was annoyed when The Kids Are All Right went that way because honestly I wanted more of the story about the lesbian couple and I’d gotten the impression that was what it was about. There was Chasing Amy before that. Stories about straight couples are allowed to be about straight couples without veering off into non-heterosexual infidelity, so why can’t stories about lesbian couples do the equivalent? (Probably because all movies have to be mostly about men, because $$$$.) It’s not that I think it’s an Unapproved Message, exactly, but…it wasn’t the movie I’d wanted to see, for sure.