Some employees were offended by the column
Business Insider removed a post about portrayals of trans individuals in Hollywood after staff complained internally about the column, saying the article did not meet the publication’s standards.
On Friday, conservative columnist Daniella Greenbaum published a piece titled: “Scarlett Johansson is being unfairly criticized for doing her job after being cast as a transgender man.”
…
Several Business Insider staff told The Daily Beast that some employees were offended by the column.
The publication took down the piece on Friday, and appended an editor’s note to the page on Tuesday saying that “Business Insider removed the column because, upon further review, we decided it did not meet our editorial standards.”
So it must have been pretty bad then. Let’s read the archived version:
Scarlett Johansson is the latest target of the social-justice warrior mob. The actress is being chastised for, well, acting.
She has been cast in a movie in which she will play someone different than herself. For this great crime — which seems to essentially define the career path she has chosen — she is being castigated for being insufficiently sensitive to the transgender community.
Johansson is set to play a transgender man in an upcoming film, “Rub and Tug,” a film based on the true story of transgender massage parlor owner Dante “Tex” Gill. The announcement quickly garnered a reaction.
Trace Lysette, a transgender actress who plays Shea on “Transparent” took to Twitter: “And not only do you play us and steal our narrative and our opportunity but you pat yourselves on the back with trophies and accolades for mimicking what we have lived… so twisted. I’m so done.”
Well, the crack about “the social-justice warrior mob” hints that the point of view is conservative, because “social justice warrior mob” isn’t really a popular label on the left, even among people who try to keep the left honest, i.e. criticize it from within. But I don’t see anything shocking enough to spell “withdraw the piece!!”
Her framing of the issue, which has been echoed by other actors and activists, is off base. “Stealing” narratives — or, more charitably, playing parts — is precisely what actors are hired to do. But that reality seems to have been forgotten. CNN wrote a story about the issue entitled, “These trans actors could have been cast instead of Scarlett Johansson in her new movie.”
It’s hard to imagine people having the same reaction in other scenarios — a rich actor being hired to play a poor person; an actor whose real-life parents were still living being hired to play an orphan; a perfectly nice, upstanding member of society being cast as a rapist; or an actor with no scientific experience being cast as a paleontologist.
Yet all of these examples (and dozens more) could also be strangely characterized as “stealing” narratives. I’m sure there’s a class on how to do just that at the Yale school of Drama.
Still not seeing any thought crime.
A New York Times story on the fallout described the online backlash as being “led by transgender actors, who argued that such casting decisions take opportunities away from members of marginalized communities.”
What they fail to acknowledge is that the job of an actor is to represent someone else. Johansson’s identity off the screen is irrelevant to the identities she plays on the screen. That’s what she’s paid for. And if she does her job, she’ll make everyone forget about the controversy in the first place.
And that’s all there is. I don’t see anything that justifies withdrawal of a published piece. It’s not an attack on trans people or even a questioning of the meaning of “gender identity”; it simply questions the idea that you have to be an X in order to play an X (and, implicitly, the idea that Xs should be hired to play Xs because they should get the jobs). That is not a good reason to withdraw a published piece.
People have gone nuts on this subject.
I wrote a piece for @NYMag about why it was a very bad look for Business Insider to pull that @DGreenbaum about Scarlett Johansson playing a trans man. For the health and vibrancy of journalism, all-out retractions need to remain quite rare.https://t.co/pvHejzu56O
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 11, 2018
I’ve given a lot of thought to representation in life, books and films (in part prompted by the fact that Hellenes are never chosen to play in movies that purport to show their myths of history) and one of my takes on the issue is Authentic Ethnics, http://www.starshipreckless.com/blog/?p=9038
This is also coming off her playing a Japanese cyborg in Ghost in the Shell… she’s probably a better fit for a trans-man than that at least, certainly better than an actual man.
The piece isn’t horrible, but it is disingenuous to feign casting about for examples of someone playing something they’re not then concluding there’s nothing offensive going on, while somehow missing the most obvious examples of crossing gender and race boundaries, which would tend to offend people.
I am so tired of these crybullies and their enablers. And the cowards who give in to them.
Big budget feature films intended for wide release need big name stars.
And however much gender activists may wish to convince us all otherwise, a male star would be a bad fit for the role.
I hope this fuckery will turn out to be a political mistake for them. Movie makers are liable to reach the same conclusion already reached by numerous scholars and scientists (and journalists): going against the trans ideological outrage machine isn’t worth it. They’ll avoid trans characters and leave the “representation” to true believers, who will make earnest films about brave and stunning trans heroes that nobody outside their community will see.
I wonder if these trans actors intend to only play trans characters for their entire careers.
@Nan I wondered that too. Isn’t the point of representation meant to be actors starring in narratives where their minority status (race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability etc) is not the point of the character? Little people complain (with good reason) that they are typecast into very narrow roles. It’s been a joy to watch Peter Dinklage cast off a few of those shackles at least. Surely trans actors only getting trans roles woukd be even more limiting?
There’s another angle on this as well. Sometimes able bodied actors are cast in disabled roles because the director wants to show the character before they became disabled. Equally, for a trans role, if you want to show the period before transitioning or show the process of transitioning, that means the actor has to spend time presenting as something other than the gender identity of the trans character. But oh, we’ve already been told ad nauseum how distressing this is, triggering a trans person’s dysphoria. Why it constitutes violence, don’t you know? So how exactly are directors supposed to square that circle?
I can answer that. No. Transwomen expect to play women. I know a case where a transwoman was cast in a role (NOT a transwoman role) and there have been other instances where they expect to be treated the same as “cis” women. There are few enough good roles for women anyway, so if we now have to compete with transwomen, who with their often larger size and somewhat less feminine features (not all transwomen fit that, I realize) they can easily portray the grotesque caricatures of women that are not uncommon in women’s roles.