Ultimately demeaning
Dreaming the impossible dream again:
Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer has said she no longer wants to play transgender roles. The 25-year-old transgender star shot to fame playing a trans character, Jules Vaughn, in HBO’s hit teen drama.
So he’s an actor and a he, and the BBC is lying to its readers in the usual way by calling him “she.”
Anyway. Trans actor Hunter doesn’t want to play trans characters any more. Ok; there are other jobs. Have a nice life, Hunter.
But Schafer said she felt she could go further as an actress by “not making it the centrepiece to what I’m doing”. She said: “I worked so hard to get to where I am, past these really hard points in my transition, and now I just want to be a girl and finally move on.”
He “just” wants to get jobs playing a woman when there are thousands upon thousands of actual women who want those jobs. The movie business is there to make money, not to validate guys like Hunter. He just wants to be a girl but he’s not a girl, so he wants the impossible. He just wants to “move on” from being trans, but the only place to move on to, for him, is being a man.
Speaking to GQ magazine, Schafer said being known simply as a “trans actress” was “ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do”. She continued: “I’ve been offered tons of trans roles, and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to talk about it.
Well tough shit, kid. You can’t have it both ways. If you find it “demeaning” to be known as a trans actress, you could always stop being a trans actress. Tragic reality: more people want to be famous rich movie stars than actually are famous rich movie starts. Lots more.
Funny that he wants to drop the trans roles and just usurp some female roles. “Oh my gosh, can’t we just skip to where you accept me as female? *pout*”
Sounds like they are writing tons of trans characters into mainstream movies or TV. Isn’t that what you wanted? And wasn’t it you-all who insisted that trans characters could NOT be played by actors who were not trans? Sounds like you could have steady work as an actor, playing the kind of roles that you insist cannot be played by non-trans actors.
It’s like Trans Visibility Day — you want to be seen, and to be known, as trans, except that your trans status is a big fat private secret that no one is supposed to notice, remark upon, or inquire about, under threat of hate crime prosecution for having the temerity to know what sex you actually are.
First you want to pretend. Then you want to lie.
Hunter Schafer is locked into playing trans characters in the same way that Danny DeVito is locked into playing short characters. Willing suspension of belief only goes so far.
Same reason Tom. Raise didn’t get taken seriously as Jack Reacher. He just didn’t match the description. By about a foot and 30kg of bone and muscle. Some things you notice.
Can’t see him playing too many roles where he is supposed to be a woman – I took one look at how he is bigger and more masculine looking than the actor that played Snow in the Hunger Games prequel and it took me right out of the Tigra character. Also, he is an awful actor so I wonder how long women who can actually act will be happy to act like they are thrilled when they lose roles to this guy.
There are definitely places in this world where everybody will tell Hunter he’s a girl. None of them involve the public at large.
If he wants to move on, he should – away from acting. If he wants to act, he will have to deal with the fact that other people get to think for ourselves, and the overwhelming majority of us won’t ever think he’s a girl.
The current season of American Horror Story has a trans identified male playing the role of a woman. Problem is, it took me half a dozen episodes to work out he was supposed to be a woman. Are we supposed to not notice?
Apologies, early morning typing on my phone, didn’t spot the weird auto… ‘Tom Cruise’.
Simon, I started watching some western drama a while back. Quite gritty and dark, and then a character appeared that was supposed to be a prostitute. Except it was obviously a guy in a dress. A guy who couldn’t act to save themselves. It jolted me right out of the story. Were they supposed to be trans? Gay? The acting was so bad I wondered if the role was a comedy one and I’d misread the genre. Nope. Just an unexplained and unnecessary character that was badly portrayed. Presumably tossed in for shock value or status points.
There are lots of roles in movies and TV where the sex of the character is unimportant. It could be a person of either sex. For example, restaurant owner, apartment building manager, taxi cab driver, surgeon, etc. There’s no reason at all that a transgender actor couldn’t be in one of those roles. Their transgenderism isn’t essential to the story. IOW, a transgender person can act like a perfectly normal person, where it’s their job or whatever that’s the important part. What’s wrong with that?
The recent show Ripley has a woman (who claims to be “nonbinary”) playing the role of Freddie Miles. It is so obviously a woman playing a man that it is completely distracting. Is the audience just supposed to ignore the obvious? I don’t have an issue as such with trans characters unless they just shoehorned in for the sake of woke points, but this is just an odd choice on the part of the people making the show. It ruins the immersion every time “they” is onscreen.
Amy @11
Ha, just yesterday I read a review complaining about that (unfortunately I can’t find it.) The reviewer said that in addition to being distracting, the actress (Eliot Sumner) can’t act worth a damn.
So why was she cast? Well, she’s “non-binary”. It’s probably just coincidence that she also happens to be Sting’s daughter…
Lady Mondegreen;
I just saw the introduction of ‘Freddie’ in the new Ripley. I wondered at the casting, including the notion that ‘he’ might be trans…
It’s a dumb casting choice on several fronts. The whole issue of gay male signaling and underworld-ish recognition is a major point in the novel, and the film from ’99.
The show ‘Yellowjackets’ introduces a peripheral character played by a ‘trans actress.’ Nicole Maines is plausibly female in the role. But of course her trans status had to be touted.