Performing
And while I’m on the subject of Pink News…just one more –
Why cis men should never, ever play trans women as Eddie Redmayne admits ‘mistake’
But wait though. How do they know anyone is a cis man? Isn’t it a crime to assume people’s gender? How do they know Eddie Redmayne isn’t gender fluid and just hasn’t come out yet? How do they know he isn’t trans and hasn’t come out yet?
The debate on who gets to play what roles has been particularly prominent in recent years as the industry faces up to decades of misrepresentation.
Well…as a handful of activists yell louder and louder and ever louder.
Today, there is a broad consensus that trans roles should go to trans actors.
Is there? Who says? Where are the stats?
Also what does that mean? That trans men should play trans men and trans women, and trans women should play trans women and trans men? Just generic “character is trans so get a trans actor” regardless of which gender is being performed?
Richards goes on to list examples of successful trans actors, like Laverne Cox, Trace Lysette and Angelica Ross, who proudly live their lives as women, just as beautiful and feminine off-screen as they are on-screen.
And that of course is what “as women” means – being maximally beautiful and feminine. Most women are doing the woman-being all wrong, by not being beautiful and feminine enough, and men are here to show us how it’s done.
Richards directly contrasts this with Redmayne in The Danish Girl, admitting that while it’s certainly a convincing trans performance, “it reduces that person… to a performance of transness, a performance of femininity, rather than as a whole person of whom transness is one aspect of.”
But of course being a man pretending to be a woman is not at all a performance of femininity.
As Eddie Redmayne walks the red carpet in suit and tie, the epitome of masculinity and the antithesis of Lili Elbe, he reinforces the harmful and offensive trope that a trans woman’s identity is nothing more than a costume which, when removed, reveals a man beneath.
So harmful and offensive, and let me remind you how beautiful and feminine Laverne Cox is.
There aren’t enough eyes to roll, I swear.
“it reduces that person… to a performance of transness, a performance of femininity, rather than as a whole person of whom transness is one aspect of.”
I think a container ship of irony meters just sank.
Eddie Redmayne also portrayed Stephen Hawking…but Redmayne is able to walk and speak without assistance. Should only disabled actors play Stephen Hawking?
Benedict Cumberbatch played Hamlet, but he is not Danish. (Not even a cheese Danish.)
That may explain why the lack of anger towards Felicity Huffman for portraying a trans woman in “Transamerica.” They accept her because as a woman she has no trouble passing as, well, as a woman.
Of course, I just remembered the role of Roberta Muldoon as played by John Lithgow in The World According to Garp. There was a bizarre scene in which he was accepted as a woman in a memorial for Jenny but Garp was outed as a man. Why has John Irving not been trashed by the TA’s for writing this?
Wait, these trans activists are outraged about misrepresentation?
So trans actors presumably should only be playing trans roles? One wonders what has to happen on the next season of ‘Umbrella Academy’
I wonder if trans cult apostle Judith Butler has a problem with performances of performative gender. :P
But then there was all the anger about Scarlett Johannsen, who definnitely can also pass as a woman.
If Eddie Redmayne were to publicly self-identify as a woman, ( without any hormones and surgery), he’d happily be accepted as a woman, just like Alex Drummond is.
Also, this is another example of this madness. The Irish rock band Girl Band (made of four men) has now changed their name to Gilla Band. They’ve also offered the usual cowardly apology for ” “choosing a misgendered name in the first place.”
https://pitchfork.com/news/girl-band-ditch-misgenderedandnbspname-to-become-gilla-band/
The final death-rattle of rock music as a subversive art-form, anyone?
Muldoon was, of course, transsexual, and a big point was made in the book about how accepting people were of Muldoon being a woman. Irving also wrote In One Person, which has an important trans-identified-male character who passes as a woman for much of the book, and is treated very sympathetically. Maybe the activists like Irving. But probably the big reason is that the film version of Garp came out in 1982, well before all hell broke loose.
There was a recent kerfuffle about whether Jewish characters should be played by Jewish actors, and I shared a couple of thoughts at the link.
Ha! I really really want to say he’s cheesier than a Danish, but I think he’s a pretty decent actor.
I’m baffled. Not by the ‘trans’ cult’s blatant hypocrisy; that’s par for the course. But what has cheese got to do with Danish? Over here, the Danes are famous for their bacon, not their cheeses.
Only trans actors can play trans parts, and only “cis” actors can play “cis” parts?
As long as we’re not compelled to generalize to other acting categories, this sounds like a great deal to me. So then a trans woman would in every sense be a woman except they couldn’t play the role of a “cis” woman?
Re #11, cheese Danish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry
A “Danish” in American English refers to a “Danish pastry”, called different things other places. Sweet cream cheese is one of the popular toppings/fillings, and that one gets called a “cheese Danish”.
I look forward to the movie being remade with Mister Laverne Cox being given the starring role. Why not? :)
Sackbut, I am familiar with Danish pastries. They have been popular for as long as I can remember. But I have never seen or heard (or even read, until this thread) of a ‘cheese Danish’. We live and learn, eh? Thank you!
I think you’re probably not familiar with what Americans mean by “Danish pastries” which I doubt any Danish people would consider Danish. They’re not good. Real almond paste never gets anywhere near them.
In fact they’re kind of trans-Danish.
I lost my sense of humour at birth. But Ophelia’s ‘In fact they’re kind of trans-Danish’ elicited a great guffaw.
As a matter of fact, how many good professional trans-actors are there?
‘admitting that while it’s certainly a convincing trans performance, “it reduces that person… to a performance of transness, a performance of femininity, rather than as a whole person of whom transness is one aspect of (sic).”’
If it is a ‘certainly a convincing trans performance’, then what is the problem? If it somehow simultaneously ‘reduces that person’ (a character in a film or play) ‘… to a performance of transness, a performance of femininity’, then either the actor was doing the job well, and performing well, or the performance wasn’t convincing. What a thoughtless mess.
What is this “acting” profession again?
Re cheese Danish: I don’t think the Danish consider “Danish pastries” Danish; they are called “Viennese bread” in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. Or rather, a similar pastry is given that name in Scandinavia; the Danish do not own the rights to dictate what does or does not go into a pastry called “Danish” in the US, especially if they don’t call it a “Danish” anyway. I would be interested in trying a “Viennese bread” sometime.
There are good ones in the good bakeries in the US. I wouldn’t judge the entire class of pastries by what you can pick up wrapped in plastic at the convenience store.
A good cheese Danish is an utter delight, among my favorite pastries.
Yes that’s fair, I was thinking the same thing. But as a generic label I think it refers more to the cheapo kind of thing you’d get at a Denny’s or similar.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company is three guys who do a farcical send-up of Shakespeare’s plays as a stage production.
At one point, one of the guys is playing a female character. He slaps a curly blonde wig on his head and commences running in circles, flapping his arms, and spouting–well–not any actual lines from a play, but some shrieks and moans indicating her emotional state.
Just when it seems that the bottom has completely fallen out, he turns to the audience and explains, “It’s called acting.”
Re Acting
There was a sketch on some comedy TV show in the 70s in which a desperate man approaches another and pleads for a job, and he lists his woes; something like: a sick wife, lost his job, lost his home, hungry children. The other man happens to be a movie producer, and he’s producing a movie about a desperate man who pleads for a job, citing a sick wife, a lost job, a lost home, and hungry children. The producer asks the man how old he is; he’s 26. The character is 26 and a half, aw, darn, but they won’t start shooting for six months, so he should be OK. He gives the guy a script to read that happens to be exactly what he’d been saying. They guy cannot act, not at all. Shifting between reading the script (if he’s been offered the part again) and actual pleading (if he’s been rejected for the part again), both speeches having the exact same words, he sounds stilted and awkward or heartfelt and convincing.
This sketch comes to my mind a lot when I read about these silly battles over who can take what part. Acting skill is what matters most, not so much whether the actor matches the character in various demographic metrics.
Steven @ 22 – I’ve seen that, and it was hilarious (and I’m a massive fan of Shakespeare). It was years ago, so it might be different people doing it now. I went with two friends and there was a bit during the instant Hamlet where they picked out someone in the audience to come up on stage and help them out. The person they chose was one of the friends I was with. The first thing they asked her was her name. (Rachel.) After it was over and we were talking about it, amid gales of laughter, I pointed out that it would have been even more entertaining if I’d had to answer that question.
Acting isn’t just being who you are, it’s being able to portray a character that isn’t actually you. John Lithgow (World According To Garp), Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie), and Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent) are actors who know how to do that. Just being something doesn’t make you able to portray someone who happens to be like you.
I find it odd for TRAs who decry “essentialist” arguments to be such essentialists themselves when it suits them. Oh wait, I’m not. Anyway, as I said, acting is much more than simply being who you are.
“Eddie Redmayne walks the red carpet in suit and tie, the epitome of masculinity”
Is that all it takes? Clothing maketh the man? Baffling then that they won’t allow him to put on a dress and instantly be the epitome of femininity.
Nonsense, the epitome of masculinity is plate armor with shoulder pads the size garbage cans and a sword longer than you are tall.
Suit and tie pretty much gender neutral sissy stuff.
I think it’s worth coming to a complete halt and taking a moment to consider what images the expression “epitome of masculinity” conjures up, and how far from Eddie Redmayne those are.
OMG that would have been brilliant. Some friends and I saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company at a small informal venue (before they got big!) and the bouncing Yorick skull landed right in my friend’s lap. I’ll never forget the look on her face.
The TRAs aren’t going after John Irving because he’s a man.
Jesus and Mo, and Ricky Gervais, have taken potshots at idennity madness without attracting any threats of rape or murder. They haven’t been doxxed or confronted with violent mobs either.
Yeah, I saw The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) in the 90s.
It seems from WIkipedia that the same actors (or at least some of the three) that I saw are still in it now. Not sure when Steven or Ophelia saw them.
If being trans is just “one aspect” of the “whole person,” then why does someone else misgendering them or showing skepticism “deny their humanity?” After hearing over and over that transness is the Core Self, discovering that it’s only one aspect of who they are is a bit of a jolt.
The quote does, however, show that the TRAs recognize how fragile the illusion is. If all it takes for people to doubt that trans identities could be performative (I thought gender was supposed to be performative) is being exposed to a performance, then they’re fighting a losing battle.
Hello? Calling Sam Smith. What about Enbies? Aren’t their identities “valid”? Or is that just a sop that nobody (even genderists) really believes? Can’t they play anyone and everyone? As far as acting goes, they should be the “universal donor” type, since they are neither, they should be able to play both. Or something.
Oddly enough this echoes criticism of Peter Mahew’s performance in the original Star Wars. Said one offended critic, “it reduces that person… to a performance of Wookieness, a performance of furriness, rather than as a whole person of whom Wookieness is one aspect of.”
(Also, “…of whom XXX is one aspect of” wins an award of an ad hoc repetitive “Live and Let Die” redundancy award.)