Lana Wachowski – Bitch Flicks

Dysphoria Dystopias in ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Glen or Glenda’

However, comparing Wood’s deeply personal product with the Wachowskis’ deeply polished one, ‘Glen or Glenda’s explicit gender dysphoria with ‘The Matrix’s allegorical dysphoria reveals parallels that illuminate both films.

“You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life.” – Morpheus, The Matrix

Though Lana Wachowski’s coming out should not be an excuse to limit interpretation of the Wachowski siblings’ most iconic film, The Matrix, to a closeted discussion of gender dysphoria, yet it is a film that is profoundly concerned with psychic dysphoria as sci-fi dystopia: with jarring disconnects between perceived reality and actuality, embodied in a heroic struggle for the reimagination of the self against escalating systems of social control. Ed Wood Jr.’s cult 1953 B-movie, Glen or Glenda, explicitly harnesses classic science fiction to dramatize the psychology of gender dysphoria. As was fictionalized in Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood, Wood was a self-accepting crossdresser who approached the topic of gender dysphoria with an empathy almost unique for his era, clumsily advancing enlightened opinions that would later become orthodoxy. There may be deceptive cunning underneath Wood’s film’s rough surface. Assigned to create a cheap, B-movie freak-show exploitation of the notoriety of Christine Jorgensen’s sex change, Wood delivers a freak-show of random mad scientists, mischievously accuses the cismale audience of suffering from pattern baldness due to their failure to wear women’s hats, creates a surreal nightmare of social conditioning, and then allows his transgender subjects to be islands of humanity within this freakish world. He effectively delivers a transgender freakshow in which the transgender are never freaks. On the surface, Wood’s film and the Wachowskis’ could not be more different: one is the cheap and amateurish product of a man popularized by the Golden Turkey Awards as “the worst director of all time,” while the other is a slick blockbuster considered a milestone in special effects, that has spawned serious, academic debate over its philosophical meanings. However, comparing Wood’s deeply personal product with the Wachowskis’ deeply polished one, Glen or Glenda‘s explicit gender dysphoria with The Matrix‘s allegorical dysphoria reveals parallels that illuminate both films.

Dystopia, Now: Contemporary Reality As Sci-Fi Nightmare

“It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth” – Morpheus, The Matrix

The most fundamental parallel between The Matrix and Glen or Glenda is their shared concept of present reality as a creation of sci-fi dystopia. In Glen or Glenda, Boris Karloff’s mad scientist is positioned as a creator-figure, who performs sex change transformations with a wave of his hand, while omnisciently supervising all life. Though Karloff’s never-really-specified relationship to the film’s realist narrative, complete with weirdly hovering intrusions over the action, are celebrated ironically as symptoms of Wood’s incompetence and oddness, yet Karloff’s role in Glen or Glenda mirrors that of the machines in The Matrix: he enables a dual discourse of irresistible predestination and faulty creation. Karloff’s “pulling of the string” drives surges of wildebeest like irresistible animal impulses, which place Wood’s hero as a puppet who must “dance to that which one is created for” while recognizing that “nature makes mistakes, it’s proven every day”, just as Neo struggles to accept that he is not in control of his own life through the guidance of his re-creator Morpheus.

Using a nightmare sequence of mobbing crowds and mocking variants of the schoolyard chant “slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails, that’s what little boys are made of, sugar and spice and all things nice, that’s what little girls are made of,” Wood dramatizes the sinister power of social conditioning in a way that would be considered Lynchian surrealism, if he wasn’t dismissed as the worst director of all time. Where Wood uses a nightmarish dream sequence, the Wachowskis use body horror, in the violation of flesh-penetrating bugs and the imposed silence of a mouth literally sealed shut, to expressively dramatize the sinister power of their Agent “gatekeepers” over the hero’s most intimate body and self. Wood’s visual vocabulary for expressing the internal experience of gender dysphoria is drawn from James Whale’s Frankenstein, a queer lexicon of absent nurture and flawed divinity. The Wachowskis’ visual vocabulary in The Matrix is drawn from Ghost In The Shell, a cyberpunk anime that explores gender identity through a dystopia where characters can explore their identity by “plugging themselves in” to superpowered new bodies (or “shells”) of any gender. The effect of both texts, however, is to code lived reality as a profoundly unnatural and imposed nightmare that is essentially dystopian and demands the psyche’s resistance, symbolized for the Wachowskis by re-Creator Morpheus’ red pill.

Wood’s decision to open his film with a trans* woman’s suicide, narrated through her suicide note of repeated arrests for cross-dressing–“let my body rest in death, forever, in the things I cannot wear in life”–underlines the seriousness of the psychological crisis of gender dysphoria. Wood’s dramatization also recognizes the individual nature of each trans* experience, from the “transvestite,” who was conditioned by the environment of early youth to value femininity over masculinity and yearn to express his feminine side, to the “pseudo-hermaphrodite” Anne, who seems to correspond to a trans woman in her description as “a woman within… indeed meant to be a woman.” Anne challenges gender stereotypes by excelling as an army officer, before choosing a sex change operation. The “removal of the man and the formation of the woman” is represented onscreen by Bela Lugosi’s scientist blessing the new incarnation in a pseudo-religious ceremony.

The Holy Trinity: Variations And Incarnations

“You’ve been living two lives. In one life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson… the other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias “Neo”… One of these lives has a future and one of them does not.” – Agent Smith, The Matrix

When Keanu Reeves’ hero, hacker Thomas Anderson, is introduced, he has constructed an imaginary identity and vicarious second life as “Neo” that is confined within the cyber-realm. The basic plot of the first film is Anderson’s gradual embrace and embodiment of “Neo” as his true identity, while realizing his imposed identity of Thomas Anderson as a fictional construct. It is Hugo Weaving’s sinister Agent Smith of the social-conditioning “matrix” who continually imposes the (explicitly masculine) identity of “Mr. Anderson” onto Neo. It is when Neo finally resists and asserts “my name is Neo!” that he frees himself from the inevitability of his defeat. It is Neo’s allies who affirm his true identity, with Trinity’s iron belief in his potential self, embodied as a kiss, acting as the catalyst for his final awakening into unbounded liberation. Many commentators have pointed out that Neo can be read as a Christ allegory. Fewer have highlighted that Trinity’s name evokes the Holy Trinity’s conception of a single being’s incarnation into multiple forms. If Morpheus functions as a Creator/Father mentor to Neo’s Christ-figure, Trinity must represent his Holy Spirit. Her kiss is therefore not only Mary Magdalene’s handmaiden witnessing Christ’s resurrection, but the descent of the dove/spirit as agent of his baptism and awakening to mission.

The film’s iconic uniform of black leather, slicked back hair and shades visually codes Carrie-Anne Moss as a female variant of Keanu Reeves’ hero, reimagining the patriarchal Holy Trinity of the Christian religion as a transracial, transsexual one (the theme of transracial incarnation would later play a controversially race-bending role in the Wachowskis’ Cloud Atlas). While the dizzying complexity of the Matrix sequels are beyond the scope of my study, it should be noted that they center on Neo’s battle through ever complicating systems of social control and predestination to avoid the compelled sacrifice of Trinity. A traditional feminist reading would bemoan that Trinity serves as yet another apparently Strong Woman reduced to damsel-in-distress. However, reading Trinity as Neo’s liberated alter-ego enables an interpretation that is more coherent and thematically rich. Trinity is introduced before Neo – demonstrating her super-strength and desirable mastery over laws of nature, she is his ultimate goal throughout the films.

Glen Or Glenda describes the relationship of “Glen” and “Glenda” as “not half man, half woman, but nevertheless man and woman in the same body,” evokes the idea of multiple incarnation of a unified being. A kind of trinity is established between Glen, Glenda and the supervising creator Karloff, similar to that between Morpheus, Trinity and Neo.

The Blue Pill: The Lure Of The Cure

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.” – Morpheus, The Matrix

In The Matrix, the “blue pill” represents returning to the “prison for your mind” that is coercive social conditioning. The character of Cypher represents the lure of the cure, in rejecting the “desert of the real” with its lack of comforts, its isolation and its persecution by patrolling machines, in order to resume a pre-programmed, conforming life where he forgets his past and betrays the team because “ignorance is bliss.”

Neo is dissuaded from his own instincts for comforting conformity by Trinity, the empowered alter-ego who gives him strength to resist his moments of doubt with her own certainty: “You know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that’s not where you wanna be.” In Glen or Glenda, Barbara becomes the strengthening image, with her willingness to accept and love Glen, even if he never abandons women’s clothing, being the catalyst for his mental freedom. While insisting that a sex change is a happy ending for Anne, Glen’s happy ending becomes his reabsorption into a standard male role by finding his cravings for loving femininity fully answered by Barbara. This ending satisfies the mainstream audience’s urge to “cure” Glen, but only if they can grant the trans* audience’s demand that Glenda be accepted as she is, as a part of Glen, as a crucial precondition of the cure.

Gender policing limits the opportunities for full self-realization of all people, though their realized selves might take many forms across a wide spectrum of gender identity. In Lugosi’s words, “one is wrong because he does right. One is right because he does wrong.” Paradoxically, the mainstream audience are the obstacle to their own liberation, because of their mental indoctrination into an ideology of gender policing. As The Matrix‘s Morpheus puts it, they are “the very minds of the people we are trying to save, but until we do these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy.” Or as Glen or Glenda has it: “You Are Society – JUDGE YE NOT.” In the struggle to envision a world without rules or controls, without borders or boundaries, the self-actualization of all people is implied. As long as their matrix of policing thoughts and ingrained prejudices exists, the human race will never be free. What an everyday nightmare.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vUoSPJm5w0″]

Brigit McCone covets the Bride of Frankenstein hairdo, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and hanging out with her friends.

Unity Through Differentiation: The Radical Sex Positivity of ‘Sense8’

The net effect, woven throughout the series, is a sex positivity that both embraces differentiation and recognizes the universal experiences that can work to close gaps of gender, orientation, and race that routinely stymie the discourse.

This guest post by Emma Houxbois appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

Sex positivity, as a movement and concept in general, is open to a great deal of interpretation and criticism because of the multitude of forms that it’s taken over the years. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the heated debates that formed what are alternately described as “the feminist sex wars” and “lesbian sex wars” in establishing where the boundaries between legitimate self expression and exploitation lie in areas like commercial pornography and BDSM lie.

Discussions of power, privilege, and control typically remain central to the topic of sex positivity, and they’re vitally important when considering film in particular, a medium where female expressions of desire are more often than not conceived of and executed by men. While these discussions are vital, they can also stand to be expanded into what sex positivity can look like when it moves beyond the idea of liberating self-expression to recognizing and understanding other people’s desires.

Prior to the debut of Sense 8, Lana and Andy Wachowski were not typically considered to be filmmakers with a particularly sex positive agenda, but the roots of their broad and inclusive conceptions of sexuality in their Netflix series (co-created with J. Michael Straczynski) go all the way back to their debut Bound, a heist flick that starred Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as lovers. At the time, the Wachowskis reached out to erotica writer and famed proponent of sex positive femininity Susie Bright to offer her a cameo in the film as thanks for her work’s influence in creating the film. Bright, who fell in love with the script, countered with a readily accepted offer to be their consultant on film and provide direction on how to film the sex scenes between Gershon and Tilly.

It’s an under-discussed part of the Wachowskis’ career that Bound, through arrangements made by Bright, had its debut at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the Castro theater, establishing a queer context to their work years before Lana came out as transgender. However it’s easy to see a recapturing of the spirit of their collaboration with Bright in Sense8, as they expand from the lesbian romance of Bound to expand into a multitude of simultaneous expressions of sexuality.

Key to much of the conversation around the series and its depiction of sex is how central, and explicit, the relationship between Nomi, a trans woman, (played by Jamie Clayton) and her girlfriend Amanita (played by Freema Agyeman) is. In and of itself it’s a tremendous victory for trans representation that scores the unheard of trifecta of a trans woman character being played by an actual trans actress, recognizes that trans women experience same gender desire, and doesn’t construct her sexuality around deception of any kind. The Wachowskis clearly communicate their triumph in this with the close up shot of a well-lubricated rainbow dildo dropping to the floor at the close of their first sex scene together, but Sense8 sets out to accomplish far more than just a sex toy mic drop.

In addition to Nomi and Amanita’s relationship, the series develops the romance between closeted Mexican actor Lito Rodriguez (played by Miguel Angel Silvestre) who is among the seven other characters Nomi shares an empathic bond with, and his boyfriend Hernando, as well as blossoming heterosexual romances between other members of the group. Nomi and Lito’s relationships are given the bulk of the development as the series progresses, but the Wachowskis use that focus as an opportunity to build a conception of sex that celebrates differentiation while also tapping into the universal aspects of sex and intimacy that everyone experiences regardless of gender or orientation.

This is primarily and most noticeably achieved in a sequence in the sixth episode where enough of the emotional energy of the sensates is focused on sex to trigger a full blown orgy between several of them, including Nomi, Lito, and two of the straight male characters. The focus and direction of the sequence, which was described by Silvestre as Lana Wachowski yelling directions from the sideline, which sounds much like what Bright believed her role in Bound’s production would be interpreted as. (“I think they imagined that meant I stood over Gina and Jennifer with a riding crop, snapping, “Deeper , Harder, A Little to the Left!”) But the scene does also communicate the same language and visuals that Bright intended for Bound:

“There were two main ideas on my mind. One, unlike most Hollywood lesbian scenarios, this movie shouldn’t insinuate oral sex– that’s not the kind of characters we were looking at. BOUND is about getting inside someone very fast, trusting them with everything-these women had to be fucking each other. Penetration was the act we wanted to imply. Yet obviously we weren’t going to get away with gynecological or hardcore shots in a movie that was headed for America’s shopping malls.”

“My idea, stolen from the ‘Kathy’ footage, was that we show a woman’s legs, straining and squeezing, and that we see that her lover’s forearm between her thighs. We dwell on that arm for a moment, moving back and forth in a fucking rhythm, looking sure, steady and unrelenting. Then, instead of following her arm all the way up to her lover’s pussy, we would cut to her stomach, fluttering like a little butterfly in that spasm we all recognize as orgasm. I loved the idea of eroticizing a woman’s belly like that. A lot of men making sex movies try to show a woman’s sexual pleasure by focusing the lens on her cleavage. Maybe that’s what they’re looking at, but hey, there’s a lot more going on!

“The other key idea was to eroticize the women’s hands whenever they were flirting or making love with each other. ‘A lesbian’s hands are her cock, they’re the hard-on of the movie, that’s what you want to follow,’ I said, like some veteran pornographer. When I see Corky’s hands on screen, I want to imagine how they would feel inside me. They’re the metaphorical substitute for the genital shots that you won’t be showing.”

Eroticizing the hands is the technique most keenly felt that follows through from Bound, but toward a somewhat different purpose in Sense8. Bright was looking for a way to get the idea of the kind of sex she imagined being most relevant to the plot and character beats of Bound across without being able to use explicit detail. She wanted to communicate genuine queer female desire to an audience who had never seen it presented in a manner equal to the depiction of straight sex in mainstream film. In Sense8, the first thing that focusing on eroticizing hands and grasping does is communicate the universality of desire across characters who identify as gay, lesbian, and straight. It depicts a physical element of sex that everyone, no matter their gender or orientation, can easily grasp and identify with. What it also does, just as Bright sought to evoke penetration in the sex scenes as part of the overall themes of Bound, is communicate how the individual sensates have been grasping toward each other in the series, trying to reach an understanding of their circumstances and who each other are.

Differentiation cannot be overlooked as being a major component of how the series presents and celebrates sexuality, despite the centrality of the “orgy” sequence that communicates a universality to human desire. Immediately following that sequence is a conversation in which Nomi tries to make sense of why she shares an empathic bond with the others, stating that it would seem more logical to her if the others were closer and not further from her identity and experiences. The response from Amanita’s mother is that she teaches the importance of differentiation through her classes on evolution. The implicit idea is that if differentiation is a key catalyst in biological evolution, it cannot be overlooked when considering the evolution of attitudes around sex that include queer and trans experiences.

Elsewhere in the series we see the critical importance of differentiation outside of sex, most notably as Lito and Wolfgang trade places in each others’ lives at the climax of their individual storylines. Lito, having pushed the situation with his blackmailer as far as he can by acting, falls back on Wolfgang to literally finish the fight. Then Wolfgang, having reached the limits of his skills as a thief and fighter in dealing with his rival, allows Lito to step forward and ply his trade as an actor. Each facet of the characters’ lives and experiences are as vital to the others’ towards their shared survival whether it be Sun’s martial arts skills, Capheus’ driving abilities, Lito’s acting skills, or Nomi’s computer wizardry.

Emma Houxbois is a fiercely queer trans woman whose natural habitat is the Pacific Northwest. She is currently the Comics Editor for The Rainbow Hub and co-host of Fantheon, a weekly comics podcast.

Pleading for the Female Gaze Through Its Absence in ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

This guest post by Emma Houxbois appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

“You guys know about vampires?” author Junot Diaz once asked an audience of college students. “You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ‘Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?'”

This is the starting point of Blue is the Warmest Color, which contends, and grapples with, the fact that depictions of female pleasure by female artists do not exist in art. This condition, this lack of understanding and representation, is what dogs its protagonist, Adele, as she struggles and ultimately fails to achieve a sense of comfort with her queerness. Female pleasure abounds in the film from the explicit sex between Adele and Emma, whose romance the film charts the rise and fall of, to eating, and the particular pleasure of observing and being observed. Adele is sometimes the subject, as she pursues Emma or when they take in an art exhibit, her gaze on the nude female figures constructed by men the focus of the scene, and sometimes she is the object as she poses for Emma’s paintings, the first representational work of her lover’s career.

The English title of the film, the same as the graphic novel it was adapted from, implies an inversion of the normal way of seeing. We’re used to seeing blue as cool, cold, and distant, but the film challenges us to see it as a vibrant and passionate colour the way that it challenges us to reconceptualize the power and passion of queer love. The French title, La Vie D’Adele: Chapitres I & II are heavy with film and literary allusions. To The Story of Adele H, the loose account of how Victor Hugo’s daughter pursued an unrequited love across continents and La Vie de Marianne, a novel left unfinished, suggesting both tragedy and an unfinished quality, which both come into fruition. Adele remains restless and unfulfilled throughout the film as Truffaut’s depiction of Adele Hugo is, but the irony of the reference is that Blue’s Adele is an inversion. Instead of warping the world around her to believe that an unrequited love is genuine, Adele is dogged by the invisible weight of heteronormativity that propels her to hide her relationship and live in a private shame. The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

The problem with the male gaze and trying to uplift or separate a female equivalent from it is that male gaze as a term and concept has shrunk in its application to a narrow didactic interpretation that borders on being universally pejorative. To wit, the simple unexamined usage of the term was thought to be all that was needed to condemn Blue is the Warmest Color by its skeptics, but the use of “male gaze” as a cudgel that immediately translates into prurience and exploitation does more harm than good to the conception of a female gaze not least because it immediately valorizes the alternative, as elaborated on by Edward Snow in his essay “Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems”:

“Nothing could better serve the paternal superego than to reduce masculine vision completely to the terms of power, violence, and control, to make disappear whatever in the male gaze remains outside the patriarchal, and pronounce outlawed, guilty, damaging, and illicitly possessive every male view of women. It is precisely on such grounds that the father’s law institutes and maintains itself in vision. A feminism not attuned to internal difference risks becoming the instrument rather than the abrogator of the law.

[…]

Under the aegis of demystifying and excoriating male vision, the critic systematically deprives images of women of their subjective or undecidable aspects- to say nothing of their power -and at the same time eliminates from the onlooking “male” ego whatever elements of identification with, sympathy for, or vulnerability to the feminine such images bespeak.”

Simply put, the male gaze is not a monolith, and despite the way that the term is used in criticism and conversation, no one actually views film from the position that the male gaze is monolithic or purely informed by patriarchal values. To actually adopt that stance would require the conflation of Kenneth Anger with Quentin Tarantino, among other laughable absurdities. Male-directed film has always found ways to appeal to women on terms other than internalized misogyny, and of course the male vision in film has been frequently mitigated, influenced, or redirected by the work of women in other roles. Tarantino, for instance, is famous for his collaboration with the late editor Sally Menke, whom he sought out specifically for a feminine influence, which is hardly a rare event. Much recent buzz was generated by another female editor, Margaret Sixel, who worked on Mad Max: Fury Road with longtime collaborator George Miller (she edited Happy Feet and Babe: Pig in the City for him). Her contribution has been argued as being integral to the strong female reception to the movie, which, again, runs the risk of valorizing women’s work as being inherently superior.

The problem with strictly gendering the gaze is that it can improperly frame collaborations and essentialize the vision of female filmmakers. Mad Max: Fury Road, as a film, is more than the sum of a male director and a female editor, especially for a narrative so committed to dissecting toxic masculinity from within. So too ought Sally Menke’s work with Tarantino be seen more than just a mitigation, but a cornerstone of Tarantino’s desire to achieve more that what the limitations of his masculinity allow for, especially as the roles of women in his films evolved from non existent in Reservoir Dogs to the complete focus in Deathproof. Perhaps the most intriguing recent example of how a female collaborator transformed the work of a male director was in Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her own novel Gone Girl for David Fincher, inverting the uncomfortable and frequently malicious male gaze that engenders his work, transferring the web of fear that his female protagonists like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander or Alien 3’s Ripley live in to the male protagonist and through him, the male audience. It’s a synthesis that cannot be easily essentialized into a single gendered gaze.

This is compounded by the fact that male nor female are fixed categories, nor are their desires. How are we, for instance, intended to properly frame the work of Lana Wachowski as a trans woman? How trans women engage with gender in our own lives and through our art cannot and should not be subsumed into a lens defined by the cisgender female experience. Which is only the beginning of how ruinous categorizations of gender in the gaze are on queer film and filmmakers. In comic book criticism especially, lenses of queer male masculinity are frequently co-opted and assimilated into constructions of the female gaze, which has the twin repercussions of narrowing queer male desire to a pinprick of feminized male figures and completely alienating queer female desire. If there are to be productive critical frameworks that utilize “male” and “female” gazes, they must be understood as needing a prism held up to them in order to properly understand the full spectrum of what informs a particular vision. There needs to be an understanding of intersectionality intrinsic to their uses.

On that note, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux, the stars of Blue is the Warmest Color, are the only actors to have been awarded Cannes’ Palme D’Or alongside their director, Abdellatif Kechiche. It was done by a jury made up of Steven Spielberg, Bollywood actress Vidya Balan, Christoph Waltz, We Need To Talk About Kevin screenwriter Lynne Ramsay, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu (whose Beyond the Hills and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days have tackled themes including queer femininity and access to abortion), Japanese writer-director Naomi Kawase, Nicole Kidman, and Ang Lee. Nicole Kidman, it must be recalled, co-starred in Stanley Kubrick’s erotically charged Eyes Wide Shut with then husband Tom Cruise. Ang Lee’s career as a director has been built almost entirely out of critically lauded portrayals of queerness and eroticism including The Ice Storm; Lust, Caution; Brokeback Mountain; and Taking Woodstock. The crowning of Kechiche, Exarchopoulos, and Seydoux by this jury, Lee and Kidman in particular, ought to have carried with it all the mythic importance of Quentin Tarantino, as head jurist, awarding Chan-Wook Park the Palme D’Or for Oldboy a decade earlier. Instead it’s treated as a footnote. Presumably because in this instance, that jury was more attuned to the nuances of the male gaze than the American critical establishment that presaged its arrival on US soil with cries of exploitation and misogyny.

The Cannes jury made it clear that they wanted to define the film as a collaboration, and I would extend that further to define it as a conversation. At its heart, Blue is the Warmest Color is a film about performances of identity and how the stresses of assimilation can erode and destroy fundamental parts of our being. One of the primary ways that we can perceive Kechiche’s self awareness that his masculinity limits his ability to conceive of and portray female queerness accurately is the insertion of a viewpoint character for him, an Arab actor Adele originally meets at a party thrown for Emma’s artist friends. He asks naive, well meaning questions about their relationship that queer women the world over hear, but understanding that he’s probed far enough or perhaps too far into her life and identity as an interloper, he opens up to her. He tells her about how he’s an actor and he’s just been to the United States, describing New York City in the same way that we dreamily describe Paris. “They love it when we say Allahu Akbar,” he says with a smile, telling her about how there’s always a hunger for Arab terrorists in Hollywood. Kechiche is, himself, Tunisian, and this is his exegesis.

He’s approaching the queer experience from the perspective of the immigrant experience. This is the Adam’s Rib that he proffers up towards the goal of uncovering female pleasure in art. This is the part of himself that he bares in order to justify the depth with which he probes Adele and Emma’s relationship. The clearest way that we see his Arab identity in the film is in the act of cooking and eating, which easily transcends the specific cultural context he takes it from thanks to the intimacy and care with which it’s handled. Cooking is framed as emotional labor, seen most keenly as Adele frets over making Spaghetti Bolognese for Emma’s friends, fretting over it as she serves it. Eating is, except for Adele’s junk food stash, a communal act, the consumption of the emotional labour of cooking as much as the food itself. This merges with queerness as Adele tries oysters, possibly the most yonic food imaginable, at dinner with Emma’s family. Her hesitance and discomfiture with eating oysters despite the welcoming attitude of Emma’s family mirrors the overwhelming tension she’s experiencing in her performance of queer femininity, and the difficulty she’s experiencing in how accepting Emma’s family is of it.

The broader sense of how Kechiche attempts to conceive of queerness through the best available lens at his disposal is how he constructs France’s queer community as a diaspora. He portrays Adele’s budding queerness and her experience of the queer nightlife in much the same way as the child of immigrants might feel overwhelmed and illegitimate by their first exposure to their parents’ native culture. There are certainly parallels between Adele’s entry into the queer community while still in high school and A Prophet’s Malik’s early uncomfortable interactions with the Arab prisoners after having been forcibly assimilated into the ranks of the Corsicans.

Where they differ is that Malik is able to thrive within the group by shedding attachments to the structures that will never accept him while Adele folds under the pressure of maintaining both a queer identity and the public performance of a straight one, immolating her relationship with Emma and leaving her isolated. Similarly, the Arab character returns to the film as Adele visits Emma’s latest show after their reconciliation. He tells her that he’s left acting, that he got tired of that one narrow performance of identity that the film industry allowed him. He’s never been happier. Adele remains unable to shed that attachment to the normative world and leaves feeling more upset and isolated than ever before.

The pressure of assimilation asserted by heteronormativity and white supremacy are distinct yet similarly functioning forces, which is one of the main achievements of the film. While it is by definition an uneasy attempt at capturing the queer female condition, Blue is the Warmest Color succeeds magnificently by providing a context and a shared struggle with which to build solidarity between marginalized groups in contemporary France. In the scene immediately following Adele’s break up with Emma, we see her leading her children in a celebration of African culture, with Adele wearing a cheaply thrown together pastiche of African fashion, adopting a clearly false and ill fitting identity. It’s a stark metaphor for how poorly Adele assimilates into heteronormativity.

Kechiche’s attempts to conceptualize of others’ struggles by finding commonality is by no means uncommon or uncelebrated in contemporary film. Jim Sheridan found common ground with 50 Cent when making Get Rich or Die Tryin’ by taking him to where he was born in Dublin and exploring their differing experiences of 1980s New York City. In an oddly similar way, Steve McQueen launched his feature film career by exploring the Northern Irish experience of otherness in his account of Bobby Sands’ imprisonment in Hunger.

In regard to the female gaze, Blue is the Warmest Color isn’t an exemplar, but a cautionary tale in how conflating the gendered gaze with the gender of the director can obscure and severely harm incredibly brave and vital filmmaking. Especially in the case of a film that strives to achieve a sense of understanding between distinct groups that suffer similar forms of oppression.

The American Lens on Global Unity in ‘Sense8’

‘Sense8’ is a clusterfuck of clichés, mediocre storylines and inept world building. Still, binge watch the series to enjoy the human journey of the eight sensates and maybe the Wachowskis and Netflix will take note and improve season 2 – they’ve mapped out five seasons. ‘Sense8’ will prosper on Netflix.

The Sensates "Mom" Angelica — The Sensates “Mom” Angelica

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.

The paradoxical desire for global inclusivity that is created or controlled from an American perspective is characteristic for our modern pop culture. Harsh, maybe. We are in the 21st century after all, so it seems more than natural – albeit refreshing in our current cinematic climate of reboots – to explore an array of themes such as religion, gender identity and politics (LGBT) all served with a thin layer of sci-fi. The Wachowskis put their own spin on the mosaic narrative with Sense8. Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and Alejandro Gonzaléz Iñárritu’s Babel paved the way. Sense8 aims to portray the brittleness of cultural barriers and the importance of global unity. Do the Wachowskis succeed?

Directors Lana and Andy Wachowski ventured from the start of their career into the field of “mindfuck” cinema. Their previous work on the Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, and Ninja Assassin prepared them for their Magnum opus: the film version of the incomparable deemed novel of David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas – or was it the critically panned Jupiter Ascending?

The announcement of the series created a lot of buzz online but criticism rose against Lana Wachowski as a result of her previous comments when it came to the racial insensitivities in Cloud Atlas; and the fact that Wachowski was a keynote speaker at the Chicago Trans 100 – this annual event honors influential voices that are leading the transgender movement. In her speech she tried to focus on the “eradication of otherness,” but made several anti-Black comments, compared the current trans movement and its hardships to the American Civil Rights Movement, and appropriated Indigenous language. This is the same woman who brought us the premise of diversity with Sense8. Dilemma.

Sense8 has a challenging narrative structure. Eight different places, eight protagonists and eight stories that seemingly fit together as matryoshkas. The eight characters all influence each other in subtle ways and thereby change the course of events. In an interview with Buzzfeed director Joe Straczynski states,“ It’s a global story told on a planetary scale about human transcendence and what it ultimately means to be human in a contemporary society.” Right.

The plot centers around the idealistic Chicago cop Will (Brian J. Smith) who has father issues; Icelandic DJ Riley (Tuppence Middleton) who runs from her traumatic past; happy-go-lucky Kenyan bus driver Capheus who is obsessed with Jean Claude Van Damme (Aml Ameen); Korean business woman Sun (Bae Doona) who is a kick ass martial artist at night and deals with her inept brother and father; Mexican telenovela actor Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre) who is closeted and afraid to come out, Indian scientist Kala (Tina Desai) who is stuck in a “love match” with a man she doesn’t love; German criminal Wolfgang (Max Riemelt) who struggles with his Slavic family; and San Franciscan blogger and ex-hacktivist Nomi (Jamie Clayton) who is a transwoman and is haunted by her family’s disproval. The series was shot in San Francisco, Chicago, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Iceland, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Seoul.

The eight strangers have one thing in common and that is that they’ve evolved into “sensates” and thus can share the thoughts, feelings, memories, skills, and experiences of other sensates. At the start of the series, the sensate Angelica (Daryl Hannah) and Jonas (Naveen Andrews) give “birth” to the group of adult sensates which ties them together into a “cluster”, which means that they can reach out to each other without being in physical contact first. The cluster is composed of eight sensates who are all born at the exact same time but are scattered all over the world. Conveniently enough they can use each other’s language, knowledge and skills. Well, no story is complete without the big bad wolf. The cluster is haunted by the Biologic Preservation Organization (BPO) under the leadership of Whispers (Terrence Mann).

The series has a very slow start. The Wachowskis take their sweet time to introduce all the characters. Will is the one who sets the story in motion when he finds out he can connect with other people – and has had a similar experience in his childhood. Jonas contacts Will and reassures him, “You’re not losing your mind, it’s just expanding.” Nomi often questions the ability of the sensates and her girlfriend’s mother quips, “ To be something more than what evolution would define as ‘yourself,’ you’d need something different from yourself.” Lovely pseudo-profound statement.

The Wachowskis made the creative choice to focus more on the day to day lives of the sensates and their relationships with their loved ones instead of fully embracing the sci-fi element. There should be a better balance between the sci-fi elements and the different relationships of the sensates. It truly distorts the flow of the series. The Wachowskis try to embrace the equality of different world culture and underline the universality of the human experience. It seems that they aimed for a similar vibe as seen in documentary films such as Baraka or Koyaanisqatsi.

However, they opt to include every cliché in the book when it comes to the non-western countries and the characters. Mexico City looks like it was copied out of a popular telenovela; Mumbai is multicolored, lots of jewelry, flowers, Hindu iconography and Kala busted out the classic Bollywood dance with her fiancé; Seoul is almost sterile with a grey-futuristic aesthetic and lots of mirrors and windows; Nairobi looks sweaty and lots of earth tones were used; and Reykjavik and London look like glossy tourist commercials and so on and so forth…

Naturally, Kala is a smart scientist who is stuck in a “love match” but knows that the arranged marriage will make her family very happy. Capheus is a poor yet happy bus driver who cares for his sick mother. Her illness? AIDS. He also has several battles with the local gangs. At first glance, Sun’s story seemed the most fleshed out. Only her arc reaffirms several stereotypes on East Asian culture, see the manifestation of sexism (“Oh, I wish my daughter was a son”) and she’s the ultimate fighter. Despite filming in Korea, the city is only used as a backdrop in the ultra-masculine business where Sun works or a seedy night club scene; Lito is the colorful, sensitive yet conservative homosexual telenovela actor who doesn’t want to bring his career in jeopardy by coming out. Honorable mention goes to Will as the idealistic white cop who tries to safe a black child’s life after he’s been shot and the Black nurse at the ER refuses to help at first and asks him if it will be worth it. Luckily this element of his arc was quickly dropped.

When it comes to (pop) cultural influences, they’re all American. Capheus is obsessed with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Wolfgang and his friend live by the philosophy of Conan the Barbarian and Riley inspires the cluster to a sing along with the 4 Non Blondes song “What’s Going On?” We are not introduced to the local (pop) culture of Mumbai, Mexico City, Seoul or Nairobi – besides the tired cliché of Kala’s Bollywood dance.

The creative decision to let all the characters speak English albeit with a hint of an accent here or there seemed unnecessary. In the other Netflix show, Daredevil, several characters spoke their native language and subtitles would suffice. On the other hand, there are small moments in the series where you know that the sensates speak to each other in their own language but because of their connection they understand each other, e.g. when Sun and Capheus meet and they understand each other, Sun asks him, “Do you speak Korean?” and Capheus says, “No.”

It has to be said, all eight storylines are mediocre when you look at them separately. Riley’s tragic loss is wonderfully acted but looks too familiar. Capheus’ narrative brings at times some lighthearted relief but it doesn’t add to the general arc. Lito, his boyfriend Hernando and beard Daniela have great chemistry- a Tumblr dream come to life. Yet, Lito’s narrative stands on his own until the last couple of episodes where’s he’s pulled into the fight of the sensates to rescue Riley. The only exception could be Nomi – played by the trans actress Jamie Clayton (!) – who plays an important part as a San Franciscan trans female character who fight society’s standards and the occasional TERF. Her arc is natural, layered and she has wonderful chemistry with her very supportive girlfriend Amanita.

Some of the performances fall flat and the swishy camerawork definitely doesn’t add to the quality. You can’t escape the cheesiness and terrible, terrible dialogue. Sure, Sun and Wolfgang are always used as the fighters when the others are in trouble; Will brings his critical thinking skills in times of duress; Capheus knows how to drive the get-a-away car; Lito will tell the perfect lie; Nomi can erase you from the internet; and Riley plays the white damsel in distress whilst being in a bland relationship with Will. All the sensates are seemingly good, kind and idealistic. Nevertheless, it still is a welcome change from the usual assholes that parade on our screens. Plus: Diversity (!).

Why should you watch Sense8? A) The genuine bond between all the sensates; B) The series really flows when the sensates finally work together to fight against Whispers and BPO and manage to control their skills; C) The Wachowskis do know how to aptly bring fight choreography to life on screen.

Sense8 is a clusterfuck of clichés, mediocre storylines and inept world building. Still, binge watch the series to enjoy the human journey of the eight sensates and maybe the Wachowskis and Netflix will take note and improve season 2 – they’ve mapped out five seasons. Sense8 will prosper on Netflix.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKpKAlbJ7BQ”]

Giselle Defares comments on film, fashion (law) and American pop culture. See her blog here.

‘Jupiter Ascending’: Female-centric Fantasy That’s Not Quite Feminist

So yes, ‘Jupiter Ascending’ provides women and girls the “you’re secretly the most important person in the solar system” narrative that is so often granted to cishet white men, the demographic who already are treated as the most important people by virtue of the kyriarchy. What’s missing, however, is the part where Jupiter taps into her secret set of special skills.

Poster for 'Jupiter Ascending' — Poster for ‘Jupiter Ascending’

If you’re not on Tumblr, you might have entirely missed the existence of The Wachowskis’ space opera Jupiter Ascending. Bumped from last summer to a mercy-kill February release, it was panned by critics and ignored by audiences. Save the fannishly inclined, largely female Tumblr users who happen to populate my dashboard, who completely lost their minds over this movie. I blinked and missed its momentary theatrical release and had to wait for it on video to find out if it met the subculture hype. And I am here to report that Jupiter Ascending is a delightful cheesy sci-fi flick, if you’re into that sort of thing. And while it isn’t a feminist triumph in the way that Mad Max: Fury Road is (and even that movie’s feminism has been called into question), Jupiter Ascending is unusually suited to a female viewership, which is sadly still rather revolutionary, particularly for a genre flick.

Why does this spaceship look like a fancy mechanical fish? Why doesn't yours!? — Why does this spaceship look like a fancy mechanical fish? Why doesn’t yours!?

Gavia Baker-Whitlaw’s Daily Dot piece “Why Women Love Jupiter Ascending“ notes that its story “is the precise gender-flipped equivalent of all those movies where some weak-chinned rando turns out to be the Chosen One” usually with a hyper-competent and hot “Strong Female Character” acting as his guide through his Newly Discovered Destiny. In Jupiter Ascending, Mila Kunis’s Jupiter Jones is a mild-mannered housecleaner who discovers she is actually solar system royalty after Genetically Engineered Space Werewolf Channing Tatum rescues her from an alien attack. Jupiter finds that she is at the center of a war between three royal Jovian siblings (yes I just had to look up the demonym for Jupiter I love my life) who all seek to control Earth and its seven billion harvestable humans so they can rejuvenate their youth by bathing in Soylent Green Espom Salts. She has a claim to Earth because she is the reincarnation of their mother and is also immune to bee stings. Or something. (The intricacies of the plot are not important, I only recount them here because they amuse me.)

Bees don't sting solar system royalty for some reason. — Bees don’t sting solar system royalty for some reason.

So yes, Jupiter Ascending provides women and girls the “you’re secretly the most important person in the solar system” narrative that is so often granted to cishet white men, the demographic who already are treated as the most important people by virtue of the kyriarchy (you really need to be MORE important, cishet white dudes?). What’s missing, however, is the part where Jupiter taps into her secret set of special skills, as we see with our once-mundane male Chosen Ones from The Matrix‘s Neo to The Lego Movie‘s Emmett to Wanted‘s Whatever-James-McAvoy’s-character-was-named. She never eclipses the badassness of her Trinity-equivalent, the aforementioned Genetically-Engineered Space Werewolf, Caine Wise (one of the great joys of the film is when people call him “Wise” while he’s doing foolishly reckless things. I’m not sure if that was intentional). Caine needs to rescue Jupiter throughout the film; his preferred style of rescue is to give her a piggyback ride while he zooms around on his gravity-defying space rollerblades. If all these absurd details haven’t convinced you to watch this movie yet, I’m not sure what will. When she’s on her own, Jupiter’s “action” is largely about contract law.

Jupiter gets a lot of piggyback rides from Caine

Because Jupiter’s secret importance doesn’t come with previously untapped hyper-competence or the unique importance of her particular abilities, it is simply a royal birthright. She’s more along the lines of The Princess Diaries‘ Mia Thermopolis than Neo. And women aren’t really wanting for “you are actually a princess!” narratives. There are 30-odd Disney movies about that. Jupiter Ascending isn’t a power fantasy, it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Women already have "you're really a princess!" stories — Women already have “you’re really a princess!” stories

But it is still a fantasy for women in a big-budget sci fi movie, which is incredibly rare. Is that why Jupiter Ascending flopped at the box office, or at least why the studio lost confidence in it as a potential summer release? I suspect it has more to do with the current difficulty selling big movies without source material. If even the Wachowskis’ own Matrix trilogy (which provided the very namesake of Tasha Robinson’s Trinity Syndrome) couldn’t bring in a new era of original sci-fi blockbusters (the only two I can think of are Avatar and Pacific Rim), the failure of Jupiter Ascending seems foretold. So hopefully studios will focus on Jupiter Ascending‘s lack of source material rather than its female protagonist when they try to avoid making other movies that meet its fate. Then again, only basing movies on properties that already exist will perpetuate male-dominated stories. So we’re kinda screwed either way, which isn’t an unfamiliar position for feminist film fans.

Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax (that's the kind of character name you get with 'Jupiter Ascending') — Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax (that’s the kind of character name you get with *Jupiter Ascending*)

Jupiter Ascending might go on to be a cult classic, and if you like bizarre scifi you should help it get there. I didn’t even get into Academy Award Winner Eddie Redmayne’s astonishingly campy performance as Balem Abrasax, who prefers the cape-but-no-shirt look and only speaks in whispers and screams (in the alternate universe where Jupiter Ascending was released in Summer 2014, Michael Keaton gazes lovingly upon his Best Actor Oscar). While Jupiter Ascending deserves accolades for providing female-centric fantasy, it doesn’t go the distance to become a truly feminist film (it is certainly nine or ten notches below Mad Max: Fury Road, which doesn’t even meet the bar for some people). But while I can’t recommend Jupiter Ascending as a feminist film, I do recommend it as a fun film. They can’t all have Furiosa.

Robin Hitchcock is a Pittsburgh-based writer who sadly has been stung by bees.

‘Cloud Atlas’ Loses Audience

But how can a film with so many actors playing so many different roles go wrong?

Cloud Atlas, directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, portrays the pursuit of equality in a palatable way for the mainstream – soaked with platitudes. But, due to facially disproportioned prosthetics and a failed attempt at a postmodern structure it misses even the mainest of mainstreams. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and a slew of other actors don different noses, teeth and skin colors to represent parallel souls traveling through generations of personal and cultural strife. Each protagonist challenges an authority or oppressive obstacle.

Cloud Atlas tries to transgress norms, but it fails because it spends too much time celebrating gimmicks. Even though it pushes an over-sentimental philosophy – I still want to like it because it tries to present a variety of underrepresented ideas and identities. But, I just can’t like the movie because the structure and devices weaken it.

We get several solid female characters, a tender and sympathetic portrayal of gay lovers and plenty of conversations (directly and indirectly) about the importance of empowering marginalized groups.

Berry plays (among other characters) a journalist in 1973, Luisa Rey, investigating a nuclear plant. She’s smart, complex and is following a story rather than romantic interest. She’s not a kickboxing Buffy-esque strong woman, but a typical adept character with strengths, flaws and personality.

We see a similar level of complexity in the relationship between two men in 1936 who are young and in love, but separated while one, Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw), unsuccessfully pursues his ambitions as a composer. They don’t have an ideal romance, and we only see them actually together once, but their affair may be the most intense of the film. They do not dwell on societally-imposed secrecy about their sexuality, but it is painfully clear what limits them. Also, while their story does end tragically, it is not because of sexuality, but because of Frobisher’s failed ambitions. It could be argued that the characters are experiencing indirect punishment for their sexuality – but their story isn’t the only tragic one, and their affection for each other is the happiest part of Forbisher’s narrative.

Also, we follow the story of a young American attorney who agrees to help a black man escape slavery and subsequently becomes an abolitionist. We also follow a commodified woman escape from slavery and fight against fascism in a dystopian world. These are cookie-cutter liberal narratives – not progressive. But, put together they create a tone that celebrates marginalized people rising up and making their voices heard.

Because the ideas behind the film are embracing multiculturalism I am also reluctant to say that actors playing different races is problematic. It doesn’t feel offensive against a back-drop of social justice themes – as much as naïve. Most of the main characters already share an easily identifiable birthmark – so there is no need for the characters to be played by the same actors. The birthmark itself could be heavy-handed, but the characters being played by the same actors puts it over the top. If the make-up had been skillfully done, it might be more compelling, but when Hanks plays a 19^thcentury doctor, he has a clumsy set of fake teeth slapped under false freckles and complimented by a trying-too-hard nasally English accent (the accent is not the make-up artists’ fault, but it sure does negatively enhance the overall effect). All of the make-up looks hastily thrown together. And, reading an interview with the make-up artist backs up that idea.

Jeremy Woodhead, a make-up designer for the film, detailed his process in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“Susan Sarandon was away filming somewhere else, so we hadn’t got a life cast, and I had to turn her into a little old man from the Indian subcontinent. So I used James D’Arcy’s eyebrow blocker piece to change the shape of her forehead. On top of that, I put Jim Sturgess’ forehead. And I had two or three noses made of varying sizes, just hoping that one would fit. Luckily, one did. And then put a wig and a goatee beard and a mustache and then just a lot of paintwork on her. This was the first time she’d ever been a man, and she just sat there giggling.”

Cloud Atlas looks like it is begging to be dubbed “groundbreaking” and reviewed with clichés intimating its unique and fresh take on culture. But, it’s just an over-layered overlapping story making comfortable stabs at conformity and glossy-eyed statements about the connectedness of all humans.

This is the trouble with unremarkable films; no matter how good the intention of their message – it will go unheard if communicated poorly.

Trans* People On TV

I spent my weekend at a conference for transgender people, and it was a little frustrating. If there’s one place in the world you might hope to escape clueless questions, utter ignorance, and the necessity of patiently holding people’s hands through Trans* 101, it’s at a conference by, for, and largely attended by trans* people.

Alas, no such luck.

It’s well past time popular culture assumed the burden of basic education. Pop-culture overthinkers like myself enjoy citing articles that indicate the profound influence of the mass media on public attitudes. The Cosby Show changed the televisual landscape for African-American-centered shows. Will & Grace taught America about The Gays (FACT; Joe Biden says so). Isn’t it time Middle America learned, from its favorite babysitter / best friend / water-cooler-conversation facilitator, that transgender people are human too?

Stupid TV! Be more trans-friendly!

Certainly it’s much, much more likely for pop culture to get it wrong than right. I’ve read queer theory textbooks assigned for class that left much to be desired on the trans* front, and I hardly expect better from the mass media.

Of course, there are some lovely, sensitive, non-rage-inducing portrayals of trans* people to be found in books, film, and TV, but these tend to be fairly obscure. In the mainstream, things are still pretty terrible.

For example.

Apparently there are no actual trans* actors in Hollywood. Apparently a trans woman needs to be portrayed by a cis woman, and a trans man needs to be portrayed by a cis woman, and the films need to focus obsessively on these characters as explicitly trans bodies. We have to see all of the little things a trans person does in order to pass. We have to see crotch shots and/or invest all meaning in bottom surgery. We have to cast an ugly, voyeuristic eye over these bodies – bodies which, lest we forget, in real life belong to cis women: there’s a weird doubling of voyeuristic focus here, on the characters as trans and on the actresses as women, and while on one level we are being invited to leer over these bodies as trans bodies, we are certainly also being invited to leer over these bodies as women’s bodies.

For example.

I rage-quit Glee long before the introduction of its trans* character, and so did fully half the Americans who used to tune in on a weekly basis when the show was in what I (for want of a better term) will call its prime. People just aren’t talking about this show the way they used to. From what I can make out, the portrayal of the trans* character has been reasonably well-received; but, as always with Glee, things could spiral horrendously out of control at any moment. An unholy chimera of offensively over-the-top jokes and earnest After School Specials, and never remotely consistent with its tone or characterization, Glee would not have been the ideal venue for a realistic depiction of a trans* person even at the zenith of its cultural impact.

(And now I have wasted an hour of my life reading up on recent developments in this stupid show, and I have the TV equivalent of a caffeine headache.)

Help me. Friends don’t let friends relapse.

For example.

A friend recommended the show Hit & Miss, starring Chloe Sevigny as a trans woman who is an assassin. But I’d already seen this interview, and I knew there was no way I could watch this show without spontaneously combusting from rage. I mean, really:

Whenever Mia is shown changing or in the shower, there are quick glimpses to remind viewers that a crucial part of her is still male. Hence the prosthetic, which took two hours to attach.

“It was horrifying,” says Sevigny. “I cried every time they put it on me. I’ve always been very comfortable being a girl, so it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that someone could feel so uncomfortable in their own skin.”

Everything about that just makes me so incredibly furious. The fact that the show’s producers thought it was necessary to include those “quick glimpses.” The journalist’s phallocentrism and essentialism. Just the whole fact that Chloe Sevigny is appropriating and trivializing the experience of gender dysphoria for the sake of some TV show. I’m so happy that all those times I sobbed in the shower because I hate my body, all those hours spent wishing myself away into some non-physical realm, the absolutely inescapable feeling of discomfort and discontent in my own skin – I’m so happy that all of that was able to be comprehended by comfortably cisgender Chloe Sevigny when she donned her prosthetic penis to play a transsexual assassin in a TV show.

Things that are retroactively ruined because I can’t see Chloe Sevigny without ragesploding: American Psycho, Boys Don’t Cry, that one episode of Louie

Some things are getting better. Lana Wachowski is pretty high-profile at the moment; I could personally take or leave her films, but as a human being she is perfection, and Hollywood’s first mainstream trans director is a BFD. And maybe Glee is going to do a really excellent job with its trans* character, and the six million suckers who still watch it will be vindicated.

But I don’t think I’m going to run out of things to be angry about any time soon.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.