Transamerica. A movie that cannot be made now.

Transamerica, starring Felicity Huffman is on TV right now. Felicity is a cis woman  playing a transwoman. Brilliantly it must be  said.

But, but given our current woke  world that  movie would  never be made these days. You see the people  who pretend  to represent us would  say a cis women actor could not  possibly represent a transwoman. That's  BS because  actors are actors. I've seen  similar related to gay  actors. Apparently a straight  man can never play a gay character according to some people with influence in the  business.
Of course that means  no gay actor  can ever play a straight  man.
To me that means Hollywood won't  greenlight any movie with gay or trans characters other  than  incidental. Not least because of the risk of offence.

Not  that it  matters to me.

Identity politics are really getting complex. The studios used to say the reason they didn’t cast trans people for trans roles was because there were no trans actors. That ain’t the case these days.

To the extent that there is a trans actor that meets the role, then the trans actor should be cast for the role. That hadn’t always been the case and to counter the bias involved that suppressed trans actors, the current emphasis is to make that space for underrepresented groups.

In days past the same rationale was used to justify black face.

BTW, I think Felicity Huffman did a damn good job portraying a trans character.

If you want to see cute movie with a trans actor (Michelle Hendley) playing a trans role, watch Boy meets Girl (2014). The director wanted a trans girl for the role, so he scoured YouTube channels till he happened to find her’s. Called her and asked her if she wanted the role.

~ Liz

For better or worse, movies and television entertains, educates, and helps shape our views of the world. Nowadays, there are more opportunities for audiences to engage with different and more complex stories about the transgender experience. As a black person, I'm well aware of how media depictions matter - how representation matters. I know that the industry is sexist, ageist, racist, nepotistic, etc. with regards to casting. More often than not, transgender actors and actresses are going to be regulated to playing gender non-conforming characters regardless of talent. This severely limits what they can star in compared to cisgender actors and actresses, and until recently, most of those roles went to cisgender people anyway. Getting our stories right is only half the battle: normalizing us on screen - letting people know that we exist - is also important, in my opinion.

If Transamerica was made today, it'd simply have better casting and trans folk would have creative input.

With that being said, I'm glad that you enjoyed the movie. One of my favorite cisgender actress plays transwoman roles is Edie Stokes on the Jeffersons. That was the first time a sitcom ever featured a trans character and it was surprisingly tactful considering it was the 70's. Since our existence was less common knowledge back then, and since they really wanted to drive the point home that George's old friend got a sex change, the casting choice made sense. It was ahead of its time, far more informative and humanizing than most depictions of us in the media that came after until recently, and its 'main character-freaks-out-initially-but-learns-to-accept-it' storyline still holds up today.

Hi Marie,

Is it on Netflix Marie, if not which channel for replay?, l would so like to see it again.

Celia xx