Up On The Silver Screen (Or in The Box On The Wall)

We are starting to make headway with trans actresses and actors instead of using cisgender actors.

Hollywood's Cringey Transgender EvolutionWhile the film industry may be earning praise today for how it depicts transgender issues, there have been some awkward missteps.The Daily Beast
Keith Phipps
August 8, 2015

It’s been an extraordinary few years for transgender visibility and the discussion of transgender issues.
Much of that increased visibility and discussion can be credited to pop culture, from Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace to Transparent to Orange Is the New Black’s Laverne Cox’s performance and her composed, confident talk-show appearances to the reality show-driven interest in Caitlyn Jenner’s transition to Sean Baker’s remarkable indie film Tangerine*. Music, film, and television have helped bring what was until recently pushed to the mystery-shrouded margins into the mainstream—a moment in which art and the advancement of a cause have found a mutually beneficial synergy.

That makes 2015 an odd year to revisit Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill (which will receive a new release on DVD and Blu-ray on September 8 as part of the Criterion Collection).

 Released in 1980, the film attracted considerable controversy at the time, most vocally from groups like the San Francisco-based Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media, which distributed a leaflet proclaiming “if this film succeeds, killing women may become the greatest turn-on of the eighties.” Its offenses, per the group, were many, most of them tied to “scene after scene of women raped, killed, or nearly killed” that combined to make the film “a master work of misogyny.”
[…]
To revisit these films and the history around them is to realize how much the landscape has shifted from that of the past few decades. Appreciating them means looking at them carefully as products of their moments, if sometimes products that tried too little to question those times. Dressed To Kill and its ilk may have little to do with where we are now, but much to do with where we’ve been, a relic of a recent past worth remembering if it’s not to be repeated.

We have come a long ways since movies like Dressed to Kill and shows like Bosom Buddies.

*Tangerine is showing this week are Real Art Ways in Hartford CT.