Good News For Those Who Do Not Like

The Danish Girl, it has been banned in a number of Middle East countries,

Five more countries ban The Danish Girl over 'moral depravity'
Jordan bans The Danish Girl for 'promoting homosexuality and gender transformation'
Gay Star News
By Joe Morgan
1 February 2016

Five more Arab countries have banned British trans drama The Danish Girl over ‘moral depravity’.
[…]
Qatar was the first country to ban the film over what they deemed ‘culturally unacceptable content’.

But now, the film has also failed to pass local censors in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait.

You know us, trans people are corrupting the world.

Meanwhile the Walrus has two writers compare their thoughts about the movie. The first writer is a trans man, Casey Plett.

I wanted to like The Danish Girl. I didn’t. I would love to see a complex, sad, vivid movie based on Lili Elbe’s life. This movie wasn’t it. I can’t speak for all trans people here, and I know of one trans lady personally who loved this film, but I was bored and frustrated. Here’s why.

So first: Eddie Redmayne. Many people (like me) don’t want to see a cis man play a trans woman again, ever—like, ever. Redmayne is a good actor, and a total babe, and he does perform well here. They still should have had a trans woman play her. Not just for all the usual reasons why cis people playing trans people is dumb; but can you imagine what Candis Cayne, for example, could’ve done with that role? Gerda is kind of fun the first half, though I found her two-dimensional and reductive in the end—starting out as saucy Cool Girl in Act I and becoming Tragic Spurned Wife in Act II.

I agree with the fact that they could have found a trans actress to play the part and that they over did the martyred wife who stuck with her to the end since in real life she was probably bisexual and they stayed together because of love not loyalty. He goes on to write,

But, of course, cis people got to make the movie instead. Their film takes zero risks, and yet they will be called brilliant for it anyway. To be blunt, I think you’re more right than you realize when you say: “It’s the sort of morally uplifting movie that an earnest, liberal-minded couple should be proud to see on date night.” I think this movie was made to appeal to people like you, and make you believe you should find it moving and give it awards. To me, it was the kind of safe, syrupy-tragic movie that cis people are supposed to like and feel good about liking. I say: let’s all go watch Tangerine instead.

But since this movie was, in my opinion, made for you and not me, I suppose I could ask: Would you watch The Danish Girl again? Do you think you’d get more out of it each time, the way the best movies stay with you? Did you find it an emotionally compelling and moving film?

Then it was the cisgendered person’s turn, Jonathan Kay writes,

I see that we disagree on several important points. Moreover, I think that these points of disagreement get us precisely to the crux of the difference between the way many trans people and many cis people might watch such a film.

To answer your question: Yes, I did think that this was an emotionally compelling film—at least in its early and middle parts. My test for this is whether scenes from the movie forced their way into my conscious mind, unbidden, in the days after I have seen a film. The Danish Girl definitely passes that test.

And the reason for this is that The Danish Girl was written with a cis viewership in mind. Which shouldn’t be surprising, if only from a crass commercial point of view. Cis folk, after all, do constitute the majority of the movie-ticket-buying public. As noted above, I spent a good deal of the film identifying with Gerda, the cis wife trying to figure out what to do with her life in the face of what is (for her) a massive emotional cataclysm. The movie needed a character like that.

You criticize The Danish Girl for “focusing on the poor cis people who must endure a transitioning partner rather than the pain of the actual trans person is also a trope of trans stories.” But why? The most interesting movies (and this applies to all narrative art forms) aren’t “gay movies” or “straight movies” or “trans movies” or “cis movies”—but rather movies about the human condition that happen to focus on gay, straight, trans, or cis characters and themes. Surely it would be limiting, for both artist and viewer, to produce a film that emphasizes only one character’s, or one group’s, perspective. That approach feels like a species of activism, whose influence inevitably has a crushing effect on all forms of art.

I have to agree with Kay here, “…but rather movies about the human condition that happen to focus on gay, straight, trans, or cis characters and themes” I don’t think this was a trans movie but rather a movie about a trans person.

I will go further: Only by dwelling to some extent on Gerda could the filmmaker even aspire to universalize the film. I remember when Heath Ledger died in 2008, I poured out a column about Brokeback Mountain, in which I finally figured out why the film had such a powerful effects on me. “Brokeback is too often pigeon-holed as a gay love story,” I wrote. “But the homosexuality in the movie was incidental to a larger theme: the random cruelty of the human condition. [Enis and Jack] were gay men living in a homophobic world. When they were true to their love, they lived in a tiny snowglobe of ecstasy. But everywhere else, they were lonely men living a lie. The wreckage in the film is not really about gay love, or even love itself. It is about powerlessness…When Jack famously says to Ennis ‘I wish I knew how to quit you,’ the you could be anything. This is why so many people who aren’t gay, and care nothing for Western vistas and cowboy flicks, were so affected by Brokeback.”

So the battle between those who loved the movie and those who hated the movies goes on; overall I liked the movie and I tend to agree with Jonathan Kay. Also the movie did have over twenty trans people in non-trans parts, two of them were Rebecca Root who played a nurse and Jake Graf (he writes about the movie here) who played a friend on Hans at one of his parties. In Thinkprogress they write that,

At Monday’s screening, Hooper defended casting Redmayne, praising his performance and noting the complicated casting snafus that preceded his signing onto the film. To compensate, he explained, “I went on a great journey to find transgender actors.” Some 20-30 trans actors were actually cast in the film, all playing supporting cisgender roles. Acknowledging that creating more opportunities in the industry for trans cast and crew is an important priority, Hooper promised, “I will do everything in my power to forward the cause.”

So what did you think of the movie?