I suspect that I will receive some personal attacks for this post, but I believe that its contents need to be said. The boyfriend and I went and saw the Dallas Buyers Club several weeks ago and thought it very well done, particularly the acting by Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in a story line that covers a very ugly period of time and lives in extreme stress and facing death. I thought Leto did a very good job personalizing the character of Rayon and making her human in a way that many viewers could connect with, especially those who may never have met someone transgender and/or have only been exposed to Christofascist depictions of transgender individuals. The boyfriend and I were thrilled that Leto won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and found his comments moving:
Said Leto:
“To all the dreamers out there all around the world watching this tonight, in places like the Ukraine and Venezuela, I want to say, we are here, and as you struggle to make your dreams happen, to live the impossible, we’re thinking of you tonight.”He added:
"And this is for the 36 million people who have lost the battle to AIDS and to those of you out there who have ever felt injustice because of who you are or who you love. I stand here in front of the world with you and for you."
Sadly, some of the usual suspects in the transgender community have trashed Leto and, in my view, demonstrated once again that some in that community are their own worse enemies. Being angry and always negative is NOT the way to win friends and allies or to change hearts and minds. Fortunately, Mara Keisling, executive director at the National Center for Transgender Equality, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, took the high road. Here are excerpts from Huffington Post on Keisling's reaction:
“Leto’s portrayal was of a particular fictional transgender person at a particular time," Mara Keisling, executive director at the National Center for Transgender Equality, told The Huffington Post in an emailed statement Monday. "But we can’t forget that transgender people like Rayon did exist and do exist. To the film's credit, I think it accurately showed what the life of this brave person must have been and how she was treated. Our job is to make life better for transgender people like Rayon in the real world, and it really helps to have these lives told by Hollywood.”
However, Keisling did give Leto credit for at least alluding to the trans community. “My interpretation of his acceptance speech is that he was talking about trans people when he called out to people who are disrespected for who they are.”
Mara Keisling is as always a class act. As noted, however, others are not. Here is a sampling of the negativity that in my mind drive would be allies away from the transgender community:
Jos Truitt of the blog Feministing wrote: "I have no interest in watching a cis man in drag play a trans woman ever again. No matter what Dallas Buyers Club does as a film, the narrative around this movie, the fact that a man in drag is playing a trans woman, perpetuates the stereotype that we are men in drag."
Putting such stereotypes in context, Time's Steve Friess compared Leto's portrayal of a transgender woman to the offensive "mammy" role popular in early 20th century cinema.
See the full HuffPo article for more of the negativity. To these critics, I would again remind them of how the Christofascists depict the transgender community. Perhaps Leto's portrayal wasn't perfect, but he made Rayon someone real, someone strong and brave, and someone that the average viewer could relate to and just perhaps cause them to find themselves rethinking past prejudices.
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