The answer usually comes from the true intent.
When it comes to big budget Hollywood movies , 100% are made sheerly to make as much money as possible.
Independent movies often seek to tell stories with messages, and often are so scraped for money they need to do just about anything to just get made.
Many minorities have been upset with television and movies for not portraying them either accurately or in a good light for many sad years. There have been cases like the movie “Black Panther” where the joy of finally seeing a black hero with no negative, trite stereotypes have been received with so much utter glee that it can make you cry real tears that so many past injustices have been righted so well that no one can begrudge Hollywood a penny for its late jump to consciousness.
“After an onslaught of criticism over the past week, actress Scarlett Johansson announced on Friday she will be pulling out of the starring role in Rub & Tug, a film based on the true story of a transgender man who ran a ring of prostitution fronts.”
The whole thing leaves me completely confused. That quote comes from NPR, which usually seems to be on the forefront of defining things in the best possible terms. I have no idea if that character is best described as a “transgender man.” I don’t know if he was a good “man.” I have no idea if it is a good story to tell. I have no idea what slant the film makers making “his” story have. I’m actually more than a little confused.
In college, I had no bias towards gays, but I often used the word “fag” in unenlightened ways. I used it in a short story and turned it in to a creative writing teacher who was gay to refer to a band where the main character in the story derisively mocked a band he hated by calling them “The Fags” because the band played punk songs in a way that character saw as less than in the true spirit of punk. That character was not meant to be seen as heroic and that character was probably autobiographical. The professor, who always showed genuine affection for me, was either forgiving or accepted the times in which she lived. She pointed out that the character in my story was the type who loved Little Richard and yet was using this term for a band he hated.
Hopefully, she knew that I was not anti-gay, I wasn’t. I did however grow up playing a football variant called “Smeer the Queer,” where no one ever spent a second thinking about what the name of that game meant or its impact. I grew up in a time of ignorance. Of what little sexual education I had, some of it basically told me that all gays were pedophiles. I had a sixth grade teacher who was completely enraged by even the term gay, because that was actually her first name. One of my favorite singer/artists was indeed Marvin Gaye, whose birth name was actually Gay and had the E added to the end for obvious reasons, and he did so because his father, who wound up shooting him, did have gender issues that in turn led to Marvin having many gender and sexual issues.
In 1981, burnouts I went to high school with proudly listened to Culture Club. Despite the fact that its singer wore a dress and the video made it as obvious as possible, no one even thought for a second Boy George was gay. In 1982, perhaps three quarters of my high school went to see Queen and almost all wore the accompanying concert T-Shirt to school the next day. Likely few if any knew Freddie Mercury was gay or why his band was named Queen. There were likely gay boys at that school, who were extremely effeminate and had no idea whether they were gay or not. It was a big ball of ignorance, with few real villains.
In late 1989, I was transferred to San Fransisco where I learned a lot, which was great. I had never really been anti-gay, but I had been isolated. The one gay man I encountered the most, who worked where I worked, was an African American, who was flamboyant and fun. My only real observation about him was that it seemed amazing to me that he seemed to be willing and able to put his hands all over any woman he wanted to at any party. He got further with my girlfriend at the time in a five minute meeting than I did in pretty much three dates. I don’t know how she or the others felt about that at the time or now.
I went to an outing at Lake Tahoe of an online trivia group. The head of that group was a homosexual man and I learned his story and it made me extremely sad. When his “partner of many years” died, he was purposely left out of the obituary, an unforgivable, sad crime.
I’ve heard many racists say some variant of, “First you wanted to be called colored, then Negro, then Black, then African American. I don’t know what the fuck to call you.” Mostly, like in the case of Muhammad Ali, I think you should do your best to indeed call a person whatever the fuck they want to be called.
There have been amazing strides in gay rights in the past 20 years, which nevertheless are still in peril. Look who is Vice-President. Look at the religious “hate group” Donald Trump became the first President to give a speech to at their yearly rally, while waving his supposedly favorite book the bible, a book I would love to see him attempt to take a pop quiz on that fifth grade Christian private school kids would yawn through.
I consider myself as woke as perhaps 80% of the United States in this regard.
To the best of my knowledy the most sensitive term for that community is LGBTQ, and the Q actually does stand for queer. There is also LGBT+, LGBT*, LGBTx, or LGBTQIA.
There is also transgender, cisgender, binary, non-binary, and genderqueer. No one is more compassionate or has more time to figure all of these things out than perhaps me, but even I’m getting to the point where I am too confused to parse it all and I don’t think I am like those racists I previously referred to. Maybe I am, I can’t know for sure.
The first real classic film ever made was D.W. Griffith’s 1915 “Birth of a Nation,” which had white men playing “evil rapacious” black men. It not only glorified the KKK, it revitalized them and saw them reach their peak in brutality and impact. The president at the time had this to say after seeing it in a private screening.
It was indeed so revolutionary in terms of innovation and impact on film alone, that much to the disgust of people of color or even people of any color, you literally can not be a legitimate film school without deeply studying “The Birth of a Nation.”
I once heard a quote that “The best way to criticize a film you don’t like is to make your own film.”
Spike Lee did. It was called Bamboozled and it contained this gut punch.
For most of their lives and still today, Martin Luther King was seen as a non-violent proponent of slow, peaceful progress. Rosa Parks was not the first black woman who refused to stand or move to the back of a bus. She was merely the first one eloquent, strong, and attractive enough for backers against that practice to feel confident enough to push her case to the forefront.
Malcolm X is seen as someone who wanted freedom and economic power for his people “right now” and “by any means necessary.” Both men were more complicated than that, but you can still have a week long debate over whose plan was better short term and long term for African Americans.
But then again, acting is supposed to be about playing and embodying someone that you are not.
Cary Grant for years played the same character effectively and effortlessly. He was the ultimate ladies man. Cary Grant was gay.
Tom Hanks made a number of movies where he was just Tom Hanks, but he won his first Oscar, for playing a gay man with AIDS in “Philadelphia,” and it was considered a godsend to the gay community at the time. Tom Hanks is not gay. If Tom Hanks were cast in that role today, I have no idea what the hell the response would be.
Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” So repellent that it basically ruins what is otherwise a very good movie.
Tom Cruise in “The Last Samarai,” extremely silly, maybe offensive.
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder,” a hilarious unrepentant attack on Hollywood that too many people still don’t understand.
Will Smith’s first big movie role came in “Six Degrees of Separation” and it had nothing to do with Kevin Bacon. His character was a con man and hustler. There were gay elements to that character, but Smith was famously unwilling to kiss a man in it and risk his career.
1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” was seen as groundbreaking and won Hillary Swank her first Oscar for playing a trans man, who met a tragic end. Hillary Swank is not a trans man. Hillary Swank to my knowledge is not even remotely gay. No one applauded more than the gay community.
Again when Hanks took his role in 1993’s “Philadelphia” it was seen as a huge risk, possible career suicide, and in the end heroic.
In 1998, Anne Heche started dating Ellen Degeneres, which went public one day before she was cast as the romantic lead opposite Harrison Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights.” The film was made, but there was insane and inane hysteria over whether anyone could take her seriously in the role, knowing perhaps that she wasn’t really interested in sleeping with Harrison Ford, but perhaps more interested in the woman who played Ford’s co-pilot and current girlfriend in the movie Jacqueline Obradors. Really the hysteria was over the box office impact of it. It’s always about money!
The whole thing was stupid. Most history is depressingly stupid. Heche was a very talented actress on the brink of stardom. She broke up with Degeneres at some point and has to my knowledge since only dated or married men. She has had psychological issues. She works, but she is not now and never has been a star.
At some point, straight actors playing gay roles was again seen for a while to be heroic.
I remember the wonderfully, cranky Harrison Ford, who really mostly essentially always plays Harrison Ford, discussing one of Tony Curtis’ first screen roles. He was playing, I believe a newsboy, and Ford said that the response was that upon seeing him do it everyone said you could tell that Curtis was a star. Ford’s remark with as much hostile disdain as possible was that he thought the point was that Curtis should have been portraying a newsboy. Just for fun, perhaps Curtis’ most famous screen moment came in the movie “Some Like It Hot” seducing Marilyn Monroe with his legendary Cary Grant lady killer impression. Curtis also starred in “The Defiant Ones” handcuffed to Sideny Poitier, where they had to work together to escape from incarceration.
There is a famous scene where they are unshackled and Poitier catches a train that Curtis fails to reach. Poitier jumps off to stay with the racist Curtis.
The estimable James Baldwin discussed this whole Hollywood issue better I ever could over 50 years ago. The Reel Critic: “I Am Not Your Negro”
To Baldwin, white people loved it, while black people in the audience were thinking, “Get back on the train you fool!”
“The black man jumps off the train in order to reassure white people, to make them know that they’re not hated,” he says.
“If any white man in the world says ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,’ the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing he is judged a criminal and treated like one, and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger so there won’t be anymore like him,” he tells Dick Cavett.
But of course that film was aimed at changing white views, black people knew the situation as they always have. Whether it was a positive attempt or not depends on your worldview. A lot of people love the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” also directed by Stanley Kramer. Spike Lee does not. You can decide yourself, which director has had more impact and in what ways. It’s infinitely complex.
Non white males have always had to turn the other cheek endlessly and that is sad. Maybe there needs to be a violent insurrection. It always sort of felt that progress was being made, even if it was slow, until about the last two years or so.
So yeah like John Lennon waffled, “If you want to talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out… in,” but he also prayed and maintained “Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright.”
Usually, you have to appeal to the least hateful straight whites in order to make change. Or at least that is how it’s been done so far.
For a long time, Sidney Poitier was essentially pretty much the only black man allowed to be portrayed heroically or at all in Hollywood movies.
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry was better know as Stepin Fetchit. He was billed as “the Laziest Man in the World.” He was the first black actor to receive film credit in a film. He was the first black actor to earn a million dollars. His initial legacy was one of scorn and derision, but now there is a widespread belief that it is more complicated than that.
In 2008, Larry David, whose legacy is now and will be complicated, as a Jew I love him and pretty much every joke he has ever told, said that his favorite sitcom ever was ““Amos and Andy” , which currently is pretty impossible to see. Many African Americans actors agree, and point out that had there been other sitcoms featuring blacks in more respectful ways, that “Amos and Andy” would have been fine. Few people who have seen it deny that it was funny.
A few years ago close to 50, I was the only white person in a communications history class at a community college, and the only person over perhaps 22. The teacher made me not answer the following question, which he knew that no one else there would know the answer too. “What was the main issue that came up when “Amos and Andy” moved from radio to television?” It was a casting issue. Learning “true” historical things is always good, but there is exists tons of history where facts may not be facts.
Bill Cosby made an incredible amount of money playing Cliff Huxtable, a “respectable” black family man, colleges bent over backwards to give him honorary degrees. But Bill Cosby criticized many other black actors and comedians for their language, their world view, the characters they played, and their art. Bill Cosby’s legacy is in tatters now for good reason, but maybe it should have been before that. Bill Cosby made as much money as he could at all times embodying on stage and on film and TV, the exact kind of black man that whites felt most comfortable with. He had plenty of compassion for blacks who went to college, but not much for those who never had a real chance to go to college. It was complicated then, minus the Quaalude activity, it still should be complicated now.
In 2014, Laverne Cox became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category: Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia Burset in “Orange Is the New Black.” Cox is both transgender and an actor. Is she allowed to play a character that is not transgender?
Jeffrey Tambor, not transgender, but a great actor, was seen as a hero for playing a transgender person in “Transparent.” He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance in the debut season of the show. He dedicated his win to the transgender community.
On January 11, 2015, “Transparent” won two Golden Globe awards for the first season of the show, including Outstanding Comedy Series. I watched the celebration with mixed feelings. I hadn’t seen the show and its win seemed inspiring, but those on the stage acted like they had cured Cancer and delivered on World Peace.
Since Tambor, has either rightly or wrongly been fired for sexual harassment issues, I’ve researched it and have no idea what actually went on, his and indeed the show’s legacy is in flux.
A ton of amazing English classically trained black actors have earned a lot of money and recognition playing American ghetto criminals. Morgan Freeman is as good an actor as there has been over the last 30 years. He got no chance to show that until he played a pimp at 50 in 1987’s “Street Smart.”
Frankly, if a genius with no financial support like Orson Welles, wants to spend years and tons of his own money to fulfill his dream of playing the lead in “Othello,” I’m fine with that.
Again, it’s called acting and it’s mostly about portraying someone you are not. No, of course I want no Japanese Mickey Rooney’s. I’m not even sure if I want a heroically, perfectly envisioned, and accurately executed Japanese character, portrayed by Mickey Rooney.
But I do know this. If I were making a movie, especially one with an honest positive message. I would want a great actor as my lead. I would want great actors in all the parts, and there are many great actors of all colors, genders, creeds, etc around.
I’ve made fun of the Academy Awards for giving Oscars to beautiful women for playing roles where they made themselves look ugly. The most obvious is Charlene Theron is “Monster,” but there seems little doubt that she deserved that award. The movie was directed by Patty Jenkins, who went on to make Wonder Woman, which whether or not it was good was a breakthrough for the vary rare species that is women directors mostly because of how much money it made.
Reese Witherspoon was molested. She now produces her own movies about women’s stories, and has done so honestly, credibly, productively, and financially successfully.
There have been many amazing acting performances by actors in their first role, who had little or no training. Some roles are better executed by unknowns.
So yeah, if I wanted to make a movie about a transgender man, with a good productive message, and I have no idea if “Rub and Tug” fits that definition, I would want the lead to be a great actor. I would want the movie to be seen by as many as possible, while retaining as much integrity as possible. If necessary, I would also want that great actor to be a popular movie star if that helped to fulfill my goal. If I was forced to pick between only two actors to play that lead with the same amount of renown, one who was a straight actor capable of greatness and one a transgender actor only capable of of mediocrity albeit with real life credibility, I would choose the better actor.
It’s much more complicated that that of course, but the answer is honest intent, as it should be in all things.
The one thing I do know is the people in charge of our country right now and their attitude towards any sector of the LGBTQ community is not complicated. It is obvious, dangerous, and repulsive.
Now is not the time for bickering on really complicated, extremely specific issues. Now is the time to see the forest for the trees. Now I care very little about who plays the lead in “Rub and Tug.”
We’re all human beings no matter how different we are.
Bruce Lee: You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don’t want to be like “As Confucius say,” but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.
