(via Gwyneth Jones)
"Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede." --Chesterton
My wife alerted me to an unsuspected backlash to the Jared Leto Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club: from those in the trans community who resent the fact that this character was played by a cis-man. Some even comparing it to "blackface"... Now ordinarily i would say, Let a thousand ressentiments bloom; it's not like there's never any reason to feel oppressed there. But i would think, today, why not be more celebratory, what with even Texas on the road to marriage equality (it seems)--a place whose former motto might well have been: "Uganda, with Tacos." That was very much a sympathetic character. Remember Freebie and the Bean?
This puts me in mind of those who take umbrage at the increasing visibility of autistics in popular culture. They say: why not hire autistic actors, to do it right? I submit that there are two separate issues getting mixed up, to the detriment of both. One is job opportunities. I really think, in acting as in any other field, let anyone play any part. Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet, James Earl Jones played Lear (magnificently), any number of gay actors have been hetero heartthrobs in the Golden Age of Hollywood & after: simply remove the barriers that exist because of prejudice, & let talent prevail. It might even be considered more of a challenge to persuade when coming from a position of non-experience. Michael Douglas as Liberace? He was practically a poster child for straight male privilege--.
The other part is the war of images. A good case can be made that there is usually a sequence of increasingly realistic depictions of any minority, with what passes for convincing portrayal becoming seen as stereotypically demeaning to a later era. This does not mean that the pioneers' efforts were wasted. They were, after all, out there. Personally i do not feel that any onscreen character, even if it directly purports to show something that is part of my regular experience, is really about me or anyone else; it's a commercial product, & it's a fictive creation, in a genre-galaxy of other fictive creations. But many people do use these commercial products to form their ideas about the world, so therefore they are important facts, to be negotiated. Ending stereotypes won't end prejudice, yet when prejudice lessens, using them turns unfashionable. That's how progress is made.
Meanwhile I am looking at the words. If white playing African-American is "blackface" & white playing Native American is "redface" (yes, people do use the term), is cis playing trans "trans-face"? neurotypical playing autistic "aut-face"?--I could get out my collection of exonyms for this-- gay playing straight "straight-face"...? And what's the contrary of that--"true-face"? I have said before that reality television isn't reality, it's amateur acting. Being your real self comes from a long apprenticeship, an askesis, even, in which the self-lies of socialization are progressively removed. This has nothing to do with art, except for the artist's asymptotic journey toward more perfect expression.
"Shadow, not light, is the language of the sun." --George Murray, Glimpse (2010)
