Portraying the Transgender Community in Movies and TV

Over the last couple of years, information about transgender people has slowly been making its way into our conversations. The influx of media and our vast use of technology has been a major reason for this. Although, media still has the power to shed light on transgender people in a negative way, over the past couple of years there has been more talk on transgender people than ever before. Slowly the transgender community is now being represented in our media, like movies and TV shows. But it is not fast enough and often even when the transgender community is represented in media it is often wrong.  But this topic is just at the beginning of its journey of being fully accepted and understood in our society. The transgender community is still an underserved part of our community. This blog post will convey my personal reflection on the issues of the transgender community and their portrayal in media today.

What first peaked my interest in transgender people’s portrayals in media was when I was watching Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox. Cox is a transgender woman and in Orange is the New Black she portrays Sophia Burset who is also a transgender woman. The character of Sophia has been incarcerated for stealing credit cards to pay for her sex-reassignment surgery and has a job in prison as a hairdresser.  Cox was the first transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy and appear on the cover of Time Magazine. She, along with others are fighting stigmas and trying to get a message to transgender youth that they should only ever be who they are and should always pursue their dreams.

“For me personally, I am an individual who consumes mainstream culture. I watch a lot of television. I go to mainstream films. And I want to see myself. I want to turn on the television and see people who look like me who have similar experiences that I have. And I think that trans people want and deserve that; everybody wants and deserves that. We should have representations that humanize our experiences and tell the diversity and the complexity of our experiences. I have mainstream sensibilities. Just because I’m black and trans does not mean I’m somehow not mainstream and not consuming the same culture everyone else is consuming. For so long we haven’t had that kind of validation of our experiences in mainstream culture, particularly as black trans women — but as trans people in general…

I am a patriot and I love this country. What I’ve always loved about this country, in theory, is that this is a place where anything is possible for anybody if you work hard enough, at least in theory. We know that there are systemic things in place that keep a lot of people from reaching their dreams and achieving their goals, but in theory it shouldn’t be about your race or your religion or your gender or your class that you were born into. You should be able to rise up and have your moments. It’s not possible for a lot of people but I just think that in terms of forming a more perfect union and having to live up to those ideals, representation and having everyone’s story told in our media is an important part of that.” ~Laverne Cox for her interview with Time Magazine (Gjorgievska, A & Rothman, L, 2014)  

However, transgender people in media are often times portrayed incorrectly or they are not portrayed at all. According to the Williams Institute, there are 9 million Americans who identify as LGBTQ and 700,000 who are transgender individuals (Gates, G, 2001).  With these staggering numbers you would think that they should be as represented as any other character in movies or TV. Despite, making up a large portion of our population there is little to no representation of them in our media today. Laverne Cox and others are proof that this is changing but their numbers are still few and our representation of them in media is nowhere near proportional. Underrepresentation of transgender people is a major issue. We live in a world where we cannot avoid the use of technology it is everywhere, constantly. Media is used in our schools, it is how we get our news, it is how we use our free time. But when transgender people, clearly a major of society, do not get represented in these areas of the media it creates issues and problems.

Percentage of LGBT Population, by state (Source: Gallup, 2013)

Much of the media relies on stereotypes and derogatory to portray transgender people. This has huge negative implications for all transgender people. Many times people watching these derogatory stereotypes believe them and then base their actions and behaviors off them. Continuing on this trend, the way people speak and the words they use to describe transgender people is also an issue. The simple use of correct terminology when describing and talking to transgender people can be the first step in raising awareness. Media is often focused on areas like the “coming out story”, the medical issues, or a transgender person’s name. Transgender should always be used as an adjective and phrases like “she wants to be called” should always be avoided. In the media this is often overlooked. Again, we know that the media has the power to change our behaviors and attitudes and when the media continues to incorrectly communicate about transgender people this is badly affecting how people think and speak about transgender people (Kane, M, 2014).

There have been mixed reviews about Jared Leto and his character in the Dallas Buyers Club and later his win for the Academy Award for the character. I think it is great that this character even existed in the movie, where there would not even be a character written for Leto 50 years ago. However, others and myself wonder why Leto, a non-transgender person, got the role when there are so many other transgender people who could have done the role. It could have been that Leto was the most qualified person for the role talent wise and that is a fair point. But it was also how the character was written, in a very stereotypical way. It seems to be the only kind of role that transgender people ever get cast as, which is showy, exaggerated, and trivial (Friess, S, 2014). Rayon, Leto’s character, is obsessed with clothes and make up and seems to be always flirting.

But this is a similar role to all the other roles that are cast to characters that are transgender. But it got me wondering if there will ever be a transgender person cast who is that sweet and simple pastry chef in the romantic comedies? Will they ever just be dressed in jeans and t-shirt or will they continue to be an exaggerated version? Will they always be cast in movies as the transgender and this is their only identifier?  Don’t get me wrong; there are many transgender people who are like Rayon in the movie. The transgender women, Calpernia Addams who coached Leto when filming Dallas Buyers Club is a showgirl. There is nothing wrong with that, however what is wrong is that according to the media that is the only thing a transgender person can be.

Laverne Cox is a singular case of an actual transgender woman playing a transgender woman. Hopefully she is the first of many transgender people who start getting cast in major roles in media. Hopefully these roles show another side of the transgender community and not just the showgirl side. (Molloy, P. R, 2014; Friess, S, 2014).  Hopefully transgender people are cast in roles that do not have “transgender character” as their identifier; hopefully they can become characters first. It starts with our language. It starts with the media speaking about the transgender community in ways they do not find degrading or stereotypical. Simple representation of transgender people is great however, change will not occur unless we change how they are represented and how we speak about/to them.

~Devon Harkins

References for this blog post:

Gjorgievska, A., & Rothman, L. (2014, July 10). Laverne Cox Is the First Transgender Person Nominated for an Emmy—She Explains Why That Matters. Retrieved October 24, 2014, from http://time.com/2973497/laverne-cox-emmy/

Gates, G. (2011, April 1). How Many People are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender? Retrieved from http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-demographics-studies/how-many-people-are-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender/

Kane, M. (2014). GLAAD Media Reference Guide – In Focus: Covering the Transgender Community. Retrieved from http://www.glaad.org/reference/covering-trans-community

Friess, S. (2014, February 28). Don’t Applaud Jared Leto’s Transgender ‘Mammy’. Retrieved from http://time.com/10650/dont-applaud-jared-letos-transgender-mammy/

Molloy, P. (2014, March 10). What People Don’t Get About Dismay Over Jared Leto. Retrieved from http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/03/10/op-ed-what-people-dont-get-about-dismay-over-jared-leto