The Scarlett Johansson Transgender Brouhaha

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More. Business Insider reports (or, rather, prints a GLAAD press release as news):

“Scarlett Johansson’s announcement, together with the transgender voices who spoke out about this film, are game changers for the future of transgender images in Hollywood,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said. “Hollywood changed how Americans understand gay and lesbian lives, and TV is starting to do the same for transgender people with authentic transgender portrayals being major hits with critics and audiences. The film industry has a real opportunity to do the same.”

Related: Business Insider deletes opinion column defending Scarlett Johansson, and columnist resigns:

11 Comments for “The Scarlett Johansson Transgender Brouhaha”

  1. posted by JohnInCA on

    (A) I’m not really invested in this, I don’t go to the movies much. So all my knowledge of the situation is from a handful of articles.

    (B) my understanding that s large party of the objections were because it wasn’t being billed as a story about a transman, but about a lesbian who crossdressed to improve her business prospects. The repeated and consistent mis-gendering of the guy the biopic was about was a big part of the controversy.

    So it’d be like if the movie Milk had tried to whitewash that Milk was gay.

    (C) Hollywood had an undeniable problem casting gay and trans actors in leading roles. This makes it very difficult to take the “it’s acting! The actor’s identity doesn’t matter!” argument very difficult to take seriously.

    Or to put it another way… If you don’t want folk to call you on your hypocrisy, don’t be hypocrites.

    • posted by Matthew on

      False equivalence is false because joining the transcult is a choice and being gay isn’t. That 2008 MILK movie was a complete travesty for casting a wife-beating heterosexual in a role that only gay actors should have been considered for, and to give him an Oscar is a way of saying “gayface is morally acceptable, you’re a racist for pointing out the undeniable parallels to blackface, and heterosexual men have the right to steal gay roles from gay actors.” Dustin Lance Bareback is an Uncle Tom, a hack, and a traitor for casting that psychobreeder asshole as the father of the modern gay rights movement. Harvey Milk was gay and Jewish and should only be played by an actor who is both. Spare me the “but it’s acting” because no other minority group would put up with this kind of minstrelsy and you know it.

  2. posted by Lori Heine on

    I know nothing about this project, but if John in CA is correct, then this blog is running with a definitely fake news story. Offering up a scrambled, screwball plotline in which a lesbian is posing as a guy is not the same thing as telling a transgender story. Not in any universe I know of.

    Sounds to me like Johansson made a pretty tone-deaf choice in roles. And I say this as someone who doesn’t give a dry hump about political correctness.

    By the way, is it possible to spell the actress’s name right in the headline? There is no “e” at the end of her first name.

  3. posted by Jorge on

    I don’t care either way. Johansson could play this any way she likes, but there are consequences, and who knows what her political goals are? I suspect she’s in that uncomfortable stage in her career where she’s really big, but not quite really, really big, so it’s hard to find the right role between edgy and blockbuster to seal the deal for life instead of becoming yesterday’s news.

    I think she’s probably just a bit too private a person to pull off edgy.

  4. posted by MR Bill on

    Indifferent to this…

  5. posted by Kosh III on

    Yawn……

  6. posted by Jorge on

    “I believe female actors can play men and trans men.”

    Did you not know? In this brave new world, only men with inferior views of their own masculinity are allowed to cross dress. If women of pedigree femininity are allowed to do so, cross dressers will be emasculated even further than they already are. Why do you care so much?

    • posted by Matthew on

      And this is why jenn-durr is a lie and why I boycott trans-themed anything.

  7. posted by Matthew on

    Meanwhile, gay actors are supposed to step aside and let heterosexuals keep taking our roles.

  8. posted by Rex on

    My gawd, people, it’s called ACTING for a reason!

    • posted by Matthew on

      Gayface is blackface, and casting Sean Penn as Harvey Milk would be like casting Ricky Schroder as Malcolm X. Some gay roles should only be played by gay actors.

Comments are closed.