FILM REVIEW
'Boys don't cry'
By
Deirdre (Al Dente) Sinnott
The brutal rape and murder of trans youth Brandon Teena
shocked many in the small Nebraska town of Humboldt where the
events occurred five years ago. But it came as no shock to the
many thousands of trans people who live under the threat of
violence every day.
Since December 1994 when Brandon Teena--and his friends Lisa
Lambert and Phillip DeVine--were all murdered by John Lotter
and Tom Nissen, various artistic attempts have tried to put the
events in perspective. Two plays and two films have so far
chronicled the short life and violent death of working-class
youth Brandon Teena.
The latest attempt is the film "Boys Don't Cry," directed by
Kimberly Pierce. The film is a fictionalized account of
Brandon's last few months on earth. The writers and director
have taken some liberties with the facts of the case.
In fact, one of the women whom Brandon Teena reportedly
dated in real life has asked that her name be removed from this
film. The ethical issues facing a filmmaker fictionalizing a
story about real people--some of them still living--make this
film a target of justifiable criticism.
But the film also makes an important contribution. It
reveals with an unflinching gaze to a mass audience the
violence wielded by bigots against someone seen as "other."
For transgender and transsexual people--and many others
whose lives have been wounded as targets of such frenzied
reactionary violence--the graphic portrayal of brutality may be
extremely painful and difficult to watch.
The film begins in Lincoln, Neb., where Brandon Teena--whom
this reviewer felt was played quite convincingly by Hilary
Swank--runs from bigots who have discovered the "secret" of his
birth sex.
Teena moves to Falls City, where he is initially accepted by
a group of friends. There he begins a love relationship with a
woman named Lana--played with warmth by Chloë Sevigny.
But his life begins to unravel when Falls City Sheriff
Charles Laux arrests Teena and publicly exposes the fact that
he was born female-bodied. This exposure leads two of his
former "buddies" to gang-rape Brandon Teena. And the forcible
outing by the police eventually leads to his later murder at
the home of Lisa Lambert.
Lambert's friend in real life--Phillip DeVine--was also
murdered at the house. But this was not depicted in the film.
This omission unfortunately means that viewers don't know the
part that racism played in this murderous attack. DeVine was an
African American man who was visiting the virtually all-white
town at the time of the attack.
There are large issues that are not covered in this film.
Brandon Teena's identity and murder are taken out of social
context. Trans oppression as a whole is not explored, for
example.
Neither is the question of working-class oppression.
In the beginning of the film Lotter and Nissen have recently
been released from jail. The entire area is extremely
economically depressed. There appear to be very few jobs for
anyone--especially former prisoners--and poverty is
commonplace. Drugs and alcohol that numb the mind and senses
are used heavily by all characters throughout the film.
Lotter and Nissen are the kind of white straight men so
marginalized in the working class that they can be seduced by
right-wing ideology into blaming trans people and women for
their problems.
Ultimately Brandon Teena was killed for attempting to be
himself in a world that has little tolerance for sex and gender
variations. This intolerance isn't simply a symptom of living
in a small town in Nebraska.
A mountain of historical evidence reveals that transsexual
and transgender and intersexual people lived in small
cooperative communities for thousands of years before the
division of society into haves and have-nots. And they enjoyed
the respect of their communities. But these were societies
based on sharing the fruits of communal labor in which each
member's contributions were vital and therefore appreciated
Brandon Teena is a victim of quite a different historical
period. Under capitalism, a tiny handful of families claim to
own the vast system of production that has been built through
the collective labor of the working class. Ideology that whips
up bigotry plays an important role in such an unjust and
unequal economy. It disarms and weakens the potential unity of
the giant laboring class.
Had there been no 1969 Stonewall uprising--which
subsequently unleashed the massive modern movement for lesbian,
gay, bi and trans liberation--Brandon Teena's death might have
passed unnoticed and this film would never have been made.
And the progressive struggle to shed light on his murder is
a part of the growing movement for trans liberation--a social
movement that may end up shaking the current notions about sex
and gender to their very foundations.
But it will take a truly massive and united struggle against
all forms of bigotry to put a stop once and for all to the kind
of violence that claimed Brandon Teena's life--and the lives of
so many other trans people.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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