I feel like there’s a difference between the character’s sort-of transphobia within that sequence and the film agreeing with that character. I don’t think we’re really supposed to IDENTIFY with Paul Dano’s character, or view him as correct. In that sequence, he’s personally uncomfortable dressing as a girl (which is itself okay and not a condemnation of anyone else doing that. Besides, I feel like the film’s underlying message is more one of accepting one another, period.) Besides, as the film shows, if he’s a narrator, it’s an incredibly unreliable one.
Nah, it’s not that. It’s that they set up an arc that can go in a trans-positive direction, but then a twist happens. And that twist means that the character who’s depicted doing that is meeting instead a very hateful trope about trans people. And so all the scenes of X character doing trans-esque things are really setting up this ugly twist and “hinting” at it.
Because of course, this work couldn’t actually go in a surreal positive direction and instead needs to be about X overused hateful transphobic trope and some bullshit sad boner confessionalism.
And the part where my identity and the potential of it actually getting reflected was just actually set up to form a hateful trope mocking said identity is just a really foul dick move and a reflection that we’ll never see major actors like Daniel Radcliffe and huge indie buzz for a work that was genuinely revolutionary and truly did trans identities justice.
It was also especially galling because my enbyfriend* specifically chose it out as a birthday gift because a friend recommended it to them, despite knowing that they are trans.
*I really wish there was a term for being romantically attracted to anything other than men, cause homoromantic doesn’t technically fit anymore, but panromantic, I feel, let’s douchey guys think they have a potential in. *shrug shoulders* Identity is complicated.
I’m being intentionally vague to try and avoid spoilers as best I can, but hopefully that is still understandable to people who’ve seen the movie.
marianne
I’d actually like spoilers on that, anywhere you can post this and be less vague about the pertinent tropes? Ty in advance as I gotta go back to sleep for a bit now 🙂
The main character starts the movie lost and like he’s about to die when he finds a dead body that comes to life and they become friends and more. He later has an arc where he starts dressing like a girl for their dead body companion because of a plot line involving magic boners (just roll with it) and they talk about their father being really against stuff like that and society disapproving of it and playing him like he’s a trans girl figuring stuff out now and falling in love with his dead body companion now that he thinks he’s going to die. Except twist, he wasn’t lost at all, he’s just a creepy stalker hiding out in the woman he’s obsessed with’s backyard and all the trans elements are just him being the creepy deranged trans psycho trope and signs of how sick his obsession really is. Cause that’s somehow more novel than a surrealist queer love story and metaphor for being lost in performative cisnormativity.
marianne
Thank you Cerberus, and I apologise for putting you through so much hassle. Sounds like sucking to me, 500 demerits to Gryffindor!
Jason
Oh yeah, now I see exactly what you meant about the seriously damaging tropes about transwomen. (I feel that it is specifically transwomen who get that bullshit and transmen just don’t show up- due to sexist bullshit I ain’t going into at 1am, but if you’ve followed me thus far you probably already get it.)
But yeah, I’d not even heard of this film but fuck that damaging bullshit. And big hugs for having to put up with that bullshit.
DarkVeghetta
Have you seen “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, Cerb?
It’s quite the experience and you may find it to be one of a very few that approach transsexuality as a major theme. It’s also a rock musical with both dark and uplifting segments.
David
I really wish there was a term for being romantically attracted to anything other than men, cause homoromantic doesn’t technically fit anymore, but panromantic, I feel, let’s douchey guys think they have a potential in. *shrug shoulders* Identity is complicated.
Shrug, “attentive”? “Romance” runs in complex patterns providing identification. Most of its elements are accessible to a good observer and interactor. Actual carnality is only a small and almost separate part.
We’ve had a pair of fillies here who had phases of stallionness. The highlight was one of them mounting her mother. It doesn’t get more wrong than that.
Maybe we need a Tiresian month for everybody in college age (staggered timing) where they spend their life attired as the other gender. Just to get a view of the different patterns modeling interaction and their influence on one’s own life.
Just to loosen the ties of gender identities to reproductive organs.
Vine409
Yeah, identity is super complicated. And overall terms/vocabulary just don’t exist currently when nonbinary is involved. Like “gay/lesbian” and “straight” or “hetero” and “homo” are literally designed to be used in a binary system… they don’t work/make sense if they person trying to find a word for their identity is nonbinary… (personally I ended up making up the term femromantic for myself to get around this[defining it as attracted to feminine traits]. Coincidently Mascromantic and Enbyromantic could be things in that same vein. Haven’t considered/thought through possible terms for nonbinary + something else… so something else to think about)
Language has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to nonbinary….
Deanatay
Ugh, don’t get me started on how useless (and inherently degrading) ‘hetero’ and ‘homo’ have become in a non-binary world. Can we pls switch to ‘andro-‘ and ‘gyno-‘ (does ‘andro-romantic’ work?) (and yes, you can keep ‘pan-‘ and ‘a-‘, those are fine)??
I mean, as someone who’s thought about this to a fair degree, I think andro and gyno are almost exactly as problematic in a non-binary world as hetero and homo? I suppose they work when the user is non-binary, where hetero and homo don’t, but they still imply that the group of people you might be attracted to falls into a binary. I don’t know of a good alternative, though, since gender and sexuality are both basically a spectrum which means splitting it into labels is hard.
(Also I’m sure it’s not your intent, but I’ve seen andro/gynosexual used in gross transphobic ways by equating them to genitals so the user can say “I’m a gynosexual lesbian so I’m only interested in real cis girls.)
welcrye
And ‘gynophilia’ is also way too reminiscent of ‘autogynephilia’.
Jon Rich
Wait, how are “hetero” and “homo” now exclusionary? Aren’t they just two points on a spectrum, which now includes the, for lack of a better term, “new” terms of sexuality?
vlademir1
@Jalathas You also start getting into the problem of the nontraditional terms becoming treated as so much ingroup jargon which cuts off people from even comprehending what you’re saying due to lack of experience and inevitably invites even more ingroup/outgroup bias.
@Jon Rich If one views the gender spectrum as two points “heterosexual” implies one likes those of the other point (ie a man who likes women). if one sees gender as a spectrum it becomes more of a problem because “hetero-” as a prefix implies the whole group of those dissimilar to oneself even though it’s most often used to imply the same meaning as though the spectrum were just two points which in term reinforces the binary gender viewpoint and suggests that is how one views gender which thereby implicitly others anyone who is not on those two points.
Now I get to hope you eventually do get to see this, considering the time and therefore that the next comic is up so those’ll be the comments most people read.
@Jalathas
Well, the point is that physical attraction is oft highly correlated with the hormones and the body build of the person, both characteristics that have nothing to do with that person’s identity, but with that person’s biology. Actually, it’d be strange for any form of attraction to be based on identity-based groups. There are assholes in any group (and for the different people, different assholes), so of course there won’t be emotional attraction just because somebody identifies as male.
By this logic I don’t see much point in getting mad about binary descriptions of sexual preferences, as long as everybody keeps in mind the thresholds between the binary descriptions will be different for everybody and fluctuating with time and mood. Like, “it’s not gay if he looks good in women’s clothing”.
That being said, some more words in the dictionary is always useful. Human beings are way too complicated to ever have a functional language that can accurately describe even one person’s sexuality. As a caveat, though, vlademir1 is right about the whole jargon and ingroup/outgroup mentality thing.
Willinwoods
If you haven’t seen it already, I can recommend Normal (2003), with Tom Wilkinson in the lead as a trans person. It might be hard to find (since it was made for tv), but — as I remember it — beautifully played.
Alan
!!!! there is a term for this though !!!! Nomaromantic means attraction to every gender except men!
I hate that casual transphobia is the new casual racism in things that make you cringe twenty years after the fact. Monty Python’s The Life of Brian is a fantastic movie, but it’s just got one scene which I can’t get out of my head now when I think about it, and it means I don’t want to show my boyfriend an otherwise great movie. :/
And we’re not even (anywhere near) out of the woods on the matter, so it’ll be until I’m practically dying of old age that I can just say “it was a different time then” like people say when they talk about Huckleberry Finn as a classic now. (I sure hope we can talk about this like a memory before I die.)
Leorale
Huckleberry Finn was very anti-slavery and anti-racism, though, wasn’t it? It has the n-word in it, but it’s there in order to show how icky the n-word was/is.
Heff
Which screams that this person really doesn’t understand what they’re talking about here. Probably agreed with the book burning it goes through for simply having a word that makes some people uncomfortable.
3-I
Oh, look, found the white guy.
Janine
Because it’s okay to other, demonize, dismiss and stereotype a race and sex of people that don’t fit into our accepting and progressive vision, right?
3-I
When they’re saying marginalized people “Must be fans of book burning” and say the N slur makes people “uncomfortable,” yeah, kind of?
Their response betrays a life experience utterly removed from what they’re talking about.
HeySo
That’s the exact opposite of what their grammar suggests they’re saying:
“The above poster probably agrees with the book burning that Huckleberry Finn goes through, solely because it has a slur in it.”
Also, while misreading happens to all of us, your ‘found the white guy’ statement is a hypocritical reaction lacking in substance or contribution.
DarkVeghetta
“Oh, look, found the white guy.” – Stating someone’s skin color in a pejorative manner is, dare I say, quite racist, 3-l.
Perhaps being less hilariously hypocritical would add to your next argument, since you’ve quite soundly shot yourself in the foot this time.
Zoë
He doesn’t want things banned, or purged or whatever, he literally wants to ‘just say “it was a different time then”’.
Gigafreak
I wonder if the point was “we can point to Huckleberry Finn as an example of a different time, because it highlights the racism in the things that Huck and Jim have to put up with, even as it condemns them.”
CURRENT society’s views of racism as something bad are partially created by this book specifically. So, it’s not about “look how it was a different time back then”. it’s about “look how this book made the time right now different”.
Inlaa
(A note: I AM a bit of a Mark Twain fan, so my perception may be skewed by that. The summary is I think Twain got more progressive as he got older, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are pretty well designed to show how awful racism is. It’s a work with flaws, but it’s definitely meant to make us sympathize with Jim and to hate how people treat him.)
If I recall correctly, Mark Twain was somewhat involved in progressive movements. For instance: when King Leopold decided to, you know, directly and indirectly cause the deaths of potentially twice the number of people that died in the Holocaust by doing awful shit in his “Congo Free State,” well… Mark Twain was one of the people who spoke out loudly against him.
A brief peek into Mark Twain’s history should show, too, that he was staunchly anti-racism, pro-abolitionism, pro-woman’s rights… He was definitely progressive for his time.
Now, from what I can tell, Mark Twain isn’t someone that was always that progressive (see one of his earlier works – with some fairly racist language – mentioning Native Americans, though he eventually seemed to reverse his stance on Native Americans), but he eventually became a guy that really hated racism. Which… I think that’s an important thing to understand: people can change. And I think Mark Twain did, and for the better. Twain grew as a person as he got older.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn show how goddamned dehumanizing the N-word can be, and how awful people treat someone for being black. Jim is constantly shown in a positive light, though he’s mistreated (if I recall correctly) even by Huck in the beginning. He’s kind, he’s patient, he’s uneducated but wise, he’s protective of Huck Finn… Etc. Though it’s been years, I remember thinking about how Jim seems to be the hero of the story as much as Huck at points.
I don’t blame anyone for thinking the book is racist, though. It can definitely be a tough call. It’s not just the use of the N-word that makes me say this – which, again, was used to express how awful that word is – but how Jim, despite having all those positive traits, is still shown as being superstitious to his own detriment and generally has his lack of education thrown in his face. But then again, I’d argue that Jim’s lack of education is mostly thrown at him in the first part of the book, where Huck Finn doesn’t appreciate Jim yet, and Huck becomes a better friend of Jim throughout the book and eventually treats him like an actual human being. However, the writing definitely makes you pause at points and wonder, on occasion, if the book is racist. So… I won’t begrudge anyone of that opinion, as ardently as I believe that Mark Twain was a good fellow and socially progressive.
One last thing: I’m not a Game of Thrones fan, but I’ve heard people claim – and I agree with this assessment – that George R. R. Martin’s work is meant to show how awful and horrible war is, how pointless it is, etc. Yet it does so by highlighting a brutal civil war in all its terrible details. We are NOT meant to cheer for the abusers, the murderers, the rapists, etc. in that story. They’re highlighted as awful people. We want them to die as we read, to get their comeuppance. I think Mark Twain’s work is similar in that regard: we’re not meant to agree with the racism shown by characters in the book, but to be upset by it and to want change. That’s my take, at least.
I apologize for the long piece, here. As said: I’m a bit of a Mark Twain fan, though I haven’t read his stuff in years. Of all the American classics, his stuff is probably the only stuff that really stuck with me.
Daniel Taylor
Thanks for an excellent analysis.
I’m interested by the comparison you draw, because it’s an apt one: both Game of Thrones and Huck Finn suffer from having good intentions, marred by an author unable to lift their good intentions away from their own privileged viewpoint.
Twain was certainly a strong progressive, by the standards of his time… which makes uncomfortable reading now, as we realise that ‘far ahead of his time’ still left him with some whopping great blind spots.
Similarly, nobody is saying that Martin is glorifying war… and obviously we’re not meant to cheer for the abusers and murderers and rapists.
Nevertheless, in a brilliantly constructed world… he seems to have constructed the plot to depend disproportionately on rape and abuse. Yes, it’s good to acknowledge that rape is a horrific reality of war.
On the other hand, so is dysentry. And being covered in mud. And trench foot. And yet, somehow, rape seems to get all of the page count…
To be fair, there is a sequence in the 5th book where one of the major characters (Daenerys) gets dysentery. But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.
Jon Rich
“But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.”
I’ll admit that I haven’t read or watched GoT, but one thing occurs to me: Would one possible factor be that rape is still something which still happens in modern, Western society, so it has a bigger impact on the reader/viewer. On the other hand, there are very few people in advanced, Western countries who die of dysentery or warfare anymore. It might not pack the same punch. So a big factor might be just writing for the audience.
I’m being totally in earnest here, this wasn’t meant to be catty or anything.
Ana Chronistic
[deletes a lot of rambling and second-guessing]
It’s interesting you mention people not having a frame of reference for dysentery and warfare, because I read a book that a friend recommended as “very good”–The Doomsday Book (or Domesday Book in “proper” English)–which is like 50% depictions of horrible disease.
I’d say SPOILERS but I dunno, I felt like I saw the twist coming from light years away. It was sort of interesting in the graphic detail of what the disease was like, but otherwise it was really… BORING. Just people dying for no reason, except to show how they died. No lesson learned.
I thought I had a conclusion to reach from sharing this, but I guess not.
DarkVeghetta
A plague isn’t caused by human folly (at least historically), hence it isn’t something one can do away with via some sort of lesson learned.
War and related atrocities on the other hand are wholly dependent on the human element, hence there can be lessons aimed at mitigating such.
Ana Chronistic
well, considering the people dying in the future was caused from mucking about with time travel and a dig site infested with latent plague virus, it is COMPLETELY human folly
why? to chronicle what it was like back then
mission success, I suppose
Iforgotmyname
To be fair, there is worse than aknowledged casual racism, and that is ignored casual racism.
Do you guys know about Tintin ? (If you don’t, it’s a comic book classic that’s very popular in francophones countries)
Well one of the early comic books is called “Tintin au Congo”, and it is so full of casual racism that it is sickening. There was a trial in the 2000′ (the book was published in th 1930’s) to ban the book or at least print a disclaimer on the cover. The belgian court of justice ruled that since the cartoonist wasn’t hostile toward black people in this book, then it was ok if he treated them as children (I’m paraphrasing by the way).
Wikipedia link if you wish to know more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Congo
Also worth mentioning that Hegre repudiated his casual racism later in his life and acknowledged the damage he’d done. Not that it makes it better, but at least he acknowledged it & tried to fix it.
Derek
You mean the scene with Loretta? I dunno, I personally found it… progressive? both given the time and the context? The People’s Front of Judea is actually pretty accepting of Loretta’s new identity, even if they don’t fully understand it
Full disclosure though, I’m cis so maybe that scene is uncomfortable to trans folk and I’m missing that element
I agree, i just watched that scene again and all of the characters aside from the leader are pretty open to the idea, and don’t chastise Stan about wanting to be Loretta. They simply ask questions about it, without putting her down. I think it is pretty progressive, especially for the time. Also Huck Finn is very against racism. Just because it uses words associated with racism, doesn’t mean it is racist. Twain strongly breaks from the norm by making Jim a real and sympathetic character instead of a stereotype. He questions the idea of slavery through the eyes of a young boy.
welcrye
The film wants you to find the whole affair absurd, which is a fundamentally different context from Huck Finn.
Jimi
I didn’t think it was transphobic at all. It was played for laughs, but to me the comedy just came from how little it had to do with the plot and how much screentime it was given despite that, and if it isn’t laughed at, it’s just a woman who was born a man and realizes they’re a woman. Also, wasn’t the actor who played Loretta actually a trans woman IRL?
Benjamin Geiger
That’d be Eric Idle, and I doubt it.
Lena
But, the thing is, you have to actually see what people’s likely responses are going to be. How likely do you think it is that the average viewer isn’t just going to see this as “haha, he thinks he is a woman how silly”? When writing something you have to take in account common opinions about stuff as well.
Pippin4242
I always found the scene funny because just one character was getting frustrated, and it was increasingly upsetting him. Everybody was fine with Loretta being Loretta, but the angry character hated the reasoning behind it – this was set 2,000 years ago, and the reasoning was that she wanted to have babies. For me, the scene peaked in amusement with the other character’s wail of “where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?” which – you know, with a slightly more sensitive rewording – I feel like something like that scene could play out in a comedy in 2016 – you know, actual trans or NB character has an aggravatingly utopian worldview when it comes to their options, and everybody around them wants to be supportive, except that isn’t actually very helpful?
IDK, I think it plays out as a lot funnier than any other trans jokes from back then, or from now, really.
David
Shrug. “otherwise great movie”? “The Life of Brian” is an offensive movie. It is written and executed as one. I find it almost amusing that you have no problem with Terry Jones depicting Brian’s mother yet object to Loretta. In their sketches even more than in “Life of Brian”, Monty Python rides out stereotypes ridiculously into the sunset.
Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance. Strangely, it feels less off-pitch when done by Terry Jones (the go-to female), Eric Idle and even the occasional John Cleese than in the rare occasion where they have actual female actors. Take a look “Prejudice”, for example. The female number girl is actually the one I find most offensive here, not the “shoot the poof” slur. Probably because it’s safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds.
But this “safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds” is also very much culturally defined. You would not want to watch “The Life of Brian” with a set of hooligans. You would not want to watch it with a Quran reading class, never mind that the joke is on you (or not).
The ultimate message is that our only weapon against intolerance is laughing about ourselves. It’s a bit sad that there is a narrow window of audience between those who laugh too little and those who laugh too much, but it matches the stereotypical audience it was created for well enough to still work.
It doesn’t for you. And you would not want to have it work for your friend, so it would not be a good video to view together since it would be disturbing him in effigy. That’s both the good and the bad thing about sharing a movie.
Hoodiecrow
“Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance.”
That’s a remarkable thing to say about a film where the only relatively grounded and moral character is a woman (Judith), and where practically all men are ditzy, erratic, and whimsical, and the one most focused on appearance is a man (Pilate).
I think you might have had some coloured goggles on when you saw the film.
David
“In their sketches even more”.
Hoodiecrow
It was a long time ago, but as I recall it the female characters in the sketches weren’t really that much ditzier than the male ones, except when the characters were meant as parodies of typical contemporary female characters in film / tv, such as the “Scott of the Antarctic” sketch. The Python gang weren’t all that progressive, but they were at least intelligent and in general didn’t base much of their humor on the kind of stereotype you mention.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
In a documentary, Carol Cleveland said that she thinks one of the things is that the the Pythons didn’t know how to write young women because they didn’t know many young women well. They knew middle-aged women from their mothers and their friends, so they tended to write from what they knew.
(Carol Cleveland is the actress who played most of the women in the Python series who weren’t played by the men in drag.)
i had never heard of swiss army man before noticing there were a couple reviews of it on youtube. had no plans to see it and now that i know theres transphobia in it, im definitely never gonna watch that movie.
This is why one should never argue with idiots. If they win, you feel extra stupid because you lost to an idiot. If you win, they fail to understand that you won, and you had to listened to their idiocy, so really they won after all.
Matthew Traver
“Never argue with a stupid person. They’ll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
-Dunno, but I remember it from the internet
DaveM
“Never argue with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon will just knock the pieces over, shit on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious”
Explains both the last two Australian Prime Ministers and Donald Trump.
HeySo
“Explains [..] Donald Trump.”
Wow, that’s rude.
Apologize to pigeons everywhere. 😐
Orion Fury
Never battle wits with an idiot; they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
merbrat
In a battle of wits, Walky is unarmed.
Deanatay
Most of the cast of DoA, in a battle of wits, would be armed with squeaky-hammers.
602 thoughts on “Spaceship”
Ana Chronistic
I’m gonna take a wild guess here at who’s seen Swiss Army Man and not walked out
ahhhh and look at that, a toy I wanted but couldn’t get as a kid is vaguely reasonable on eBay YESSSSSSS
Cerberus
Ugh, that movie. Not the fart jokes, just the nasty transphobia inherent in one of the major plot elements.
Mishyana
Seriously? I was looking forward to that one. Damn it.
Nerd Herder
I feel like there’s a difference between the character’s sort-of transphobia within that sequence and the film agreeing with that character. I don’t think we’re really supposed to IDENTIFY with Paul Dano’s character, or view him as correct. In that sequence, he’s personally uncomfortable dressing as a girl (which is itself okay and not a condemnation of anyone else doing that. Besides, I feel like the film’s underlying message is more one of accepting one another, period.) Besides, as the film shows, if he’s a narrator, it’s an incredibly unreliable one.
Cerberus
Nah, it’s not that. It’s that they set up an arc that can go in a trans-positive direction, but then a twist happens. And that twist means that the character who’s depicted doing that is meeting instead a very hateful trope about trans people. And so all the scenes of X character doing trans-esque things are really setting up this ugly twist and “hinting” at it.
Because of course, this work couldn’t actually go in a surreal positive direction and instead needs to be about X overused hateful transphobic trope and some bullshit sad boner confessionalism.
And the part where my identity and the potential of it actually getting reflected was just actually set up to form a hateful trope mocking said identity is just a really foul dick move and a reflection that we’ll never see major actors like Daniel Radcliffe and huge indie buzz for a work that was genuinely revolutionary and truly did trans identities justice.
It was also especially galling because my enbyfriend* specifically chose it out as a birthday gift because a friend recommended it to them, despite knowing that they are trans.
*I really wish there was a term for being romantically attracted to anything other than men, cause homoromantic doesn’t technically fit anymore, but panromantic, I feel, let’s douchey guys think they have a potential in. *shrug shoulders* Identity is complicated.
Cerberus
I’m being intentionally vague to try and avoid spoilers as best I can, but hopefully that is still understandable to people who’ve seen the movie.
marianne
I’d actually like spoilers on that, anywhere you can post this and be less vague about the pertinent tropes? Ty in advance as I gotta go back to sleep for a bit now 🙂
Cerberus
Okay, don’t hover over this text, people who don’t want spoilers
Hopefully this works.
Cerberus
If this works, hover over this link to see spoilers
Cerberus
Spoilers in this hover-text, maybe?
Last chance, before I give up and just ask Orion Fury.
Orion Fury
Well that’s what I get for going to bed early, huh?
Oh, and if I recall correctly: &<
Slartibeast Button, BIA
This is a test. Do not adjust your sect.
this is the base text if I am doing this right.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Below is what I just posted, with the angle brackets “” changed to “[” and “]”.
This is a test. Do not adjust your sect.
[abbr title=”this is hover text”]this is the base text[/abbr] if I am doing this right.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
By angle brackets I mean shift-, and shift-. on a standard US QWERTY keyboard.
Ana Chronistic
I should prolly comment somewhat late that those can easily be identified as “less than sign” and “greater than sign”
Cerberus
Thanks Slartibeast!
Okay, testing, hover for spoilers
Cerberus
Oh, frick it, SPOILERS BELOW:
*
The main character starts the movie lost and like he’s about to die when he finds a dead body that comes to life and they become friends and more. He later has an arc where he starts dressing like a girl for their dead body companion because of a plot line involving magic boners (just roll with it) and they talk about their father being really against stuff like that and society disapproving of it and playing him like he’s a trans girl figuring stuff out now and falling in love with his dead body companion now that he thinks he’s going to die. Except twist, he wasn’t lost at all, he’s just a creepy stalker hiding out in the woman he’s obsessed with’s backyard and all the trans elements are just him being the creepy deranged trans psycho trope and signs of how sick his obsession really is. Cause that’s somehow more novel than a surrealist queer love story and metaphor for being lost in performative cisnormativity.
marianne
Thank you Cerberus, and I apologise for putting you through so much hassle. Sounds like sucking to me, 500 demerits to Gryffindor!
Jason
Oh yeah, now I see exactly what you meant about the seriously damaging tropes about transwomen. (I feel that it is specifically transwomen who get that bullshit and transmen just don’t show up- due to sexist bullshit I ain’t going into at 1am, but if you’ve followed me thus far you probably already get it.)
But yeah, I’d not even heard of this film but fuck that damaging bullshit. And big hugs for having to put up with that bullshit.
DarkVeghetta
Have you seen “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, Cerb?
It’s quite the experience and you may find it to be one of a very few that approach transsexuality as a major theme. It’s also a rock musical with both dark and uplifting segments.
David
Shrug, “attentive”? “Romance” runs in complex patterns providing identification. Most of its elements are accessible to a good observer and interactor. Actual carnality is only a small and almost separate part.
We’ve had a pair of fillies here who had phases of stallionness. The highlight was one of them mounting her mother. It doesn’t get more wrong than that.
Maybe we need a Tiresian month for everybody in college age (staggered timing) where they spend their life attired as the other gender. Just to get a view of the different patterns modeling interaction and their influence on one’s own life.
Just to loosen the ties of gender identities to reproductive organs.
Vine409
Yeah, identity is super complicated. And overall terms/vocabulary just don’t exist currently when nonbinary is involved. Like “gay/lesbian” and “straight” or “hetero” and “homo” are literally designed to be used in a binary system… they don’t work/make sense if they person trying to find a word for their identity is nonbinary… (personally I ended up making up the term femromantic for myself to get around this[defining it as attracted to feminine traits]. Coincidently Mascromantic and Enbyromantic could be things in that same vein. Haven’t considered/thought through possible terms for nonbinary + something else… so something else to think about)
Language has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to nonbinary….
Deanatay
Ugh, don’t get me started on how useless (and inherently degrading) ‘hetero’ and ‘homo’ have become in a non-binary world. Can we pls switch to ‘andro-‘ and ‘gyno-‘ (does ‘andro-romantic’ work?) (and yes, you can keep ‘pan-‘ and ‘a-‘, those are fine)??
Jalathas
I mean, as someone who’s thought about this to a fair degree, I think andro and gyno are almost exactly as problematic in a non-binary world as hetero and homo? I suppose they work when the user is non-binary, where hetero and homo don’t, but they still imply that the group of people you might be attracted to falls into a binary. I don’t know of a good alternative, though, since gender and sexuality are both basically a spectrum which means splitting it into labels is hard.
(Also I’m sure it’s not your intent, but I’ve seen andro/gynosexual used in gross transphobic ways by equating them to genitals so the user can say “I’m a gynosexual lesbian so I’m only interested in
realcis girls.)welcrye
And ‘gynophilia’ is also way too reminiscent of ‘autogynephilia’.
Jon Rich
Wait, how are “hetero” and “homo” now exclusionary? Aren’t they just two points on a spectrum, which now includes the, for lack of a better term, “new” terms of sexuality?
vlademir1
@Jalathas You also start getting into the problem of the nontraditional terms becoming treated as so much ingroup jargon which cuts off people from even comprehending what you’re saying due to lack of experience and inevitably invites even more ingroup/outgroup bias.
@Jon Rich If one views the gender spectrum as two points “heterosexual” implies one likes those of the other point (ie a man who likes women). if one sees gender as a spectrum it becomes more of a problem because “hetero-” as a prefix implies the whole group of those dissimilar to oneself even though it’s most often used to imply the same meaning as though the spectrum were just two points which in term reinforces the binary gender viewpoint and suggests that is how one views gender which thereby implicitly others anyone who is not on those two points.
Now I get to hope you eventually do get to see this, considering the time and therefore that the next comic is up so those’ll be the comments most people read.
erejnion
@Jalathas
Well, the point is that physical attraction is oft highly correlated with the hormones and the body build of the person, both characteristics that have nothing to do with that person’s identity, but with that person’s biology. Actually, it’d be strange for any form of attraction to be based on identity-based groups. There are assholes in any group (and for the different people, different assholes), so of course there won’t be emotional attraction just because somebody identifies as male.
By this logic I don’t see much point in getting mad about binary descriptions of sexual preferences, as long as everybody keeps in mind the thresholds between the binary descriptions will be different for everybody and fluctuating with time and mood. Like, “it’s not gay if he looks good in women’s clothing”.
That being said, some more words in the dictionary is always useful. Human beings are way too complicated to ever have a functional language that can accurately describe even one person’s sexuality. As a caveat, though, vlademir1 is right about the whole jargon and ingroup/outgroup mentality thing.
Willinwoods
If you haven’t seen it already, I can recommend Normal (2003), with Tom Wilkinson in the lead as a trans person. It might be hard to find (since it was made for tv), but — as I remember it — beautifully played.
Alan
!!!! there is a term for this though !!!! Nomaromantic means attraction to every gender except men!
modulusshift
I hate that casual transphobia is the new casual racism in things that make you cringe twenty years after the fact. Monty Python’s The Life of Brian is a fantastic movie, but it’s just got one scene which I can’t get out of my head now when I think about it, and it means I don’t want to show my boyfriend an otherwise great movie. :/
And we’re not even (anywhere near) out of the woods on the matter, so it’ll be until I’m practically dying of old age that I can just say “it was a different time then” like people say when they talk about Huckleberry Finn as a classic now. (I sure hope we can talk about this like a memory before I die.)
Leorale
Huckleberry Finn was very anti-slavery and anti-racism, though, wasn’t it? It has the n-word in it, but it’s there in order to show how icky the n-word was/is.
Heff
Which screams that this person really doesn’t understand what they’re talking about here. Probably agreed with the book burning it goes through for simply having a word that makes some people uncomfortable.
3-I
Oh, look, found the white guy.
Janine
Because it’s okay to other, demonize, dismiss and stereotype a race and sex of people that don’t fit into our accepting and progressive vision, right?
3-I
When they’re saying marginalized people “Must be fans of book burning” and say the N slur makes people “uncomfortable,” yeah, kind of?
Their response betrays a life experience utterly removed from what they’re talking about.
HeySo
That’s the exact opposite of what their grammar suggests they’re saying:
“The above poster probably agrees with the book burning that Huckleberry Finn goes through, solely because it has a slur in it.”
Also, while misreading happens to all of us, your ‘found the white guy’ statement is a hypocritical reaction lacking in substance or contribution.
DarkVeghetta
“Oh, look, found the white guy.” – Stating someone’s skin color in a pejorative manner is, dare I say, quite racist, 3-l.
Perhaps being less hilariously hypocritical would add to your next argument, since you’ve quite soundly shot yourself in the foot this time.
Zoë
He doesn’t want things banned, or purged or whatever, he literally wants to ‘just say “it was a different time then”’.
Gigafreak
I wonder if the point was “we can point to Huckleberry Finn as an example of a different time, because it highlights the racism in the things that Huck and Jim have to put up with, even as it condemns them.”
erejnion
That’d be again not doing justice to the book.
CURRENT society’s views of racism as something bad are partially created by this book specifically. So, it’s not about “look how it was a different time back then”. it’s about “look how this book made the time right now different”.
Inlaa
(A note: I AM a bit of a Mark Twain fan, so my perception may be skewed by that. The summary is I think Twain got more progressive as he got older, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are pretty well designed to show how awful racism is. It’s a work with flaws, but it’s definitely meant to make us sympathize with Jim and to hate how people treat him.)
If I recall correctly, Mark Twain was somewhat involved in progressive movements. For instance: when King Leopold decided to, you know, directly and indirectly cause the deaths of potentially twice the number of people that died in the Holocaust by doing awful shit in his “Congo Free State,” well… Mark Twain was one of the people who spoke out loudly against him.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Soliloquy
A brief peek into Mark Twain’s history should show, too, that he was staunchly anti-racism, pro-abolitionism, pro-woman’s rights… He was definitely progressive for his time.
Now, from what I can tell, Mark Twain isn’t someone that was always that progressive (see one of his earlier works – with some fairly racist language – mentioning Native Americans, though he eventually seemed to reverse his stance on Native Americans), but he eventually became a guy that really hated racism. Which… I think that’s an important thing to understand: people can change. And I think Mark Twain did, and for the better. Twain grew as a person as he got older.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn show how goddamned dehumanizing the N-word can be, and how awful people treat someone for being black. Jim is constantly shown in a positive light, though he’s mistreated (if I recall correctly) even by Huck in the beginning. He’s kind, he’s patient, he’s uneducated but wise, he’s protective of Huck Finn… Etc. Though it’s been years, I remember thinking about how Jim seems to be the hero of the story as much as Huck at points.
I don’t blame anyone for thinking the book is racist, though. It can definitely be a tough call. It’s not just the use of the N-word that makes me say this – which, again, was used to express how awful that word is – but how Jim, despite having all those positive traits, is still shown as being superstitious to his own detriment and generally has his lack of education thrown in his face. But then again, I’d argue that Jim’s lack of education is mostly thrown at him in the first part of the book, where Huck Finn doesn’t appreciate Jim yet, and Huck becomes a better friend of Jim throughout the book and eventually treats him like an actual human being. However, the writing definitely makes you pause at points and wonder, on occasion, if the book is racist. So… I won’t begrudge anyone of that opinion, as ardently as I believe that Mark Twain was a good fellow and socially progressive.
One last thing: I’m not a Game of Thrones fan, but I’ve heard people claim – and I agree with this assessment – that George R. R. Martin’s work is meant to show how awful and horrible war is, how pointless it is, etc. Yet it does so by highlighting a brutal civil war in all its terrible details. We are NOT meant to cheer for the abusers, the murderers, the rapists, etc. in that story. They’re highlighted as awful people. We want them to die as we read, to get their comeuppance. I think Mark Twain’s work is similar in that regard: we’re not meant to agree with the racism shown by characters in the book, but to be upset by it and to want change. That’s my take, at least.
I apologize for the long piece, here. As said: I’m a bit of a Mark Twain fan, though I haven’t read his stuff in years. Of all the American classics, his stuff is probably the only stuff that really stuck with me.
Daniel Taylor
Thanks for an excellent analysis.
I’m interested by the comparison you draw, because it’s an apt one: both Game of Thrones and Huck Finn suffer from having good intentions, marred by an author unable to lift their good intentions away from their own privileged viewpoint.
Twain was certainly a strong progressive, by the standards of his time… which makes uncomfortable reading now, as we realise that ‘far ahead of his time’ still left him with some whopping great blind spots.
Similarly, nobody is saying that Martin is glorifying war… and obviously we’re not meant to cheer for the abusers and murderers and rapists.
Nevertheless, in a brilliantly constructed world… he seems to have constructed the plot to depend disproportionately on rape and abuse. Yes, it’s good to acknowledge that rape is a horrific reality of war.
On the other hand, so is dysentry. And being covered in mud. And trench foot. And yet, somehow, rape seems to get all of the page count…
Kernanator
To be fair, there is a sequence in the 5th book where one of the major characters (Daenerys) gets dysentery. But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.
Jon Rich
“But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.”
I’ll admit that I haven’t read or watched GoT, but one thing occurs to me: Would one possible factor be that rape is still something which still happens in modern, Western society, so it has a bigger impact on the reader/viewer. On the other hand, there are very few people in advanced, Western countries who die of dysentery or warfare anymore. It might not pack the same punch. So a big factor might be just writing for the audience.
I’m being totally in earnest here, this wasn’t meant to be catty or anything.
Ana Chronistic
[deletes a lot of rambling and second-guessing]
It’s interesting you mention people not having a frame of reference for dysentery and warfare, because I read a book that a friend recommended as “very good”–The Doomsday Book (or Domesday Book in “proper” English)–which is like 50% depictions of horrible disease.
I’d say SPOILERS but I dunno, I felt like I saw the twist coming from light years away. It was sort of interesting in the graphic detail of what the disease was like, but otherwise it was really… BORING. Just people dying for no reason, except to show how they died. No lesson learned.
I thought I had a conclusion to reach from sharing this, but I guess not.
DarkVeghetta
A plague isn’t caused by human folly (at least historically), hence it isn’t something one can do away with via some sort of lesson learned.
War and related atrocities on the other hand are wholly dependent on the human element, hence there can be lessons aimed at mitigating such.
Ana Chronistic
well, considering the people dying in the future was caused from mucking about with time travel and a dig site infested with latent plague virus, it is COMPLETELY human folly
why? to chronicle what it was like back then
mission success, I suppose
Iforgotmyname
To be fair, there is worse than aknowledged casual racism, and that is ignored casual racism.
Do you guys know about Tintin ? (If you don’t, it’s a comic book classic that’s very popular in francophones countries)
Well one of the early comic books is called “Tintin au Congo”, and it is so full of casual racism that it is sickening. There was a trial in the 2000′ (the book was published in th 1930’s) to ban the book or at least print a disclaimer on the cover. The belgian court of justice ruled that since the cartoonist wasn’t hostile toward black people in this book, then it was ok if he treated them as children (I’m paraphrasing by the way).
Wikipedia link if you wish to know more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Congo
Historyman68
Also worth mentioning that Hegre repudiated his casual racism later in his life and acknowledged the damage he’d done. Not that it makes it better, but at least he acknowledged it & tried to fix it.
Derek
You mean the scene with Loretta? I dunno, I personally found it… progressive? both given the time and the context? The People’s Front of Judea is actually pretty accepting of Loretta’s new identity, even if they don’t fully understand it
Full disclosure though, I’m cis so maybe that scene is uncomfortable to trans folk and I’m missing that element
asdf
I agree, i just watched that scene again and all of the characters aside from the leader are pretty open to the idea, and don’t chastise Stan about wanting to be Loretta. They simply ask questions about it, without putting her down. I think it is pretty progressive, especially for the time. Also Huck Finn is very against racism. Just because it uses words associated with racism, doesn’t mean it is racist. Twain strongly breaks from the norm by making Jim a real and sympathetic character instead of a stereotype. He questions the idea of slavery through the eyes of a young boy.
welcrye
The film wants you to find the whole affair absurd, which is a fundamentally different context from Huck Finn.
Jimi
I didn’t think it was transphobic at all. It was played for laughs, but to me the comedy just came from how little it had to do with the plot and how much screentime it was given despite that, and if it isn’t laughed at, it’s just a woman who was born a man and realizes they’re a woman. Also, wasn’t the actor who played Loretta actually a trans woman IRL?
Benjamin Geiger
That’d be Eric Idle, and I doubt it.
Lena
But, the thing is, you have to actually see what people’s likely responses are going to be. How likely do you think it is that the average viewer isn’t just going to see this as “haha, he thinks he is a woman how silly”? When writing something you have to take in account common opinions about stuff as well.
Pippin4242
I always found the scene funny because just one character was getting frustrated, and it was increasingly upsetting him. Everybody was fine with Loretta being Loretta, but the angry character hated the reasoning behind it – this was set 2,000 years ago, and the reasoning was that she wanted to have babies. For me, the scene peaked in amusement with the other character’s wail of “where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?” which – you know, with a slightly more sensitive rewording – I feel like something like that scene could play out in a comedy in 2016 – you know, actual trans or NB character has an aggravatingly utopian worldview when it comes to their options, and everybody around them wants to be supportive, except that isn’t actually very helpful?
IDK, I think it plays out as a lot funnier than any other trans jokes from back then, or from now, really.
David
Shrug. “otherwise great movie”? “The Life of Brian” is an offensive movie. It is written and executed as one. I find it almost amusing that you have no problem with Terry Jones depicting Brian’s mother yet object to Loretta. In their sketches even more than in “Life of Brian”, Monty Python rides out stereotypes ridiculously into the sunset.
Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance. Strangely, it feels less off-pitch when done by Terry Jones (the go-to female), Eric Idle and even the occasional John Cleese than in the rare occasion where they have actual female actors. Take a look “Prejudice”, for example. The female number girl is actually the one I find most offensive here, not the “shoot the poof” slur. Probably because it’s safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds.
But this “safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds” is also very much culturally defined. You would not want to watch “The Life of Brian” with a set of hooligans. You would not want to watch it with a Quran reading class, never mind that the joke is on you (or not).
The ultimate message is that our only weapon against intolerance is laughing about ourselves. It’s a bit sad that there is a narrow window of audience between those who laugh too little and those who laugh too much, but it matches the stereotypical audience it was created for well enough to still work.
It doesn’t for you. And you would not want to have it work for your friend, so it would not be a good video to view together since it would be disturbing him in effigy. That’s both the good and the bad thing about sharing a movie.
Hoodiecrow
“Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance.”
That’s a remarkable thing to say about a film where the only relatively grounded and moral character is a woman (Judith), and where practically all men are ditzy, erratic, and whimsical, and the one most focused on appearance is a man (Pilate).
I think you might have had some coloured goggles on when you saw the film.
David
“In their sketches even more”.
Hoodiecrow
It was a long time ago, but as I recall it the female characters in the sketches weren’t really that much ditzier than the male ones, except when the characters were meant as parodies of typical contemporary female characters in film / tv, such as the “Scott of the Antarctic” sketch. The Python gang weren’t all that progressive, but they were at least intelligent and in general didn’t base much of their humor on the kind of stereotype you mention.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
In a documentary, Carol Cleveland said that she thinks one of the things is that the the Pythons didn’t know how to write young women because they didn’t know many young women well. They knew middle-aged women from their mothers and their friends, so they tended to write from what they knew.
(Carol Cleveland is the actress who played most of the women in the Python series who weren’t played by the men in drag.)
Wheelpath
That was transphobia… Oh….
magicallady
i had never heard of swiss army man before noticing there were a couple reviews of it on youtube. had no plans to see it and now that i know theres transphobia in it, im definitely never gonna watch that movie.
filleralias
Still can’t believe this is an actual movie and not an snl skit.
Disloyal Subject
Yeah, when I started seeing the ads I had to check that it wasn’t somehow April 1st in the middle of June.
Ana Chronistic
oh hey I FINALLY got the aforementioned toy yaaaaaaay
granted part of that was on me for forgetting I had to go to the post office to pick it up
…yay Megavolt =D
AnvilPro
And the epic battle continues with no winner in sight
filleralias
I would say Carla wins but she lost by having to suffer through Walky’s bullshit.
Doctor_Who
This is why one should never argue with idiots. If they win, you feel extra stupid because you lost to an idiot. If you win, they fail to understand that you won, and you had to listened to their idiocy, so really they won after all.
Matthew Traver
“Never argue with a stupid person. They’ll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
-Dunno, but I remember it from the internet
DaveM
“Never argue with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon will just knock the pieces over, shit on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious”
Explains both the last two Australian Prime Ministers and Donald Trump.
HeySo
“Explains [..] Donald Trump.”
Wow, that’s rude.
Apologize to pigeons everywhere. 😐
Orion Fury
Never battle wits with an idiot; they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
merbrat
In a battle of wits, Walky is unarmed.
Deanatay
Most of the cast of DoA, in a battle of wits, would be armed with squeaky-hammers.
merbrat
*giggle-snort*
Darkoneko
Arguing with idiots is like wrestling with pigs in the mud : At some point you realize the pig is really enjoying himself.