According to a GLAAD survey, about 80% of Americans don’t know a trans person. Even more unfortunate, most of their knowledge about the trans community comes from the media (aka not the best for unbiased portrayals). Mrs. Doubtfire, The Silence of the Lambs, Yentel, Dallas Buyers Club, and Boys Don’t Cry are just a handful of the divisive films discussed in the Netflix documentary Disclosure, an urgent showing of the problematic representation of trans people on-screen.
Interviews with Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black), Lilly Wachowski (dir. The Matrix), Yance Ford (dir. Strong Island), Mj Rodriguez (Pose, Rent), Jamie Clayton (Sense8), and Chaz Bono (writer, musician, actor) all shed light on how they navigated their specific journey through Hollywood. Growing up, many expressed their feelings of being torn between hopefulness when seeing a trans character on-screen and fear when said trans character is met with disgust, visceral reactions, and abuse. Recalling painful moments in the industry, they express that the sensitivity of laughing “with” these characters vs laughing “at” them is a very thin line. It’s telling that despite the film industry existing for well over 100 years, one of the only positive reinforcements of a trans depiction onscreen is in the 1957 Bugs Bunny episode “What’s Opera, Doc.” A cartoon got it right in the ’50s.
When “being invisible” is considered “a privilege,” as many expressed in the documentary, that’s a sign that things need to change. Since D.W. Griffith’s Judith of Bethulia (1914), Hollywood has been guilty of perpetuating the transgender victim narrative for too long – and we haven’t even talked about the self-gratifying shoo-in Oscar or Golden Globe nominations cis men receive for playing trans roles (ahem Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne, Jeffrey Tambor). In order for social change, we need a fair representation of trans people on screen so we can make a difference off-screen, and with social justice and equality at the forefront of everyone’s minds, Disclosure should be considered essential viewing.
Disclosure is available on Netflix this Friday.
