Gasp! Nicole Kidman plans to marry Charlize Theron and go faux-tranny in The Danish Girl. Yep, nut-less Kidman will jump in the role of Einar Wegener, the first man who underwent a sex-change operation. Hurry, someone grab James Lipton and his 10-foot tall stack of note cards. What a courageous, novel choice on the filmmaker’s part! And how titillating! Ooo-la-la. Kidman and Theron and the more than likely artsy-fartsy sex scene. I hope MrSkin.com is adding some more bandwidth.
Yep, those are the two main strains of opinions bellowed across the web when news of Kidman’s casting broke. Either shock and fawning or pure meat-head mentality. What you didn’t hear was many people calling bullshit on the casting. Well, bullshit, bullshit and bullshit.
Since Brokeback Mountain inexplicably lost to the opus of superficiality that is Crash at the Oscars a few years ago, there has been a growing belief among many that Hollywood’s comfort with homosexuality is nothing more than a mirage betrayed by the reality of its product and environment (why are you still in the closet Mr. S—–?). A fine argument can be made for that theory. Yet, when it comes to material featuring transgendered individuals, there’s no doubt Hollywood locks itself in the safe room.
More often than not when a male actor goes girly for a role, the character is your stereotypical movie drag queen, flamboyant, yet harmless, and somehow imbued with miraculous super-powers to transform the lives of the average, non-fabulous citizens. I half expect most movie drag queens to ride into the story upon a flying unicorn that farts out rainbow lightening. It’s a condescending framing of the transgendered community and it’s the way most Hollywood, and non-Hollywood films, render men dressed as women.
I’m sure The Danish Girl plans to avoid this pitfall. The film sounds like Oscar bait rather than To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Yet, even though it’s an indie, the casting of Kidman as a guy-gone-girl transsexual is a symptom of shrewd, safety-first Hollywood studio mentality. You can almost hear the financiers. She’s a star! She’ll boost box-office! She’ll create instant publicity in a role like this! So it’s not brave or novel casting, but a rather ball-less decision obsessed with the bottom line.
However, it also exemplifies a much crasser trend than the lovable drag queen stereotype. It’s the Victor/Victoria casting couch where you have a woman play a man who portrays a woman. It’s Hollywood saying we think you might freak if a man dresses up as a woman without any wink-wink towards the camera. We’re afraid you won’t stomach it for 2 hours. So instead, we’ll comfort you by casting a sexy actress to do a Victor/Victoria routine, which guarantees you grannies in the audience won’t get too weirded out and you proud heterosexual men will still feel secure with your sexuality if Kidman’s character gives you wood.
The filmmakers of the mind-numbingly superficial Transamerica pulled a similar stunt by giving the film’s lead role of a male-to-female transsexual to Felicity Huffman. Why isn’t this akin to Ben Affleck taking on the lead role in a James Brown bio-pic? Sure, it lacks the offensive minstrel show roots synonymous with black face, but nonetheless it feels patronizing and not quite right all the same.
Despite caking on pounds of Nutty Professor putty makeup to conceal her natural femininity, Huffman still came off as overtly self-conscious and unconvincing as a man-turned-woman (screw the several award nominations) – just as I’d expect a tanned Affleck to fail in convincing me he’s the Godfather of Soul. So if you cut out all the financial and audience comfort zone reasoning from the equation, why would anyone hire Huffman or Kidman and man them up in makeup when the more logical and honest path to these characters is hiring talented male actors and prettying them up? I honestly don’t know. It doesn’t make sense on a creative level. It’s artistically dishonest. Especially when considering the filmmakers of those oh-so rare, serious transgendered-themed films such as The Crying Game, Soldier’s Girl and Boys Don’t Cry, filled the gender-crossing roles with actors whose sexes matched those of which their characters started as, resulting in superbly credible performances.
Yet, those successful casting stories won’t deter spineless filmmakers from miscasting similar roles in the future. Nor will it cause some actors such as Kidman to pause and reconsider taking these roles. Kirk Lazarus would be proud.
