Etc. etc. Her initial response to critics, what she now needs to represent herself as "realizing" was "insensitive" was: "Tell them they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment." In other words, lots of cisgender actors have not only played transgender characters, they've received high honors — an Oscar for Leto, an Oscar nomination for Huffman, an Emmy for Tambor. It must have seemed to Scarlett that she'd get extra credit for stretching herself into this role.
But that's not where the culture is right now, Scarlett learned. As Hollywood Reporter reports, there are actors who are themselves transgender, and no one seems interested in giving them an opportunity to stretch and show that they can play cisgender characters:
... Transparent actress Trace Lysette, tweet[ed], "I wouldn’t be as upset if I was getting in the same rooms as Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett for cis roles, but we know that’s not the case. A mess."The argument seems to be that at least all transgender roles should go to transgender actors. It's an interesting argument and it was effective, but it was only effective in scaring cisgender actors off of any transgender role. What will be the result of that victory? Will the transgender actors get what they want? The big goal is to get access to cisgender roles, to make it seem bigoted to exclude them. Obviously, there's the question what audiences will want to see.
A similar question is whether people have accepted gay actors playing straight characters. I'm looking at "Gay Actors Who Play Straight Characters" and noticing that many of the roles are straight people with characteristics stereotypically assigned to gay people — "Jim Parsons has played several socially awkward heterosexual characters, including Sheldon Cooper on 'The Big Bang Theory'... Jane Lynch on "Glee" (playing a high school coach).
Quite aside from the goal of getting access to cisgender roles, there's the question whether there will be support and enthusiasm for movies about transgender characters if the actor isn't tasked with pretending to be transgender. There's no impressive stunt to perform. Maybe there will be more movies where some characters happen to be transgender without that needing to be the whole story. There could be an argument like what we've seen from black actors for many decades: It's wrong to limit us to stories about black people. Almost any role should be playable by a black actor.
In that light, Scarlett Johansson found herself in a position like that of the last white person cast to play Othello. Yes, there was a long tradition of eminent actors playing Othello, and maybe some day, black actors will get so many roles that it will be fine to have another white actor as Othello, but right now, we're in transition.
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“The argument seems to be that at least all transgender roles should go to transgender actors.”
Basically affirmative action in casting.
Without the headline actress Johansson, this move bombs. This is now a niche movie aimed at a tribal audience and faddists.
Every bit of this nonsense is absolutely stupid.
There is nothing here.
Why doesn't anyone ever bring up The World According to Garp and John Lithgow's character in these conversations?
If you look at Dante Tex Gill, Chastity Bono would be the perfect actress/actor to play her/him/zer.
Aren't the trans activists undercutting their own point? If the character is a trans man, shouldn't they be complaining that a female actor is playing a male role? That they would be fine with any male actor cast in that role, because fundamentally, trans men are just like any other men?
Hollywood is trying to monetize the free-ranging insane. What they don't realize is that big name stars are not going to pull sane people into watching retards being retards.
Here's the plot: A shemale goes into a bar, has group sex, and is then confused about their sexuality when Bill Gates hires them to manage an I-Phone store.
Lots of stuff about tattoo's, piercings, and high heels in artistic swirling photography.
Ending in a scene where Rambo kills everyone in North Africa.
She didn't shrink from criticism she shrank from making no money. The only people that we're going to go see this movie were on the left and she alienated them all. Quite predictably actually. The fact that she didn't know how badly this was going to read on the left shows the kind of bubble that she and the people she knows live in
The real person was a female that "transitioned" to man.
It's wrong to limit us to stories about black people. Almost any role should be playable by a black actor.
Once again a double standard...Black men can play any role, White men must never play a "person of color". Real women aren't allowed to play transpeople, but transpeople can play anybody.
Privilege for me, punishment for you.
Vive la difference.
The solution is no transcrazy characters in any movie ever.
What about RuPaul? How come he, and other drag queens get a pass on pretending to be women?
John Henry
Hollywood will cast a pretty woman like Lisa Edelstein to play a tranny on Ally McBeal as part of their propaganda program, because most men in the audience could get used to the idea of being with Lisa Edelstein. They've been doing that for years.
This is so tiresome. I'll make it a point not to see this movie.
Darrell
Can Chastity Bono act?
Serious question: is she an actress and what has she been in?
John Henry
What's going to happen to the trouser roles in opera? Are there enough quality countertenors?
What about RuPaul? How come he, and other drag queens get a pass on pretending to be women?
Black and gay.
Obviously, there's the question what audiences will want to see.
Looking at the Star Wars franchise, this is obviously something that Disney doesn't understand.
What Hollywood does understand is virtue signaling. Sell Hollywood stocks short...
Get Woke, Go Broke...
The backlash will be against the trans women in women’s sports. Hollywood better hope the conservatives win the culture war.
Looking at the Star Wars franchise, this is obviously something that Disney doesn't understand.
No matter how many expeditions the coastal elites take into deplorable country...they still don't understand us and probably never will. I spent half the movie trying to figure out the reason for the Laura Dern character, and the only thing I could come up with is to make a man look bad and a woman look heroic.
Can Chastity Bono act?
"He" was on Dancing With The Stars--did pretty well. If Cher can go from singer to actor, Chaz can make it, too. She just has to be in the ScarJo league, anyway.
"but right now we're in a transition."
No- we're in a hole. A tarpit. And you don't come out of a tarpit without a mess all over you. Collectivism has run amuck on our society. Humans learn nothing over centuries. We like to think we're so sophisticated and intellectually above previous century cultures. We're not. We dress differently and avoid gluten, but that's about it.
Althouse,
As somebody who cares about the language, as you have demonstrated on this blog, why are you using those letters strung together and pretending they're important?
cis- is nonsense.
I'm not sure our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance. I think the activists continue to get louder.
But I'm with professional lady. It all gets tiresome. Make your movie, don't expect me to take the making of your movie on as a cause. Then I'll see it if it looks good.
Stick to comic books, people, comic books. They are the past, the now, and the future.
And I agree with Birkel. I don't like seeing Althouse using "cisgendered" like it's a real term.
Charlie Cox apparently took the role of a blind super hero ,(Daredevil) despite being sighted. No outcry.
The question about why we accept gay men and women in straight roles is an easy one to answer. We've been doing it as long as Hollywood has been making pictures.
I don't care about actor gay or straight - they're actors. But there's no market for a film about transgenders. It's a who-cares plot problem.
Black and white romances also don't work well because they're always falling into the moral lesson genre. A moral lesson isn't wanted, a romance is.
Black and white borderline romance works okay - The Pelican Brief.
Black and white borderline romance falls into helping each other out. That works.
@ whitney - Bingo
"we're in transition" - The progressive theme song as sung by a member of the "delta" force.
I thought, when I started putting up corporate online courses back in the mid-90s, that that technology would doom the education/industrial complex. I was wrong to underestimate the rent-seeking entrenched power of that business.
Half or more of the college system simply needs to be shut down and discarded. That diseased half is a feather bedding sinecure for the left’s favored groups.
We need to stop producing idiot spoiled children who want to play dress up. It would be better to put these idiots on the dole. Let them sit at home and watch TV.
"Once again a double standard...Black men can play any role, White men must never play a "person of color". Real women aren't allowed to play transpeople, but transpeople can play anybody. Privilege for me, punishment for you."
You're missing MY point, which is that until black/transgender actors have decent access to a wide array of roles, it's unfair to give one of the specific black/transgender roles to an actor that does have wide access to roles.
I can't wait for CGI actors. No more jobs for humans.
Will we still insist on quotas?
Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson were cast as a heterosexuals. No one got upset.
The thing is, they were actors. Duh. They knew how to fake it for 120 minutes.
Shouting Thomas: "...featherbedding sinecure..."
I agree.
Shut down only half? I think your aim is a bit low. We could lose 75% of freshmen classes for a couple decades and we'd be better off.
In 1987 Carmen Maura played a transsexual in Pedro Almodovar’s Law of Desire. She was great. If you can rent movies through the Althouse Amazon portal, rent it.
Athouse,
Fair? Define fair.
I call civility (fair) bull shit.
Black and white romances also don't work well
You haven't watched enough recent drama. Half the established couples are interracial.
That's different from a rom-com though.
Didn't we have a discussion of "cishet" here last year?
Personally, I'm tired of all the stunt casting -- like having a thin actress play a fat woman or a beautiful actress play homely woman. Since there are plenty of fat actresses and homely actresses, why not give them a role? The answer is, I suspect, that the story isn't a good enough one that you'd care if the actor in the role looked/felt just like the character. You're prodded to care because of the stretch.
An exception might be where the character needs to be seen in different states — fat and thin or old and young. It's easier to pad a thin actor out to fat or use make up a young actor to look old, so the actor with the socially beneficial status gets the role.
I'd be more interested in seeing an old actor made up to look young -- a better stunt. Or a fat actor CGI'd into thin. But that would assume that we're interested in that actor, and the truth is more likely that we fixate on the thin and the young and disrespect the fat and the old.
As for "RuPaul's Drag Race," one of the most interesting things about it is how a rather homely man can present himself as a beautiful woman by using makeup and fashion. It's a lesson to women. You can create the impression of beauty (if you work at it hard enough).
OK, prof.
Why in the hell are we supposed to “provide access” to anybody for a job?
We’ve subsidized your goofball feminism for decades with feather bedding jobs for women in academia.
Why are we supposed to keep subsidizing your peculiar obsessions?
Obviously, you can’t sell your peculiar obsessions in the marketplace. You lost, as I recall, every state referendum on gay marriage, and then your corporate legal colleagues forced it on us.
“I'll make it a point not to see this movie.”
Without a bankable star no one’s going to see this movie.
Othello was supposed to be a Moor, i.e. a native of the North African coast. Genetically, Moors are in the Caucasian group, not the sub-Saharan Africa black group. So Whites playing Othello in makeup is truer to the role than was Paul Robeson, a black, sub-Saharan African.
You can't play the race card if you can't get the races straight.
"Scarlett Johansson shrinks from criticism and backs out of playing the role of a transgender man."
Those titties didn't shrink.
As far back as 2014 Gill was a stereotypically fat ugly lesbian with the added fun of the Mafia and tax avoision:
For awhile, DeLucia’s business partner was Dante “Tex” Gill, an overweight Brentwood woman who dressed like a man in suits and ties, wore short hair and sideburns and preferred to be called “Mr. Gill.” A lesbian, Gill married Cynthia Bruno of Dallas, Texas, in Hawaii and lived with her in Pittsburgh before the couple eventually split.
Ralph L. Re:trouser roles in opera. I expect to see a re-emergence of castrati in my lifetime.
Without a movie star, Brokeback would have been a molehill.
"cis" comes from Latin, meaning "on this side."
From what I have heard, trans roles in porn movies go almost exclusively to trans actors, so they have that going for them.
There's an opinion piece in the WSJ today by a woman physics professor on why there are so few women in STEM fields. It's men's fault, and also women tend to go into fields where the get the best grades. I may have to re-read it.
Woman physics professor would be a good role for transgender former man.
(find opening line, google that line in an anonymous window, to access article)
There is no overstating how stupid this tranny bullshit is.
All of it.
Physics professor would be something good to hire if you're making a movie about airplanes, trains or space. Hollywood always, always, fucks the physics up. Like they had women screenwriters.
I recently watched 'Goliath' season 2 on Amazon. There's a female judge character with a fairly prominent role and quite a few lines. The actor did a good job, but I wondered aloud if the she was trans in real life.
After reading this post I looked it up and the answer is yes. It's someone named Alexandra Billingsly who stars in another show, 'Transparent' that I haven't seen.
Here's brief interview with Billingsly about getting the role, if you're interested.
https://nypost.com/2018/06/15/transparent-star-charting-new-path-with-goliath-role/
As for 'Goliath', an absorbing show, but dark and some pretty disturbing stuff happens.
You're missing MY point, which is that until black/transgender actors have decent access to a wide array of roles, it's unfair to give one of the specific black/transgender roles to an actor that does have wide access to roles.
The biggest hit on Broadway features a Black man portraying a White man.
Fox news has a headline: Nancy Sinatra Sr., first wife of Frank Sinatra, dead at 101
Senior??
Does that mean the child is Nancy Sinatra, Jr.?
Is this the new transgender?
What happened to Ms. ?? Women's liberation is dead.
Flash Gordon's rocket ship was pretty cool, though.
You're missing MY point, which is that until black/transgender actors have decent access to a wide array of roles, it's unfair to give one of the specific black/transgender roles to an actor that does have wide access to roles.
There are very few people, period, who have access to any roles, let alone a wide array.
Virgil, the hermaphrodites get a few roles--so I've been told.
I expect to see a re-emergence of castrati in my lifetime.
After the Arabs take over. FGM for everyone!
I don't think a Canadian African American actor should play the part of an American African American actor, eh?
Alexandra Billings. Not Beaver's Mom's namesake.
oops... I finished the article, and yes, she was referred to as Nancy Sinatra Jr.
I saw the end of the Flash Gordon remake just yesterday. Timothy Dalton, future 007, had a supporting role. Lucky it didn't end his career.
Ming was impaled by Flash's rocket.
Before she married, my mother had the exact same name as her mother. If she went by Junior, she never said so.
Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman get lots of roles.
Market yourself as that kind of black actor and you'll do fine.
You have to be articulate, bright, and clean to be a Magic Negro.
rhhardin said...
It's men's fault,
Excuse me, it's white men's fault.
WSJ also says it's white men's fault that American African Americans are not interested in genetic testing ("A legacy of unethical studies complicates calls for greater participation by African Americans)", but actual research with counting 'n' numbers 'n' complicated stuff says that's just more Fake News from the WSJ:
"In the absence of any specific supporting data prior to 2006, this widely held belief appears to have been based solely on either anecdotal information or just a “gut feeling.” Only since 2006 have published studies directly assessed this long-held belief about this “legacy” of the TSS, with all four publications from the two surveys (one in 1999–2000 and one in 2003) reporting no detectable differences observed in the likelihood of participating in biomedical studies between racial and ethnic groups and no relationship between knowledge of the TSS and willingness to participate in biomedical research for either Blacks or Whites."
The Wizard of Oz midgets could - and should! - play the Harlem Globetrotters.
You're missing MY point, which is that until black/transgender actors have decent access to a wide array of roles, it's unfair to give one of the specific black/transgender roles to an actor that does have wide access to roles.
Put me down as not caring. I have been annoyed by activist whiners for decades and at this point, I'm not in the concession business anymore because the important stuff is essentially done.
If you want to argue for a Black Zeus, I will gladly accept a White Othello. THAT would be a novelty.
Mostly, Hollywood is about telling stories that uplift, inspire and challenge humanity. It’s not about making a profit. Because Hollywood exists for the betterment of mankind, we don’t have to worry that they will stop writing stories about transsexual characters based on a new worry that they won’t be able to cast them with A-list actors who reliably bring in audiences and money.
"but right now, we're in transition." We won't recover in this lifetime.
Thank goodness the world was not sufficiently woke when Lawrence Olivier played Othello in blackface. It was considered an outstanding performance by the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day. Couldn't happen now.
Remember "Zulu"? (Great soundtrack!)
They're doing a re-make with underrepresented Honduran migrants as the British Army, and Scarlett Johansson starring as the Zulus.
(Great soundtrack!)
5:43 of the soundtrack is great.
This whole thread reminds me of why I don't go to movies any more.
My wife and I watched "Little Drummer Girl" the other night. There is plenty of good stuff from the years before Hollywood went insane like the rest of the left.
We could lose 75% of freshmen classes for a couple decades and we'd be better off.
I was interviewing a girl applying to the military this week. She had a BS degree in "Animal Science" or some such. I asked her what the Hell that was. She laughed and said it was a mixture of business and biology. She added, "I'm working as a personal trainer" and was joining the military. We agreed that a lot of college majors were BS.
I pretty regularly go to the opera and the theatre. It's pretty common to have inter racial casts and male/female role switching. I just saw the Tempest where a female was playing Prospero - she pulled it off really well. I'm going to see Julius Caesar pretty soon - female playing Julius Caesar. Saw Handel's opera "Cleopatra" the female opera singer who played Julius Caesar was excellent (they don't have castrati to do the role anymore although now counter tenors are making a comeback). I saw a version of King Lear I think in the 70s with James Earl Jones as King Lear with an African motif for the production - excellent. I guess guys don't usually do female opera parts because - well, I guess you would have to be a pre pubescent boy or a castrato (no fun). Who knows, with the crazy SJW parents and if the Ds get back in power - maybe the castrati will make a comeback. Laurence Olivier's make-up in Othello (the movie) looked green rather than brown to me. Placido Domingo and Renee Fleming's Othello was stunning - what a tragedy if Domingo (who is as great an actor as he is a singer) had never been cast in that role because it wouldn't have been "fair".
it's unfair to give one of the specific black/transgender roles to an actor that does have wide access to roles.
Feel free to produce as many movies as you want, to provide roles for the under-represented actors. Hollywood is only interested in ‘fairness’ as virtue signaling, and that only lasts until the profits start drying up quickly. Sure, they can sustain their posturing through a few flops, but eventually the profit motive reasserts its supremacy. There’s a reason all those new Star Wars one-off films are now on hold.
I especially like "respectfully". Wouldn't want to get the Hell out of this madhouse disrespectfully.
There is nothing Scarlett Johansson could have done which would have satisfied the Left. Taking or not taking the role would have been equally offensive to these Outrage Monkeys
i get a daily fix of caffeine and gender fluids at Starbucks, so i'm good, thanks
Carmen Maura in “Ay Carmela” - go see it.
Scarlett Johansson shrinks from criticism
Shrinkage is different for women than for men.
until black/transgender actors have decent access to a wide array of roles
Black actors shouldn't be typecast as just pimp, convict, detective, chauffeur, cowboy, scientist, Vice President, Chief Justice, President, or God, the way Morgan Freeman has been. Anyway his "God" was just the Christian God as visualized in post-Christian Hollywood. Where are the black actors portraying Nordic deities besides Idris Elba?
I can see why transgendered actors have trouble landing roles. If Harvey Weinstein or some of those other pervs had a thing for the transitioning, they would have found it easier to land roles. I fear this imbalance will not be ended until we see more producers and directors with such a fetish in positions of power.
It is hard to think of transgendered people who have played transgendered people on screen in anything other than small supporting roles- there are no stars with the ability to put butts in theater seats. About the only one I can think of is Jamie Clayton from Sens8, and I imagine almost every will be saying, "Who?" Which is the point.
FIDO is correct, of course- had Ms. Johansson declined the role from the start, that would have set off criticism from the exact same bunch of lunatics.
Hasn’t Morgan freeman played God not once but multiple times?
I saw the recent Jennifer Lawrence film, Red Sparrow. In that film she uses the black arts of nudity and lingerie to further her schemes as a KGB agent. In the movie she starts off as a dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet. There were some dance sequences where Lawrence really looked like an accomplished ballerina. This, in my estimation, is a far more profitable use of CGI and editing than showing Lawrence doing MMA stunts. I can give this movie my unqualified recmendation......Scarlet Johansson is spectacularly good looking. Why would anyone want to see her in a movie where she subverts her good looks and sex appeal. That's truly perverse. If Scarlet truly wants to see how it feels like to be ungorgeous, just wait a few years......I recently saw the new Lara Croft movie with Alicia Vikander. Some of the stunts were okay, but no amount of jumps cuts and tricky editing will make me believe she can kill some 250 lb bodybuilder in hand to hand combat. Also there's a scene where she has to swim in a river whilst wearing a tank top. When she comes out of the water, you can't see her nipples. I bet they used CGI to edit them out of the film. Talk about perverse.
We're all adults here, and accept that life isn't fair...right?
Qualified actors will also have to be unblemished from a #METOO point of view, of course (thus ruling out Morgan Freeman).
Political congruence ("="), not limited to [color] diversity, and spontaneous conception, is a progressive condition.
Buwaya. Thanks for the recommendation.
She should just balance the transgender role by doing some full-frontal totally nude scenes.
It is hard to think of transgendered people who have played transgendered people on screen in anything other than small supporting roles-
The guy in "The Crying Game" was excellent. Maybe he was just a cross dresser.
Jaye Davidson, the actor who played "Dil" had never been an actor before.
His performance as Dil in "The Crying Game" (1992) is ranked #92 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Half the battle in Hollywood is just getting funding for the flick. Much of THAT battle is getting someone to sign on that will, theoretically, get butts in the seats.
Scarlett Johansson might fit that bill. Chaz Bono? C'mon.... does ANYONE think that will draw 'em in?
So the movie, if it's even made now, will be a movie about a splinter group, appears on the surface to be a lefty-preaching vehicle and will "star" a nobody-knows-this actor - BUT HE/SHE's a REALLY REAL trans.
Box office gold!
I remember The Crying Game. What made her so credible was not that she looked like a woman but that she looked like a woman with sex appeal. It's not so hard for a man to dress up as a woman, but it's a huge challenge for him to appear as a sexy woman. It's hard enough for a woman to do that. Poor Jaye Davidson missed her moment. She'd have been a much bigger star in today's environment.......Sometimes actors create their own roles. There weren't a lot of great roles for midgets before Peter Dinklage appeared on the scene. Technically, Tom Cruise is not a midget.
It's absolutely amazing: If a man were certain that a show would fail he could make a fortune.
Actors pretend to be something they are not.
So do trannies.
What's the problem? Trannies are to be ignored. Nothing else.
" Technically, Tom Cruise is not a midget."
And yet he played Jack Reacher who is 6'4".
What range, what depth, what nuance!
"It's absolutely amazing: If a man were certain that a show would fail he could make a fortune."
Spring time for Trannies?
Scarlett has played an astronaut squirrel living underwater, in Spongebob Squarepants, the Movie. After that, what terror can a role as a different gender hold for her?
Watch movies's Scarlett Johansson on vexmovies now. On July 13, the beautiful actress of the blockbuster The Avengers announced she decided to give up the movie Rub & Tug. As originally planned, Johansson will assume the role of crime boss Dante "Tex" Gill, a transsexual, born Jean Gill.
"After the ethical disputes involving Dante Tex Gill, I decided to retire from this project," Out.com quoted Johansson as saying. "I have learned a lot from the LGBT community since making the first statement about the role and I realized that the words were very insensitive," she admits.
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