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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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The number of women who have been successful police detectives is probably a bit larger - maybe it’d take two parking lots to fit all of them - but the fact remains that this is also a heavily male profession, generally utilizing classically masculine virtues.

Given that the new series of True Detective stars Jodie Foster, it's probably worth pointing out that, thirty years ago, she won her second Oscar playing an FBI agent-in-training, in a film which was both acclaimed by critics and awards bodies (still the most recent film to win the Big Five at the Oscars) and a huge commercial smash ($270m against a $19m budget). For added diversity points, at various points in the film Foster's character is assisted by a fellow agent-in-training, a black woman.

This makes the "you only hate season 4 because you can't stand to see strong female detectives" defense even harder to take seriously. No one* had a problem with a thriller revolving around a strong white female detective (and her black female partner) 30 years ago. You'll have a hard time persuading me that the average prestige TV audience member in 2024 is more misogynistic (and racist) than the average Anglophone cinemagoer in 1991. Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's a point that needs to be argued for and can't be taken for granted.

*Except feminists and trans activists.

I watched Silence of the Lambs a while ago, and I remember that Lector expounded that Buffalo Bill wasn't necessarily trans, he just hated his own identity--which, sure, these days, that might be more of a distinction without a difference, but it doesn't seem like the movie is as anti-trans as one might think.

Also, the source novel really labours the point that Buffalo Bill isn't actually trans, to the point that it almost disrupts the immersion. There's a point where one of the characters contacts a gender reassignment clinic looking for information on people who applied for the surgery but were rejected, and the doctor is like "you have to understand: we do not want the general public to think trans people are dangerous. This is already an incredibly marginalised community, making their lives worse in any way is completely unconscionable."

I once argued that, on the film's release, TSotL wasn't transphobic, because during production "trans" was an identity category subject to medical gatekeeping: only people formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a qualified mental health professional are "really" trans; Buffalo Bill has not been formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria (and has had his request to medically transition refused on that basis); ergo Buffalo Bill isn't a trans woman. (One could plausibly argue that it was homophobic at the time of release, as Buffalo Bill is stated to be homosexual. My understanding is that Demme took this criticism seriously and made Philadelphia in a conscious effort to atone for it.)

But under the modern self-ID rubric, Buffalo Bill says she's a trans woman, therefore she is, therefore the film retroactively becomes transphobic by depicting a stunning and brave trans woman whose trans identity motivates her to become a vicious serial killer who starves and mutilates her victims.

In other words, TSotL wasn't transphobic until trans activists made it so.

Jodie Foster's character also has a line where she specifically calls out that this behavior is unusual for transvestites, who are normally passive and far from dangerous. I believe the controversy existed at the time, and they slightly altered the script to ward it off.

It's based on the book, where the statement "transsexuals are passive types usually" is made (top half of the page around 164 or 5).

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