The work of Elliot Page shows that transgender inclusion is about adding more voices rather than anything being taken away, says Victoria Luxford.
This week sees the release of Close To You, Elliot Page’s first film role since coming out as a transgender man in 2020. The story of Sam, a trans man who returns to his hometown for the first time in four years, it tackles themes that both Page and transgender cinemagoers will recognise in their own lives. The Oscar nominated actor is at the forefront of a growing trans and non-binary movement in the film industry, although these performers and stories still fight to be seen.
Like many minority groups, transgender people have struggled to see themselves on the big or small screen in the past. Comedies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), The Hangover Part 2 (2011), and Ted 2 (2015) made trans women a punchline; while the message of films such as 2001’s Boys Don’t Cry and The Danish Girl (2012) rang hollow to many, given that trans characters were being played by cisgender actors. Attitudes have changed somewhat over the years, with Scarlett Johansson stepping away from playing a trans man in 2018 production Rub & Tug after complaints of the role going to a cis actor. While stories featuring trans and non-binary characters are still thin on the ground in big budget movies, there are a growing number of actors making a name for themselves on the biggest stage.
The joy of the Barbie movie
Last year’s Barbie was a celebration of all womanhood, making the casting of transgender actress Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie a welcome inclusion. Simply playing a fellow Barbie rather than anything LGBTQ+ specific, the character had plenty of screentime and was one of a variety of actors to convey Greta Gerwig’s message of empowerment. It was an interesting year for trans women on film, with Hunter Schafer playing an important part in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Trace Lysette winning critical acclaim for Monica, an independent film about a trans woman caring for her ailing estranged mother.
This year has seen improvement of sorts in Hollywood’s biggest franchises. On the big screen, non-binary actor Emma Corrin played the villain Cassandra in the smash hit Deadpool and Wolverine, while on the small screen Page starred in the fourth and final season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Non-binary star Emma D’Arcy continues to rule in HBO goliath House of The Dragon, while even previously problematic shows like Sex and The City have embraced gender variance in the sequel series And Just Like That, introducing trans and non-binary characters into the lives of the Manhattan-based stars.
Transgender representation is here
Trans representation is already here to a small extent in Hollywood, but how it is received is still complicated. Amid the ocean of transphobic hostility you can find on social media, actors are often not recognised for their identity in mainstream media, as shown in the viral clip where D’Arcy’s House of The Dragon co-star Matt Smith is shown correcting a journalist who misgenders them. There’s also the issue of trans stars being offered specifically transgender roles, as highlighted by Schafer in April who revealed she doesn’t want to play trans-focused roles. The 25-year-old, who also starred in recent horror film Cuckoo and TV smash Euphoria, told GQ “I just want to be a girl and finally move on” explaining that “ultimately, I really do believe that not making it the centrepiece to what I’m doing will allow me to get further….And I think getting further and doing awesome (work), in the interest of ‘the movement,’ will be way more helpful than talking about it all the time.”
It’s a complicated issue, but when has progress ever been linear? The mere existence of transgender and non-binary performers is a vast improvement for those of us old enough to remember when the ‘big reveal’ of 1992’s The Crying Game was treated like a scene from a horror film. However, as The Olympics sadly showed this summer, there is some way to go before the hostility shown to transgender people in all walks of life is overcome. The work of Page and others shows that true inclusion is about adding more voices telling a variety of stories, rather than anything being taken away. It’s up to us to make sure those voices are heard.