Bums On Seats
Acting is about pretending. It’s also a business in which investors want to know ahead of time that they have a bankable star in the leading role. There may be other actors or actresses who would suit this part better, but I doubt many of them have had major roles in the Avengers films. Like it or not, that counts for something.
So writes John Sexton, steering us towards today’s pressing moral conundrum:
Is Scarlett Johansson too female to play a transgender man?
Answers on a postcard, please.
For those unfamiliar with Dante ‘Tex’ Gill, the brothel-running transgender mobster whose adventures are to be depicted by Ms Johansson, there’s a brief summary here.
Short answer: yes.
Think this may explain it
https://www.facebook.com/LetFreedomSpeak/videos/839423269598601/UzpfSTEwNjIxODk0NTA6MTAyMTQ3NTIzMDEyOTU0NDU/
Shorter answer: no.
Is Scarlett Johansson too female to play a transgender man?
Short answer: yes.
Shorter answer: no.
Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up, and so quickly.
Well, on the off-chance the movie bombs, we can look forward to being lectured again about how insensitive we are.
I can’t think of any reason I’d see this movie no matter who was in the leading role. So naturally I’m reading a story and leaving a comment about something I don’t care about. Yay, internet.
For me, the John Sexton quote gets to the nub of the issue. If you want a high-profile, mainstream film to be made about Mr Gill’s improbable adventures, then the people financing it will expect some reassurance that an audience will turn up and hand over their money. Ms Johansson is apparently that reassurance. To pretend that commercial concerns are secondary or irrelevant, as some activists seem to do, is bizarre. And the obvious alternative is that films featuring transgender characters will not be made, or remain low-budget and largely unwatched.
I can’t think of any reason I’d see this movie no matter who was in the leading role.
I repeat: a brothel-running transgender mobster.
No?
I was shocked and horrified when I found out that Sir Ian McKellan wasn’t a real wizard. Obvious discrimination against the magical community!
As the previous reply want into the ether, I’ll revise, from the photos at the Daily Mail, the real gangster is nigh a dead ringer for Benny Hill, so yes, Johansson is way too feminine.
I take it Eddie Izzard wasn’t available then? Because I’m having no trouble picturing him as a brothel running gangster.
Johansson is a terible choice. Hiddleston would be far better if you wanted an Avenger.
from the photos at the Daily Mail, the real gangster is nigh a dead ringer for Benny Hill, so yes, Johansson is way too feminine.
Perhaps she’ll bulk up for the role. Besides, the camera adds two hundred pounds.
In other entertainment news, we are pleased to present the dancing police, firemen, and auxiliary personnel of Norfolk, Virginia! Don’t believe me? Just watch!
https://www.norfolk.gov/CivicAlerts/SingleAlertItem?alertID=3961
Jonathan, I still remember the day I made the chilling discovery that Elijah Wood and Sean Astin aren’t really hobbits. It was all done with camera trickery!
(Aside: why is everything “chilling” to the woke?)
McKellan is not a wizard, but he is gay so he gets a pass.
More to the point: Who the hell wants to pay to view such a flick? The producers reckon that only an actual cis female lead has a chance of pulling in a broad audience. (No puns were intended in that last sentence.)
When I saw this yesterday, my first thought was of Linda Hunt, native of New Jew Jersey, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress playing the role of the Billy Kwan–a male, Indonesian journalist of Chinese ancestry– in The Year of Living Dangerously. As Sexton notes, “acting is about pretending.” What part of that is hard to understand?
It was all done with camera trickery!
It’s almost as if movies are all about lying and pretending.
As Sexton notes, “acting is about pretending.” What part of that is hard to understand?
There is a certain obliviousness to some of the complaints. If you follow the links above, you’ll see some activists are complaining that, while non-trans actors are hired to play trans people, trans actors are rarely hired to play non-trans people. But I’ve yet to see an activist acknowledging that trans people are often visibly trans, which is hardly a trivial detail, given the chosen line of work and its concern with persuasion and appearance. And with few exceptions, if a trans actor has their features and anatomy scrutinized up close on camera and enlarged to fill an IMAX screen, it does seem quite likely that any, shall we say, imperfections and ambiguities might be detected by an audience, thereby rather undoing any suspension of disbelief.
I only just got the title. *hangs head in shame*
OT, but important…
In case any of you are feeling relieved, and indeed, cheered, that those lads stuck in a cave in Thailand are now all safe … well shame on you:
https://thenib.com/rescue-effort-still-underway-to-save-boys-trapped-in-america
Those lefties, eh?
I only just got the title.
It’s a scandalous gap in your education, madam.
The mobster in question WAS a freakin female!! She was a mannish woman who liked women. Last time I checked that was a freakin Lesbian of the more masculine persuasion. Now it’s a trans-man? She never had any damned surgery, or took any of the hormone cocktails they have now! She was just naturally mannish, liked women sexually, dressed up like a man, and liked being called a man’s name.
I’ve always been a bit tomboyish, but I am a female with XX chromosomes and all the factory-original parts. I happen to like more traditional “guy” stuff, but I am not nor will I ever be, a man! If SJ wants to dress up like this mobster and can act the part, more power to her.
Where are the freakin feminists and GRRRRl Power shriekers and #MeToo bandwagon jumpers? Why aren’t they howling about women being oppressed? Funny how The Patriarchy is the go-to boogieman for everything they can think of until they run up against muslims or the “trans” community. Then it’s move along, nothing to see here.
you’ll see some activists are complaining that, while non-trans actors are hired to play trans people, trans actors are rarely hired to play non-trans people
…because most of them are woefully unconvincing.
It’s easy to get distracted on Mail Online; did you know that Sofia Richie kissed her boyfriend on the head while displaying taut abs in racy bikini?
Meanwhile, Neighbours star Nicky Whelan, 37, strips down to a lacy black lingerie as she poses in a lace mask and Lady Amelia Windsor puts on a chic display in a polka dot skirt and heels at a glitzy BVLGARI bash in London…
It’s easy to get distracted on Mail Online;
It’s like some parallel universe filled with tat and populated almost entirely by C-list celebrities.
“Transwomen are women, but women aren’t transwomen. We’ll use your bathrooms, but don’t you depict us on screen. We are the same as you, but you aren’t the same as us.”
“Transwomen are women, but women aren’t transwomen. We’ll use your bathrooms, but don’t you depict us on screen. We are the same as you, but you aren’t the same as us.”
That.
As a native Yinzer I would like to point out that we left that city in 1969, so I will not be answering any questions on this matter. No. Sorry…
As to casting, I’ve always thought Dame Judy Dench looked rather butch. Was she not available? I’ll be getting my hat…
BTW, I’d like to remind everyone, that “staying in one’s lane” in the performing arts is only necessary when certain progressive oxen are being gored. Thus, Scarlett Johansson playing a transwoman is affront to social righteousness, but having a musical about Alexander Hamilton, in which the cast is exclusively POC is just dandy.
Where are the freakin feminists and GRRRRl Power shriekers and #MeToo bandwagon jumpers? Why aren’t they howling about women being oppressed?
Well, they kind of are. There’s been a rift between the militant feminists (“TERFs”) and the transtrenders for a while now and it’s finally starting to spill out into open conflict.
I expect shares in Orville Redenbacher to spike.
A cautionary tale for woke SJW feminists…
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/07/10/feminist-apparel-founder-fired-staff-learned-hed-abuser/
“…there’s a brief summary here.”
Gotta say, in fairness to the activists, I’m not seeing much resemblance. Could Danny Dyer do the accent?
“It’s easy to get distracted on Mail Online; did you know that Sofia Richie kissed her boyfriend on the head while displaying taut abs in racy bikini?
Meanwhile, Neighbours star Nicky Whelan, 37, strips down to a lacy black lingerie…”
I don’t think I’ve ever been able to concentrate fully on a Mail article to the end.
Mail Online’s the world’s biggest English-language news site, you know. I wonder why.
Mail Online’s the world’s biggest English-language news site, you know. I wonder why.
One thing they do well, if that’s the right word, are those catty articles that profess affection for some ageing minor celebrity, snapped off guard and while shopping or whatever, while the deliberately unflattering photos send a rather different message. Generally, some variation of “Ooh, hasn’t she gotten fat?” Or, “Doesn’t she look a cow?” They ran a particularly unkind series of ‘features’ on former daytime TV presenter Judy Finnigan.
[ Edited. ]
why is everything “chilling” to the woke?
To reposition the center of attention onto themselves.
Has anyone asked Scarlett Johansson if she identifies as a transgender man or not?
How fluid is her trans-identity? Maybe she only identifies as a transgender man when she’s playing a transgender man for a role.
I particularly liked the comment by Vance Fry under the Hot Air article, quoting transgender actress Trace Lysette, angry about the Johansson role:
Trace Lysette: “…you play us and steal our narrative and our opportunity but you pat yourselves on the back with trophies and accolades for mimicking what we have lived”
Vance Fry: “How is that not a description of what transwomen do to real women?”
Where are the freakin feminists and GRRRRl Power shriekers and #MeToo bandwagon jumpers? Why aren’t they howling about women being oppressed?
Here they are.
“I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists!”
—the Left
Well, they kind of are. There’s been a rift between the militant feminists (“TERFs”) and the transtrenders for a while now…
and the linked article
“Here they are”…
seem to boil down to
“Transwomen are women, but women aren’t transwomen. We’ll use your bathrooms, but don’t you depict us on screen. We are the same as you, but you aren’t the same as us.”
However, from all the “trans” community keeps demanding, I think
“Has anyone asked Scarlett Johansson if she identifies as a transgender man or not? How fluid is her trans-identity? Maybe she only identifies as a transgender man when she’s playing a transgender man for a role” is a valid point.
Why does it not work both ways? Why do they get to be so intolerant and narrow-minded about everything, when we have to open our minds so wide everything falls out in order to accommodate whatever identity they assume for themselves at any given moment?
I am getting really tired of all this one-way accommodation bullshit.
“you play us and steal our narrative…”
It’s worth noting that Ms Johansson is also a co-producer of the project, which suggests it’s a film she wanted to see made, likely in part because of her left-of-centre pieties about minorities and inclusion, etc. However, those same pieties don’t seem to be buying her much grace from the minority in question. Or at least from the chronically unhappy activists who claim to speak for it.
“steal our narrative”
“We make up stories and insist you say you believe them. Or else.”
Well worth reading…
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/the-30-best-thomas-sowell-quotes/
Or at least from the chronically unhappy activists who claim to speak for it.
Claim to.
Claim to.
While poking through various threads, I spotted several trans people who were either in favour of Ms Johansson playing the role, which they saw as positive, or indifferent. It would, I think, be interesting to see the extent to which the demands of activist scolds, which seem oddly uniform and rather narrow, diverge from the views – plural – of the broader trans demographic.
To reposition the center of attention onto themselves.
This.
It’s amazing how so many people have been conditioned to fly into hysterics over the smallest matters that don’t even involve themselves. The white knighting has become pathological.
It’s worth noting that Ms Johansson is also a co-producer of the project, which suggests it’s a film she wanted to see made…
I believe she bought the rights to the story so she not only wants to see it made, she wanted it as a starring vehicle for herself. She probably thought it would be her route to an Oscar like the Aileen Wuornos bio-pic was for Charlize Theron. Right idea, wrong time, poor Ms. Johansson missed the Overton window unfortunately.
Why do they get to be so intolerant and narrow-minded about everything, when we have to open our minds so wide everything falls out in order to accommodate whatever identity they assume for themselves at any given moment?
Good question, I tend to fall into Dave Chappelle’s camp, “I support anyone’s right to be who they want to be. My question is: to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?” My answer is, not very far.
why is everything “chilling” to the woke?
“Though without much exertion one will find an increasing migration on the left to the newer Hitlerian Calendar.”
since somewhere like twenty-first century Tucson exists beyond the known boundaries of the cosmos.
Heh. I did like this bit:
It’s something I’ve tried to convey when covering Mao-ling psychodrama. How the Mao-lings react to someone like Jordan Peterson or Heather Mac Donald or whoever it may be this week, is, by extension, how they would react to you, and your family, were you to speak in their presence.
It’s worth noting that Ms Johansson is also a co-producer of the project, which suggests it’s a film she wanted to see made, likely in part because of her left-of-centre pieties about minorities and inclusion, etc.
She’s also been in trouble for playing an Asian in Ghost in the Machine.
Personally, I can’t forgive her stealing the identity of the character in “Under the Skin” 2013. Who speaks for this marginalised group?
She’s also been in trouble for playing an Asian in Ghost in the Shell.
That wasn’t a good film, though for reasons other than Ms Johansson’s ethnicity.
Maybe instead of a gangster brothel owner, she could rescue a bunch of teenagers from a flooded cave? The whole transgenderism plot could turn on some crisis causing her to forget to stick her sock down the front of her wetsuit.
I’m imagining lots of slow shots of her swimming, with plenty of focus on her backside. Because of the dramatic tension, dontcha know.
I’m imagining lots of slow shots of her swimming, with plenty of focus on her backside. Because of the dramatic tension,
I’ll leave this here just for you.
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/crowder-confronts-tire-slasher-in-austin/
I’ll leave this here just for you.
Somehow I KNEW that was the post you were linking to, yet I clicked anyways.
Sigh.
So many things posted here that can never be unseen, yet I keep coming back for more.
It’s the humor in how all this the drek is presented, the dry wit, the intelligent commentary on it all that I enjoy, I think. And that keeps me from wanting to tear out my hair or go on a 3 day bender.
And the art. Mustn’t forget the Art and Culture of which our host so kindly ensures we get plenty.
the dry wit, the intelligent commentary…
I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Could you say it again, but louder?
THE DRY PICKLED “EGGS,” THE INTELLIGENT PICKLED P*N*SES…
What?
You SAID, say it louder…
Never thought I’d see anything less plausible than Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, but the notion of Scarlett Johansson as a cross-dressing bull dyke proved me wrong.
See, the nice thing about Vimeo clips is that the title, containing the words “underwater flatulence” loaded well before the video started. this left plenty of time for a quick retreat to the comparative salubriousness of David’s pages.
a quick retreat to the comparative salubriousness of David’s pages.
Yes, looking good in comparison is one of the things I do well.
Yay!!! Justice triumphs after all…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-12/charges-against-stormy-daniels-dropped-technicality-amid-human-trafficking
Yay!!! Justice triumphs after all…
Yay? More like Yikes! The talent level in Pickerington leaves much to be desired. Sad! And Miranda Panda? Really? Stage name I hope. Ay, oh, way to go Ohio…
I especially liked this part…
During her performance after removing her top exposing her breasts she began forcing the faces of patrons into her chest and using her bare breasts to smack the patrons.
I used to live in Columbus, Ohio. Pickerington is a wealthy suburb of same.
…she began forcing the faces of patrons into her chest…
For whatever reason, the Lovely Bride is never sympathetic when I complain of being assaulted in this way.
For whatever reason, the Lovely Bride is never sympathetic when I complain of being assaulted in this way.
Bachelor party weekend, late 1990’s, Fort Meyers, FL. Bachelor buddy gets “reluctantly” called up on stage, supposedly to have a line of girls dance for him. Things started out kinda as expected but by about the fifth girl, things started getting a little nasty, culminating in an “atomic wedgie” that pretty much ended the evening for everybody. A few weeks later there was a story in the paper about the same club where a guy got beat up so bad, he got a neck injury and was suing the establishment.
…culminating in an “atomic wedgie”…
Aaaand, we’re off the rails.
Things started out kinda as expected but by about the fifth girl, things started getting a little nasty
Protip: the strippers don’t really like you.
Yes yes, but are we all sleeping soundly in our gender equal societies?
http://www.williamofockham.com/2018/07/12/sleeping-the-sleep-of-the-righteous/
Protip: the strippers don’t really like you.
Oh, they liked me. I was the one paying them. With all the other guys’ money. Closest I’ve ever come to being a Democrat.
These fads come and go. I feel my fellow Australian Cate Blanchett dodged a bullet by playing a male Bob Dylan in a film a few years back. The perpetually offended weren’t then that worried about cross gender roles by non transgender people. It’s almost like it doesn’t really matter….
Apparently the answer to the question posed in the original post is “yes”
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2018/07/13/a-happy-ending-scarlett-johansson-exits-rub-tug-film-after-trans-man-controversy/?utm_campaign=twitchywidget
(Sorry the link goes to Twitchy, but I haven’t seen another post on it yet).
Since SJ was also funding a good portion of the film, I hope she takes her $$$ with her.
Idiots. “Tex” Gill never took hormones or had surgery – she was as biologically female as SJ, yet SJ can’t dress up like a bloke and pretend to be one – y’know – ACT?
Pst314,
Really, really horribly late to this thread, but by the time I got to “I want rustlers, cut throats…” I was reading that in Harvey Korman’s voice.
Damn. I’m old.
And tired.
Protip: the strippers don’t really like you.
What if she buys me breakfast after her shift is over?
Jim Parsons AKA Sheldon is gay, but Sheldon is cis.
Why can he pretend but Scarlett cannot? Smells like …MISOGYNY!!!!
Growing up in the 1950s, there was a couple of women three houses up up the street who gave a young boy food for thought. My parents called them The McClain sisters, but one of them appeared to me to be a man. I’d see her exit the house in the AM dressed in a man’s suit, with a man’s haircut, get into her car and drive off. I never knew where she worked.
Several years later, as a young teen, I worked for the sisters one summer doing yard work and chores like cleaning out the garage. They were very good people to work for, paid above the going rate for juvenile labor, and did not have impossible standards for trim work.
Oh, yes. They were not sisters.
And now, of course, that the shrieking (what is the m2f trannies equivalent of a harpy?) have had their go, she isn’t playing a woman who may or may not have been transgender.
. . . by the time I got to “I want rustlers, cut throats…” I was reading that in Harvey Korman’s voice.
. . . . Weeelll, Yes, of course you’re going to do that.
“We are the same as you, but you aren’t the same as us.”
Sounds like their equality relation is neither commutative…
… nor …
[Twitches in anticipation]
… transitive.
Forgot your sunglasses
Forgot your sunglasses
So that’s why I didn’t get even one henchlesbian…
[Twitches in anticipation]
… transitive.
Bartender! A drink for the gentleman…overlord…punster!
Math(s) puns for the win!