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.