Trans actors should be playing not-trans roles

[jenthelibrarian]

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/28/cast-more-transgender-actors-in-non-trans-roles-union-urges?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR12wKFUQQqKtC1NjcR9wnxfp9wPdfjWrISoBOWaqTl5jCv-LTR2NFUongY#Echobox=1572286540

“The fact that [a performer] is trans may be completely invisible in the role or production, but it powerfully represents diversity in the industry. This ‘invisible’ diversity is just as important as more physically recognisable forms of diversity.”

Really??

I've certainly never seen a trans actor who passed for a second, it's always screamingly obvious to me

As soon as you start giving people jobs because they are trans, or female, or Asian etc you are building expectations of special treatment. And, quite possibly, are not hiring the best person for the job/role.

Yes, and it will ultimately tend to work against those actors themselves, who could very easily find themselves unable to play roles they might be interested in but which do't fit their profile. If someone like Juliette Binoche can convincingly play a Hispanic role, presumably a Hispanic actress can convincingly play a Frenchwoman, and why shouldn't she? But if it becomes normal to think of these kinds of identifiers as being exclusive, people are deluding themselves if they think that sort of ideology won't equally apply to supposedly dominant groups of people. I can easily imagine a bunch of French people being upset over someone not French playing Joan of Arc or some other role with a lot of national meaning.

I am not convinced that is a road we want to go down.

It would be more reasonable for a female who wasn't French to play Joan of arc than a French male.

Sometimes it's relevant and sometimes it isn't. There was some publicity recently about a black actress playing the little mermaid but what does the ethnicity matter there? You couldn't have a white female play someone like Martin Luther King though.

Presumably it’s only an issue if it’s relevant to the actual story. So a disabled person could play a role of a character in a story where disability wasn’t a storyline because disability shouldn’t be the only “thing” about a person. Equally if it’s a movie about a real person then arguably they should be played by someone similar unless the whole point of the play/movie is to subvert the story (eg Hamilton).

So in You - it’s actually probably reasonable to have Hari Nef playing the part as being trans isn’t anything to do with the story, but neither is being female - it isn’t a role where her sex is really anything to do with it and the role could have been played by any sex or any race.

And I agree up thread about Chandler’s dad. I always assumed the “joke” there wasn’t about being trans or not (as she was a drag queen anyway I believe?) but more that the viewer knew that actress as a well known woman - it was never supposed to be a believable trans character.

Sometimes it's relevant and sometimes it isn't. There was some publicity recently about a black actress playing the little mermaid but what does the ethnicity matter there? You couldn't have a white female play someone like Martin Luther King though.

It seems difficult to imagine that would work, but in terms of movie make-up these days you can do quite a lot, and maybe even more on the stage. And then, there are some computer generated films where actors can look totally different, look at that Beowulf with Ray Winstone, he's a tubby middle aged man playing a buff fellow 15 years younger.

Beowulf is a fantasy character they could have made that film with puppies.
Martin Luther King is a historical figure.

Blythe in You is is a minor character and Hari Nef was probably not paid very much and doing it for exposure. It doesn't really matter and its a good thing to portray homosexual relationships as just happening rather than making a thing out of it.

Trans people are less common than non-sighted/blind people, or deaf people/hard of hearing.

How much blind or deaf representation have you seen in media this year compared to trans?

There was a big fuss on Broadway when they cast Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller instead of a visually impaired child actress.

The producer/director kept explaining, an experienced child actress strong enough to carry that part was rare as hens teeth anyway so it would have meant an inexperienced unknown, which was a huge financial risk. And they had to have a big, known name to pull the audience to make the show successful as opposed to a financial disaster.

Reality sucks. But it's what the world runs on.

Beowulf is a fantasy character they could have made that film with puppies.

That's totally irrelevant, the point is that the actor didn't need to have any particular physical qualities at all to take the role, only a convincing voice, and the same thing could be done for any role using that technology. Even historical figures like Martin Luther King, or Martin Luther.