FILM
LET’S TALK ABOUT TRANS CHARACTERS ON FILM
We dig into the progression of trans characters in movies and TV, and how they’ve changed from being comedic punchlines, to victims, to main characters By Bianca Guzzo
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2020
When Lieutenant Lois Einhorn’s true identity as a trans woman is revealed at the end of 1994’s Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, all of the characters start a chain of puking out of shock and disgust. The movie is 26 years old, but this scene has stuck with the transgender people who witnessed Jim Carrey trying to “cleanse” the memory of being intimate with her by suctioning off his mouth with a toilet plunger – as if using a toilet plunger on his mouth was somehow a solution to finding out he had kissed somebody who happens to be transgender.
Executive producer Laverne Cox in the Netflix documentary, Disclosure, which examines the history of transgender representation on-screen over a hundred years
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