Author’s Introduction:
As I was writing this feminist critique of the movie, Tangerine,
I felt overwhelmed by the near unanimity of praise for this supposed comedy
from the critics, even female critics.
So, I was gratified to read of a protest
by Lesbian Nation at the London film premier of the film. [i]
Go sisters!
In preparation for writing this article, I also came across
an interesting piece of information on Wikipedia.[ii]
In summary, it states that the tangerine (Citrus tangerina) is an orange
colored citrus fruit closely related to, or possibly a type of, mandarin orange
(Citrus reticulata). Under one
classification system it is considered a separate species, under another, a
group of varieties. The term tangerine may yet acquire a different genetic
meaning.
TANGERINES
ARE ORANGES? TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN?
By Carol Downer
SPOILER ALERT!
Sean Baker’s Tangerine[iii]
films a day in the life of two trans women street sex workers in Los
Angeles. Alexandra tells Sin Dee, who
has just been released from a month’s jail sentence, Chester (her lover and
pimp) had sex with the new girl, a “fish” “with a vagina”, during her
absence. Sin Dee charges off to find and
confront him. Alexandra goes to find customers
and hand out leaflets to fellow sex workers to publicize her up-coming
performance that evening, Christmas Eve.
I watched Tangerine to learn more about trans
gender women, especially since the trans
community has been vociferously asserting their demand to be included in
women-only spaces[iv],
including public bathrooms, women’s festivals and separatist meetings on
the grounds that they are “women”.[v]
Others hotly debate this.[vi]
The film unerringly captures the
dynamic of the gender relationships between men and women and how trans women
fit into it. Sin Dee and Alexandra are
males who identify as women, but, from what I saw, their main similarity to
women is their outer appearance and the ways in which they defer to men. I witnessed the possible arising of new
gender/s. If it is, this new gender of
trans women can be just as hateful to women as the most sexist men, and are as oppressive
to women as the other males in the film.
The plot plays out the gender hierarchy.
The male pimp exploits both trans women and “fish”. Razmik, male cab driver who’s also Alexandra’s
customer, cheats on his wife and deserts his family’s Christmas dinner to hear
her perform. Sin Dee goes to a “party
room” at a motel and violently overpowers the “fish” (we eventually learn she is
named Dinah), dragging her by the hair across town to accost Chester at the
doughnut shop that he works out of.
Both Sin Dee and Alexandra, use their
testosterone-created size and musculature to survive on the mean streets. Alexandra squares off to physically collect
her fee from a welching client, reminding him, “I have a dick too”. Sin Dee kicks down the door to the motel party
room and grabs Dinah, pulling her onto the bus.
Making a stop at the bar to see Alexandra perform, she relaxes her
brutal treatment only long enough to repair the damage she’s done to her
make-up so that she can appear to be a respectable member of Alexandra’s
audience, and gives her have a hit of methamphetamine to feel better. Alexandra watches Dinah when Sin Dee can’t.
All of the
males, including Sin Dee and Alexandra, treat all the women in the film
disrespectfully. Sin Dee insults the
hairstyle of Razmik’s wife when she comes to the donut shop where Chester, Sin
Dee, Alexandra and Dinah and Razmik are, to see for herself that her husband is
not working, but is with prostitutes. She’s faced with her husband’s expensive
sex habits, and admits that she’s dependent on her husband for support, so she
goes home. The mother-in-law asserts the
gender role she probably learned growing up in Isfahan, denouncing and exposing
her son-in-law for having sex with prostitutes.
Everyone, including Chester, subjects Dinah to verbal abuse (he can’t
remember her name either), and he slams her head against a table. After Chester
mollifies Sin Dee by proposing marriage, the “fish” is left to find her own way
home, moneyless, poorly clad, and then jobless, homeless and shoeless. No one notices her plight nor cares.
As in real life, other than buying
doughnuts for the group as a way of apologizing for all the suffering he’s caused,
the man comes out unscathed, dismissing the whole brouhaha as a “girl thing”. The transgender sex workers come to terms with
their respective places on the man’s totem pole. Razmik has lost face and is miserable because
he’s trapped in a heterosexual family situation despite having an attraction to
trans women.
Tangerine
is billed as a “girlfriend
movie”[vii],
because Sin Dee and Alexandra come back together after they fight when it comes
out that Chester had sex with Alexandra also.
They reunite when Sin Dee is a victim of a drive-by assault from a
carful of men. Alexandra helping her
recover is a touching scene. Not only does it show their friendship, but to me
it shows something equally heart-warming—gender solidarity. Trans women will do better, I think, to unite
to fight for their rights as a new gender rather than re-defining what it is to
be a woman, thus weakening the sisterhood of women by insisting on a broader
definition to include people who don’t have uteruses and cannot give birth. It
ignores how the gender of woman has (and continues to be) shaped under
oppressive control of our reproduction—and by not seeing what womanhood could
be if patriarchal control of our reproduction were overthrown.
Comment: Although the intent of filmmakers is usually irrelevant
in evaluating their artistic effort, it is relevant to the discussion of how
reflective Tangerine is of reality. In
interviews with Sean Baker[viii],
the co-author, cinematographer, director, editor and producer, he talked about
the collaboration of the actresses who play the leads. Mya Taylor, who played Alexandra, asked him
to make the movie realistic but funny.
He tried to make “a movie that these women would enjoy themselves.” I presume that means that these actresses and
their community were gratified that film viewers would see the brutality
they’re subjected to by gender-enforcing men, but also they would get a lot of
big laughs at seeing the brutalization and degradation of women.
Also, it’s surprising that no gay men or lesbians are in the
film, since the gay community lives nearby and because Tangerine focuses on the
overall cultural shift from stereotypical male-female coupling.
The area where the film takes place is light
industrial. Many, many small
film-production businesses are there.
So, it is a thriving part of “Hollywood”, even though it has none of the
trappings of Hollywood glamour
Creative contribution by Madison René Knapp
No comments:
Post a Comment