Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto's Rayon - Loved It? Hated It?

[TSFantasia]

Dallas Buyers Club is a story about a Texas straight cowboy played by Matthew McConaughey, who gets diagnosed as HIV positive and given 30 days to live in the early days of the AIDS outbreak.
In his attempt to find drugs to treat it in Mexico that are not available or FDA approved in the States he begins a lucrative business
buying and selling these drugs to other HIV infected people who are given no hope by their doctors except to prepare to die.
He forms an unlikely partnership with a transgender woman named Rayon played by Jared Leto. Both Matthew and Jared won Oscars for their performances.

Jared Leto's performance has stirred up a lot of controversy in the transgender community. Specifically because the feeling is the role should have gone to a transgender actor as this is like giving the part and the award to a white man to play an aboriginal or black role with brown or black shoe polish smeared on his face, it's an insult. Also it promotes inaccurate stereotypes about transgender women and no real research was done by the Directors or by Jared to make this an accurate portrayal of a transgender woman.
My feeling is he was offered a role and he did an Oscar worthy job doing it. I would put more blame on the the writers,directors and producers for an inaccurate portrayal of trans women.

http://time.com/10650/dont-applaud-j...sgender-mammy/

http://transhollywood.tumblr.com/pos...ed-letos-trans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvMPU0WaPcc

[rider014]

Oscars=

I used to watch this spectacle of millionaires congratulating other millionaires and to me it got to a point of this show being called, "Name 12 movies I've never even heard of". Blockbuster movies and Hollywood icons such as Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Sigourney Weaver and Tom Cruise sit at home and stare at a mantle with no golden trophy on it, makes me wonder where the academy's heads are. I have seen some of the movies over the years that received an award of some kind, some I enjoyed, some were shut off after the first half an hour. IMHO, a lot of these oscar nominated films had high hopes of being a huge hit, then fell short at the box office, so let's give it an award to hopefully spark some blu ray sales so all isn't lost. Some have made it big right out of the gates (Titanic) but are few and far between. It could almost be focused on highlighting a newcomer to acting to boost them into more blockbuster type roles. Who really knows for sure as it seems every single year, there are the masses of movie goers that critique the nominations and the winners and those that should have. This particular movie, I haven't seen or heard of until now, has probably come and gone from the theaters, so again, I'll have to wait until Netflix has it on and then give it a look.

[Guest]

It's nothing new to see this come out of Hollywood.

Hi Fantasia,

I am really not surprised about this issue. It seems to be the norm in Hollywood to do it all wrong when it comes to transgender representation.

To me, it seems like the movie industry in Hollywood is run by a bunch of immature jerks who with their deeply steeped religious beliefs really don't like transgender people - period.

Hollywood seems to need to do a movie every now and then with some sleazy male-to- female TG in a main role, and they make sure to screw it up so badly so that all the character does is to bring more trans-phobia to our community.
It's been going on for years because Hollywood's top brass do not accept us as serious individuals deserving a whole lot of respect.
Oh yea, in person, they might be polite to us, maybe with a tongue in cheek attitude...you know...like maybe overly polite as if the whole conversation is a farce.
I mean, who, while trying to be polite to our TG community, would ever make a movie with the TG role being all messed-up like that?

Who? And why?
What would be the purpose other than to mislead and misinform society of who and what we are or...represent?
I think Hollywood, more often than not, assigns the worst behavioral characteristics to transgender characters in movies. Why? So we can continue to struggle for acceptance in mainstream society.
I wrote about this a couple of years ago.
It seems to be a topic that is making a comeback in the trans community from what i read about how TGs everywhere are not liking how this hetrosexual man is portraying a TG character in the movie.

I haven't seen this film. And from what i've read about it, i am not sure i'll waste my time watching it. It might only serve to upset me.
Me watching this "flick" would be similar to me willingly being a witness to an act that i strongly detest.
I feel i would only be encouraging Hollywood by watching it.

That's my 5 cents on the matter.

Babe,
xoxo

[Guest]

Oh yea, and i, also, think that it's only normal for Hollywood to issue out an Oscar to THEIR representation of what a TG is. Doing that only encourages the movie-goers to believe that TGs must be bad because of how the TG was in the movie.
After all, the actor GOT AN OSCAR for that performance - so it must all be true.

Sorry, i wanted to add that to my previous post.

xo

[TSFantasia]

Well I've only seen clips so far so will reserve judgement until I see it in full. It does look like an interesting movie and I keep in mind that Rayon is a totally fictionalized character added for dramatic effect and I guess comic relief to a "based on a true story" movie. Also this was early '80s and I'm not personally aware of what the transgender scene was like at that time. There is a disproportionate percentage of trans women who work in the sex trade now, many out of necessity because of job discrimination and being ostracized from family support, so I would imagine the discrimination was much worse the early 80's.
Life on the street usually lends itself to drug use perhaps out of depression and despair.

[VanessaBell]

I haven't seen Dallas Buyers Club yet, though I like Jared Leto, and like Matthew McConaughey even more (most recently he was amazing as Rust Cohle in True Detective), so I definitely will be getting around to it at some point. That being said, I haven't seen a representation of trans people in film that hasn't annoyed me in some way, and given that I get annoyed about things that other trans people usually let slide, combined with the fact that people seem to be bothered about this movie in particular, it makes me a bit wary.

[Franklinzed]

I haven't seen Dallas Buyers Club yet, though I like Jared Leto, and like Matthew McConaughey even more (most recently he was amazing as Rust Cohle in True Detective), so I definitely will be getting around to it at some point. That being said, I haven't seen a representation of trans people in film that hasn't annoyed me in some way, and given that I get annoyed about things that other trans people usually let slide, combined with the fact that people seem to be bothered about this movie in particular, it makes me a bit wary.

His performance was decent but still came across like a straight privileged guy playing a transsexual woman. Missed opportunity on casting an actual trans lady.
He actually gave an interview this week saying that he almost went to the oscars in "drag" to honor the memory the character is based on.
Trans women are NOT in drag fukker!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Crystalsopen]

Mostly I thought Jared got it as right as possible (spoilers)

Rayon as a character, is one person with many flaws. Rayon is not the perfect rep for trans community, but that is not the point. Jared Leto played a flawed person as being very human and real and the sort of performance even to cis people can relate to. That is his job, to make Rayon as real as possible by his portrayal. The only part of movie that bothered me was after rayon's Death when Mathew and Jenifer's character are talking about rayon with male pronouns .

[TSFantasia]

His performance was decent but still came across like a straight privileged guy playing a transsexual woman. Missed opportunity on casting an actual trans lady.
He actually gave an interview this week saying that he almost went to the oscars in "drag" to honor the memory the character is based on.
Trans women are NOT in drag fukker!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I heard in another interview he said "everyone has an inner tranny" or something like that . Just keep the insults coming and then act all dumb founded when the transgender community finds this all so offensive Jared! Go polish your Oscar and get your black shoe polish ready I hear there's a new Martin Luther King bio you might be interested in auditioning for! LOL.

[Crossover1]

Here we go: The trans mafia is adopting all of the same Nazi tactics that the gay mafia has perfected.

1. Hollywood films work on the star system. In order to get financed a film must have a few high profile stars in order to get financed, especially in films like this one that a whole swath of the population will not see because of the subject matter. Jared Leto is a high profile star. There are at present ZERO trans actors that have this level of popularity in Hollywood and would put bums in seats. Simple economics of Hollywood. If you'd like me to cut it even finer, as execs would do, young women love Jared Leto and would flock to see him in this role just because. Again, no trans actor would get that same demo in the theatres.

2. The notion that you have to "be" something in order to "play" something is absurd. By that standard, almost every role in Hollywood would be "misrepresentation." It's called "acting" for a reason. The notion that I could not understand or play a trans role because I am not trans is absurd. By that standard Danny Glover could never play Iago, or Anthony Hopkins a gleeful flesh-eating killer. Again, "acting" is the operative word, not "being." That's the art of it: all human emotion is universal no matter how you get there. Duh.

3. This is a very well made movie, which unlike lots of you, I have actually seen (lol), but the studio "tweaked" the storyline to their advantage in order to get more people in the theatre. For example, Mc's character was made more macho with the bull riding stuff in order to make him more manly and offset "the gay." The point is: if you look to Hollywood for accuracy or reality, you're an idiot. It would be altogether a different story if this film won for best doc.

4. The trans community could actually seek to educate people, gently, kindly and with grace, instead of shrieking and just turning people off. Lots of people are curious about trans people, and don't know the difference between drag, trans, pre-op, blah blah blah. How about taking the high road and just using persuasive argument instead of finger-waving. Genuinely help people understand differences while realizing IT'S A FUCKING HOLLYWOOD FILM, not a documentary.

Licenses taken.....

[Crossover1]

I heard in another interview he said "everyone has an inner tranny" or something like that . Just keep the insults coming and then act all dumb founded when the transgender community finds this all so offensive Jared!

Please please please tell me why this is in any way offensive and not absolutely TRUE. Aren't so many trans women telling everyone all day long that being a transexual is a state of mind, not about body parts. Oh and by the way, if you lined up 20,000 transsexuals you'd have 20,000 definitions of what being a transexual is. And we expect some Hollywood actor to understand completely every fucking nuance of what it means to be a transexual, including the hotbed of language which would ensnare probably 100% of trans people if the tables were turned and the subject were the proper nomenclature for African tribes in the Sahara??

I've read Leto's comments and they could at worst be called "naive" and hardly "offensive." How about just educate the guy instead of shrieking about all that tripe about "how dare he play that character" and "how dare he be so offensive!" There was on blog post in particular that was really clever and high road written by a trans women. I'll see if I can dig it up.

[TSFantasia]

Please please please tell me why this is in any way offensive and not absolutely TRUE. Aren't so many trans women telling everyone all day long that being a transexual is a state of mind, not about body parts. Oh and by the way, if you lined up 20,000 transsexuals you'd have 20,000 definitions of what being a transexual is. And we expect some Hollywood actor to understand completely every fucking nuance of what it means to be a transexual, including the hotbed of language which would ensnare probably 100% of trans people if the tables were turned and the subject were the proper nomenclature for African tribes in the Sahara??

I've read Leto's comments and they could at worst be called "naive" and hardly "offensive." How about just educate the guy instead of shrieking about all that tripe about "how dare he play that character" and "how dare he be so offensive!" There was on blog post in particular that was really clever and high road written by a trans women. I'll see if I can dig it up.

That's a wild exaggeration! That there are different views and different opinions for sure within the transgender community like there are in any group of people. The complaint is that the directors/producers and Leto himself did no research or real consultation with transgender community/actors. And seeing that this was supposed to be based on a true story (Ron Woodrow is a person and these events did happen) it would seem appropriate that they would care to give an accurate portrayal of the characters.

As I said I don't know what the TG scene was like in Dallas in the early '80s and I'm sure there were lots of crossdresser/transvestite hookers, which in this case they added for dramatic effect and comic relief. Just don't be making speeches about how you are representing the transgender community and using the word "tranny" in the next sentence.