Based on a true story, the
movie Boys Don’t cry, drama was adapted from the life of Brandon Teena, born
Teena Brandon, a woman who chose to live her life as a man and suffered tragic
consequences as a result. The movie can
be seen from a sociological perspective focusing on issues of sex, gender
identity and sexuality in a societal context that is set out in the movie. Brandon
becomes a symbol of everyone who doesn't fit neatly into the presupposed
categories in the culture of everyday life
In the movie, Brandon became
good friends with John Lotter , a charismatic, but sometimes violent young man,
and John's friend Tom Nissan . John and Tom are important characters who represent
brute masculinity at its worst. While Brandon imagined life as a male as
something worth striving for, it is ironic and eventually tragic that his male
friends turned out to represent everything that is wrong with traditional
masculinity. John and Tom are not too bright, aimless, and often mean; John is
especially dangerous because he has an impulse control problem. However, it is
through John and Tom that Brandon meets Lana, a sad young woman who hates her
life with her alcoholic mother, but can see no way out. Having only known guys
like John and Tom wild, unruly, drunk Lana immediately
connects with Brandon's sensitivity and charm, his lanky shyness, and his sweet
demeanor. They become a couple, Lana completely unaware that Brandon is
biologically female. Even in intimate sexual situations, Brandon is a
convincing male, although there is a moment when the film suggests that Lana
suspects Brandon's biological identity.
Everything goes fine until
the truth about Brandon's biology is unearthed. Most of Boys Don't Cry chronicles Brandon's entrance into his
group of friends and his growing relationship with Lana. But, the last quarter
of the film details how those who had previously accepted him into their
"family" react to the realization that Brandon's identity is
complicated in a way they could not have expected, and how that leads to
horrible violence.
He tells his new friends
that his father lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and that he has a sister who is a
model in Hollywood, all of which are lies that are not necessary to maintain
his male persona. There is something strangely disconcerting about Brandon's
character, and the reckless choices he makes are often infuriating. Boys
Don't Cry is ultimately a
human story about misunderstanding and anger that led to the unimaginable. This
doesn't mean the film is depressing or hopeless, but it is sad. It is sad
because Brandon Teena was only one person who suffered because others could not
handle the threat he posed to their understandings of the world.
Thus the movie shows the psychological
aspects of gender identity of Brandon Teena who in spite of being a women feels
like that of a man, Prejudice of his family members and society who dejected him
and discriminated him for feeling something which was not easily accepted by
the people that time.
While he had been ostracized
by his immediate family, and later his friends for they thought of him as a
lesbian, Only Lana stood by him till the end in spite of knowing the truth that
he was actually a women. Boys Don’t Cry is essentially a film about the transgender experience and reveals the performativity of gender through Teena
Brandon and her assumption of the appearance and identity of a heterosexual
male. The plot is centered around Brandon’s relationship with Lana and explores
issues surrounding Brandon’s search for his ‘true’ identity and the question of
Lana’s knowledge and acceptance of his transgender body. My argument stems
from the idea that in feeling it necessary to adopt and ‘perform’ the gender of
a heterosexual man, the character of Brandon inhabits and thus reaffirms binary
categories of gender definition, conforming to hetero normative codes of
‘identity’ and essentially rejecting the notion of ‘queerness’. Lana however,
embodies the concept of queer through both her acceptance of Brandon, despite
his lack or gender or sexual identity and the instability of her own concept of
self-hood and sexual orientation. While Teena Brandon’s portrayal of a male
draws attention to gender as being inherently ‘ per-formative’, Lana’s character
exhibits a messy, disrupted sexual ‘identity’ that lacks such a strong per-formative element and is arguably much more ‘natural’ and certainly more
‘queer’. Towards the end of the film, when Brandon is being victimized John
Lotter demands to know Brandon’s ‘true’ sex, saying ‘Are you a girl or are you
not?’. It is from this demand that Brandon fit in to a category that Brandon’s
‘sexual identity crisis’ initially emerges. The idea of Brandon’s search for a
solid ‘identity’ is key to my argument that he rejects his queerness, for in
subscribing to the idea of ‘true’ self, Brandon effectively wishes to sign up
to a normative category, he wants to ‘fit in’. ‘The brutality of the male gaze,
however’, as suggested by Halberstam, ‘is more than just a castrating force:
John and Tom not only want to see the site of Brandon’s castration, more
importantly they need Lana to see it’.
They need Lana to be repulsed by the site of Brandon’s female genitalia
in order to confirm their branding of him as a ‘gender outlaw’ and ‘freak’. ‘Lana kneels in front of
Brandon, confirming the scene’s resemblance to a crucifixion tableau, and
refuses to raise her eyes, declining once more to look at Brandon’s
unveiling’. The brutality of the male
gaze and the determination of John and Tom to remain faithful to notions of
biological determinism are further emphasized by the consequent rape.
The stories presented in The
Brandon Teena Story and Boys Don’t Cry revolves around persons, not a group of
people. The per-formative documentary and the drama-documentary or
documentary-drama send a message about a person, but at the same time send a
message about groups of people. The individual, Brandon, becomes an icon, a
symbol for a group and movement. The traditional documentary and the biopic
narrative share similarities but it is the differences that draw the line
between different arguments and create controversy. Boys Don’t Cry certainly
strives to clearly show Brandon’s transgender life. Whether Brandon had to tape
down breasts with ace bandages or shamefully stole tampons from a gas station
in real life isn't questioned because these scenes give Brandon a psychological
depth that subjective accounts of his life don’t come close to. Brandon, the person and the myth, will live
forever through these two films, and that is the greatest power the cinema,
narrative and documentary modes aside, gives to man.
Dhwani Shah
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