Tribeca Film Festival Takes on “Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives”
Risky business can be good business
I can only imagine the amount of free press that the producers of the film “Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives” are getting since the entire organization of The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, aka GLADD, decided to try and pull this film from the Tribeca Film Festival lineup. It’s a controversial subject, and risky movies have a chance at being huge at the theaters. According to Entertainment Weekly’s website Mel Gibon’s “The Passion of the Christ” was the number one most controversial movie of all time. That movie ended up bringing in over half a billion dollars worldwide. This particular movie “Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives” is already creating a stir thanks to GLADD, but perhaps the producers had planned this all along. This transgendered ruckus would bring in a lot of free advertising for director Israel Luna and producer Toni Miller. Inflammatory subject matter is a great way to get the word out.
In the official online listing for “Ticked-Off Trannies,” a comedy by Israel Luna that is making its world premiere at the Tribeca festival, the film is described as a “campy homage to the exploitation films” in which “a group of transgender women are violently beaten and left for dead,” but then “the violated vixens turn deadly divas.”
The Controversy
Not many people know the definition of a trans-gendered (also known as the “third gender”) person. According to Wikipedia, a transgender “is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to deviate from the normative gender roles.” That means anyone who does not choose to fit into the “normal” gender role of male and female i.e. transvestites.
This leaves a lot of gray for those of us who are there trying to figure out which men are women and which women are men. I believe that is where this movie is going to shine. Some people are going to watch it just because it has that weird factor, and some will watch it because it feels like an episode of Jerry Springer where you just can’t take your eyes away. Also, women getting revenge by wielding knives sounds like a timeless classic already.
We all know it’s a revenge movie by the title, and who knows what kind of horrors would arise if anyone had the chance to get back at someone for a hate crime. The point is, that controversial films have a better chance at distribution, and the subject of pissed off, transgendered people was ripe for the picking. The real question, however, is whether or not films like these are selected based on their merit as a film . . . or based on their shock value. Ultimately, the audience will decide but it’s definitely a great debate.
According to the article by the Associated Press, the Tribeca Film Festival said in their statement that they are “. . . proud of its ongoing commitment to bring diverse voices and stories to its audiences.” What’s next? Maybe “Psychopath Berdaches Strike Back?
The ladies of the now controversial Tribeca Film Festival entry "Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives." Credit: Tribeca Film Festival
2 Responses
“Not many people know the definition of a trans-gendered (also known as the “third gender”) person. According to Wikipedia, a transgender “is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to deviate from the normative gender roles.” That means anyone who does not choose to fit into the “normal” gender role of male and female i.e. transvestites.”
Woah, not quite!! As a trans woman myself (that is a male-to-female transsexual) I feel that I have to correct this paragraph on a number of points.
The term “transgender” is a *very* broad umbrella term. It encompasses everything from drag queens to transsexuals and more. The word means anyone who does not conform to the expectations imposed on them by being assigned a gender based on their biological sex at birth. Most people have a gender identity, gender expression and physical sex that align, whereas transgender people do not. Many trans folk are *not* a 3rd gender. For example, I am a woman plain and simple; I identify within the binary of “man” and “woman”. There are people who identify themselves as 3rd gender (or genderqueer, or outside the gender binary), but not all trans people do this.
Israel Luna (the writer/director of this film) uses the term “trans women” many times in his promotional material for the film. That’s a bit more specific word, and does not apply to many of the people he applies it to. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_woman
Many of us are also very gender normative. I’m a pretty average female in her early 20s. Again, not all trans people are gender normative, but neither do all “deviate from the normative gender roles”. We are not all transvestites. Transvestites are cross-dressers (people who dress as the opposite gender from time-to-time). I, on the other hand, dress to my gender (female) and present as female 24/7 without exception. In short, many of us (myself included) are about as “normal” as any cisgendered (ie: not trans) person out there. There is also the fact that transsexual people take hormone replacement etc., whereas cross dressers typically do not.
“Some people are going to watch it just because it has that weird factor, and some will watch it because it feels like an episode of Jerry Springer where you just can’t take your eyes away. Also, women getting revenge by wielding knives sounds like a timeless classic already.”
Yes, and these are all things that marginalize trans folk! It is really remarkable how a director who claims to be acting in the best interests of the broader LGBT community could knowingly exploit us as a hook for the film! I’ve lost jobs and been harassed by people who have known my trans status because of these poor portrayals. Being compared to Buffalo Bill or a Jerry Springer caricature is very frustrating, and having to dispel these countless stereotypes to keep a job (rather call a lawyer to keep a job) isn’t a lot of fun. These portrayals and stereotypes – which are often the public’s only exposure to trans folk – are so dehumanizing and hateful that we are very often murdered. A frightening statistic is that more trans people are murdered than get married!
This isn’t about the apparently hilarious “weird factor”… this is about the lives and well-being of a particularly misunderstood group of people.
Hello Expede. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective on this sensitive subject. I wanted to write about this subject because of my background in Anthropology and my fascination with cultural perspectives of gender. Honestly, I am enchanted by all facets of culture, but I have never really tried to tackle the gender issue until now. I hope I did not offend you. I tried to stay as true to the “definitions” of gender as I could. That is why I chose to pull trans-gender from my lexicon. It is such a broad word that I thought I could get away with it… Evidently not. Also, I had to throw in “third gender” just to rattle the paradigm of what is man and woman. This can be a scary subject for many. Also, I wanted to talk about HATE CRIMES and how very real they are. It is very important to me that I get a REAL PERSPECTIVE on this, so thanks for posting. I can write about it all I want, but I try to use people as my main source and not books or the internet. Culture should be passed through language, not the internet. But times they are a changing.