Queer Capital: Transgender Representation in Contemporary American Cinema

<p>From The Crying Game’s shocking gender reveal in 1993, to the resounding success of Pose in 2018, trans characters and narratives have become increasingly visible across media platforms. Most significantly, trans characters have become a key part of American Indiewood cinema. Films like Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl, Stonewall, and 3 Generations demonstrate the growing visibility of these roles within the American independent tradition. Moreover, these films’ critical and financial successes, in particular those of Dallas Buyers Club, signal the potential value these characters offer studios as a marker of cultural progressiveness. However, while trans characters in Indiewood films inspire more mainstream conversations about queer identity and community, interrogating these representations reveals how these depictions may reinforce harmful myths about trans identities and experiences. Analysing these representational practices through textual, generic, and industrial analyses, I will demonstrate how trans performances benefit the wider film industry, and question the impact of cis-gender casting on these films’ representational strategies. The purpose of this project is thus to examine performances of transgender identity in contemporary indie and Indiewood films, spotlighting industrial influences on transgender representations. By using Dallas Buyers Club as a case study to explore how queer Indiewood films appeal to mainstream audiences; and using Tangerine to illustrate alternative representational strategies, this thesis demonstrates how contemporary Indiewood cinema excludes most trans writers, directors, and actors, how this process benefits cis-gender industry elites, and how paratexts mitigate the potential threat that trans identities pose to gender categories. More specifically, I pose the questions: how are filmic performances of transgender identity informed by industrial power relations; and, what are the cultural implications of the dynamic between the two.</p>