The Lifetime
cable network is well known for its tear-jerking,
melodramatic made-for-TV-movies and other like-minded
offerings. I was never a fan of Lifetime's
soapy dramas.
In light of my
disappointment with Transamerica, a mainstream
movie about a transgender woman, I did not expect much from
Lifetime's foray into the
forever-misrepresented trans world with A Girl Like Me:
The Gwen Araujo Story. After all, if
Transamerica got it so wrong, what chance did
Lifetime have?
The writers of
Transamerica should bow down and worship this
movie.
It's very
rare to see anything in print, on TV, or at the movies that
even comes close to real insight into my world. Different
for Girls, a 1996 fictional feature film
produced and filmed in the United Kingdom, was an
exception. No cheap tricks, humane, and not
stereotypical; a real glimpse at what transsexuals feel and
experience.
A few years ago
Law & Order: SVU did a good job demonstrating
how screwed up the world's perspective concerning my
community is. Sadly, that show portrayed how and why
so many of us wind up dead like Gwen Araujo. But
SVU blew it when explaining some of the science. As
in Transamerica, the SVU writers were
sensationalistic and stereotypical--in short,
lazy.
Lifetime's
TV movie, A Girl Like Me, got it right from the title
on. This movie is based on the true story of Gwen
"Eddie" Araujo's hate-crime
murder. Araujo, a 17-year-old transsexual, was killed in
October 2002 upon the discovery that she was biologically
male. Her killers lured her to a party in order to
expose her.
I closely
followed the murder case when it was in the news. The press
insisted, against her mother's wishes, on calling
Gwen by her birth name, Eddie, and always referred to
her as a he. How typical. The press just didn't
get it; it seldom does. Lifetime "got it" on
many levels, including the pronouns.
I suppose that
Lifetime's intention was drama; in this kind of story
there is nothing more dramatic than the sad truth. Lifetime
could have done a hatchet job--who would know
the difference?--but they stayed true to the
events and the people in the story. Maybe the dramatist
producers and writers were out sick that day, I
don't know. What I do know is that the writers
nailed it.
The movie was
laid out in flashbacks--normally a cheesy storytelling
method--but even that worked well here. The courtroom
scenes walked us through the linear proceedings of the
trial. After each scene the action flashed back to the
events leading up to the courtroom dialogue,
eventually leading to the murder.
The defense
attorney embodied the hostility, blame, and misunderstanding
that many people harbor toward transsexuals. This lawyer
really did say and do what was depicted in the movie.
He tried the gay-rage-blame-the-victim defense,
resulting in a lesser conviction with no hate-crime
enhancements. Pity.
The movie used
early-life flashbacks that showed true-to-life indicators
of transsexualism in Gwen's
childhood--something every transsexual can
relate to--serving as an object lesson in how to
recognize the early signs of transsexualism. When we
transsexuals show our colors as children, few
non-transgender people mark it in their memories, but we
never forget it.
The character of
Gwen's mother does a great job expressing her initial
confusion as well as the eventual evolution of thought it
takes for a parent to come to terms with and accept a
transgender child. The flashbacks of Gwen's
mother speaking to a professional gender therapist
gave voice to some of the basic facts about transsexualism
that the media so often can't seem to address.
And they were addressed accurately, concisely, and in
terms most people can grasp.
Gwen's
internal transition--her pain, her desires, her
longings, and her commitment to her personal
truth--were all too familiar and real. I never
knew Gwen personally, yet I knew her intimately long before
this movie appeared. I did not get to know Gwen by
following her case in the news either: Almost all
transsexual people feel what she felt and can relate
to her struggle.
The fact that
this movie wrenched my guts is a sure sign of its
authenticity. Movies never make me cry, but I cried.
Gwen's story was almost unwatchable for me
because it hit far too close to home. In Gwen I
revisited myself. Good fiction should invoke real emotions.
The forgotten pain I suffered in childhood, and in
transition, came rushing back.
So, if you want
to know what it's like to be a real transsexual,
forget the documentaries and catch this movie in
reruns. Even if you don't care, watch it
anyway. It may not be the best movie Lifetime has made, but
from the perspective of one who knows, it is the most
realistic thing you will see on Melodrama Central TV
Network.