Netflix’s ‘Girl’ and Hollywood’s Sick Addiction to Trans Trauma
In award-winning movies about transgender people, almost all they do is suffer.
In Boys Don’t Cry, Brandon Teena is shot and stabbed—as he was in real life. In Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto’s Rayon, a sex worker, dies of AIDS. The Danish Girl tells the story of painter Lili Elbe, who died from complications of sex-reassignment surgery in 1931. And in A Fantastic Woman, the fictional Marina is repeatedly attacked verbally—and ultimately physically—by her dead boyfriend’s transphobic family members.
So, when is Hollywood finally going to tell—and reward—different kinds of transgender stories? That’s a question worth asking as the controversial Girl, a Belgian film about a young transgender ballerina, heads to this Sunday’s Golden Globes, where it is competing for Best Foreign Language Film.
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