When gender gets in the way, as it so often does, these gender pioneers say “Change it!”
Trannies of every stripe — drag queens and kings, transsexuals, intersexuals, etc. — have traditionally had even less say in constructing their cultural identities than gay people have in creating theirs. An ever-accommodating medical profession has kept them as footnotes in the “bizarre case histories” sections of weighty medical texts. More recently, tranny imagery has become a popular entree for the insatiable maw of television, from weepy medical and police dramas (“My dear, your girlfriend, yes, your Leslie was … a man!”) to the squalid sideshow of tabloid TV, where revelations of “gender abnormality” provoke everything from howling laughter to black eyes from the drooling average-American audience.
Fortunately, the objects of this unwanted cultural makeover are not taking all this lying down, as evidenced by San Francisco’s daylong Tranny Fest, now in its fourth year. Six programs of 20 film and video shorts, docs, and features make up the show. Some of the titles are reprised from other fests; others are premieres. Inevitably, in a grassroots event like this there’s sometimes less artistry than activism, but why not? Film festivals don’t, or need not, exist in a vacuum outside cultural politics.
That said, let’s take a look at this niche-iest of festivals.
In Program #1, Play (1997), Shamiran Samiano’s brief glance at a basketball-playing butch, redeems its too cheesy ambience when a fetching femme wanders by and the butch suddenly turns on her beloved basketball. Sadmith Manze Performance (Boyd Kodak and Cat Grant, 1998) and Remembrance (David McPherson and Chris McCune, 1997) tap the festival’s roots as an activist enclave without being particularly artful or more ambitious than the needs of agitprop demand. The former looks briefly at the deportation of a Mexican tranny from Canada; the latter pays tribute to a group of trannies who didn’t survive their lives on the street.
Program #3 resurrects the ever-welcome feature Black Lizard, Kinji Fukasuku’s 1968 homage to pop/camp/drag. Infamous female impersonator Akihiro Maruyama plays the title character, a wonderfully vicious tranny and international jewel thief. Sweet indeed is Ms. Lizard’s revenge against an unstylish world as she augments her vast jewel collection with human jewels — beautiful bodies she embalms. Even the author of the original property, hypermilitary homo writer Yukio Mishima, isn’t safe from the claws of this evil queen — he pops up as one of her living statues.
Program #4 is another welcome reprise: Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparacio’s wrenching documentaries on homeless trannies and one who “escapes” into fundamentalist Christianity and faltering heterosexuality with dire results. The Transformation (1995) visits a loose-knit group of brave, funny, self-defined women as they attempt to eke out a life in a vast New York dump; Documentary of Ricardo (aka Sara in the Salt Mines) shows in grim detail what happens when misguided religious nuts try to remake one of the queens into a model husband and churchgoer.
Soshana Rosenfeld’s wonderful Uscent uVa Butch is a highlight of program #5. Every permutation of the word “butch” is paraded in this interview-based documentary; viewers will need a scorecard to keep track of the sheer variety of self-defining, redefining butches. One of the most excitingly outre categories is the rarely sighted “nelly faggot butch”! Special (1998), directed by Ray Rea, ambitiously reworks a conversation with a deranged street person into a meditation on the documentary process. Anime fans will want to check out Tranamation: Romeo and Juliet, a brief cartoon video from Japan. Marla Leech’s 1998 video Tranny TV is a sampling of trannies from commercial TV. There’s RuPaul demanding a hardly reluctant Dennis Rodman to kiss her; lots of “shocking” images of various queens ripping off their wigs to reveal their biological maleness to alarmed dolts like Archie Bunker; and the usual pool of gender-depleted morons reacting violently to the news (obvious to most viewers) that their mother, girlfriend, boyfriend, uncle, child, etc. has decided to join the opposite sex or to define a new gender of his/her own. In spite of claims that such appearances “humanize” trannies, it’s clear they’re there strictly for their freak-show value. Leech’s documentary would have benefited by including some balancing imagery from shows like Kids in the Hall or SCTV, which regularly featured brilliant, respectful, and very funny drag.
The final program is a heady mix of the old and new in the transgressive tranny porm genre. Festival codirector Christopher Lee weighs in with Alley of the Tranny Boys (1998) which follows a group of transitional trannies (female-to-males) in their search for s&m thrills in the seedy motels of San Francisco. This documentary is explicit, brutal, and sometimes playful, as in a charming bathtub sequence where Angel and Guy frolic in the water, call each other “dude,” and compare the state of their ever-evolving bodies. Mihra-Soleil Ross’s An Adventure in Tucking with Jeanne B. (1993) is a hilarious nine minutes with a drag queen trying to pull scotch tape off her crotch with intermittent success. Jeanne B’s valiant efforts are counterpointed by an offscreen group of women laughing sympathetically as their friend screams, curses, and slings the dish. In the same show is the aptly named Del La Grace Volcano’s Pansexual Public Porn (1998), a rarity — and a good indicator of this festival’s attractions — in celebrating not only public sex but sex without the pesky boundaries of sometimes suffocating gender definitions.
