Earlier
this year The Teena Brandon Story was a blockbuster
documentary about a true story -- a rape and preventable murder
involving a Nebraskan male trapped in a woman's body. Now
a feature film, Boys Don't Cry, dramatizes the
same events. The film is directed by Kimberly Peirce, who
also handled the screenplay. Teena Ray Brandon (played by
Hilary Swank), at 21 years of age, has the temperament of
a man and dresses the part of a man, including using a sock
to show a bulge in a pair of jeans; a sex-change operation
is sought when funds are available. The tagline of the film,
which began with the provisional title "Take It Like a Man,"
is "A true story about finding the courage to be yourself."
Leaving Lincoln to party in Humboldt (Falls City in the film),
a small town some 75 miles from Lincoln, Teena becomes attracted
to Lana Tisdel (played by Chloë Sevigny) and vice versa, and
the two become lovers. Teena displays considerable masculinity
in cigaret smoking, beer drinking, bronco riding on a pickup
truck, and in having sex with Lana, but fits into the familiar
paradigm of a stranger in town. Teena prefers to be called
"Brandon," the birth surname, and is assumed to be a man by
everyone in town, but the police run a check on Teena's identity
after an arrest for a misdemeanor check forgery charge. The
police then out Brandon by releasing the name "Teena Ray Brandon"
to the town's newspaper for the column on recent arrests.
John, Lana's longtime boyfriend, is jealous about Teena's
whirlwind romance with Lana, so after reading the newspaper,
he makes an issue of Teena's sexuality. Together with his
friend Tom (played by Brendan Sexton III), Teena is stripped
to reveal female rather than male genitalia. Teena is then
tormented by the two boys, who act out of jealousy and prejudice
but also because of the "lie" that Teena pretended, in their
view, to be a boy though anatomically a girl. On Christmas
Day 1994 they rape Teena. However, police refuse to prosecute
John and Tom, who are former felons, and they soon proceed
to murder Teena. The story is a variant of the Romeo and Juliet
paradigm in which two lovers are not allowed by the conventions
of society to consummate their relationship, though in this
case only one of the lovers dies. The two murderers, titles
tell us at the end, are convicted and imprisoned. Had Teena
admitted in the beginning that she was anatomically a woman
but wanted an operation so that her male personality would
fit with her anatomy, would everyone have been understanding?
Certainly not. But how would Teena have been able to develop
close relationships in a world that does not yet understand
or accept the transgendered? As the film unfolds, we realize
that the problem is not Teena's but ours: When will society
be ready to accept a male personality in a female body or
vice versa and why must such persons have operations just
to be accepted by others? For raising these questions, Boys
Don't Cry has been nominated by the Political Film
Society for an award as a film exposé and for an award in
the category of human rights. Meanwhile, Lana has filed suit
against Fox Searchlight Pictures for invading her privacy
through the film, thus ensuring that some of the issues will
be posed even more stridently in the public arena. MH
I
want to comment on this film
