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Feminist Media Studies
ISSN: 1468-0777 (Print) 1471-5902 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfms20
On not really being there: trans* presence/
absence in Dallas Buyers Club
Laura Copier & Eliza Steinbock
To cite this article: Laura Copier & Eliza Steinbock (2018) On not really being there: trans*
presence/absence in DallasBuyersClub , Feminist Media Studies, 18:5, 923-941, DOI:
10.1080/14680777.2017.1393833
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1393833
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 03 Nov 2017.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1393833
On not really being there: trans* presence/absence in Dallas
Buyers Club
Laura Copiera and Eliza Steinbockb
adepartment of media and Culture studies, Faculty of Humanities, utrecht university, utrecht,the netherlands;
bdepartment of Film and Literary studies, Centre for arts in society, Leiden university, Leiden, the netherlands
ABSTRACT
Recently more trans characters, even as main protagonists, star in
flm and media representations, perhaps in tandem with an increased
recognition of trans rights globally. In this article we argue that the
visual and aural grammars of cinema perform a double movement
of inclusion and elision, making for a fascinating if utterly frustrating
uptake of trans presence that is at once, perforce, also an absence. Our
case study of the Rayon character in Dallas Buyers Club is an example
of a recent sexualized representation of trans femininity. Our textual
analysis will deconstruct this character’s presence and absence on
the level of the flm’s aesthetical and technical aspects demonstrating
how cinematic grammar implicates cisgenderism.
Introduction
Popular media has long drawn on trans* characters and stereotypes to bring spectacular
fgures to the screen (The Rocky Horror Picture Show 1975), to add spoof comedy to television
(Little Britain 2003–2006), and justify bloody tragedy on crime thrillers (CSI Miami 2002–
2012).1 Recently more trans characters, even as main protagonists, star in flm and media
representations, perhaps in tandem with an increased recognition of trans rights globally.
The near universal celebration of actress Laverne Cox’s portrayal of trans woman character
Sophia Burset on the award-winning Netﬂix series Orange is the New Black (OITNB 2013–2019)
heralded a new trend in mainstream, popular screen cultures. Soon after in 2014, Amazon’s
Primetime show Transparent (2014–2018) garnered attention from all the major award bodies
and recently launched season three to critical acclaim. Though the starring trans woman
character Maura Pfeﬀerman is played by a cisgender man, trans creatives are present at all
levels of production and on-set, who give shape and direction to the way trans characters
are depicted.2 In comparison, Hollywood’s predominantly cisgender flm industry seems to
lag behind with involving trans people in decision-making positions on productions and in
front of the camera, with dire consequences. Major pictures do not lack trans characters per
se (played of course still by cisgender actors); only consider Bree Osborne in Transamerica
© 2017 the author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis Group.
this is an Open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution-nonCommercial-noderivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
KEYWORDS
transgender studies; flm
analysis; presence/absence;
trans protagonist; sexual
representation
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 6 July 2016
Revised 11 august 2017
accepted 15 august 2017
CONTACT Laura Copier [email protected]
OPEN ACCESS
Feminist media studies
2018, Vol. 18, No. 5, 923–941
924 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
(2005), Jane in Predestination (2014), and most recently, Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl (2015).3
Nevertheless, we argue, the visual and aural grammars of cinema orchestrated by cisgender
perspectives perform a double movement of inclusion and elision, making for a fascinating
if utterly frustrating uptake of trans presence that is at once, perforce, also an absence.
Following the celebratory tone surrounding the Primetime Emmy Awards in August 2014
when OITNB swept the ceremony, the December Academy Award evening when Jared Leto
won an Oscar for supporting actor in the role of Rayon in the Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc
Vallée, 2013) was extremely jarring for trans audiences. In his acceptance speech Leto did
not even mention the word transgender, much less thank the various trans people who had
helped him prepare for the role. One could decry the invisible labor of trans activists who
lost their lives to AIDS, or the continuance of cisgender creatives siphoning oﬀ trans cultures.
Dallas Buyers Club (hereafter DBC) also unfortunately draws on a highly sexualized version
of trans femininity that tempt/disgust cisgender men, already well-developed in characters
like Dil from The Crying Game (1992), Kitten in Breakfast on Pluto (2005), and even in Xavier
Dolan’s artful Laurence Anyways (2012). One must critique this problematically narrow version
of trans femininity for a cisgender eye, as well as acknowledge the exclusion of trans masculinity in storylines about desire.4 Moreover, many have denounced the obvious problem
of cisgender actors playing trans bringing little backstory or personal understanding to these
roles, or worse, as something analogous to white actors doing blackface, called “transface”
(Daniel Reynolds 2015). We agree that all these issues are present in DBC and more widely
in media ventures looking to cash-in on only the most superfcial markers of transness in a
rush to capitalize on trans chic. Nevertheless, as transfeminist flm scholars attentive to how
gender ideologies underwrite cinematic perception we see these as extenuating, though
important, issues to the flmic text itself. Namely, cinematic grammars implicated by cisgenderism make an argument to the spectator about how to see a trans person as a less than
full person relative to cisgender standards. Thus in this article we show the ways in which
certain cinematic elements of DBC deny the onscreen, diegetic reality and value of Rayon.
The close analysis of these elements enables us to more accurately critique the shortcomings
of DBC as a semi-fctionalized account of socio-political events. In the frst section we analyze
the flm’s opening scene in terms of its cinematic voice and body (Heath) to explain our
overarching methodological approach that combines trans studies insights into body politics
with tools to study flm bodies. Subsequently, we turn to the question of character development to show how the narratological function of trans operates in the text, followed by
a close reading of the visual demarcation of Rayon through cinematographic means. We
conclude with an assessment of cinema’s potential to ‘body forth’ diﬀerent kinds of trans
identities, expressions, and perceptions, that is, to bring trans cinematic bodies into being.
Denial of fullness in enunciation
Opening sequences of flms can be understood as foreshadowing events, themes, motifs,
and issues to come, and as such provides a key guideline, or manual, on how to read and
what to look for in a flm (Thomas Elsaesser 2012, 115). In the very frst shot of DBC, the
spectator is aligned with its main character, Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), through
the use of a point-of-view shot (See Figure 1 below). Compressed between dark, haze-producing slats we are presented with a blurred vision of a man carrying a large American ﬂag
atop a powerful Quarter horse.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 925
In the remainder of that frst scene of DBC, we continue to follow Ron at a Dallas rodeo.
He engages in a sexual act (with two women), and after this, we see him making some extra
money on the side (he’s an electrician) by setting up bets with rodeo riders. When he stands
to lose one of these bets, he makes a run for it, and has himself willfully arrested by a sympathetic police ofcer. When he is dropped oﬀ at his trailer park home (instead of going to
jail), he instantly passes out in the middle of his trailer. These short scenes framed the main
character by rodeo culture: his preferences (smoking, drinking, fucking) and his actions
(hustling, gambling, cheating). The flm will use these traits set up at the beginning and
elaborate on them throughout the flm: it will show us further (attempts) at sexual encounters, the way money is used and abused and the (semi-) legality of the protagonist’s actions,
and, fnally, how he tries to outsmart fgures of authority and the law. As such DBC adheres
to the formal rules of a flm’s exposition, clustering its main character and themes
explicitly.5
However, an added salient detail in this opening sequence is the way sound helps the
viewer to constitute an even more subjective connection with Ron. The flm’s opening shot,
the subjective point-of-view shot, is further underscored by the use of internal diegetic
sound: sound that comes from inside the mind of a character.6 The viewer hears a slowly
increasing high-pitched noise, indicating physical uneasiness, pain, or even danger. This is
a highly subjective type of sound, suggested as what Ron experiences in his head. By positioning the viewer on a visual as well as aural level with Ron, it is immediately clear that the
flm will exclusively favor this character’s position of knowledge, or put diﬀerently, Ron will
be the character the spectator is forced to identify with right from the beginning of the flm.7
Conversely, the audience does not have a chance to see or feel with the trans* character
Rayon in the same way, experiencing her sickness and desires. She oscillates throughout the
flm between a secondary presence and muted absence in relation to Ron’s noted Texan
heterosexuality, never coming into a full enunciation in the flm, let alone becoming the
privileged point of recognition and knowledge for the spectator. Rayon’s incomplete
Figure 1. Opening shot of the flm.
presence raises the question of how the flm diﬀerentiates bodies according to a cisgender
and overtly heterosexual perspective.
In his 1979 essay Body, Voice, flm theorist Stephen Heath analyses instances of the presence of people in flms that oﬀers a succinct set of tools and problems relevant to DBC.
Throughout his flm theoretical writings, Heath is particularly interested in the problem of
ideology in cinema. His main contention is that cinema creates the illusion of a coherent
subject position for the spectator through a specifc signifying practice. In order to critique
this illusion of coherence, the analyst must deconstruct the text. Heath observes how flms
are “full of people,” but questions, “what is this ‘fullness’ of people in flms?” (Stephen Heath
1981, 178). In response, he delineates a number of categories operative in narrative fction
flm: the agent, the character, the person, the image and, lastly, the fgure. Seen within the
particular context of narrative flm, both agent as well as character are predominantly understood in the sense of narrative agency, their role in the action of a narrative. Person and
image, though, basically relate to the individual playing the agent or character, which in the
former case would be a human actor, and in the latter, a star, whose presence lends a “luminous sense” to the character (1981, 181). Finally, the category of the fgure takes up all the
previous categories and unites them in a certain constellation, an order of importance and
in a historical point in time.
However, Heath is quick to state that this type of categorization of a fgure has its limits,
most certainly when it comes to thinking about the complete capture of a body within any
one of these categories. His explanation of the fragmented body, alongside the already
noted positioning of the spectator with Ron’s point of view, helps us to understand how the
presences of Rayon/Ron (Leto/McConaughey) fracture along diﬀerent lines:
The body in flms is also moments, intensities, outside a simple constant unity of the body as a
whole, the property of a some one; flms are full of fragments, bits of bodies, gestures, desirable
traces, fetish points. (1981, 183)
The uneven presence of the body is as crucial in Hollywood narrative flm as it is in pornographic flm, Heath goes on to stress, and as such, it is necessary to, “explore conditions
of presence, since understanding in this area has important implications for alternative practices of cinema” (1981, 183). Exploring the conditions of how a body becomes presenced will
point to the myriad ways in which people and their bodies are represented diﬀerentially in
flm. People in flm, Heath stresses, “are always in systems of representation, are always part
of an enunciation, for that and never ‘immediate’ or ‘themselves’” (1981, 183–184). This article
takes its cue from Heath’s observation on the importance of a close analysis of the systems
of representation (an enunciation and its conditions). Cinema in particular oﬀers an important site for analyzing the imaging of trans bodies, for it follows what Susan Stryker (2013)
has termed, “the cinematic logic of transsexual embodiment,” with correspondences between
the activities of a flm production’s cutting room and an operation room. In both cases she
sees the cutting of the physical medium of the body/image, the splicing of images together
in new ways, and the projecting of the medium so that it becomes a public way to tell a story
through those constructed images.8 In our analysis of DBC, we reverse course to start with
the flm’s mode of presencing in order to trace out the cisgender logic of cinematic trans
embodiment.
Here, we understand the flm text to be of crucial importance in the analysis of the bodily
presence (and absence) of the trans* character Rayon. Given that cinema is a signifying
practice creating a certain presence, as Heath states, the political question is, “how and to
926 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
what extent is it possible to transform those conditions, that presence?” (1981, 191). Even
though we do not set out to address this issue specifcally in this essay, it remains in the
background of our analysis. The flm oﬀers diﬀerent manifestations of presence, visually,
bodily on the one hand and aurally, through the voice, on the other. Heath does not elaborate
in great detail on the concept of voice, apart from the observation that the voice constitutes
a diﬀerent condition of presence (1981, 178); hence, we look to how the voice as a critical
aspect of an embodied subject has special valence in Transgender Studies.
In Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ’s) “Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century
Transgender Studies” issue (May 2014), Andrew Anastasia foregrounds the use of voice as a
keyword in relation to the acts of listening and hearing as opposed to the more formative,
metaphorical use of voice as “the agency by which an opinion is expressed, and the expressed
will of a people” (2014, 262). Instead, he states, the voice an sich needs to be the focus of
attention. One needs to listen to the actual voice, its vibrations and the way a voice can
“pierce us in unexpected ways” (2014, 262). Here, voice is akin to though not necessarily
conjunct to physical presence; Anastasia remarks that with regard to “how others make sense
of a trans* voice, especially relative to one’s physical appearance, [it] can provoke great
anxiety or pleasure” (2014, 262). This suggests a potential fracture with and fetishization of
voice as a trace of the body. In our approach to trans fgures in flm, we look at how the
presencing of the Rayon trans fgure’s voice in DBC fails to both embody the agency of a
represented people and provokes more anxiety than pleasure in the context of the flm.
Our analysis of the Rayon character takes these aspects of body and voice into account,
not to demonstrate the limitations of this representation, which are numerous (and which
we do above, brieﬂy), but to point out how, in what ways, this partial, unfulflling presence
is constituted within the flm text in politically pernicious ways. In the following sections, we
frst deploy a narratological analysis of Rayon, where the idea of presence will be approached
through the concepts of character (a composite, a helper), plot (cause and eﬀect), and
agency. Second, the analysis will deconstruct Rayon’s presence and absence, onscreen and
oﬀscreen, in focus and out of focus, on the level of the flm’s aesthetical and technical aspects,
primarily in its mise-en-scene (staging) and cinematography.
A character study: composite, helper, trans* mammy?
Our analysis of Rayon begins with the notion that she is a fctitious character embedded in
a historical storyline about the actual, global AIDS crisis experienced on the local level of
Dallas, Texas. Unlike the real-life Ron Woodroof, Rayon and Dr Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) are
both composite characters created by writers Craig Borton and Melisa Wallack after interviewing multiple transgender activists and doctors who faced similar struggles with accessing drugs and administrating care (Aisha Harris 2013). The writers created Rayon as a foil to
Ron, a character whose generosity he learns from, but who also challenges his homophobia
so that as the hero he may undergo a transformation (Harris 2013). The disease and its discourse ignite already prevalent sexual and racial prejudices; Ron is shown to conquer both
the illness and its social ills. In this sense, Rayon is not only a composite, but forms the position
of the “helper” or ally, a key fgure accompanying the hero who themselves has no major
emotional or narrative arc but is the catalyst (Christopher Booker 2004).
That the main and supporting character hierarchy maps onto social inequalities is typical
in Hollywood fare. Steve Friess (2014) responded to the Academy’s celebration of Rayon’s
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 927
“brave portrayal” by reminding us that back in 1940 African American Hattie McDaniel won
an Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With The Wind. He argues that 20 years from
now the “sassy, tragic-yet-silly Rayon will belong in the dishonorable pantheon along with
McDaniel’s Mammy” and charges the flm with producing a “crude throwback of a less aware
era” (2014, n/p). We submit that the multiple levels of spectator (dis)satisfaction with the
character of Rayon stems mainly from the composition of her gendered and sexualized
persona as being less than and subservient to the hetero patriarch. As we explain below,
the trans* mammy is strikingly similar to racialized forms of mammyism.
Cast as a white but poverty-stricken, gender non-conforming person DBC paints Rayon
as someone with multiple afictions, with her trans identity and drug abuse ultimately being
her true sources of suﬀering rather than having AIDS. For his part, Ron shows disgust at her
“weakness” in relation to both her femininity and drug addiction, despite the fact that he is
a known drug user. Leto acknowledges that the writers scripted Rayon as a composite gay
cross-dresser and drag queen, whereas he decided to play her as a trans woman who wishes
to transition physically and live full-time as a woman (Diane Anderson-Minshall 2013, n/p).
He goes on to call her representative of “the Rayons of this world, of gays and lesbians,”
further evidencing his confusion between gender and sexual identity. Rayon’s scripted “girl”
look borrows heavily from the iconography of the fabulous drag queen (wigs, heavy makeup,
and sexy clothing) and cross-dressing (fetishistic shots of her at the mirror, caressing her
clothing). No discussion of her desires for hormones or surgical procedures is included, but
neither does she give name to a desire not to transition. Rather than reﬂect the ﬂuidity of
80s trans cultures in which to be a queen could include being gay or a partial bodily transformation, the character of Rayon appears a composite of sexualized stereotypes about
various gender non-conforming identities, practices, and desires. Her defning features as a
street-wise sex worker with a heart of gold underscores how unimaginative a trope Rayon
actually is.
The plot relies entirely on Rayon being a productive “helper” to realizing Ron’s ambitions:
she is the cause to every eﬀect in birthing, maintaining, and saving the buyers’ club. She frst
gives Ron the idea to charge other sick people for access to AIDS medications, she then
recruits club members from the disproportionately aficted queer community, and fnally
she sells her life insurance to her father in order to keep the club going in the face of high
court fees. From the standpoint of the narrative arc, it is hard to fathom how, when it is her
idea, her people, and her money, that DBC became, in the words of Jack Mirkinson “a flm in
which the hero of the AIDS movement is a straight bigot who helps educate all of the people
he once despised about how to treat themselves and fght the system” (2014, n/p). Regarding
its stunning historical reversal of cause and eﬀect, Mirkinson points out that “[i]n its haste
to canonize Ron Woodroof […] it almost entirely erases the real saints of that fght: the men
and women of the LGBT community who saved their own lives” (2014, n/p). A last dialogue
between Rayon and Ron produces this dizzying inversion: as she gives him the cash from
her life insurance, he formally extends his hand, she then pulls him in for a hug and whispers
in his ear, “thank you.” Surely Ron should be thanking Rayon who performs this last sacrifce
before she dies, but not when the character of Rayon must be the ever-grateful helper acting
in the service of the savior patriarch.
The flm marks Ron as aggressively heterosexual, in contrast, Rayon has no specifc sexual
identity of her own. On DBC’s website Leto speaks in the video “Making Rayon Real” about
how he felt Rayon was someone who “wants to be loved, to love,” yet her only on-screen
928 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
seduction is of Ron as a kind of John, unmistakably in a car in the area she works in. Rather
than a straightforward sexual seduction, she tries to sell him on the value of her assistance,
lending a sexual edge to her servicing role for Ron. Akkadia Ford suggests that Rayon pays
for her gendered and sexual transgressions with the punishing narrative arc of a ruined,
“‘fallen woman’ who must eventually die” (2016, 135). Parker Marie Molloy argues that “the
outcry against Rayon in Dallas Buyer’s Club is less about Jared Leto playing a trans woman,
and more about an industry where Rayon is the only trans woman allowed to exist” (2014,
n/p). Rayon fulflls the predominant trans tropes Molloy oﬀers: a sex worker, a deceptive trap
for hetero men, and a dead body.
Though Leto states he understands that “this type of role is usually only treated as comedic
relief,” and that “I was intent on putting a real person up on the screen, and not a cliché,”
further examination suggests Leto embodies a highly clichéd trans mammy (AndersonMinshall 2013, n/p). Where Friess provocatively suggests that despite her whiteness Rayon
can be likened to a Black Mammy, Joelle Ruby Ryan (2009) takes the analogy even further.
She analyzes a series of flms that produce the specifc visual and narrative repertoires of the
“Transgender Mammy,” a gender-variant character marked by servility and allegiance to
hegemony, who becomes defanged through comedic aﬀects and sexual dysfunction or
asexuality. Given the caveat that racial diﬀerence is not analogous to gender diﬀerence, it
remains worthwhile to compare the conditions in which diﬀerent kinds of “mammies” result
from the projection of racial anxieties or sexual anxieties operative in society.
The history of African American mammies on-screen derives from a larger structuring
mythology of race and gender, having its heyday in the 1930s during the era of Jim Crow
laws. Like the fantasy of the kindly helpmate of the white family found in “Aunt Jemima”-
types, transgender mammies are present to care for their ruling cisgender class. Rayon fulflls
this role in the context of the AIDS crisis, for instance in tending to Ron when he is sick and
to run the people side of the buyers’ club ofce in the hotel.9 A cousin to the helpful aunties,
Spike Lee comments that the “Magical Negro” is a guardian angel fgure who saves the day
with “great powers but who can’t use them to help themselves or their own people but only
for the beneft of the white stars of the movies” (quoted in Ryan 2009, 183 footnote 4).
Similarly Rayon’s relationship with Ron is marked by her ability to solve his problems, suggesting she is a “Magical Tranny” who amazingly swoops in with the necessary money just
in time.10 The character of Rayon is also positioned to be the educator of Ron, a mammy
function to promote acceptance and dispense free expertise to cisgender people who otherwise treat them horribly (Ryan 2009, 129). Like the Black mammy, the trans mammy presents the myth of deriving happiness and meaning from subordination to the hegemonic
ruling class.
Insightfully, trans activist Riki Wilchins comments on the addition of camp characters to
a flm as a means of deﬂecting the “viewers’ discomfort from old, outdated stereotypes by
introducing new, outdated stereotypes” (quoted in Ryan 2009, 133). Leto’s achievement of
a starved feminine body performing non-threatening acts of seduction and care work shows
the spectator once again damaging myths—“oh, this old thing” (T. L. Cowan 2015, 165)—of
trans feminine bodies bearing the brunt of sexism and violence against women, virulent
transmisogyny, and the criminalization of sex work. The trans body is still read through the
prism of the mythological image and Leto’s attempted presencing through body and voice
lacks any critique of the structured inequalities that produce Rayon’s presence. No wonder
then that trans spectators have questioned, “are we still dealing with this old thing?” of the
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 929
comedic-tragic trans prostitute. In Cowan’s words, performers who take on trans roles should
embody these “criminally deviant or iconically tragic fgures in need of rescue” only in an
eﬀort “to jam the machinery of image production … to mark the specifcity of what is elided”
(2015, 172). Known for his long hair and lilted southern voice that could lend a luminous
sheen to Rayon’s realness, Leto might have embodied a more complex version of the trans
woman myth. Instead, he ascribes the weight-loss, waxing, and achievement of Rayon’s voice
as mere “physical challenges” for a cisgender actor rather than related to historical practices
of gender transitioning (Anderson-Minshall 2013).
Despite the shortcomings of the narrative placement and development of the Rayon
character it is worth evaluating whether the formal framing of Rayon by the cinematography
and mise-en-scene oﬀer any contradictions or further cement the subordinate helper role.
So how does Rayon appear, what kind of cinematographic presence does she have in the
flm?
The positioning of presence: imaging manifestations of a trans character
Here we focus on the visual presence of Rayon constituted in the text of the flm by performing a close analysis of four key scenes that represent the full spectrum of the narrative
development (resulting in the inevitable decline and death) of Rayon. The scenes we will
focus on are the introduction of the Rayon character, a group scene in the buyer club’s
makeshift ofce, a confrontation in the supermarket between Ron and a friend, and fnally,
a scene that anticipates Rayon’s death and its aftermath. Through this analysis, we will
uncover the ways in which DBC positions the spectator with Ron and how the character of
Rayon is persistently denied full presence.
In the introduction to this essay, we analyzed the frst shots of the flm, highlighting the
importance of a flm’s opening sequence, from which we argued that the spectator is frmly
aligned with the character of Ron. The appearance of Rayon after about 30 minutes of screen
time puts the previously established point of view with Ron in a diﬀerent light.11 Ron has
been taken into hospital and is in bed; even in his miserable physical state, he tries to impress
and ﬂirt with his female doctor, Eve. After Eve walks away from him, the flm’s second notable
female character is introduced. Before we see her, we hear Rayon’s voice from behind the
curtain, saying, “Honey, you don’t have the slightest chance.” Only then does she open the
curtain to reveal herself (see Figure 2).
The introduction of a character by way of a disembodied voice is of course nothing novel.12
Similarly, the “reveal” of a character by opening a curtain falls into an analogous category of
dramatic gesture. For a brief moment, Rayon is privileged as a body-less voice, free of the
constraints of her physical body.13 This potentially powerful position (the voice behind the
curtain, not unlike in Victor Fleming’s 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz) is however, promptly
corrected. Ron, and the spectator with him, is presented with the “failing” femininity of Rayon.
She is presented with short hair tied back under a scarf, wearing a pink dressing gown over
her ﬂat chest, and overdone make-up. All of which contribute to our understanding she is
not a “real” woman. The dialogue confrms this is also Ron’s point of view: she says, “I’m Rayon,”
to which Ron nastily replies, “congratulations, now fuck oﬀ.” Additionally, the husky “Honey”
that adds a feminine touch now seems in contrast to her physical embodiment, and therefore
adds drama to her reveal as a double reveal of her so-called true sex designated at birth by
the appearance of one’s genital morphology. Danielle M. Seid (2014, 176) explains this as
930 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
the trans moment in which normative standards of sex/gender truth are brought to bear on
a trans body that is shown to be other than it is presented, in this case by a voiced feminine
use of language, a timbre that provokes hostile anxiety.
In this scene, two recurring motifs that encapsulate the problematic relationship between
Ron and Rayon are frmly established. First, Ron’s physical uneasiness that leads to his disavowal of Rayon’s femininity and second, the exchange of money as a way to temporarily
by-pass that discomfort. Their frst interaction is playing a game of cards with a betting pool,
during which Rayon beats Ron. An exchange of money takes place. Sensing they may share
a similar interest, Rayon tells Ron about the clinical trial for AZT and how to make money by
peddling their prescription drugs to other infected people. As the scene progresses, the talk
about money and the exchange of it appears to loosen Ron up. Then when he gets a cramp
in his leg, Rayon is quick to help him by providing water and a massage, then making oﬀ
with her winnings. (See Figures 3, 4, and 5).
The rapport between Ron and Rayon is underscored by the cinematography, since they
are captured in the same frame.14 This may lead the viewer to believe that this might be the
beginning of a beautiful friendship, albeit one based on both characters’ penchant for money.
It is striking that Ron’s uneasiness with Rayon actually seems to be least present in this
introductory scene that cements their identifcation and a one-way relationship of intimate,
physical care. In the following scenes that we will analyze, the distance between Rayon and
Ron becomes more pronounced through the flm’s construction of their diﬀerentiated bodily
presence, which results in Rayon fading into a disembodied absence.
After having set up their buyers’ club, Ron and Rayon conduct their business from a motel.
This transient space allows them to pack and leave on short notice, if the circumstances
demand. The location of a cheap roadside motel evokes deeper connoted meanings for a
devious, sexual space, which is further worked out in aspects of the mise-en-scene. At this
point in the flm, Ron’s buyers’ club is attracting more and more customers. Rayon’s part in
all of this remains vague, she appears to be an unspecifed liaison with fellow sex workers
and members of the gay and trans community who have contracted HIV and could become
Figure 2. introduction of Rayon.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 931
members of the buyers’ club. The lack of development of this storyline is startling given the
history of HIV being known as the “gay disease” when it was frst identifed. The staging of
this scene indicates that in their working relationship Ron is in charge and that the Rayon
character is simultaneously a part and apart from the main plotline of the story (the selling
of alternative medicine to HIV patients). As the shot below shows, a triangle forms between
Ron, Eve, and Rayon, literalized in the geometric framing of their bodies here (see Figure 6).
Even though all three characters share the same frame, Rayon is set apart not only in the
deep background of the shot, but also by a division in the room. Interestingly though, this
shot captures the triangular dynamics of the three main characters: Ron arguing with his
Figure 3. Rayon helps Ron with a leg cramp.
Figure 4. Ron drinks water Rayon gives him.
932 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
potential, but unattainable, love interest Eve who is slightly out of focus while Rayon lingers
in the background. Also note that the only character in complete focus is Ron. This recurring
stylistic aspect of DBC’s use of triangularization (and not only a simple hierarchical contrast
with Ron) and lens focus will become more pertinent in the following scene we will
analyze.
The next shot breaks the established triangle, to include Rayon’s unnamed friend/druguser/companion/lover, a wooly-headed, lithe boy whose combination of femininity and
masculinity lies between Ron and Rayon (see Figure 7).15 The triangle has become a more
balanced square of desire, though brieﬂy. Rayon’s threatening sexual presence is, however,
Figure 5. Rayon wins the card game.
Figure 6. Ron appeals to eve with Rayon in the background.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 933
more overtly felt in one aspect of the mise-en-scene. In the motel room, the walls are decorated with pictures of 1960s and 70s teen idol Marc Bolan, whose music is also featured on
the flm’s soundtrack and can be heard in the background during this scene (see Figure 8).
While fxing his piqued gaze on the pictures, it takes Ron a while to notice that some of the
pictures are of this androgynous and sexually ambiguous man. Again, the presence of Eve
in this shot serves to set up a diﬀerentiating hierarchy of femininity. In this case next to
pictures of Bolan, whom Rayon loves and identifes with, are some pin-up girls on motorcycles and the “real” woman Eve (her name is of course also not coincidental as the frst woman,
recalling a Bible-ordained sexual diﬀerence). Ambiguous (Bolan) and fantastic (pin-ups)
representations of femininity are contrasted with the cisfemininity of properly heterosexual,
Figure 7. interpersonal dynamics at the buyers’ club ofce.
Figure 8. Buyers’ club ofce’s hierarchy of femininity.
934 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
though unattached Eve. What is striking is the fact that while Rayon herself is left out of this
shot, out of the frame, out of the picture; Bolan becomes the fetishized part of her, the part
the flm associates to her less than full embodiment of femininity. Filmic bodies are always
“fragments, bits of bodies, gestures, desirable traces, fetish points,” Heath (1981, 183) tells
us, yet, it is indicative of the flm’s hierarchization of femininity which bodies are given more
bodily presence and which remain fetish points or traces.
In a brief scene that takes place in a supermarket, the motif of physical unease with a
trans character is represented by the use of selective focus. Ron and Rayon are food shopping
when they run into Ron’s old drinking buddy TJ. In their initial exchange, TJ looks over Ron’s
shoulder and remarks, “those fucking faggots are everywhere.” He is of course referring to
Rayon, who is oﬀ screen. When Rayon walks into the frame, meaning to shake TJ’s hand, Ron
misgenders her by urging TJ to shake “his” hand (“He said hi to you”). Ron wrestles with TJ,
who is forced to touch hands with Rayon. In this scene, the three characters do share the
same frame in the key moment, when TJ is forced to shake hands with Rayon. This might
seem as some sort of (forced) association between them, but this is not the case. Here, the
salient use of selective focus uncovers the real issue: the confrontation between two men
who have a standoﬀ over the meaning of a trans character (see Figure 9).
The positioning of the characters is telling: Ron and TJ are facing one another, when Rayon
enters the frame (and the fray) she forms a triangle, with TJ as the pinnacle blocking a part
of the frst plane of the frame, and Ron and Rayon on the same right-hand side. TJ is strongly
favored in this scene up to this point, since he is always in focus. When he tells Rayon “Fuck
you,” the camera’s focus switches to Ron, who grabs TJ and wrestles him into submission.
Rayon remains the bystander throughout. When the three characters are all in the same
frame, she’s the only one who’s out of focus, signaling the weight of this scene: the heterosexual cisgender men having a fght over the (associated) meaning of a third character who
is given no sense of agency, literally blurred out as a subject. Towards the end of the scene,
Rayon is granted two reaction shots, which put her in focus for the frst and only time in this
scene, but they capture her implied clear gratitude for her chivalrous partner. This scene
Figure 9. Confrontation in the supermarket with triangularization.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 935
further underscores Rayon’s need to be saved by Ron due to her failing agency; she is presented as a character in rapid decline.
Rayon’s actual death, her moment of dying, is not shown in the flm, but we can analyze
two brief scenes that anticipate the empty tragedy of Rayon’s death and its aftermath. In
the frst scene, which seems unconnected to the rest of the flm’s plot, the viewer observes
Rayon as she is sitting in front of the mirror. In this intimate moment, she mutters the cryptic
line, “God, when I meet you… I hope you’re pretty.” Rather than fulfll a plot function, the
scene serves to reinforce the trope of the tragic trans woman seeing herself as a failure,
misunderstood in life but hoping she will be recognized in her afterlife. Shortly after, Rayon
dies oﬀ screen, and the spectator is only allowed access into her grey hospital room through
the character of Sunny. Sunny stands in front of the window by an empty bed wearing a
dirty grey-white oversized T-shirt, a washed out light permeates the room while he folds
Rayon’s leftover clothing, notably a gown (see Figure 10). This fabric is like a shroud for the
absent body, signaling its intimacy through proximity to death and her self-identifed feminine gender. It also enables the flm to bypass any representation of a physical act of dying
in which Rayon might assert some agency. There is only that which is left behind, a fragment
from her once colorful wardrobe, a flmy fetish point.16
Finally, the absence of Rayon becomes extremely clear in the way the spectator is positioned in one of the fnal scenes of the flm. After Rayon’s death, Eve (who has just been fred
from her job at the hospital) comes to visit Ron in the motel ofce. The previously established
pattern between these two characters (Ron trying to impress Eve and possibly strike up a
sexual relationship with her) is again played out. Here, the mise-en-scene comments on the
triangular relation between Ron, Eve, and the now permanently absent Rayon. Eve walks in
and acknowledges the shrine that was installed in Rayon’s memory (see Figure 11). The flm’s
cinematography then closes the book on the Rayon character: with one pan to the left,
Rayon (or her memory even at this point) disappears from the flm’s diegesis (see Figure 12).
Instead, the end of the shot favors and emphasizes the possible unifcation of the
Figure 10. after Rayon’s death in the hospital.
936 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
heterosexual couple brought together by the shared circumstances of the departed, or rather
absented, trans character.
Demanding more of an enuciation: flm’s bodying potential
It might seem counter-intuitive to ask of flm, a notoriously immaterial medium, to “body”
forth and enunciate trans fgures with a material force. However, we submit that any cinema
that involves a trans character has the potential to bring new kinds of bodies into existence.
Thus trans cinema studies should not be limited to the framework of enumerating
Figure 11. Rayon’s shrine invoking presence and absence.
Figure 12. Ron and eve alone.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 937
stereotypes; however frustrating and dubious they may be, stereotyped characters are part
and parcel of how fction (and even non-fction) flm operates. We propose to shift our scholarly expectations to the horizon of presence: to how a character can be complex, have agency
in a flm’s narrative, and how they arrive and act within the flm’s mise-en scene. What kind
of bodily and voiced presence does an actor’s character achieve? How does a flm assemblage
a trans body in terms of following a cinematic logic of transsexual embodiment?
This way of perceiving and evaluating cinema does not disparage the ways in which all
flms have partial bits of bodies, gestures, traces, and fetish points. We should not expect
the coherence of a complete or full body—a trans cinema might instead look less like the
standardized bodies of cisgender heterosexism, and more like the embrace of a non-normative body, however dispersed. What matters is how those bits are treated and placed into
relation in terms of cause and eﬀect, the narrative arc, and degree of agency. Characters are
made in the ways the flm’s system of presence assembles them, including casting and star
intertext. So, the evaluative question of a flm’s political and ideological subtext becomes:
in what ways does it rely on presencing trans characterizations via cinematic aspects such
as cinematography and mise-en scene?
In our case DBC does in fact disappoint the spectator looking for a new kind of flmic trans
body. By recentering white heterosexual masculinity at the point of crisis and heroic redemption in the grand narrative of the HIV epidemic, queers, trans folks, and people of color are
removed as agents of change from the story. We have seen how cinematically the flm’s
mise-en-scene and cinematographic aesthetic including focus and framing collude in the
narrative of the great white male’s resurrection at the cost of the counter-history of trans
people and people of color. Further evaluation of popular representations of trans fgures
should take into consideration how the construction of presence works within the medium’s
grammar along racialized, gendered, and sexualized lines, and how it establishes hierarchy
and agency according to the axes of diﬀerence. The point is not that flms should accede
towards reality, for they can do so much more in terms of assembling new imaginary bodies.
Filmic texts like DBC that construct and position trans femininity as merely supportive, conﬂicted and (a)sexual, or not really being there, are hardly worth viewing, for we have seen
these disappearing acts before.
Notes
1. In our title and frst sentence we use the term trans* to indicate the widest possible range of
gender identities, expressions, and perceptions possible that are gender variant or gender nonconforming. The * sign attached to trans derives from online communities where an asterisk in
a search engine functions as a wildcard for any term with the same prefx. For legibility we will
use trans throughout the text, also widely used as shorthand for a range of gender variance:
transgender, transsexual, transvestite, genderqueer, and so on.
2. The term cisgender is used throughout the text to refer to a non-transgender person, that is, cis
is someone who experiences no or little incongruence between their assigned sex and gender
identity (i.e., assigned female and living as a girl/woman). Cis, like trans, coming from Latin
meaning “on the side of” whereas trans means “to cross,” hence it refers to gender identities,
expressions, and perceptions that stay on the side of one’s assigned sex rather than crossing a
socio-cultural barrier erected if not maintained by biomedical sciences.
3. We table the question of how trans cinema, working outside mainstream production companies
and recognition by major award bodies, diﬀerently handles gender transitioning/ed characters
and plot, which is addressed by Steinbock (2016).
938 L. COPIER AND E. STEINBOCK
4. For a discussion of trans sexualities and their representation see Zowie Davy and Eliza Steinbock
(2012), and Eliza Steinbock (2017). For a qualitative analysis of transgender characters on
television see Jamie Capuzza and Leland Spencer 2017.
5. See for instance David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson 2008, 86.
6. See Bordwell and Thompson 2008, 284.
7. The importance of the opening shot becomes most evident when we look at the flm’s very last
shot. The fnal shot mirrors the opening shot: it is, again, a subjective point-of-view shot (of a
rodeo rider observed from behind a wooden fence in the arena). In this fnal shot, the rider is Ron
himself and it functions as a wish-fulfllment: he rides the bull one last time. The act of mirroring,
or repeating, gives the flm a bracketing structure: the narrative is bookended, bracketed by
these two subjective shots belonging to the flm’s main character. This fantasy underscores
and reinforces the dominance of the character’s subjective point-of-view throughout the flm.
8. Stryker explains her project’s theoretical interests in the lecture “Christine in the Cutting Room:
Cinema, Surgery and Celebrity in the Career of Christine Jorgensen” (2013).
9. DBC even replaces Rayon’s management of the buyers’ club with a Black lesbian type character
(the credits list this character as “Denise,” played by Deneen Tyler) when she fails at her duties
due presumably to her drug addiction. The trans mammy appears then as not quite as reliable
as the original black mammy.
10. Though Ryan does use this term, borrowed from Lee, Jordy Jones’s article “Gender without
Genitals” (2006) on Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) was published three years previously
and also employed the “magical tranny” in his analysis of the Yitzak character, developed from
“magic negro” literature that he applies to the character of Luther Robinson.
11. Rayon’s appearance around minute 30 follows conventions of the timing of the presentation
of a key, yet supporting character.
12. For a thorough mediation and analysis of the relation between voice and female embodiment,
see Kaja Silverman’s (1988) The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema.
13. It is the voice without body, that is exerts the most power. As Silverman argues, the female
voice is always brought back to the body. This embodiment undercuts the potential power
disembodiment entails, which is often more accessible to male characters (Silverman 1988, ix).
14. The “same-frame heuristic” is explained by Warren Buckland and Thomas Elsaesser (2002, 89–90).
15. This character is never mentioned by name in the flm. The credits list him as “Sunny” (played
by Bradford Cox).
16. The gauzy and shimmering sheath is a classical Hollywood marking of the fetishized feminine
body, a point famously elaborated by Laura Mulvey’s (1975) readings in “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema” drawing on Mary Ann Doane’s analysis of Marlene Dietrich in the flms of
Josef von Sternberg.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank our two anonymous reviewers for their incisive, helpful commentary. This article
was made possible in part by postdoctoral funding from The Netherlands Organization for Scientifc
Research (NWO-Veni) awarded to Eliza Steinbock.
Disclosure statement
No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This research received no specifc grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-proft sectors.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 939
Notes on contributors
Laura Copier is an Assistant Professor of Film and Television Studies at Utrecht University. Her research
is focused on the interdisciplinary exchange between religion and popular culture, flm in particular.
Her monograph Preposterous Revelations: Visions of Apocalypse and Martyrdom in Hollywood Cinema
1980–2000 (Shefeld, UK: Shefeld Phoenix Press, 2012) analyzes the divergent representations of
the Apocalypse, in image as well as in words, appearing in contemporary Hollywood cinema. E-mail:
[email protected]
Eliza Steinbock is Assistant Professor Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in
Society. They publish on trans* cultural production, porn/sexualities, and contemporary mediascapes,
including articles in the Journal of Homosexuality, Photography and Culture, TSQ: Transgender Studies
Quarterly, Spectator, and in over 15 edited volumes as well as co-editor of the “Cinematic Bodies” special issue for the Somatechnics Journal. Their current project is “Vital Art: Transgender Portraiture as
Visual Activism” (funded by NWO). www.elizasteinbock.com. E-mail: [email protected]
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