The “road trip” might be the ultimate American movie trope — the vast expanse of the continental United States providing a vivid backdrop while the confines of a vehicle pressure-cook characters in the comedy and drama they need to discover the intricacies of relationships with fellow travelers. There’s nothing but time across thousands of miles for hearts and minds to change as drastically as the landscape.
And so it is with Duncan Tucker’s 2005 film Transamerica: Reserved Californian Bree Osbourne (Felicity Huffman) gets a call informing her that her runaway teenage son Toby (Kevin Zegers) has landed in a New York City jail and, after bailing him out, the two embark on a road trip from the Big Apple to Los Angeles, their relationship blossoming as the odometer ticks upward.
Except Bree is one week away from her male-tofemale sexual reassignment surgery and this is the first time she’s met 17-year-old Toby, who is unaware that this woman, masquerading as a Christian social worker, is actually his father.
While Transamerica may be clever word play, Bree’s gender identity isn’t the focus of the movie.
“It’s a human story in which the main character happens to be transgender,” says Tucker, who wrote and directed the film. On Sept. 11, Tucker will join folks from local LGBTQ advocacy center Out Boulder for a screening of Transamerica and a post-screening Q&A at eTown Hall.
For Tucker, Transamerica was a chance to present a transgender individual in a positive light.
“I think all [marginalized identities] in film and literature are usually first portrayed as buffoons or comical characters, the object of jokes, like Stepin Fetchit in the early movies, or gay people as drag queens or silly hairdressers,” Tucker says. “Then they become visible enough and they seem to morph into being evil, like [Buffalo Bill in] Silence of the Lambs or [Gary in] Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”
The next wave of portrayals, Tucker says, come from good intentions. Victim narratives, like that of Brandon Teena, a 20-year-old trans man whose brutal murder in 1993 became the subject matter for the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, attempt to show compassion, but still result in a polarized image of transgender individuals.
“I wanted to skip past all of that and into a story that happens to be about family and connection and love and comedy that takes [the transgender aspect] for granted,” Tucker says. “I was just so tired of everything being seen through a political lens.”
Which is not to say that Transamerica ignores “politics.”
The film successfully shakes a defiant fist at the notion that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and it sensitively navigates strained yet loving parent/child relationships. However, whether intentional or not, viewers watch Bree succumb to a number of cisgender (a term for non-transgender people) notions of normalcy. In 2012, trans advocate and writer Stephen Ira critiqued a scene where Bree refers to “Stanley,” her birth name, and her therapist (a cisgender woman) tells her client not to speak in third person. Bree, after a pause, aquiesces. To Ira, the therapist’s request was an attempt to “moderate the way that the trans woman experiences her gendered self.” Ira and others also lamented Tucker’s choice to cast a cisgender woman in the role of Bree.
But in spite of the places where some may think Transamerica falls short, it never fails to open doors to more nuanced discussions.
Sara Connell, education and services manager at Out Boulder, will lead a Q&A after the screening on Sept. 11. For Connell, the movie is still relevant 10 years later for a number of reasons, not least of which is the current media blitz on high-profile transgender people such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox.
“There has been a lot of trans visibility recently, but it’s also been limited in scope,” Connell says. “People can only learn so much and absorb so much in a short period of time. I think people are starting to grapple with this language on a larger scale and what it means to be transgender. I think the next step is to show there are lots of ways to be transgender and it doesn’t mean that any of them is more right than another.”
As an activist and publically transgender woman, Connell opens discussions wherever she goes. When she visits businesses and schools to talk about transgender issues, she says she finds people want permission to make mistakes and ask questions.
“They know these issues are improtant but they don’t want to [address them] wrong,” she says. “What that means is they don’t do it at all. What we want from this event — and from Pride and as a larger piece in general — is to start conversations, to create outlets where people can ask questions, where people can grab materials.”
And while Connell is a vocal activist, the film reminds her that every day life is activism for every transgender individual.
“For me, that’s one of the takeaways: transgender people are being radical activists just by existing and being happy and pursing a life that matters — that is radical activism in and of itself in a world that says, ‘You can’t exist.’”
ON THE BILL: Transamerica. 5:30 p.m.. VIP meet and greet with director Duncan Tucker. 7 p.m. screening, eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce St., Boulder, 303-443-8696. A Q&A with Out Boulder education and services manager Sarah Connell will follow the movie. VIP tickets $50, general admission $15.
