Switch Killer (aka Trans-American Killer):

The 80s slasher meets transgender again, except it's been displaced by 20 years. Of course, that's not to say it has a modern, realistic, or sympathetic view of trans people. An abusive boyfriend's furious when his girlfriend leaves him for a woman. And so he... transitions? Pretty much wholly problematic in every sense of the word; it is thoroughly and horribly offensive and shitty to women, sex workers, and transgender people.

The killer does not seem to transition for any personal or internal reasons, yet I get the impression that she reflects the filmmaker's perceptions of trans women (and their understanding of the audience's perceptions). Her body is shown as a monstrous mutation; completed by scarred, misshapen, lopsided and obviously 'false' breasts. Her genital status is inconsistent; in one scene she has sex with a guy for "the first time like this" (presumably post SRS) and in the following scene is shown to pee standing up. Maybe that's an attempt to shit on intersex folk too.

The film goes out of its way to depict trans femininity as false and trans identities as incoherent. It's not just trans women, though. It is openly spiteful towards all women on-screen, especially the sex workers and lesbians that populate most of its cast. The protagonist is shown to discover that she's not really a lesbian; that her deviated sexuality was simply a twisted up misunderstanding, such as the killer's (presumed) trans gender. Her girlfriend is shown to be a heartless and thoughtless bitch, and is seemingly depicted as an 'everylesbian'.

What's surprising to me is that while I hated it as a human being and especially as a transsexual woman, I didn't hate it so much as a horror fan. It was well paced and had frequent enough shock scenes. Anyone could tell that it was made on the cheap with the most limited resources, yet it still worked overall (and the faux Casablanca that is shown through out is probably the highlight of the film). All of that said, though, it is sad that we're still culturally marginalized enough that these filmmakers would depict a trans woman in such a manner.

I find myself constantly in a state of flux as far as vicarious identification is concerned... as a horror fan and as a transsexual woman. I guess the emotional part of it didn't carry as much weight before. I liked horror movies because they were often highly stylized, had a 'ride' aspect to them, could carry social/political subtexts, had cool scores and were just fun to watch. Horror films also seem to be the best marketed, and have the most iconic posters/art/characters/trailers of any genre There is perhaps a certain nostalgia involved as well, as I tend to gravitate toward horror from the 60s-80s.

Now it seems I'm trying to engage more with the story rather than focusing entirely on the formal aspects of the works, and in many of these horror movies, especially slashers, there never seems to be all that much there. I'm kind of bewildered why the transgender women are always killers in slasher films, because it certainly doesn't seem to play out that way at all in reality. Maybe its because (as I've noted before) we're so easily 'other'ed. Perhaps the conventional wisdom is that an audience just can't identify with one of those trannies. Maybe the reality of queer victimhood would detract from the fantasy.

Perhaps it is even impossible to ask a mainstream horror audience to accept, let alone identify with, queer characters (other than as incomprehensible villains and monsters). This is not unique to horror either, but it seems more pronounced there. My perception of horror audiences, from seeing the films, listening to Deadpit, visiting forums, etc. is that they are very nervous with anything that might challenge standard assumptions regarding gender and sexuality. While I don't think that being trans will hurt me so much with eventually trying to find work in the film industry (at least I only expect my prospects to be moderately more dim than they would be if I hadn't transitioned), I do wonder how a horror audience would react to work done by a transsexual woman. I'd like to think that the quality of the work would supersede any personal aspects of the filmmaker, I can't help but feel that it would be a critical factor. Which sucks because I might come up with some kickass additions to horror some day.

Tags: horror, trans
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