After much hype and controversy I unexpectedly stumbled onto an impromptu screening of Catherine Crouch's The Gendercator tonight. The film's a disjointed, shitty mess. I was honestly more affronted as a student of film than as a transgender woman. The threadbare narrative was very unfocused. If she truly wanted to get her message of trans-invalidity to a viewer unfamiliar with the history of the politics at work she needed to flesh out her presented concepts significantly. Hate film doesn't have to be horrible film. Film study has taught me that the most unredeemable ideology can be attributed to great cinema, like Griffifth's Birth of a Nation, Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Jacopetti/Prosperi's Africa Addio.

It seems almost pointless to attack the film's politics when the work is so ridiculous that it cannot support the weight of any argument. The plot is woefully undeveloped; she doesn't explain how binary-identified transsexual individuals came to be powerful and respected pillars of future society, just states so much as fact. Stereotypes abound, the simplistic and fascistic gender concepts projected onto the "trannies" seem to be rooted in the most conservative and restrictive gender theories of the past century.

The argument can be made that she is simply referencing a long-standing ideology implicitly understood by her intended audience, and that more thorough explorations are not necessary. That may very well be the case, as its essentially an experimental film that will probably not be seen outside of queer fringe circles. However, it is presented as a standalone work and therefore its ideas must be self-sustaining and well supported within the film. The superficial approach taken severely undercuts any true political ambition therein. It is a testament to our community's marginalization that such a stunted and meager work can be threatening.

I'm surprised that I've yet to read a criticism of the film from an analytical perspective. Perhaps others consider the tools of cinematic analysis to be steeped in patriarchal notions, and decided that such an approach is inapplicable to a 'radical' work such as this (though that's certainly not prevented the analysis of any film to my knowledge). The focus has largely been on the film's message, with no major attention given to the manner in which that message is relayed. It's fucked up to show this film under an inclusive LGBT banner, but as a political tool its far too reliant on a certain assumed bigotry to be very harmful. The weakness of her ideology, and the contrived and compromised formal application of such, leaves the work a toothless, hateful mess of a film.

Tags: film, politics, trans
Current Mood: contemplative