Halle Berry under fire for wanting to play a transgender man

Jesus Christ.

The issue isn't so much that Halle Berry was taking the role in the first place (although, in 2020, with trans actors needing the platform more to assert themselves as mainstream so that, culturally, they aren't excluded, they should obviously be considered for the part). The issue is that Berry's initial statement was "[it's] a character where the woman is a trans character, so she's a woman that transitioned into a man. She's a character in a project I love that I might be doing."

In that short statement, Berry misgendered the character she would have been playing, which is absolutely the wrong tack to take and just shows how much she misunderstands the community/nomenclature, and if she was to make such a blunder in two sentences, then it's incredibly unlikely that the project would have handled the story with the respect it deserves. It likely would've been another Danish Girl, which is a horrible mischaracterization of Lili Elbe and the transgender community at large.

The argument isn't that cis people can't ever play trans characters (although, again, trans actors need the boost so that they are actually put on a level playing field; once they are accepted as a mainstream level on par with cis actors, then maybe we can revisit this). The argument is that if cis people are going to play trans characters, they should at least understand the fucking nuances to the character beyond "they once were a girl but now they're a boy, but I'm still gonna refer to her as a girl."

Pretty much. I always try to remember this scene and always pass it along since this is a movie board.

One of the great line readings in film history - really gets cracking at 2:15 "and you're just the man to do it"........this is the Liberal (more accurately far Left) POV we see in the US gone too far in 2020. 

We know what Trump looks like when he goes too far (scary) but we rarely discuss his equivalent on the opposite end of the spectrum and it's just as scary - often more so.

Sure, this a little off-topic .........but what the hell we aren't doing anything else today ........ and it's a scene we should all think about ........a lot..........some of us for the first time ever I reckon.

Cis-actors have been taking heat for playing trans parts for years now but I think Berry is the first to actually misgender her subject, which was amazingly stupid of her. Surely it wasn't intentional, I mean she's not Ben Shapiro, but still what a monumental fuck-up. How do you pursue a role without even knowing who you're playing?

More generally, the entire counter-outrage narrative of "actors being actors" is the same kind of woeful simplicity/intellectual dishonesty of separating the art from the artist but it's vastly worse because it displays both a profound ignorance of privilege/representation and inability to prioritize even the slightest bit given that privilege--basically a total unwillingness to engage with meaningful social and sociopolitical factors. I don't think Brie should've had to apologize for Bojack but if you're more bothered about that than by the fact that grossly under-represented minority groups seemingly aren't even being sought for a lot of these roles than your priorities are in the wrong place. The dogmatism of PC outrage can be insufferable, but the ignorance and apathy of counter-PC outrage is often so much worse.

And the project probably won’t get made now without an star like Berry anchoring it.

Well said.

I dunno man - without Eddie Redmayne THAT movie may have not been made either (It made 123 million ) and the guys who made the movie may have felt he was the ONLY actor they'd make it with. Would it be better to not have been made at all?  Worse?  Neither?

That's a big deal - artists want their work to be seen and don't want to be told who to cast and they could easily walk away from some projects too. That's always a risk.

In another post you said this: "....... inability to prioritize even the slightest bit given that privilege--basically a total unwillingness to engage with meaningful social and sociopolitical factors."

There's also an inability to also prioritize the artistic choices of filmmakers and the economics of the marketplace - that's at least as important as "sociopolitical factors" isn't it?  

"Prioritize" is the right word........I'm not sure it's as easy to assess as we think. Halle Berry is "barely relevant" or is she "the only Black BA winner ever". 

If there was any good to come out of the Danish Girl movie directed by Oscar-hungry hack (hardly an artist) Tom Hooper, it's that it propelled forward conversations about the necessity for trans representation (a lesson many are still struggling to learn). As an example of how not to make a trans narrative, you can't do much better than The Danish Girl. It's a cautionary tale.

As for artistic choice, I'd posit that if a director is unwilling to cast a trans performer in a trans role esp. if it's a central role, then they don't care to actually represent the truth of trans experience and outing themselves as exactly the wrong kind of person for the material. It's a contradiction: creating narratives that are sympathetic to the trans experience while actively participating in something that contributes to the negative aspects (re: being underrepresented/ignored/denied) of that existence. One could pass that off as ignorance 10 years ago but now you have to be intentionally ignorant to not grasp this contradiction. Transpeople have called for greater exposure/representation. The ball is now in the industry's court and in the courts of individual writers/directors/casting agents/producers who make these decisions. Casting a cis-performer in this climate is willfully ignoring those pleas and begs the question why.

This isn't too far off from black/yellowface. The same logic anyways. Hiring a bankable star like Katherine Hepburn to star in yellowface might've been a practical economic reality in the 50s but now in a streaming climate where independent cinema is booming and films are made cheaply ever week it's just an excuse for laziness and/or transphobia. Lack of resources is not the issue here.

And I've literally only seen the economic factor excuse used in relation to conversations around representation for minorities/POCs. I said it before in another post: literally tons of films are bankrolled every year with acting newcomers in lead roles (a huge chunk of A24's lineup just for an example of one studio). Don't remember any of these kinds of money narratives surrounding "The Souvenir" or "The Rider" or any of Eliza Hitman's films, all of which featured nonactors or acting unknowns in the lead, and those are just recent examples off the top of my head. Don't understand why this pressure to perform at the BO is only leveled at certain kinds of films about certain kinds of people as an excuse to not hire said kinds of people ().

if the intent is to draw a comparison between Berry/Redmayne, their situations are quite different. Berry won her oscar two decades ago in a controversial film that didn't earn any other Oscar nods. Her win was an upset and remains divisive among those who remember it and forgotten by most everyone else. Redmayne won a year before starring in Danish Girl (in a BP, screenplay and actress nominee) and was hot on exposure from other Oscar-nominated prestige projects. He was much more bankable for money and oscar potential in 2015 than Berry is now. Berry's 2010s resume is populated with just as many misses and hits and the films where she was the lead (The Call, Kidnap, Kings) were panned. Economically she's not relevant. Dramatically she's not relevant.

Ok we just see this in opposite ways then, no worries.

To me, first and foremost it's an artist rights issue mostly and everything prioritizes down from there - I am not opposed to diversity obviously but when that means it takes the artists right away to make a project exclusively as they see fit, I'm out at that point. 

I mean you're taking a lot of cheap shots here at Hooper imo (so he's not Herzog, that means he has no artistic impetus to control HIS projects at all?), if an artist (yes, Hooper) feels strongly about the material and the actor he/she wants in it we're then branding that as "the wrong kind of person" now (!) - THAT'S being way too dogmatic just on the surface!  

.........as for blackface/yellow - I defended blackface (or what is called that, incorrectly) for Olivier's Othello  but the 3 actors I gave in my example Brando/Olivier/Pacino controlled to some large degree all of those projects at a conception stage. There wasn't a producer really who could stop them and if they had been stopped - movie history would be far different and far duller - our personal takes on those examples aside it's all iconic work.

That assumes all projects start from a producer/directorial level as opposed to a star level and if they do originate at a star level we're then telling the revenue generating star they "can't" do something?  That's scary to me......I don't see "independent cinema as "booming" I see all cinema as "dying" and relative to the thread topic - I don't dispute that sometimes you want to cast someone more right for the role like I said it's part of the priorities discussion ........but in general I'm more inclined - far more - to go with Armond White's quote (God help me) in my first post from his Hamilton review: 

"The show’s non-traditional casting obsession clashes with the limitations of today’s nutty progressivism that says actors can no longer pretend to be who they are not."

Tommen_Saperstein so where do you draw the line? Can a trans actor play a cis role? Can a gay actor play a straight character and can a straight actor play a gay one? I agree that trans actors should be given more opportunities, but I don’t think a trans role should be exclusively limited to them.

Brando isn't Sicilian or even Italian so should he have not taken the part in The Godfather?