The Crying Game’, showing at this year’s GAZE, has a bad rep, but it’s got more than a ring of trans truth.

OPINION:

Trans Representation

This year, GAZE will screen Neil Jordan’s 1992 film, The Crying Game, the writer/director’s first foray into the world of transgender people. Released two years before I was born, the film is perhaps most famous for its crass twist, one which by all accounts left audiences of the day a little taken aback. But The Crying Game has a lot more depth than the cheap trick it’s remembered for.

The twist comes towards the end of the film with the reveal that Dil is a trans woman, and nowadays it’s unbelievable that audiences were shocked. I watched it for the first time this week and from the first moment Dil, the character at the centre of the film, walked onto screen, it was obvious that I was about to get a trans woman’s story.

In 1992, maybe it was easier for audiences to just see woman than to consider a trans narrative was being played out before their eyes. The film flies in the face of the idea that trans people are easily spotted, that we can be picked out in a crowd. Maybe The Crying Game’s twist was so successful because it sought to disprove the myth that we’re all so easily identified.

The reveal, when it comes is, well, ridiculous. Disgusted by this ‘thing’, our cis male protagonist is left vomiting. He’s forced to strike Dil down and storm off. Yet, I can’t help but find all of this theatre and drama strikingly realistic.

In a world where ‘trans panic’ is still an allowable defence for the murders of trans women in 49 of the 50 US states, is this portrayal all that unbelievable? The vomiting might be ridiculous, but the violence is true.

Equally, Dil is portrayed in a realistic light. She’s strong but in need. She’s confident, but she harbours a deep dislike of herself and who she is. She’s intelligent and yet, due to her circumstances, trapped. Despite the passing 25 years since Dil first appeared on our screens, this is a history not so far behind us today.

Dil is also undeniably trans, even if the actor who portrays her, Jaye Davidson is not. Trans women are so varied, it’s difficult to ever say what is and isn’t a realistic portrayal. It’s all completely subjective, but this attempt hits home in a very real way.

While in ways the movie’s portrayal of trans lives is inherently flawed, actually the majority of the story is right. I can understand Dil in a very real way; I feel a connection to her and her struggle. Any story which shows trans people, trans women especially, as real people in need of love like anyone else, is a story well told. For something created 25 years ago, it’s surprisingly sensitive to trans lives, and well worth a watch when it screens at GAZE.