TERFy movie reviews
Sex-Realist Subtext of WICKED, MARTHA, THE DIPLOMAT, and ROCKY HORROR
One is still allowed to have an opinion about movies even as a TERF. So my movie reviews have become an oblique way to assert the challenging new perspective my LGBTQ friends have come to expect from me.
Movies are the organizing principle of my friend group as we all love film, and many of us were employed by movie theaters in our youth, and would spend hours talking about films so I’ve put in my time as a film aficionado, and garnered respect for my insights. It is the one arena in which I can claim authority as a social commentator. My one paragraph capsule movie reviews have long been a feature of my Facebook offerings.
Commenting on these reviews also allowed friends to express their opinions or reactions to mine without getting into the fray of discussing actual political views.
As TERFs know, the entertainment industry is the propaganda arm of progressive values especially of the DEI and trans inclusive variety. So movies are a perfect vehicle for me to make social commentary on American society, through the entertainment industry, as it attempts to incorporate the woke messaging of its progressive brethren. Here are two movie reviews that allowed me to expand my personal TERFy perspective and sensibilities and tease my friends with it.
Went to see WICKED. The prequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ that promises to show how the wicked witch of the West became so wicked while at school with roommate Glinda the good witch. This sumptuous feast for the eyes borrows from the boarding school magic of Harry Potter and crosses it with the pink Barbie set that moved in with all of Glinda’s over-the-top wardrobe tricks.
The sartorial choices were so woke witty, that the costuming fully expressed the ridiculousness of the they/them generation, dressed in school uniform options that were half pleated skirt and half pants, complete with gay stylin’ spectacles and colored strips of neon hair. With this Greek chorus voicing of LGBTQness led by Glinda the shallow princess of social justice virtue-signaling who wishes to be popular by doing good, I could totally get into this unintentional (or not) subtext.
Thus I was able to perfectly resonate with the sensitive portrayal of the Wicked Witch in all her Greeness and thoughtful intellect. This sympathetic old school Goth girl, who is super smart and different, and clearly has more magic and pagan witchery in her little finger than all the school put together, is mentored by the ever delicious Michelle Yeoh playing an elder star professor with an enviably elegant and ornate wardrobe of floor length robes.
Sporting all this diversity, force-teamed onto the Oz franchise, it gave the audience more, well diversity, to look at. Are the Munchkins a people like Hobbits or a racially diverse people of global immigrant Munchkins? White men are back in favor to offer young white male viewers somewhere honorable to go beyond white male toxicity, at least for now, since this two hour extravaganza is just part one.
I loved that a Black woman was portraying such an interesting lead who defies stereotype while befriended by the popular white girl who is not nearly her equal. Her Greeness is so serious and sympathetic, and so well tailored she is really in a movie of her own which fit in perfectly with my own feelings of being an outsider and a political pariah, especially when she takes a stand at the silencing of certain professors teaching reality-based history, then embarks on a public reckoning with the Wizard who, as we know, is the ultimate charlatan.
The splendid self-aggrandizing Emerald City he is designing has always allowed Hollywood to fall in love with itself despite the earnest messages of “there is no place like home” in dull Kansas. There will always be somewhere-over-the-Rainbow Oz for gay (now queer) kids to run away to.
The wizard charmingly portrayed by Jeff Goldblum plus a dollop of scripting to remind us of what authoritarian language is used on the road to tyranny in this cinematic vehicle of cultural reckoning, where we get to re-envision our national mythology on the eve of a dreaded regime change.
There was also TERFiness in Martha Stewart on her own journey of going from being very good to being very bad. In her story, I could see my own journey, in her public shaming, of breaking rank from progressives and becoming a wicked TERF. It was a chance for me to obliquely express my feelings on the matter. The time she spent in a women’s prison also intersects with our TERFy stake in the plight of women in prison which she now, no doubt, can understand, and her insights add to the dialogue of the culture of women in prison.
Watched MARTHA. Netflix documentary about Martha Stewart, her fame as a domestic diva and her rise to the pinnacle of success as a publicly traded company centering her name as a brand, only to have it all tank when she is arrested and prosecuted for insider trading.
Watching her expressions as she is interviewed provides restrained clues of her emotional journey, as her moments of self satisfaction overly a barely contained anger alongside her determination to remain true to herself. That she resurfaces with a comedic comeback alongside Snoop Dog provides an ironic twist.
As a professional organizer embracing the motto “better done than perfect”, and a trash repurposing aesthetic of serendipitous collaboration, I have kept my distance from the Martha Stewart brand (reserving my real contempt for Marie Kondo).
My interest in Martha Stewarts’ journey began with her prison sentence. It was clear to me that, as the richest woman in the world, the big boys wanted to make an example of her. That she is changed by her five month prison sentence is a big part of her story making her, not only more sympathetic, but an example of solidarity with the plight of women.
Her journey from being “a good thing” to being viewed as bad and unredeemable yet still determined to stick to her guns struck a chord with me. This passage of badness having somehow become a right of passage for notable women coming into crone hood.
The entertainment industry is now going through its own reckoning as it is exposed as pushers of trans ideology.
As Annette Bening readily admitted how her trans kid made her interesting, she unmasked the celebrity transhausen mom factor. So, too, did actors push Hollywood to force team itself with the DEI and trans inclusion agenda. But as we saw with Disney throttling back on its transgender character in a kid’s cartoon series, the entertainment industry is forced to change its tune if the majority of the audience votes with their feet. The entertainment industry, being subjected to market forces, learns fast.
A gender critical LGB Alliance TERF is quoted in the linked article, above, about Disney. This is a big step in drawing attention to the fact that not all gay/lesbian people are going along with the T ideology of the transing of society that is being pushed by our LGBT lobby groups. At least readers of this conservative magazine will have more ammunition to push back in their discussions with liberals.
Other strategies are afoot. I’ve been watching the Netflix series THE DIPLOMAT which has what could be viewed as a trans identified character. The minor character of Ronnie shows up in scene after scene holding important documents or making announcements. She is a woman with short hair who wears men’s suits with bowties which is very noticeable in the formal setting of the American embassy in London. Ronnie, with her androgynous name, is never referred to with any pronouns ever. I find this a significant strategy because she is played by a female actress. If the script gave her pronouns the series would be lambasted if the actress was not trans.
She does have a female lover so the audience can have it both ways. As a masculine presenting woman she can be perceived as either a lesbian or as a trans man though she has no facial hair and has the voice of a woman. The public does not yet realize the effects of testosterone on a woman’s body. With no pronouns for her cross-dressing presentation she is clearly a lesbian to those who understand that butch lesbians may prefer men’s clothes. To the indoctrinated public they see the trendy trans character. At least there is no indoctrination taking place with the use of trans language and born-in-the-wrong-body ideology. So for the price of being viewed as trans trendy, we get lesbian visibility. Or do we? Does it really matter if it is normalizing butchness. I do want representation for that cross-dressing aspect of lesbians to be taken as normal. Movies groom the public long before political significance becomes attached to it.
Just yesterday, I was describing the 1975 cult classic ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW to my girlfriend who had not seen it and wasn’t part of this midnight movie favorite that basically primed our generation for trans queerness, yet held back on the nonsense of trans ideology. It is the TERFiest movie of all largely because of the song “I’m just a sweet transvestite”. This bold acknowledgment that the whole cross-dressing, black corset, fishnet stockings and stacked heels outfit is a kink and a sexually subversive celebration, as a work of art, should be revived as an example of how we managed the such kink presentation before the social capture by trans activists.
The intent of the Dr. Frankenfurter household was to celebrate the subversive nature of its misfit characters and infect, seduce and corrupt any virgins that show up at their door with car trouble. Yet it had no intention of unhinging from the sex-based reality that was the basis of transvestitism as a subversive act. The midnight movie phenomenon of ROCKY HORROR held space for all the weird kids to hang out in until they grew up. The same kids who are being transed now. I mourn the loss of this space and the collective aspect of it that has now been replaced by the artificially created trans child and the narcissism of the transhausen parent.
And that’s all folks. I am boarding a midnight flight, tonight, to fly to the Far East as we used to call it when English was allowed to be Western Centric. I have always loved the exotic romance of that phrase. Being far away from this Western lunacy is a welcome retreat. So I’ll be taking a break until the end of January. I will be on my farmstead in northern Thailand with an international crew, of students of natural building, as they learn from us and help us to build our second round house of locally sourced materials, mud, straw and bamboo, on our permaculture homestead.
I had a similar thought about the Ronnie character in The Diplomat, although I am leaning positive on it because they never did say "they" or "he" and she obviously was not medicalized. The only potential hint at "trans" would be that it looked like she might have worn a binder - but I could not be sure of that, so I choose to believe she is just a small-breasted woman, maybe wearing a sports bra. I also choose to believe she was simply a lesbian who likes to dress in "masculine" clothing. We need to see plenty of normalized "butch" lesbians today as so many such women are being medically harmed and turned into so-called trans-men.