Representation and Reality

Abstract

Along with advances in surgical interventions, transsexuals have largely taken the place of cross-dressers in film dramas and documentaries. This is not the case with the comedies we have considered. As befitting its ludic aims, the comic genre inclines more to the portrayal of cross-dressing as a temporary disguise rather than as symptom of a more permanent and profound gender identity crisis. However, none of these is recent, the latest, Mrs Doubtfire, having appeared in the early 1990s. There have been no mainstream film comedies featuring cross-dressers since Mrs Doubtfire. In contrast, filmic, DVD and Internet portrayals of transsexuals who have undergone or would like to undergo a degree of surgical reassignment have increased, a fact that both reflects the higher profile of transsexuals in the media generally, and is evidence of a continuing fascination and anxiety which are focused more and more on the ever greater scientific possibilities and permutations of physical transformation. Other representations occupy the entirely negative vehicle of the thriller, or else find expression in the uneasy mix of comedy and drama, manifestation of the ambivalent reactions to trans-gender that we have identified throughout history.¹