![]() ![]() Sympathetic deaths really began to proliferate film and TV at the turn of the millennium with the release of Boys Don’t Cry, the true story of Brandon Teena, a trans man who was murdered in Nebraska in 1993. She’s disregarded for the living trans characters who have willingly sought medical “treatment” in contrast to Patricia, whose frequent arrests for cross-dressing prompt her suicide. Although the movie is framed as advocacy for trans people, Patricia scarcely figures into the film. The suicide of a trans woman named Patricia leads a cisgender doctor to tell a police inspector all about trans lives and experiences. ![]() Sympathetic trans deaths go back at least to 1953’s Glen Or Glenda, one of the earliest films to openly deal with transgender characters. But because trans characters are secondary in these narratives, the message is that trans lives are not important and that real-world violence against mostly trans women of color is normal. Some trans characters in film and television, including Fred (Sidney Drew) in A Florida Enchantment, George (John Ventantonio) in Private Parts, Eric (Pia Kamahaki) in Stripped To Kill, and Warren (Joan Marshall) in Homicidal, are killed because their characters are deemed villains, monsters, and otherwise “undesirable.” More often, though, trans characters die in sympathetic fashion, their deaths used to make a point about the marginalization of trans people. In the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment, a man eats a magical seed that turns him into a woman, and she drowns after being chased by a mob off a pier. Film has been killing off trans characters for over 100 years. ![]()
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