I turn my back for 5 minutes and the blogaysphere has been firing up over the movie Ticked Off Trannies With Knives, which I reported is showing at next month’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Everything was fine and dandy until a few days ago when gay media watcher GLADD released a statement against the movie and banged the drum for a boycott and a petition to get the film ex’d from Tribeca. Cue a lot of mud-slinging between gay bloggers, commenters, trans voices and Tribeca.
What I’ve found surprising is the amount of hostility and distrust in the gay community against GLADD itself. Some people feel strongly that GLADD shouldn’t be policing their own backyard while letting some mainstream Hollywood movies get away with thinly-veiled homophobia. But an organisation like GLADD isn’t always going to get it right – the important thing is that they get it right more often than not.
What I will say on the issue is that surely GLADD should be thinking about what kind of audience is likely to watch a movie and the consequences that might arise from exposure to the content. I can’t imagine this movie has much appeal beyond the LGBT community.
I’ve also read some real venom directed at the ‘T’ section of the LGBT community (from people commenting on blogs, not the bloggers themselves) and it raises the interesting point that, although gay, lesbian, bi and trans people are often linked by a common acronym, how much understanding is there of the ‘T’ bit by its ‘LGB’ neighbour?
So maybe any kind of discussion is good and whether you find this movie distasteful of not, its got people talking. As is always the case when anything becomes controversial, the real winners are going to be the filmmakers anyway!
As for GLADD I believe they fulfil an important role, but I can also see why they alienate some – it’s that ‘speaking for us’ thing; a bit faceless; a bit Big Brother. It might not even matter soon, because now we have Facebook and there’s already a similar campaign to stop Ticked Off Trannies With Knives, and that comes from, like, the people.
