Can a cisgendered actor play a trans character?

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so progressive

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Google it.

Also some of my trans friends are actually quite... Good looking. Unlike that person above...

I feel odd saying it because I remember when they were guys. :p
 
Tunney said:
OCuk on a cis male actor playing a trans woman character: It's called acting, get over it.

OCuk on a black actor possibly playing James Bond: James Bond is white! A black actor can't play James Bond! :mad::mad::mad:
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James Bond is an existing character. Some people object to making changes to existing characters (unless they are realistic changes as a result of things that happen in the story, e.g. a person aging).

You are treating too different things as being the same thing and they are not.

Also:

1) It is ludicrous for you to ascribe that position to OcUK, regardless of whether you mean to refer to the business or to every person on these forums. You're making yourself look silly.

2) I agree with the general idea of not changing established characters without good reason in the story, but I think it doesn't apply to James Bond. The original James Bond was born in 1920 or 1921. A James Bond today who very obviously isn't in his mid 90s therefore can't be the same person. "James Bond" must be a codename that has been used by different people over the decades, so any change in the character isn't changing an established character.

So are you claiming that I never post on these forums and my posts somehow appear here from somewhere else?

The problem that trans people have with this is that it reinforces the false idea that a trans woman is just a man in a dress.
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Why should their kneejerk ignorance be made anyone else's problem? Do they think that Daniel Craig really is a secret agent licensed to kill? Or are they otherwise able to understand that actors are almost always pretending to be something they're not? Also, why are you assuming that all "trans people" think the same thing? "They're all the same" is an irrational prejudice in itself unless it's applied to a group of people who have chosen a particular position on something and even then only in the context of that thing. Which isn't the case here.
 
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I thought the whole idea of acting was to portray someone you are not, in a nutshell.

We've seen relatively sane actors play really really good 'crazy' roles, is the mental health industry crying about that? Nope, because its an example of fantastic acting.

If a straight person can portray a trans or gay character then more power to them.
 
Dis86 said:
The operative words being i said is.. You said was. I'm talking about now. You're talking about something in the past that has changed.
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The operative words are the ones establishing the context. That was a homosexual actor playing a heterosexual character for years. Your reply about a different character decades later is a non-sequitor. Anyway...is the actor who plays the different Sulu gay? If not, then it's still an example of an actor playing a character who has a different sexual orientation.
 
Participant said:
Undoubtedly, were it not for the fact that he's black.
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I think it doesn't matter for this particular character. A James Bond who is on active duty today can't be the James Bond who was on active duty in the 1950s. The age isn't anywhere close to matching up - the original James Bond would be 96 now!

Unless you bring in time travel or a lack of aging, James Bond must be a name used by different people at different times. So there's no reason why Idris Elba couldn't play the role of James Bond - he's simply the next in a line of James Bonds. I'm assuming from his name that Idris Elba is Welsh, so even his nationality fits (although I'd be OK with a foreign actor playing a British secret agent if they did a good job of the accent - I think that would fall under an actor playing a role).
 
Avenged7Fold said:
It is not about portraying a trans character exactly like a trans character but portraying a character as the director/writers see fit for the role. It is not an excuse, it is not a documentary. They felt he was best for the role due to his achievements, do you think a trans person would have fit the image that the director had better? ofc not or they would have picked one.

The character is trans but 'trans' is not the character. Actors play a character not a gender.

If they wanted just anyone that was trans to fill trans roles or white people to fill white roles, then they can hire amateur actors for next to nothing and save big production costs. Fact is that a gender or sexuality does not represent a character, the same way that a stereotype does not represent gender or sexuality.

In fact, the argument for casting just trans people for trans roles is contradictory to the argument against stereotyping them

'they should be more suited to the role, as they generally are more likely to act like a trans'

And

'Not all trans people are like xxx. It is just a gender and not representative of their personality or behaviour'
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This, very much so.
 
Pudney said:
It's a descriptive term. You'd use it to describe people, it doesn't actually have to be used to describe yourself (you are allowed to talk about other people, even today).

Frankly it's a word. Why care that much about a word? It's shorter than writing "not transgendered" as well.
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Some a couple of posts earlier mentioned that their grandmother sometimes uses the word "darkies". That's a descriptive term. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a good term to use, even though she doesn't use it in a negative way (as many people do with the word "cisgender").
 
yer_averagejoe said:
Isn't Cisgender a perfectly logical word to use in place of where there wasn't one already?

I.e, it's a lot easier to say 'Cisgender' than ''Born Male or Female and identifies as Male or female respectively' (if I'm understanding the term correctly).

Will people also stop saying 'Straight'. You can be cisgender and gay so Straight != Cisgender. This isn't a discussion about sexuality. It's a discussion about sex. They are not the same.
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Gender and sex aren't the same either.
 
Tunney said:
As I said, trans people are upset because the casting of cis men as trans women perpetuates the myth than trans women are just men in dresses.
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It isn't completely a myth - that is what they are from a physical perspective when transitioning.

Sure the mental perspective is different but... this is acting! Actors portray all sorts of things they've perhaps not experienced in real life, it is part of what makes them good actors.

Essentially they need someone who is physically male to play a part where they transition into a female... it doesn't really matter if the actor playing that part identifies as male or female or is gay or straight as, well, they're acting - so the mental/gender identity issue is irrelevant.

Plenty of gay and straight people play roles that don't reflect their actual sexuality their real life identity doesn't seem to be an issue there, and in fact there has been plenty of history within acting of people playing a different gender - women didn't even used to be allowed on stage at some points in history so were played by men in dresses. Likewise women sometimes play male roles. Why should trans women, as a gender, be an exception to this? Surely people campaigning for equality ought to be seeking equality not a special status.
 
look, omg, they've cast women as men

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2012/sep/04/theatre-shakespeare

Not since the 2003 Globe revival of Richard III, which boasted a triumphant Kathryn Hunter in the title role as a gleeful, scampering villain with a highly developed sense of the ridiculous, has there been such a high-profile all-female production at a major theatre. Until now. The news that Phyllida Lloyd will direct an all-female and all-star cast in Julius Caesar
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For anyone who is actually bothered about a trans person being played by a non-trans person:

Do you also have an issue with the above - women playing male roles?

If not then why not? Why should there be a special status for trans people whereby only trans actors can portray them but the same not applied equally to women portraying men?

And FYI Kathryn Hunter is awesome to watch on stage and pretty damn good at playing male roles.
 
I Kim's of agree with this.

I am still furious they cast Patrick Stewart to portray a captain of a space ship when clearly an actual spaceship captain would have been appropriate for the role.

Don't even get me started on Christian Bale.....
 
Ok I'm convinced on the black James Bond question. However Idris is too old now. The next Bond needs to be James Norton. Either that or a tranny.
 
dowie said:
For anyone who is actually bothered about a trans person being played by a non-trans person:

Do you also have an issue with the above - women playing male roles?

If not then why not? Why should there be a special status for trans people whereby only trans actors can portray them but the same not applied equally to women portraying men?
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99.99% of the time, male roles are played by male actors. Subverting the gender of the actor can be a fun twist because it happens so rarely.

How many trans roles are played by trans actors? 20%? 10%? The only mainstream role that comes to mind is Laverne Cox in Orange Is The New Black. As I said before in the thread, if this was a one off then there wouldn't be such a backlash. Unfortunately it's part of an ongoing trend though.

If 80% of male roles were played by female actors there would be riots in the streets.
 
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