This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 41, Summer 2000.
Hilary Swank won an Oscar for her portrayal of a woman passing as a man in small-town America. Boys Don’t Cry is a complex, thought-provoking film, according to Liz Kelly.
Boys Don’t Cry is the most powerful and challenging film I have seen in a very long time, and it is all the more remarkable for the fact that it has been a minor box office hit, and that Hilary Swank got the best actress Oscar for her performance. The film was written and directed by Kimberley Pierce and it tells the story of a real woman, Teena Brandon, who grew up and lived in Lincoln Nebraska (US) for most of her life, and fatefully ended up in Falls City in 1993.
The themes of gender, sexuality, misogyny and homophobia thread through the film, which offers a glimpse into the ‘small mindedness’ of parts of the US which are decidedly unglamourous, and where the term ‘dead end’ best describes the employment and relationship possibilities for women unlucky enough to live there. The absence of opportunities to construct a life with meaning and content, let alone the ‘American dream’ is starkly portrayed, and how this plays out in the lives of men and women interestingly explored. All the central characters could be described as poor ‘white trash’, all escape through alcohol and drugs. The women, however, all seem to have some form of employment and several are depicted as having dreams of something better. The central male characters on the other hand are petty criminals, who get their kicks from dangerous and pointless risk taking, with the occasional bar fight for light relief.
Into this bleak (literally) landscape enters Teena Brandon, a troubled young woman, who herself is in trouble with the police for stealing cars, who we are told has in the past been ‘locked up’ in some kind of institution at her mother’s request. Teena does not want to be female, and the film opens with her (gay) cousin cutting her hair short and Teena exploring the possibility of passing as a young man. The cousin warns her about the dangers, and makes a remark which suggests that one of problems for Teena and her family has been her relationships with women. They argue and in exasperation he urges her to either accept that she is a lesbian or have a sex change. It is Teena’s rejection of a lesbian identity — ‘I am not a dyke’ — alongside her attraction to women which sets in train events which lead to her murder.
The scene in which the key characters are brought together sets the tone of the ways in which the film explores the conjunctions of gender and sexuality. Having been thrown out by her cousin Teena Brandon is in a bar, and in defending a young woman from sexual harassment gets involved in a bar fight. Both the young woman and the two men who join in are part of the group with whom she will spend the last weeks of her life living as her male persona — Brandon Teena.
Passing on film
Boys Don’t Cry is different from the previously feted ‘cross dressing’ films — since is based on real life in which a woman did, on some levels and for a short period, pass as a man. The woman playing a man has, therefore, to be convincing. Hilary Swank’s performance is powerful and subtle, including moments of self-confidence and pleasure and scenes where gawkiness and unease are prominent. She has said that she observed her younger brothers and the men at the gym she worked out in when preparing for the role. As viewer you always watch knowing that this is a performance, but the characterisation is neither the stereotypes of Dustin Hoffman and Robyn William’s contributions, nor the semi-acceptable privileged cross-dressing playfulness of Victor Victoria or La Cage Aux Folles. This is a context where the credibility of the performance matters — as representation, since the viewer has to find the passing believable, and in the life that is being represented, since to be discovered would (and does) have high costs. Passing here is not an opportunity for cheap humour, but rather an opportunity to observe the possibilities and limitations of traditional gender identities. For example, there are moments where the freedom of being male bestowing particular pleasures and excitements is evident; but this is no simple celebration of ‘claiming power’ since the links between this form of masculinity and misogyny at worst, and disrespect for women at best, are also depicted. The most celebratory and joyful scene in the film involves three young women and Teena Brandon, in her male persona, driving in car, laughing, relaxed, enjoying each others company. It is virtually the only scene which has no tension in it; the absence of both men and the requirement to play particular gender roles provides a different kind of freedom.
Taking a position
The film is a undoubted challenge to homophobia — but remains agnostic and even slippery with respect to gender and sexuality. It is this which I found challenging and interesting — the absence of an editorial ‘line’ on how to locate the central character requires the viewer to take a position, and the position I took was not the same as that of other women I saw the film with. One of the areas of disagreement was whether to refer to Teena Brandon as ‘she’ or ‘he’. At the time, and now, ‘she’ fits better for me, but a friend argued strongly that ‘she’ had chosen an identity as a ‘he’. Within the film different ways of understanding Teena Brandon are presented — often by the character herself. She talks of being a hermaphrodite — ‘part boy part girl’, of having a ‘sexual identity crisis’ drawing on expert literature, and towards the end of the film as having been a ‘girl girl’ then becoming a ‘boy girl’ and more recently being ‘just a jerk’. Whether this slippage between biological and social constructions was intentional, or reflects sloppiness of thought and perspective is in some ways irrelevant, since the confusion rings true in terms of the characterisation. She is depicted as both attracted to and repelled by aspects of small town masculinity, and her desirability to several of the young women is — at least in part — constructed around the fact that she is different from the other men.
The film is revealing in the commentary it offers on gender in this particular context. On one level it depicts how easy it is to be male, so long as you have no desire to be top dog, and how arduous and confining to be female. But it is also impossible for Teena Brandon to assume a male role with all its complexity, routine misogyny and bizarreness. The film represents the ordinariness of brutality and male control of women with an explicitness which is both intriguing and repellent. None of the central male characters are sympathetic, but they are not caricatures either. The central male character — John Lotter — has a kind of charm, but he is inconsistent and controlling, has to be managed rather than challenged. The other key male character, Tom, is revealed as the more dangerous but only as the film progresses.
The women are depicted as both strong and defeated, they have crap jobs, crap men who they watch ‘do things’ — such as race trucks in circles with one standing in the back holding onto a rope. Most are resigned to a kind of fatalism, and escape through drink and drugs. The exception is Lana, played wonderfully by Chloe Sevigny, the young woman Brandon Teena falls in love with. She has something extra, a ‘spark’, a sense that maybe there is something better/different. She fights back — sometimes — and I found myself asking if it was love, a fascination with someone ‘different’ or a desire to escape the confines of small town misogynist US that motivated Lana.
Within the film Teena/Brandon is depicted as occupying a space ‘in-between’ — rejecting the confines of small town femininity, aspiring to be ‘one of the boys’ and enjoying the moments when she is, but nonetheless unable to embrace the casual violence and nihilism of a masculinity based on hard drinking, petty crime, living on the edge and abusing women. She defends women several times from intrusions by men, wanting to be male but not ‘act’ like them in relation to women. When Lana questions why Brandon joins in the pointless boys games the response is: ‘I just thought that’s what guys do round here’.
There are several subtle and powerful scenes in which we watch Teena switch between the fantasy persona she wants for herself and whose life she is trying to create in living it, and moments of clarity about what this means, its costs and on some level its unattainability. In a telephone conversation with her cousin Lonnie, Brandon says ‘it is so good down there’, the voice of reality responds ‘Yeah, they hang faggots’. Refusing to let go of her fantasy Brandon tells Lonnie that she intends to ask Lana to marry her, to which he replies ‘is that before or after you tell her you are a girl?’.
S/he asked for it
It is biological difference that undoes Teena/Brandon. She attempts to hide her menstruation, but Candice, the young woman she stays with, discovers the hidden tampons, and is distressed and shocked. She ends up telling John and Tom who are then determined to discover and ‘expose’ the truth; which they do with fury and cruelty. Lana attempts to protect Teena/Brandon, insisting that she will ‘look’ and then tell everyone; she vouches for Brandon, who is then forcibly undressed and Lana is made to look at Teena’s naked lower body.
What follows is one of the most distressing representations of rape I have ever seen — despite the fact that I did not actually ‘see’ it, I could not bear to watch at certain points, but the dialogue was harrowing enough. The two men take Teena/Brandon, who they have already beaten and humiliated, away in a car and both brutally rape her: one says ‘you know you brought this on yourself’. The fusion of violence, power and pleasure is palpable in the performance, and it is this which makes the scene so wrenching. Having re-established appropriate gender relations, the two men shift back into friendliness calling Teena/Brandon ‘buddy’ and insisting that she must ‘keep our little secret and we will stay friends’, followed by threatening that they will silence her permanently if she tells anyone. All Teena/Brandon says is ‘Yes I know this is all my fault’. The inter-cutting of the assault with the later humiliation of making a statement to a male police officer adds to the power of this section of the film.
It is not clear whether Teena/Brandon chose to make a report to the police, or whether this was an unintended consequence of Lana and her mother — to whose house she eventually escapes — taking her to the hospital to have her injuries dealt with. The tears of the title appear during the insensitive police interview, which is contrasted to a scene involving a woman doctor who ‘knows’ about sexual assault, and treats Teena/Brandon with care and respect.
The police report creates a crisis in the social group, when Lana’s mother finds strength to confront John and Tom, John’s defence is denial through a revealing statement: ‘If I wanted to rape someone I’ve got Mallory’ — the mother of his child, who he appears to be estranged from. It is the fact that they are soon to be charged with rape which prompts John and Tom’s lethal violence, interrupting Lana and Teena/Brandon’s plans to escape. The brutality of the murder is underscored by both the killing of Candice simply because she was there and got in the way, and the fact that Lana — in her last desperate attempt to rescue the situation, witnesses both killings.
Knowing and not knowing
One theme the film explores throughout is that of knowing and not knowing ‘who’ Teena/Brandon is. Both female and male characters comment on her ‘difference’ — her small hands, lack of fighting skills, that she is ‘good with children’. This commentary on gender becomes more marked within the love story between Lana and Teena/Brandon, since here bodies rather than performing a role are involved. A number of scenes suggest that Lana ‘knows’ on some level — she appears to notice a breast when they first kiss, but either chooses to not register or mention this. Lana’s role in the film seems to be to come to know and accept that Brandon is Teena, but even here ambivalence remains. In the middle of the film when Brandon/Teena’s identities have been discovered by the police, because of a failure to appear in court for stealing cars and she is in jail, there is an explicit conversation between the two. Lana’s response ‘I don’t care what you are I am getting you out’ is followed by a scene in which they joyfully run out of police station hand in hand. Later, however, when John and Tom publicly remove Teena/Brandon’s jeans and make Lana look, she screams ‘leave him alone’. But the final scene between the lovers implies a kind of resolution — a meeting in which knowing they are both women is shared. Lana says to Teena ‘you are so pretty’ in contrast to her use of ‘handsome’ earlier in the film; and even though they have already become lovers Lana says ‘I don’t know if I know how to do this’, to which the response is ‘I am sure you will figure it out’. It is impossible to know whether this scene is a form of poetic licence, but within the story the film tells the scene suggest the possibility of alternatives for Teena and Lana in which they could both be women differently than their experience had allowed to date.
And in the end
We are told at the end of the film that John Lotter was convicted of murder, but is currently appealing from death row; Tom was also convicted, but sentenced to two life sentences since he turned state’s evidence. We are also informed that Lana Tidsel left Falls City for some years, returning to bring up her baby daughter.
That Boys Don’t Cry depicts a real life, makes its meaning and challenges all the more powerful and poignant. For several days I pondered on whether it really is easier and safer to be lesbian, to reject conventional femininity without paying an extremely heavy price — since this was not a story based in the 1950s but the 1990s. In the end I decided that there is more space for many of us, but this relative safety depends on location — both where you live and what opportunities there are to explore a sense of self and coherence with others asking similar questions. Making sense of Teena/Brandon’s life has to begin with her location in small town USA where the possibilities with respect to gender and sexuality for women were restrictive and narrow. When asked in interview why the character she played did not just go to San Francisco, Hilary Swank responded that for Teena Brandon it would be ‘wrong’ to be a lesbian, yet she was attracted to women; the only solution she could envisage was, therefore, to be a male heterosexual. This may oversimplify this particular young woman’s struggles, but it does illustrate the extent to which masculinity and femininity continue to be constructed in opposition to one another, and the feminist ambition to loosen — let alone abandon — gender roles and expectations has had limited impact in some quarters. We are told that she had never left the town she grew up in before ending up in Falls City and her vision of the future for herself and Lana is to stay there and run a trailer park. It is tempting in these days of globalisation and the Internet to think everyone has access to information and alternatives, but even in one of the most advanced countries in the world there are huge disparities, there is a poverty of possibilities which is often connected, but not limited, to poverty in terms of material resources.
Apparently Brandon Teena has become a heroic figure within the trans/gender community in the US (and no doubt elsewhere too). Her murder is understood as a classic ‘hate crime’. But this definition is achieved by ignoring the sexual violence which was both the punishment for usurping male privilege and the issue at the root of the choice to kill her. It is more than a little ironic to label her death as a ‘hate crime’ when violence against women was excluded from the legislation which defined this in the US, and where groups focussed on sexuality chose not to link with women’s groups campaigning for its inclusion, since this might prevent the legislation being passed.
The two strongest impressions the film left me with were the dangers of being ‘out’ and the impossibility of being proud if one lives in a conservative small town, and that being poor and seeing no alternatives impoverishes women’s lives and options such that they have less resources to challenge men’s intrusions on, and control of, their lives. For feminists the challenge is how to create new possibilities not just for women like Teena Brandon but also those like Lana Tidsel and her daughter.