This is a film that uses a rat-a-tat pace of film clips and voiceovers that overwhelms the viewer. The discussions move too quickly about specific films, to broad concepts of race and gender, to the depiction of transgender stereotypes. Interviews click back and forth while hundreds of film clips flash before your eyes. It is impossible to process what you are seeing and hearing at the same time.
For those of us who do not struggle with transgender issues we aren't familiar with the differences between many terms - like transvestite, transgender, transexual, cross dresser, drag queen... and I am not sure the documentary knows either. The main theme of the doc seems to be 'Please stop laughing at us', but we are shown pics of Milton Berle in a dress, and Flip Wilson as Geraldine Jones while discussions continue about transgendered women. These are comedians and they are funny because Merle is haplessly inept in women's clothes, and Flip Wilson is funny because he takes his character Geraldine so seriously. Every time a man puts on a dress is not a transgender moment. Sexuality is not necessarily defined by the clothes you wear, Marlene Dietrich wasn't a man because she wore trousers.
I got halfway through the film and shut if off because I was exhausted from a bombardment of film clips and voiceovers that bounced all over the place without defining terms, and with very judgemental responses to any form of cross-dressing or shaming any straight person who is shocked to discover their potential sex partner doesn't have the parts they thought they had. Perhaps the documentary eventually did define terms and lightened up, but I am sorry if transgendered people can't laugh at Victor Victoria - I can.
This documentary was made for transgender people, not for anyone who is trying to learn what being transgender is and how it has been depicted in Hollywood. This could be a good documentary but it needs to be re-edited, slowed down, reorganized and a host voice-over added -- as it is, it's too frantic and judgemental to make a point.
For those of us who do not struggle with transgender issues we aren't familiar with the differences between many terms - like transvestite, transgender, transexual, cross dresser, drag queen... and I am not sure the documentary knows either. The main theme of the doc seems to be 'Please stop laughing at us', but we are shown pics of Milton Berle in a dress, and Flip Wilson as Geraldine Jones while discussions continue about transgendered women. These are comedians and they are funny because Merle is haplessly inept in women's clothes, and Flip Wilson is funny because he takes his character Geraldine so seriously. Every time a man puts on a dress is not a transgender moment. Sexuality is not necessarily defined by the clothes you wear, Marlene Dietrich wasn't a man because she wore trousers.
I got halfway through the film and shut if off because I was exhausted from a bombardment of film clips and voiceovers that bounced all over the place without defining terms, and with very judgemental responses to any form of cross-dressing or shaming any straight person who is shocked to discover their potential sex partner doesn't have the parts they thought they had. Perhaps the documentary eventually did define terms and lightened up, but I am sorry if transgendered people can't laugh at Victor Victoria - I can.
This documentary was made for transgender people, not for anyone who is trying to learn what being transgender is and how it has been depicted in Hollywood. This could be a good documentary but it needs to be re-edited, slowed down, reorganized and a host voice-over added -- as it is, it's too frantic and judgemental to make a point.