IDENTITY

In recent news, Israel Luna, director of “Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives” has been the target of some controversy, after his film, scheduled to be premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, has been heavily criticized for it’s depiction of transgender women and over-the-top title. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Deformation has even tried to get the movie removed from the festival altogether. I don’t agree with any of these remarks, especially after looking at trailers for the movie and seeing that this director is making an artistic statement about hatred using film camp as a medium. As an avid fan of camp style movies (in particular John Waters), i can completely understand and appreciate what Luna is trying to do here. For those unfamiliar, camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of it’s bad taste and ironic value. In this context, it strongly parallels the ideas of shock and stark harshness that are found in the exploitation genre of film. The director is using exaggeration and exploitation as a means to identify issues which he is fed up with and feels attention needs to be brought to. Unfortunately though, it appears that people continue to misinterpret the exploitation genre of film.  Also, I don’t see the problem with using tongue and cheek camp to deal with real life issues. How is it offensive to mention real life events and say that the community is tired of them? If anything, i feel that this film is a creative way to reveal injustices that people in the LGBTQQ community are upset about. At the same time, however, i also feel that the shocking nature of this film, and it’s title, are a powerful tool that are being used to bring attention to the film, whether it be positive or negative. In this case, the bad publicity is also reaching out to people who may never view the film, and hopefully bringing some idea of the hate issues in the trans community to their attention by way of controversy over the film. So i guess that the camp genre is being used to underhandedly support their cause through the very shock and exploitation that their film harbors. Either way, hopefully people are able to tune in to some of the hate, crime, and discrimination among transgender people, and hopefully this film (directly or indirectly) will have some part in doing so, even though I am upset that the film producers are going to censor their own trailer and compromise their art for people who will still refuse to see the film, because they will be offended by the exploitation genre period.

—-JOE