I want you to google “Bugs Bunny Valkyrie”. Go ahead. I’ll wait while you experience my trans awakening.
That flowing golden hair, the pink eye shadow over dreamy soft eyes. The breast armour and the fattest white horse you have ever seen. The perfect woman. I wanted to be her.
If y’all are confused about what’s going on here, in 1957 Warner Bros. released a six-minute-fifty-three-second homage to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. In particular, to Die Walküre which they titled What’s Opera, Doc? A fucking romp of a cartoon wherein Elmer Fudd gallivants around the countryside singing “Kill the Wabbit!” to the tune of Ride of The Valkyries. And of course, Bugs Bunny being Bugs Bunny deals with the situation by dressing up as the Valkyrie Brünnhilde and seduces him. Iconic.
You can keep your “Lola from Space Jam”. THIS the the ultimate hot girl bunny.
You’ll be surprised to discover that this is not the only trans icon from the “Merrie Melodies Crew”. Ask any transwoman doing their voice feminisation about the importance of being able to do a decent Marvin the Martian impersonation in order to get your larynx into the right position. But apart from that… there are not a lot to chose from. Well, that is a lie… there are lots of “trans icons” from my youth… just none that you would WANT to choose.
A brief list for your consideration.
Dr Frank N Furter (Rocky Horror): I adore this campy romp, but we can’t really hide behind the fun of the character. Despite being (or possibly because of him being) a “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania” this icon bludgeons his son/sexual object with an ice axe after which he serves the cooked corpse for dinner and then proceeds to violate the consent of his guests. Top marks for style for sure, but not really “role model” behaviour.
Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre): Leatherface is trans coded you fuckin film school dweebs. Go back to stroking your 6x10 signed glossy of Tarantino, I don’t give a fuck. The hulking monster with the mind of a child and a penchant for cannibalism changes costume a number of times. When he’s performing domestic duties switches his flesh mask to the female versions. The face of an old woman with greying hair for doing house chores and then that of a pretty woman for serving dinner. The grisly blue eye shadow and red lipstick is intended to horrify.
Buffalo Bill (Silence of the Lambs): Despite the explicit dialogue defending “transsexuals” (don’t worry, I will write something about shifting nomenclature another time) as being non-violent and passive the damage is still done. Yet another monster flaying the skin from women and donning it. Buffalo Bill does their makeup, atop their head a wig fashioned from scalping a woman, the ragged edge of flesh clearly visible. We all know the scene. No one can hear the mournful strains of Q Lazarus’ Goodbye Horses without thinking of Ted Levine dancing in his rainbow gown asking his reflection, “would you fuck me? I’d fuck me.” This is the part that really hurts. Because in its own perverse way, this is what being trans is like. I’ve spent hours gazing at my body in the mirror wondering if it can be loved, wondering if it’s too horrifying to ever be considered an object of attraction let alone a valid expression of “womanhood”. Buffalo Bill asks “would you fuck me?” and I ask myself “who could love this?”. Buffalo Bill then declares “I’d fuck me.” and I tell myself “If I can love this body, for what it is, then there must be other people who could love it to?”
The list could go on. I could detail all the killers who have transed their genders in order to get away with murder. Kenny in Terror Train who dons the costume of a magician’s assistant and stalks his classmates who hazed him into insanity. Norman Bates of Psycho, so unhinged that he takes on the identity of his mother to kill, dress and wig included, to slay the women that arouse him. In the same vein that the character of Elliot in Dressed to Kill played by Michael Caine (Sir. Fucking. Michael. Fucking. Caine.)? A trans character who is explicitly stated as having gender-envy so strong that if they experience any sexual desire they will slit the throat of the woman responsible. What about Ace Ventura? When Jim Carey vomits uncontrollably at discovering his target (and person he has been making out with) had transitioned to being a woman to evade capture?
All of this adds up.
Years of seeing sporting heroes don dresses and wigs to achieve the pinnacle of comedy of “man in a dress”. The cavalcade of cisgendered actors playing trans characters and being celebrated and awarded for it. Giving Jared Leto an Oscar… a goddamn Ocsar… reinforces that this… this THING that I am doing is a performance. That it is just costuming and hair. That it is a facade over the top of something else.
I grew up seeing people like me as murderers, crazed killers wielding chainsaws and pickaxes. I saw people like me reduced to a fetish, a contrivance to get away with murder. I saw monsters. Every trans woman was a horror waiting to be inflicted on womanhood. Monsters who if you were lucky would only steal your identity and if not, they would steal the skin from your bones and inhabit your corpse.
Hell of a note to end on. So lets not leave it there. I’ll give you my favourite “Transgender Monster From my Youth”.
Gremlins 2… I fucking love this film.
It’s a romp. It’s a joy. It has amazing puppets and the cast of background characters and stunt performers is astounding. Picture it, a city skyrise teeming with gremlins and while the main cast earnestly deliver their lines in the foreground, the background is chock full of stunt performers clutching lifeless rubber monsters and running, screaming full tilt into walls, doing flips, and all-round some of the best “I am having an epic brawl with an inanimate object” combat you will see.
Also, side bar: Haviland Morris as Marla Bloodstone is without a doubt the woman I aspire to be. Just… those glasses, that hair, those power suits. Fuck!
The monsters invade the science lab upstairs, injecting themselves with various serums and formulas. One transforms into a bat-gremlin, another a spider-gremlin. There’s a gangster gremlin, a genius gremlin, a non-corporal “electric gremlin”. It’s a tour-de-force of character design and execution. But my favourite “Transgender Monster” in Gremlins 2 is so explicitly, joyously trans… one of the Gremlins grabs the “gender change formula” (oh that this were a real thing), downs it and we are treated to a slow pan up from the shattered vial to shining heels, shapely green calves and firm buttocks encased in tight leopard print spandex. The shot keeps going and we are treated to the glistening muscular forearms and shoulders so broad that bodybuilders quake with envy.
Greta the Gremlin is revealed.
Her vintage pinup hair a lurid green, her lips a slick red so perfect you wanna know who does her fillers. She places a razor-taloned hand on the shoulder of Security Chief Forster (played by my beloved Bobby Picardo) and so diverts Greta’s story arc from the rest of the gremlins. While all the other monsters clamor to escape into the city, Greta only has eyes for her man.
Of course this is film from the nineties and the Security Chief is suitable horrified by the dolled up lizard lady trying to get into his pants with the same sexually aggressive fervour of a spurrned Miss Piggy pursuing her frog. But the film cumulates in some astounding momnets of trans-positivity. The musical number of New York, New York is interrupted by the breathless strains of Rhapsody in Blue and the cast of gremlins assemble placards to form a billboard sized image of Greta’s visage. She emerges, like a pop diva, from the iris of the eye, after all, isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder? And what a beauty! Our transfemme Queen bedazzeled in red sequins and boa. The smoke, the soft lens, the fawning suitors.
SHE. IS. SERVING.
At least according to the gremlins who swoon for her. Thankfully Greta is distracted from the ultimate goal of escape and spies her man, pursuing him upstairs. So, while all the other gremlins are electrified into viscous goo, our Queen is safely absent. The last we see of her is when the smoke has cleared and the SWAT guys storm the building. Security Chief Forster calls his boss, begging them to send someone to the top of the now wrecked and powerless building to save him. Sadly it may be some time and we see Forster, covered in red lipstick kisses, cowering in the corner of a bathroom. Maybe this is pop-culture “transwomen in bathrooms” moment where all the plaintive bleating of cisgendered fear comes from? Regardles, the lights dim and Here Comes the Bride swells. Greta emerges, decked in demure white, veil and all. She is a vision to behold. She slowly, gracefully, menacingly stalks towards her man. It’s here that Robert Picardo does the thing that cements him forever in my mind as an Oscar worthy actor... He looks at her, he SEES her and with the he smallest tip of his head he communicates: “You know what? She might be a terrifying reptile, but that’s one a hot lady. So why the hell shouldn’t I?”
In a world where almost all trans characters are either killers or victims of killers, Greta the Gremlin is both innocent and the sole survivor. She’s just a girl trying to live her life in a complicated world. The object of her desire has seen her as someone who deserves to be loved, that despite the strangeness of her, she is beautiful. So, while all the other monsters are steaming piles of slime in the lobby, she is not slain. She gets to live.
–S