The history of Trans representation in the cinema and other forms of Media is important if we take into consideration that the collective viewing audience is for the most part made up of the heteronormative Cisgender public. As such, gender identity and gender expression can be ‘broadened’ in the mind of receptive viewers. This of course depends on the skill of the film makers in question and how sympathetic they are in their narrative to Trans-issues. This specific genre used to be referred to as ‘Cross Dressing Cinema’, but is now thankfully referred to as ‘Transgender Cinema’. This underlines an ongoing moral perspective or debate within the cinematic context of marginalised groups such as the Trans-community, as to whether such representation should always be by Transgender Actors or Cisgender or conceivably by both, however, I will return to this question later on. The other moral question, as hinted above is whether the portrayal is always positive or not. The answer to this question is partly historical; as the Media usually reflects the current moral ideology including notions of a given time through what has become known as Identity politics.

As the focus of this article is to look at the issues of Trans-representation, the history of this cinematic genre can only be very brief. In the very early days of the cinema there had been comedic ‘Slapstick’ Drag scenes such as Chaplin’s ‘The Masquerader’, and Garbo’s ‘androgynous ‘Queen Christina’. There has subsequently been Trans-Portrayals in multiple media outlets including Television Serials, Documentary Films and World Cinema. There have also been films within this genre that have been considered ‘milestones’ of Trans-representation, such as ‘The Crying Game’, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ and ‘A Fantastic Woman’.

One chapter within the history of Transgender Cinema which has been particularly damaging to the collective heteronormative perception of Transgender individuals, which I will here refer to as a ‘Sub-Genre’ is what has been described as the ‘Psycho Slasher Transgender Murderer’ films. My own specific favourite film within this ‘genre’ is the classic Hammer Film ‘Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde’. Although this film of course was part of Hammer’s cinematic Gothic Renaissance, it does also fall within this sub-genre. This film is famous for having put an alternative spin on the classic Gothic Horror Psychological Tale that within its narrative deals with ‘split personalities’. Dr Jekyll passionately pursues the creation of a concoction of an ‘Elixir of Life’ by extracting female hormones from murdered female corpses. However, this has the unforeseen result of transforming Dr Jekyll into the evil Sister Hyde. The Doctor is then driven to murder girls himself in order to maintain his transformation.

In all probability the first Trans-Psycho-Killer film was Hitchcock’s classic ‘Psycho’ 1960. In this the main protagonist Norman Bates is the ‘victim’ of his own fractured psyche, which clinically can probably be described as ‘personality complex’, and in which he ‘cross dresses’ as his mother and brutally murders women. This ‘chapter’ in the history of Transgender Cinema has to be seen within the cultural ideology of the time in which there was a lack of understanding of Trans individuals. As such members of the Trans community were sometimes depicted as comedic, ‘freaks’ or at worst villainous monsters and in fact there is a whole list of films involving Transgender Murderers. According to writer Michelle Smith, in attempting to perceive the ‘logic’ of such prejudice, ‘Gender non-conformity is frightening and unnatural’. Furthermore, the fact that these films depict murderers that are Transgender adds to ‘otherness’ of the murders, and engenders fear.

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The ‘Transvestism’ of  the Norman Bates character from ‘Psycho’ continued to influence Hollywood and led to the continual reinvention of this pathological archetypal trans-killer, which emerged in such films as ‘Freebie and the Bean’, ‘Dressed to Kill’, ‘Cherry Falls’ and perhaps the most recent depiction in the serial killer ‘Buffalo Bill’ in ‘Silence of the Lambs’.

Another form of misrepresentation within Trans-cinema involves the ‘festishisation’ and/or ‘sexualisation’ of the characters portrayed. Trans-women are as such sexualised as the focus of the narrative of such dramatized portrayals, and within this context is here considered discriminatory. This can be perceived in the fact that there is usually too much concentration on the Trans-female characters body-clothes and commonplace everyday details; the application of makeup and getting dressed. This typical collective discriminatory form of prejudice is based on the a priori premise that the ‘trans-women’ in question; that their behaviour is ‘unusual’ as they are not really women. As one online writer succinctly put it this ‘Objectifies and dehumanizes’ the cinematic depiction of Trans-women. Furthermore this level of prejudicial stereotyping is usually based on the premise, and can extend to, the common misconceptions of mental illness characterising trans-women in general and such individuals being mentally unstable. This discriminatory characterisation at its worst, as already discussed, led to the sub-genre of Trans-Psycho Killers.