(I have been recuperating from a steady, low-level cold. I think. One of the problems with having severe Spring allergies is that it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether or not you have a virus, since the symptoms–sore throat, stuffy nose, exhaustion, discomfort–are pretty much the same. And it’s not like you can’t have them both at the same time. Anyway, laryngitis and obdurate congestion have convinced me that I am indeed sick, so I decided to take a small rest instead of getting hopped up on decongestants and ignoring the problem. It’s nice to be back.)
A few weeks ago, I saw this column by Chip Johnson in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Transgender teen’s life as a TV movie.” Now, Chip seems like a generally sympathetic guy, albeit complacent as a hamster. However, he was one of the legion of op-ed writers whose take on the Araujo murder was, “It’s terrible, just terrible, that she was tortured and beaten to death over a period of several hours, but we mustn’t forget that she was a LYING WHORE,” so I approached his thoughts on the upcoming Lifetime venture with a jaundiced eye.
And here we go:
The life of Gwen Araujo, the Newark boy who identified and lived as a girl and was killed because of it, is being made into a TV movie by Lifetime.
Right, let’s just get “Gwen’s” real gender settled straightaway. Moving on!
That may seem like a racy topic for a network whose forte is family stories — and is most popular in the American heartland — but network executives believe it’s high time the story of Gwen, and those like her, be told from a family’s point of view.
Transgender: sex? I’m just saying, Chip.
What’s this about “family fare?” Like, “I was stalked/raped/abused/sold into concubinage by my fundamentalist/cult-leader/drug-running/Mobster/Satanist husband/father/brother-in-law/boyfriend/boyfriend’s fraternity”? Or, “Mother, May I Become an Unwed Teenaged Pregnant Streetwalking Meth-Addicted Anorexic Child-Bride of DANGER?!” Or maybe, “Tonight on Missing: That Girl with the Bulging Eyes from Life Goes On Has Psychic Premonitions of Yet Another Supine Bound Half-Naked Woman Being Menaced by Scary Scary Men.” Has he ever watched Lifetime? It makes CBS look like Baby Einstein. The only women on that network not being sexually assaulted are the ones dying of cancer.
“Even in the 21st century, society is still separated by race, religion and gender,” Zev Braun, the movie’s executive producer, said in a statement. “It’s time those walls be taken down and for people to be accepted for who and what they are — human beings.”
So “wall” is “any remotely political or ‘racy’ aspect of being transgendered,” and “human being” is whatever’s left over?
Instead, the film, tentatively called “The Gwen Araujo Story,” will focus on Sylvia Guerrero’s relationship with Gwen, which is nothing more than the timeless story of every mother’s relationship with her child. The story had everything the network looks for when considering a script, said Trevor Walton, the network’s senior vice president for original films.
“It has all the components that make a Lifetime movie: compassion, redemption and family issues,” he said. “What a great story.”
Well, and vicious sexualized murder. I think Gwen’s gonna fit right in.
I mean no disrespect to Sylvia Guerrero, who is an amazing woman. But they did the same thing to Matthew Shepard when they told his story through the compassionate and palatable viewpoint of his mother (Stockard Channing) and father (Alan Alda). Children are easy to empathize with and care about, but in part because they are not as threatening. They are also desexualized, and–in this case and in Shepard’s–defined as extensions of their parents, empty spaces defined by maternal love. I have the strong sense that Guerrero would have had a loving and enduring relationship with her daughter had Gwen survived. I don’t think she would have had much difficulty getting to know her daughter as a complex adult.