TV Landscape Changing for Transgender Characters

DSM’s creator Craig Wright concedes Carmelita isn’t written perfectly. “I want to acknowledge the truth … which is that there is still a slight stereotypical notion to it. But Carmelita is rapidly becoming one of the major sort of truth tellers on the show … and it radically becomes less stereotypical as the episodes go on.”

Candis Cayne, who plays Carmelita, is a transgender woman herself and thus far Cayne is very pleased with her character. “The writing staff is taking this storyline seriously as two people that are in love with each other. They are treating this character like she is just a female woman. The cast of characters around her who know sometimes say inappropriate things, but Carmelita carries herself with dignity. Billy [Baldwin] is taking it very seriously also, and he’s not letting it turn into a joke.”

Unfortunately, Dontrelle, the transgendered character on Big Shots, is portrayed far less favorably in that show’s first episode. Played by Jazzmun (female impersonator Nichcalo Dion Crayton), she is a prostitute who has sex with Duncan Collingsworth (Dylan McDermott) in a very unpleasant public restroom, and after they are both arrested during the act, is revealed as having a penis when she urinates standing up in the men’s room. Later she comes on to Duncan’s friends who appear aghast both at Dontrelle’s presence at a party they are attending and her coming on to them.

Even though Dontrelle shares some of the most offensive stereotypes about transgender women – she is a sexually aggressive prostitute, as well as devious and unethical (taking a bribe to keep quiet about her tryst with Duncan while secretly taping him for a reporter) — Big Shots’ creator Jon Feldman sees the character differently. “I actually think she’s a very sympathetic character who just happens to be a pre-op transsexual prostitute. “

Saying she just “happens” to be a transsexual prostitute seems disingenuous at best. She was written that way specifically to get a certain reaction, a fact Feldman admits. “I think that is a certain type that we’re dealing with and I think we’re mining it really for the complications, both comic and dramatic that that encounter engenders. “

Feldman correctly points out that Dontrelle is a minor character at best, and the show isn’t about her character. “But again it’s not truthfully an exploration of her, but I wanted to try to present her in a way that there is something sort of sweet and redeeming about her despite of what she does for a living and what she does in the pilot episode.”

Feldman also believes the character comes off better in the second episode because she is repentant for having secretly recorded Duncan. Says Feldman, “I didn’t want to in any way disparage her. I think she is who she is and I think you’ll see in the next episode how there’s, I’d like to believe, for the amount of screen time we can devote to this character, which isn’t a ton, but I’d like to think there’s a fleshing out of some of those things.”

Mara Keisling, Executive Director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, had not viewed the premiere of either show at the time of this interview so could not comment directly on those show’s portrayals of transgender characters, but about Hollywood in general, Keisling had much to say.

Keisling specified transgender hookers as among the worst representations of transgender women. “There’s a whole slew of transsexual prostitutes on crime shows who generally are referred to as transvestites or trannys. So I’d have to say that they are all tied for worst. Not that there aren’t transgender sex workers, but generally these folks are not portrayed sensitively and honestly and that seems to be where a lot of the trite depictions are stuck.”

Asked about why Hollywood continues to write such stereotypical characters, Keisling said, “It’s easy. … It’s sloppy, one-dimensional, insensitive and dangerous writing. Trans people have to live with these depictions and the propagation of stereotypes.”

Cayne is also tired of Hollywood’s stereotypical portrayals and she has refused to play those sorts of parts. “I decided early on in my career that I wouldn’t do anything that a transgender person wouldn’t do. A [female] transgender character would never stand in a stall in a men’s room and pee. That’s just ridiculous. If you’re going to write about characters and people, they have to have some sort of reality.”