Sleepaway Camp is additionally problematic because even inasmuch as it goads the viewer into sympathizing with the transgender character's plight, it does so in a way that feeds into a stereotype whose prevalence is frequently exaggerated by transphobes, representing the fear of forced transitioning.
This is just one of many examples of really poor treatment of transgender characters in films of this era (and probably up to today), who are irrationally and disproportionately depicted as homicidal maniacs. Which is really no more than a reflection of a really poor understanding (and subsequent fear) of the transgender experience by the public at large.
Very accurate. I’ve read some perspectives that consider it positive in the sense it portrays the horror of being forced to live as a gender other than one’s own, but the fact that it does so by forcing a probably cisgender boy to live as a transgender girl is more effective at exploiting fear of trans people and “forced transition” than of fostering sympathy for the trans experience. Even still, it exposes a lot about the viewer at the time. I’d like to think things have changed since, but 2012’s “The House at the End of the Street” had nearly the same twist.
That's an interesting perspective. You can always flip these things around (for example, The Who song I'm A Boy suffers from the same problem, yet can be viewed as affirming the transgender experience if you consider it sung not by a cis-boy but an AFAB trans-boy). But I'd be hard-pressed to call it a "positive" portrayal given that it (along with most of these stereotypical portrayals) was almost certainly not conceived that way. Still, I commend the filmmaker for at least trying to do something novel with the genre way back then (not so much in this day and age).
Sleepaway Camp is additionally problematic because even inasmuch as it goads the viewer into sympathizing with the transgender character's plight, it does so in a way that feeds into a stereotype whose prevalence is frequently exaggerated by transphobes, representing the fear of forced transitioning.
This is just one of many examples of really poor treatment of transgender characters in films of this era (and probably up to today), who are irrationally and disproportionately depicted as homicidal maniacs. Which is really no more than a reflection of a really poor understanding (and subsequent fear) of the transgender experience by the public at large.
Very accurate. I’ve read some perspectives that consider it positive in the sense it portrays the horror of being forced to live as a gender other than one’s own, but the fact that it does so by forcing a probably cisgender boy to live as a transgender girl is more effective at exploiting fear of trans people and “forced transition” than of fostering sympathy for the trans experience. Even still, it exposes a lot about the viewer at the time. I’d like to think things have changed since, but 2012’s “The House at the End of the Street” had nearly the same twist.
That's an interesting perspective. You can always flip these things around (for example, The Who song I'm A Boy suffers from the same problem, yet can be viewed as affirming the transgender experience if you consider it sung not by a cis-boy but an AFAB trans-boy). But I'd be hard-pressed to call it a "positive" portrayal given that it (along with most of these stereotypical portrayals) was almost certainly not conceived that way. Still, I commend the filmmaker for at least trying to do something novel with the genre way back then (not so much in this day and age).