The Crying Game at 30: director Neil Jordan reflects on the film’s complex legacy
In an exclusive interview, Neil Jordan looks back at the film's controversial twist, casting troubles, and Forest Whitaker's cricket skills
Film Features The Crying Game
Thirty years ago this week, Neil Jordan’s acclaimed The Crying Game, having been nominated for six Academy Awards, received a wide release. It had been a long road getting there. The movie—which starred Stephen Rea as Fergus, an IRA operative, Forest Whitaker as Jody, the British soldier whom he is tasked to kill when a prisoner exchange fails, and Jaye Davidson as Dil, the girlfriend of Jody whom Fergus later falls for—had to get many investors from outside the U.K. During the cash-strapped production, Palace Pictures owner and Crying Game producer Stephen Woolley had to siphon profits from his own arthouse cinema in London to keep the production afloat.
Ultimately, American audiences embraced the movie both for its memorable characters and its exploration of what it means to be human. Yet because the Miramax marketing campaign revolved around the surprise revelation of Dil’s transgender identification, that plot twist became more of a focus, one that likely distracted many people from the bigger picture of the story. That scene of sexual revelation—which involves Fergus vomiting in his initial shock—was understandably distressing for many trans members of the audience.
The scene and the reaction has led some to assert that The Crying Game is transphobic; it has also been argued that some people have projected their transphobia onto it. The story’s romantic relationship, however bumpy because of Fergus not yet being comfortable with his sexuality (as opposed to Dil, with hers), continues after that moment. He also goes to jail for her. Dil was a landmark character in cinema in 1992—a confident Black trans woman whom the audience could sympathize with rather than shrink from.
Three decades later, even debating its sexual politics and that controversial scene, for many The Crying Game remains a highly charged political thriller and a moving love story. Writer-director Neil Jordan sat down for a video call with The A.V. Club to look back on the film’s creation, themes, legacy, and why it still resonates with many people today.
The A.V. Club: As I recall, this story existed three or four years earlier as A Soldier’s Wife, but you only finished about a third of it and couldn’t get past that first act?
Neil Jordan: I had the story about somebody who had been responsible for somebody’s death in the north of Ireland, and went to meet his wife in London out of a sense of guilt. Every time that the story came to London, it just became dull somehow. There was a captivity at the start of it. There’s a very well-known Irish short story [from 1931] called Guest To The Nation. It’s set in the ’20s. It’s about an IRA unit of the period who are looking after a prisoner, a British soldier, a young guy, and he realizes at a certain point that his death is going to come up. They realize it too, about which time they’ve befriended each other and recognized each other’s humanity. Then they have to go out and kill the guy. It’s a beautiful story by this Irish short story writer, Frank O’Connor. It was also turned into a play [in 1958] by Brendan Behan, which he called The Hostage. I wasn’t copying that, but I was taking a situation that would have been familiar to revisit the story. But I wanted to do something that was more metaphorical, not a piece of social realism that Ken Loach could have made. He’s a great director, but I felt the need for the story to go into more elemental areas.
When I came up with the character of Dil, it changed everything. When the character became what you’d nowadays would call a trans woman—but that’s not quite the term for the character that I came up with—it changed everything. And it reflected on the period of captivity between Stephen Rea’s character and Forrest Whitaker’s character. It became an examination of what it means to be a human being really and what any one individual’s responsibility to another individual means in its broadest possible terms. That’s when it became really exciting, and that’s when it became the kind of story that nobody ever wanted to make, including Miramax, I might add. I remember Harvey Weinstein read it and said if I cast a woman in the role of Dil he would make it. Otherwise, he thought audiences would be too revolted by the experience of having attached their affections to a beautiful woman and finding out it was a man. And he was terribly wrong.
It was very hard for Stephen Woolley, the producer, and Palace Pictures to finance. But eventually they financed it independently, and we made the movie.
AVC: I watched The Crying Game again recently, and I was thinking that you go from a situation where Fergus is dealing with toxic masculinity with the IRA kidnappers and how he’s a sensitive person. Then he meets Dil and starts learning about his sexuality.
NJ: The structure of the film was confronting this character. I’m Irish. I’m not from the north of Ireland. I was born in Sligo, but confronting this character who’s Irish, probably Catholic, I don’t know what he is. He could be a Protestant, he could be Jewish. But he’s Irish, he’s nationalist, he’s male. He is willing to use violence to achieve ends that he thinks are justifiable. So the structure of the plot was a series of mechanisms to confront every aspect of what he thought would be his definition as a human being. He’s Irish and has captured a British squaddie. He has to learn that this guy’s a human being. He’s white. The British squaddie he captures is Black, and the racism that was expressed towards Black British soldiers in the north of Ireland in the ’70s and ’80s was really shocking. There was a huge irony there that I was anxious to explore. You’re talking about an oppressed nationalist—or what they imagined to be an oppressed nationalist community in the north of Ireland—suddenly using all the language of racial hatred and oppression against Black British soldiers who are patrolling the streets. It was a strange thing. So eventually, he’s confronted with his idea of whatever he defines his sexuality or his gender. The word that people didn’t use much then.
Eventually, he has to confront his basic facts of his humanity—what kind of responsibility he has to another human being. It turns out to be Dil, and not Jody. That was really cool to see audiences all over the world responding to this basic progression of ideas.
AVC: Before making The Crying Game, you and Stephen Woolley had been out for drinks at Madame Jo Jo’s, a famous burlesque and cabaret club where mainstream and gay culture intersected. It was supposed to be a cool place.
NJ: It was a cool place. London at the time was a cool place, it still is a cool place, but it was just a party. There was no particular revelatory thing for us going to Madame Jo Jo’s. The interesting thing for me at the time when I was making the movie was we had to populate the bar [The Metro] with people from the trans community. Which wouldn’t have been known as the trans community. I remember when we were casting for all the extras, and some of the actors who would play in that bar were going through what people now call transitioning. Maybe it was called transitioning then. So I experienced a community that I had no idea existed, and a lot of them had the same story. They would meet a man, as a woman. They would begin a relationship, and the point would come where the individual would have to disclose what they were [and] their sexuality. Generally the new partner would say, “Well, that’s fine. I kind of knew that already.” To me, it was interesting. It was a subculture that’s now become a part of the main culture that I didn’t know existed.
AVC: What was the main inspiration for the character of Dil?
NJ: I don’t know. I just dreamed her up, really. I just thought of her. Maybe with Shakespeare. It was the opposite. Boys pretending to be girls in Shakespeare, but not many girlfriends pretending to be boys. Maybe it was the idea of Shakespeare, maybe plays like M. Butterfly. The character just emerged. Once I thought, if I make this character a far more complicated woman, let’s call it that, the story would just become far more interesting and more profound. That was my instinct, that was something I was following.
AVC: When you were casting for this, did you talk to a lot of trans people about their personal stories?
NJ: No, no. I remember talking to Stanley Kubrick at the time, and I described the story I was doing and he said, “You’re gonna cast a Black guy as a girl?” And I said, “Yes. That’s what I have to do.” And he says, “Have you found anybody?” And I said, “No, I’m looking.” Stanley said, “Well, you’ll still be looking in three years’ time, believe me. When are you shooting?” I said, “We’re shooting in a month’s time.” But I was helped by [director] Derek Jarman who, through the costume designer Sandy Powell, knew of an extraordinary person who inhabited the gay club scene in London. It was Jaye Davidson. I met Jaye, and I thought, this is the character. But Jaye had never acted before. I think he was a clothes designer at the time. He was part of the crew that designed Lady Diana’s dress or something like that. He was a star in this small scene that Derek knew about.
AVC: I think Jaye still works in fashion today.
NJ: I hope so. He doesn’t want to work in movies anymore, believe me. He made a couple of million dollars on some big Hollywood [movie].
AVC: Stargate.
NJ: He was rather wonderful, but I think he just got sick of the movies. When we had a screening of the movie about two years ago, Jaye turned up. He’s still as sweet as ever, but he looks different.
AVC: There are trans people who have issues with the way Fergus reacts when he discovers Dil is trans—by vomiting. One trans woman blogged on Medium about how that scene negatively impacted her when she was younger, and she wondered if many people would reconsider transitioning if this would be the reaction they’d expect to receive.
NJ: The only thing I can say is the guy was surprised, and he would have been surprised. But it kind of depended on the story that he should be surprised, and I think in real life, he would have been surprised. Maybe he wouldn’t have been surprised in exactly that way. To me, it’s surprising that the elements in fiction can traumatize people anyway. But that’s a different issue.
AVC: In retrospect, knowing that now, would you have done the scene differently?
NJ: I think he would have been surprised, you know. I think he would’ve been shocked. And I think he would have been shocked in such a manner as he would have had to make a personal effort to get over his shock, which is what the story was. He was shocked in a way that upset Dil, and it really devastated her. Then he came back, and he talked to her. And he apologized. He said, “I get it.” That’s the way the character would have reacted, really.
AVC: Later on, when Fergus cuts Dil’s hair to protect her from the IRA, she starts to look like Jody. There’s imagery of Jody throughout the movie, like when Dil first goes down on him and there’s the image of Jody in his mind. Later, when they’re talking in Dil’s place, there’s the image of Jody’s cricket uniform hung up, and the cap is down and reminds us of the hood that had been over his head.
NJ: The whole movie is about how a human being can be many different things at the same time. That’s what I hope. The main objections I got at the time in Britain were for casting an American, Forest Whitaker, as a British squaddie. That’s what was strange. It just shows you how times change. And many people objected to the way he threw that cricket ball. Cricket is very important to English people, believe me, it really is.
AVC: I always remembered that the likable character of Dil was funny and charming. At the time, most trans characters on screen would be portrayed as serial killers or freaks.
NJ: That was the big barrier towards making the film. Could you make a movie about a trans character that actually would be beautiful and sexually attractive and a nice, beautiful human being. Brian De Palma and The Silence Of The Lambs constructed trans characters that were wielding scalpels and [were] interested in cutting people up and all that sort of stuff. I did present a trans character that the world fell in love with, basically.
AVC: Is it true that the U.K. reaction to the film wasn’t as positive as the American one?
NJ: They just didn’t like a movie about an IRA guy that was a human being. Everybody had an objection to this movie at some level. They really did. That’s why it was so impossible to finance. People thought, “Oh, I don’t want to make a movie about Irish terrorism.” People thought, “Oh, I don’t want to make a movie where there’s this interracial relationship.” Even though it’s only a friendship between Stephen Rea’s character and Forest Whitaker’s character where one guy has to unzip his pants and take out his penis as he goes to the toilet. They didn’t want that. People didn’t want a relationship between a straight person and a gay person. People didn’t want a trans character in the movie. There were all sorts of reasons why people could turn down this movie, but look, the good thing is that it was about something. For me to make a movie that actually was about something that became successful was very important because I didn’t want to keep making movies if they’re about nothing.
AVC: Do you think Fergus exploring his sexuality started when Jody called him handsome?
NJ: The love relationship starts with Jody, it starts in the captivity. It absolutely does. Those guys kind of love each other. They just don’t know how to express … Fergus, in particular, doesn’t know how he likes this man.
AVC: But Jody senses something in him.
NJ: Oh, absolutely. He senses a humanity, which I suppose an IRA [member] or a soldier would call a weakness. But he senses his humanity there that will perhaps save his life, and if not save his life will perhaps lead to something else.
AVC: The Troubles in Northern Ireland were a hot-button issue back then, and I imagine some critics were angry about it.
NJ: They were. Look, I live in Ireland. I made four movies based on the persistence of political violence in this country. It’s over now, thank goodness. I made Angel, The Crying Game, and Michael Collins. I made a movie called Breakfast On Pluto, which in some ways did address those issues. People would say to me when I was making The Crying Game: “How can you present an IRA terrorist as anything other than a psychopath?” And I would say, “Well, the problem—and it’s a broader military and political problem—the problem is that they are not psychopaths. The problem is they’re doing psychopathic things, but they have an ideology that to them is coherent.” I mean, I had no sympathies either way, really. One of the things I wanted to do in The Crying Game was forensically analyze that entire militaristic mindset. It was a movie that was just questioning things that were around at the time, really. It’s as simple as that.
AVC: What do you think would have happened when Fergus got out of prison? Would they have finally gotten together and gone off somewhere, lived a different life?
NJ: I have no idea. I’d love to see those two characters together, in some strange way.
54 Comments
It was a pretty good indicator of just how liberal someone really was back then. They could handle the terrorists, but not the trans character.
I think it was less liberal , and more that after “Irish terrorist is a human being” and “American actor playing a Brit and not being able to bowl properly playing Cricket” ..they were outraged out , and at that point were too tired to be upset at anything else
America has always found the IRA palatable, they have some disgusting romanticised fantasy of “the old country”.Hell they funded terrorism via NORAID for years.
More the Irish Diaspora caused by the Potato Famine, et al.
And the English have always found the British Army palatable – they have some disgusting, romanticized fantasy of “The Empire.”Hell, you’ve funded terrorism via your tax dollars for centuries!The British Army colluded with the UFF in an attempt to murder a sitting MP in her own home.Also, fuck Gerry Adams.
For better or worse, an idiot DJ I used to listen to thought it would be funny to blurt out the twist apropos of nothing, so I ended up seeing the film knowing its secret. I was surprised when, early on, Fergus sees Dil at what appears to be a drag club. Maybe it was only obvious because of the spoiler, but I thought there were some obvious clues. I’d be interested in what other people thought of that scene. I’ll take my answers off the air.
I haven’t seen this film in years and I don’t remember if I had the same reaction, but of all the movies to compare it to there was Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and its vomit scene that really stood out to me as hateful and disgusting. If I recall correctly The Crying Game treated Dil with more respect otherwise from the start but I can definitely understand trans people having the same reaction to its vomit scene. I’m glad he’d rethink that if making the film now.
You are correct. The vomiting and surprise scene is a bit transphobic but its not worse then contemporary movies of the time and the character is fully formed, not a joke and there is a good deal of respect. The actress was also trans. I’m gonna get it props and not condemnation, it certainly wasn’t Buffalo Bill. Respect as well to Jordan.
Just FYI, Jaye Davidson is a cis man.
I just checked Jaye Davidson and isn’t trans. He’s also unrecognizable these days unless you know it’s him.
Okay noted. I read the interview and double checked the Wikipedia page and was rather confused by the pronoun usage and took a guess. Whoops sorry about that. Well its good to know he’s doing alright and still works in fashion.
He’s still beautiful.
The vomiting isn’t the movies saying “Isn’t this gross” it’s Fergus’ reaction. The surprise reveal and the marketing sucked though and it kinda hurts a well made movie. Also not to “uhm actually” but I believe Jaye Davidson identifies as a gay man and not trans. He was the first openly gay person to be nominated for an academy award.
No that’s not an um actually it kinda matters. Stupid Kinja not allowing an edit now. I also do agree the framing could have been better. Honestly its quite fascinating how many vomit jokes were made about trans people in the 1990s. This at least wasn’t a punch line.
In retrospect it also casts a pall over Soapdish, which that aspect aside is one of my favorite movie farces ever.
I dont know Soapdish. I’m a bit curious now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapdish
watch it, but that gag at the end leaves a very sour note in your mouth. The rest is incredible old school farce with the most insane performances.
I think Niel explained it really well, in that Fergus’ reaction HAS to be shocking enough to upset Dil. And Dil has to remain a sympathetic character, so any reaction of Fergus has to be severe enough that Dil’s counterreaction, of becoming upset in return, is still reasonable, understandable, and sympathetic. The less shock Fergus displays, the less sympathetic Dil’s reaction becomes. It’s also, a character can be transphobic without the story being transphobic. Fergus, in this scene, at this point of his storyarch, is struggling with his own inherent otherness, and seeing Dil display hers creates a reaction in him. A reaction that necessarily has to be physical, because always “show, don’t tell”, btw. But he eventually accepts and embraces her as well as his own otherness, concluding his arch, thereby making the whole thing a story about accepting otherness.
Hopefully, this isn’t going to be called out as transphobic, but Fergus was fully expecting Dil to have lady parts, so the fact she didn’t might justifiably be considered something of a surprise.
Beautiful film. Enjoyed the jilted boyfriend/jock dude as he’s scampering about picking up his clothes that are being flung out onto the streets, loved the mirror looks between Dil and Fergus, as well as the convo with Broadbent’s bartender.
From what I recall, the trans woman “reveal” was the big talking point, but I think Neil is right that the big controversies in England surrounded a sympathetic IRA member, and an American actor playing cricket with a dubious bowling action. The latter point was always going to be a difficult for an Irishman who clearly still doesn’t quite understand. His comment about English people being unhappy with the way he “threw” the ball speaks volumes. Bowling and throwing are two different things.As for the vomiting scene, the point is that the character is struggling with who he is and who he is “meant” to be. In those circumstances his reaction does not seem unrealistic to me, and also makes his later self-realisation and efforts to make amends all the more affecting. And I say all that as straight man with absolutely no insight so I’m happy to be told I’m talking bollocks by somebody with a more informed perspective.
“His comment about English people being unhappy with the way he “threw” the ball speaks volumes. Bowling and throwing are two different things.”
Do everyone a favour and fucking kill yourself. Just fuck off, then die. Please?
IDK, outside the ‘twist’, I found the film unremarkable, and worse, unmemorable.
Cool story, I can see why you desperately needed to add to the conversation.
Aren’t those basically the same words? Don’t be so dramatic. “I found the movie boring.” That’s all you need to say.
Encouraging gay/trans panic and depicting gay/trans panic are not the same thing. There are men out there who definitely would be shocked and disgusted to learn that they were hooking up with someone of the same biological sex, regardless of gender, the same way some men get disgusted by ‘gay stuff’ or being seen as gay. This attitude is especially prevalent among the kind of characters Neil Jordan is looking to deconstruct in this movie.But, going a bit further… it’s not an unreasonable attitude to have, either. People’s sexuality is what it is, and it’s not always tied to their personal values. Unless you’re pansexual, finding out that the person you’re hooking up with is something different from what you thought they were is going to be a viscerally uncomfortable experience for most people.I think what tends to be harmful about scenes like this one is the stereotype that tends to go along with it, i.e. that trans women are out there looking to ‘trap’ straight guys. IIRC, The Crying Game dodges this by having Dil say ‘I thought you knew,’ or something along those lines, as well as the circumstances of their meeting. But other examples like Trainspotting and Ace Ventura definitely play into this stereotype, as (almost definitionally) do most scenes that fit the ‘guy finds out he’s hooking up with a trans woman’ trope.
Dil says “I thought you knew,” but her follow-up is “What were you doing in the bar, if you didn’t know?” From her point of view that’s a totally reasonable question, and it’s interesting to see Jordan’s comments in this interview about the real-life bar that this was based on, because when I first saw the movie as a sheltered young person I was just as clueless as Fergus— all that I noticed in the bar scene was that Dil was performing the song in a stylized dramatic way that I hadn’t seen before. But having been around the block a little now, my reaction to the scene is that the vibe in the bar is pretty obvious, and that people there can see Fergus is out of his element but they’re assuming that’s just because he’s shy and not yet fully comfortable in his sexuality, so the bartender is being extra nice to him; the idea that he fully has no idea where he is, and knows literally nothing about Dil except a name and a photo, just isn’t likely enough to register with them. On a first watch, I didn’t even get that the bartender’s “Something I should tell you. She’s—” line was probably just going to end with “—got a boyfriend in the army,” because he thinks that’s the only relevant information Fergus is missing.
True, thanks for laying that out – that’s what I meant by the circumstances of their meeting. It’s a unique situation where there’s not really any sort of onus on Dil to tell Fergus, and it makes sense to assume Fergus knows what the deal is. That’s also why I mentioned that, when other scenes utilize this trope, it will almost definitionally be the case that they depict a trans woman failing to disclose their status before sex – the circumstances in TCG are set up in a very unique way where it’s a legitimate misunderstanding, but other movies using this trope don’t/can’t arrange things that way.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m bi and I really only care about the person’s personality when I date them. What’s between their legs is irrelevant to me (I would like kids someday, but in vitro is always an option if I can’t biologically have kids with them).
I do think fiction can affect reality, particularly when it comes to treatment of minorities that people might not have met firsthand outside of fiction. That’s why it’s integral to have a whole range of trans experiences in film.
I think people are conflating the vomiting with transphobia because it’s an easy connection – and, it should be noted, in keeping with the pop culture mores of the time and those that preceded them.But vomiting is a stress reaction. Plain and simple. When my wife was in labor with our first kid, we had to pull over on the way to the hospital multiple times because both she and I were tossing our cookies so much. Think about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Body” (one of the greatest single episodes of TV about sudden death) – one of Buffy’s first impulses when she finds her mom’s body is to vomit, and this is a character who’s been inundated with death over her life.The problem, of course, is that the vomiting scene in The Crying Game is taken completely out of context of the rest of the narrative, so people tend to get the wrong idea about it. A non-zero percentage of these people, unfortunately, are the type to find the clip of that particular scene on YouTube and ignore the rest of the film.
I have a pretty strong gag reflex that comes up when I encounter something that shocks me to my core or gives me a lot of anxiety. If I remember the movie right, that’s what Fergus was going through on a lot of levels at the time of the “reveal.” It’s a realistic response for someone from his background, at that time, operating in his cultural context. The difference between then and now, and the thing that is probably the source of any trauma connected with that scene, is that in 1993 Fergus was the mainstream audience surrogate. That scene was a big deal because a lot of people watching the movie would have felt the same way, so you could infer greater sympathy for Fergus’s point of view. But that’s what was great about the movie. It takes both the character and the audience on a journey toward greater acceptance, openness, and introspection. It’s just that the starting point of that journey, obviously, can’t be the worldview of 2023 when the film is 30 years old. I appreciate the reasons that part could be hard to watch, and maybe there’s an extent to which it’s offending people for the sake of the privileged. But I honestly think it’s in service of encouraging the privileged to be better humans. We gotta let art be art, enriching our experience in a way that embraces complexity, and The Crying Game does earn that distinction.
I remember hearing about there being a big twist before I saw it. It was glaringly obvious to me what the twist was going to be from the moment Jaye Davidson’s character was on screen. I really don’t remember anything else about the movie.
And me, at the time, thought Whittaker’s death was the “twist,” so I relaxed from that point on and then was properly surprised by the Dil reveal. (Chalk up missing the now-obvious breadcrumbs to me having less life experience at that point, plus seeing the relationship through a MONA LISA lens, thinking Jordan had a thing about tough guys and obsessive relationships with women of color)
I thought that the lyric referring to the moon as a “he” was a deliberate clue.
It’s very interesting to compare and contrast Mona Lisa with The Crying Game. Both films are about low level men in a violent organization who fall in love with people who aren’t what they thought they were . . . and both films have surprisingly positive endings. I’d love Jordan to make a third Ballad film.
Some movies that are overly dependent on a big twist don’t hold up that well over time to re-watching. Maybe that is true of The Crying Game, but I don’t think so. It might actually play better today now that the twist isn’t that overwhelmingly shocking
I rewatched it a year or two ago, and it holds up pretty well. Other than Fergus throwing up at the reveal, which has been gone over pretty extensively in the interview and the comments. My two cents on that is that they could have conveyed his shock and surprise without that physical reaction, and would have avoided a lot of transphobic parodies of the scene, but it certainly wasn’t intended to convey the fact that Fergus was right to be so disgusted.
Fergus striking Dil as he pushes her aside to toss his cookies was more violent than vomiting, but I get it why others see it differently.
“My two cents on that is that they could have conveyed his shock and surprise without that physical reaction, and would have avoided a lot of transphobic parodies of the scene”
You think Billy Crystal’s monologue was on their mind when they were making this movie?
I vote not true of The Crying Game. Watched it maybe five years ago and freaking loved it!
I first heard of this movie thanks to Siskel and Ebert. Then I got confused as to why a lady was nominated in supporting actor then my mom let me know why. I was like 12 at the time. I ended up seeing the movie later.
There was talk at the time about the nomination being a spoiler.
I recall when The Crying Game dropped theater owners and critics pleaded with audiences “not to reveal its secret” and this being before the Internet spoiling everything within five minutes, it worked for the most part.
I had already seen it before I took my wife. She knew who Dil as soon as she got one look at her hands.
I guess I’m one of the few people who aren’t focused on, disgusted by, encouraged by, or hurt my feelings by “The Twist,” and found the whole movie to be excellent. The first part with the hostage situation was practically a great movie on its own, and I’ll never forget the line, “Did you ever pick up your teeth with broken fingers?”
I can empathize with anyone who was disturbed by Stephen Rea’s
character’s reaction to the “big reveal” but you also have to step out of your
skin and look at the bigger picture of how the movie treats its characters
and why as well as what the story it’s trying to tell and what kind of
journey the characters take within the story.I think the vomit reaction is a raw, honest one. It doesn’t mean
the character (or movie) is transphobic. It simply shows how fragile a person’s
sense of gender and sexuality can be. He’s not a bigot or even
just ignorant. It means he’s a human being and human beings (all
human beings) are complicated and fundamentally flawed
creatures. What is important is that the character comes back to
apologize, explain his reaction and then grow as a person.People also need to realize that worthwhile art and
entertainment don’t come to us. We have to go to it. We have to ask what
the film/director’s/writer’s intent is and never assume it is to coddle us.I can also tell you that as someone who has been around the
block far more times than I’d care to mention that you can start to get
intimate with someone only to find it all blowing up in your
face for anyone of a million reasons-all of them seemingly wrong to you or
the other person but all of them unavoidably human. It can be a word, a look, a
dumb comment, some little physical “flaw” one of you perceives in the other.
None of them are “correct” but they are all very, very real and a fact of life.
It sucks but that’s the way it is. When a movie depicts this you need to ask
yourself if it is trying to be honest and why as well as why it made this
choice. In the case of this film, it was to show a character who has multiple
life changing epiphanies about himself and other people and who in the end
tries to evolve and then do the right thing.If the vomit reaction is upsetting to you then step back and
look at how these two characters subsequently treat each other and how they
(awkwardly but tenderly) bond in the end. It may not be the conclusion you want
but it’s still far more optimistic than what you’d likely experience in the
real world and that’s the magic of movies-they give us the illusion
of hope.I hope there’s more to this interview than just “The Cruing Game.” I’d love to read a discussion about “The Company of Wolves.”
The Crying Game is a beautiful, thoughtfully made, fascinating film, and I sincerely hope that no sort of political correctness ever harms a hair of its head. That would be tragic.
The short story he mentioned was actually called Guests of the Nation. There were two British soldiers and it almost made me cry in class when we did it at school. A beautiful, tragic story.
Not one word about Miranda Richardson as Jude.
She was great in this. A viscous person.
I thought The Crying Game was very well done. A movie I recently watched, and haven’t seen since the 80s, is Crocodile Dundee. My goodness is that movie racist, homophobic and especially transphobic. The way Dundee humiliates a trans woman in a bar is especially hard to watch today.
Correttoooooo!!!!!
I remember watching the movie at the time and thinking that his reaction wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There was a very concerning trend back in the 80s and 90s that if a trans woman ‘tricked you’ the expectation was you would beat the shit out of them for it. You would hear stories of guys in Thailand not knowing who they were picking up then assaulting the poor girl when they found out.Thank god we have progressed.
“Thank god we have progressed.”
Yeah, I’m sure there’s no safer job than Thai trans prostitute nowadays.