Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re yet again talking about REPRESENTATION. Again! Because it’s a big topic with a lot of aspects to cover. And today is about the character of Cara Dune from The Mandalorian. Eventually. It’ll get there, I promise.
Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the show, that won’t matter for what we’re going to be talking about. If you’re new to these posts or aren’t sure why representation is so important in so many ways, I invite you to check out my previous posts on the topic.
See the trans tuesday on GOOD REPRESENTATION.
And the trans tuesday on BAD REPRESENTATION.
What I want to discuss today is specifically the rarity that certain people get representation in our popular media and culture. From both of the previous times I’ve discussed this, you might think there are a lot of trans people depicted in media. But you’d be wrong.
Very often we simply don’t exist in almost anything we watch or read. And we’re not alone in this, because most of our media is controlled by cis straight white men, and so most of the media they create centers… cis straight white men.
And I’m not saying that’s always intentional (though sometimes it is), just that people tend to tell the stories they relate to/see themselves in the most, and when cis straight white men run everything, those are the vast majority of the stories you get.
I covered this in one of the other threads, but it bears repeating. Name a big movie/tv franchise with a cis straight white man as the main character. You could just go on for days. When you change that to cis straight white women, there’s a big drop-off.
When you do it for men of color there’s a MASSIVE drop-off, and women of color even more than that. And that’s only thinking of them as a group, which is disingenuous at best. Black men and Hispanic women have very different life experiences.
And they still so rarely get to see themselves depicted on screen, much less in ways that don’t fall into harmful stereotypes, and still less where the stories are centered around them.
And once you take all those myriad categories and drop the cisgender binary, the representation is nearly infinitesimal. This is not to say that there are no trans characters, or no good trans characters in our media, because there are. But very few.
And it’s just as small for people with disabilities, or whose bodies are different from the “Hollywood ideal” that perpetuates everything we watch. I’m focusing on the trans aspect as that’s my experience, but there are so many more people it also affects.
But I really want you to understand how INCREDIBLY rare it is. And it’s not that I can’t identify with characters of all ethnicities and genders, because I certainly can. I have to.
Every minority has to learn to do that so we can identify with all the non-disabled cis straight white man-centered media we’re fed. But identifying with (or even just loving) a character because of their personality isn’t the same.
I guess there’s really two levels of representation/identification, when you think about it. I mean two of my most favorite characters in the world are Space Dad Jean-Luc Picard and Superman, both are able-bodied cis straight white men.
Each has aspects I can identify with, but on the whole? Not really. And certainly not physically. Even when I thought I was a cis straight white man, I never identified with them on that level, never saw myself in them.
So what this thread is really about is physical representation, and that’s vexing because in an ideal world it shouldn’t be an issue at all. Our media should accurately depict the world we live in, and that world has SO much more than cis straight white men in it.
And yet our media empirically does NOT depict the reality of the width, breadth, and beauty that is the diversity of humanity. On the occasions when it does, please try to think about what that means for those of us who so rarely see ourselves.
Did you read my posts on good representation and bad representation, and what they each meant to me? And what they did to me emotionally? Seeing yourself as not the butt of a joke, not a victim, as a fully realized character?
It means that world (and those creators) see you and recognize you as a human being. That you can be a fully realized character in that story and that there is a place for you.
So without that, what do we do? For me, it’s meant that the majority of characters I have to identify with in that way are not, in fact, trans women or even trans at all. They’re mostly cis women with bodies that don’t conform to the “Hollywood ideal.”
And just so we’re clear, there’s nothing at all wrong with thin white women of a modest height. ALL body types are valid. But there are so many more body types we never get to see.
So this brings me to the character of Cara Dune. If you’re not familiar with her, she was played by former MMA fighter-turned-actor Gina Carano.
She was recently fired for being an awful bigot, and let me just state I fully support that. Before some of her recent racist/anti-vax lunacy, she was actually uhhh transphobic, which was a bit of a gut punch, because I loved the character from day one.
But this isn’t about her awful transphobia (surprise, I guess?), it’s a bit about a tweet I made last week that kind of took off.
https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1359722231018913792?s=20
That tweet is the reason for today’s thread, but it’s not back at the beginning because I want you to understand how important representation is. So why do I see myself in the character of Cara Dune?
Because she’s tall. She has a defined jawline (moreso than the “Hollywood ideal” cis woman generally does, anyway). She’s got broad shoulders. She’s buff (I am nowhere near THAT buff, but I’m a wee bit buff and I like being so).
She’s not a villain or a victim. She’s a character with goals and motivation. And not once does anyone comment on her appearance or treat her as anything other than just another human who belongs in that world.
Now think about how long Star Wars has been going, and how expansive and deep that universe has gotten. I’ve loved it all my life, and Cara Dune is THE FIRST TIME I ever felt even remotely like there was a place for me in that universe.
And she’s not even trans! Although the character COULD be and we just don’t know, but that’s me making head-canon to appease my own wants and desires. There’s nothing in the show itself to indicate she’s trans, and casting a cis woman to play her would imply she’s not.
So yes, goodbye and good riddance to bigots, I’m glad they fired the actor that portrayed her. But the CHARACTER is so unbelievably rare and far too important (to me and, I suspect, a lot of others including many cis women) to be written off.
That’s why I want her recast, because to lose the only (not even real) representation I have in that world would be awful, especially knowing it was done because the actor was a terrible person and also would probably not be fond of having a trans woman fan.
And that tarnishes the only thing I’ve got to hold on to that says maybe there’s a place for me in that world. If we go back to that happy ideal world I mentioned before, it wouldn’t be an issue because I’d have other actual trans women in the Star Wars world to see myself in.
But this is basically how it goes for me. I latch onto tall women, or buff women, or women with strong jawlines, because that’s as close as I can get.
In the present Star Trek rewatch Susan and I are doing with the kid, we recently saw an episode with a woman who had a somewhat more defined jawline, and a somewhat atypical voice (compared, again, to the “Hollywood ideal”).
And so both of those things intrigued me. And though I’ve seen the episode multiple times, I didn’t remember a lot of it but had a sneaking suspicion I should maybe keep my attachment at bay.
Sure enough she turned out to be manipulative, and narcissistic, and awful. Which of course is not to say that people of all types cannot be villains, they can and should be. But so often anything that falls outside the “Hollywood ideal” is made a villain. Or a joke.
Because how can you root for or like someone outside that ideal, right? Impossible. And it permeates everything. I mean we all generally know what the Hulk looks like, right?
But there’s a lady hulk (who has to be called “She-Hulk” even though there’s no “He-Hulk,” okay, sure, uh-huh), and for most of her comics history, she was depicted like this.
To be fair this has been changing in recent years and she often looks much, much more muscular now, which is great.
I’m not an expert on the character (but this is the internet and someone will correct me any moment now), but I don’t think she’s still ever portrayed similar to the way He-Hulk is. Even here, she can’t just be a muscular green monster, she can’t shed all of that “Hollywood ideal”.
It’s just one character, not a big deal, sure. And there’s not big green muscular monsters looking to see themselves in media (that I am aware of, but if so UP WITH BIG GREEN MUSCULAR MONSTER REP!). I only point to it as indicative of the problem.
The fact I can name two big green muscular monsters that are lead characters in the Marvel universe, but I can’t name a single transgender human that’s a lead character in the same universe is exactly what I’m talking about.
If there are some I’m unaware of, please tell me! But if they do exist, they certainly aren’t well-known enough for even someone like me who would LOVE to read about them and see them in movies and tv.
But it sends the message that the Marvel universe has more room for fictional big green monsters than it has for real living transgender people who are already fans of said universe. It feels really shitty.
I love The Expanse, though it doesn’t have a trans character either. But they do have a tall, broad-shouldered, buff woman in Bobbie Draper, and I LOVE her and will love her forever. I feel at least partially seen in that world, and it’s nice.
So recast Cara Dune (with Frankie Adams who plays Bobbie Draper, if you want my opinion that you didn’t ask for but are getting anyway). When actors do bad things and have to be fired, but their roles are so important for representation… please, recast recast recast.
There’s too little representation already, and those of us starving for it shouldn’t suffer an important character being written off because an actor was revealed to be a terrible person.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com