This is Sara Giudice and you’re reading Crip 101. Every other month, Crip 101 comes to you with questions, not answers, on the everlasting topics of media diversity, narrative change and cancel culture. Spoilers ahead, blablabla — thank you for being here.
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Gender non-conformity on screen
When looking for a gender non-conforming character, you might stumble upon either ‘Sandman’s flamboyant Desire or ‘Billions’ icy Taylor. Despite being very different from one another, these two characters appear to be equally valuable options for bringing a gender non-conforming character to the screen. Both played by non-binary performers (Asia Kate Dillon and Alexader Mason Park), Desire and Taylor are brought to the audience with two very different intentions and in two deeply opposite ways.
On one end, Desire is an entity that takes human form because it needs to be shown on a screen. The thing they represent, human desire, is distributed both in their body (femininely dressed, accompanied by a deeply masculine voice), name (the neutral ‘sibling’) and environment (their bright red, sexy chamber). The elements that are part of the character’s breakdown are varied across the gender spectrum. But because Desire isn’t human and trascends gender identity, such elements are never spoken with direct words, in the story.
On the contrary, Taylor is all out with their gender identity, pronouns and all that defines them. So much so that, the first time they enter Axe Capital, they present themselves with both their name and pronouns. With confidence and a tad of arrogance, Taylor wants everyone around them to know what their gender identiy is, which means that it immediately becomes a theme for the character and their introductory arc. The audience knows that Taylor is the non binary character and must face the issue wether they like it or not.
But is there a third option, something that doesn’t identify with the visually-canonised character or the thematised one? Of course there is.
Gen V, Jordan and writing (cis)gender non-conformity
This third option of sorts is to be found in the most fun and goriest superhero political satire you’ll find on Prime Video, ‘The Boys’ and its franchise. Most specifically, teen drama spin off ‘Gen V’.
In the first season of the show, incredibly ahead of Gen Z politics and discourse, blood-bending Marie (Jaz Sinclair) enters a superhero university and leads a group of insecure, young rebels who want to get the truth out. One of them is Jordan (Derek Luh/London Thor), a bigender bipowered shape-shifter who can change their body from male to female on a whim. Apart from the fun choice of making gender non-conformity a superpower, one of the reasons why Jordan works as an example of how to bring non-binarism on screen relates to the main theme of the show: identity. Each character in ‘Gen V’, as in every teen drama, struggles with themselves—in relation with their powers, their families, their past and traumas. Jordan, in particular, must deal with his gender identity in relation with their Asian family, who struggles to accept them for who they truly are. When they confront their father (Ep. 3), in fact, Jordan decides to present themselves with their feminine appearence, and their father retaliates by saying that Jordan could present just as a boy, if they really wanted to. But Jordan isn’t just a boy.
Ultimately, even if not being played by openly gender non-conforming performers, Jordan is greatly believable as an option for representing a non-binary character because the theme of gender identity is equally distributed in both the character and the story. Right in episode three, we see that Jordan cannot be a token, because them confronting their family makes for a crucial thematic turning point in the story: yes, Jordan is probably bigender because they were injected with the Compound V, but that does not change who they are. If we were to get the theme of gender dentity out of the character, we would lose Jordan whole. And that makes a proper piece of queer representation.
Diversity News!
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The Rome Review is a literary magazine that aims to weird out the fancy and fancy up the weird. They strongly encourage submissions from writers from underrepresented groups for short fiction, poetry and hybrid forms.
The Hollywood Diversity Report 2024 developed by UCLA describes diversity as the key to the survival of the industry.
Famous White director can’t tell the different between the need for diversity on the work place and fictional characters.
Inevitable Foundation and Netflix launched a new fellowship programme for disabled filmmakers called Visionary Fellowship. Applications close on July 31st.
Jana Schmieding and other Native American performers talk about the state of Native representation in American media and its evolution.
Lily Gladstone talks about “losing” against Emma Stone at the Oscars.
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Thanks for reading the Crip 101 Newsletter. This project was born out of sheer enthusiasm for media diversity and narrative change and is completely run by yours truly, Sara Giudice. Keep reading, keep supporting and, most of all, keep writing.