“3,186

Number of prostitution arrests in the city [New York] last fiscal year. In the same period, however, only 1,922 arrests were logged for patronizing prostitutes, which seems to indicate that the market is a tad oversaturated with hookers.”

The above was happily borrowed from The Village Voice’s website…

The things listed in the title of this post describe just a few of the characters found in the film Transamerica. This is good because it shows the Weinsteins are using their talents for something a little more interesting than Hostage or one of the other crappy mainstream films that marked their last few years with Miramax (that’s not to say they didn’t do anything good during their last few years with Miramax, but if you add up their score card for recent years, crap wins, followed by non-offensive Oscar contenders).

Anyway, with regards to the movie Felicity Huffman’s performance as a man who is one surgery away from pseudo-womanhood is as excellent as everyone says it is. As for the story, I found it to be mediocre. Much of the plot seemed contrived. And the blend of comedic and dramatic elements was a bit uneven.

Early in the film Stanley/Bree gets a call from the son he never knew he had. When he tells his therapist about it, just before receiving consent to get his final surgery, his therapist tells him that consent will be withheld until he makes peace with his son. This involves flying across the country, bailing that son out of jail, and travelling back across the country by car with the son. One of the elephants in the room that wasn’t adequately addressed is that Stanley/Bree is poor and probably couldn’t afford afford such a trip as well as a week off from work plus the surgery if this were real life. Also I think his therapist would know this, and wouldn’t threaten to take away consent as a way to force him to go on costly trip to get to know the son he never knew he had.

As the film continues, there are a couple of tragic episodes that make the father and son grow closer and some occasional awkward jokes. About half way through the film, maybe a little more, tragedy is replaced by comedy when Stanley/Bree, now pretending to be a Christian missionary, takes his son to what seems like a transexual tupperware party (at this point the boy still doesn’t know Stanley/Bree is really a man or his father).

This is followed by the son seeing Bree stand while urinating, an episode involving a Peyote priest who steals their car, another involving an Indian man who kind of develops a crush on Bree, and some hilarious scenes involving Stanley’s family. The film goes back to tragedy when the son realizes his relation to his transexual benefactor.

It ends with some bitter sweet closing scenes. The overall message of the film is something along the lines of don’t try to change people, but respect and love them for who they are. It sounds nice, but considering the characters involved… should no one try to change a sexually abused young man who becomes a drug addicted male prostitute by 17 and aspires to be nothing more than a male porn star…

And just as a closing thought, one of the questions that always comes to my mind when viewing something that deals with transexuals, whether the second season of Nip/Tuck, the episode of South Park where Mr. Garrison becomes a woman, or Transamerica is: ‘does allowing people who suffer from a psychological disorder that causes them to believe they are of the opposite sex to get an operation to make them appear to the outside world to be of the opposite sex, create the potential for these people to unintentionally involve others in a type of relationship that they might not feel confortable being in’.

Now before you answer that, let me rephrase it: you are dating, making out with, having sex with, engaged to, married to a person, and they tell you that they were not always the sex they appear to be now. How do you react?

Technology has been transforming the way we have sex for ages.  In fact, quite a few proponents of new “advacements” promise their ideas will revolutionize the way we have sex.  Sex-related video games, databases of sex offenders, and advancements in fertility have all already impacted sex in the twenty-first century.  Has our advancement from primative contraception to online dating services come at a price?

Reports of the dangers of technology to fertility, the sexual safety of adolescents, and even the future of humanity have become increasingly frequent.

Critics of sexual technology, however, all seem to ignore one blatantly obvious fact: this technology is creating new problems, it’s merely amplifying old ones.  Critics of the popular website MySpace.com, for example, blame the website for the recent acts of sex offenders.  Most of the critics seem to be parents, and ignore the fact that the internet, like your local police department can not and should not monitor every citizen all the time.

Likewise, critics of new sex games fail to follow obvious connections to companies that sell pornography.

Perhaps most importantly, critics of medical technology such as that which impacts fertility refuse to recognize that is not within their rights to regulate what others do to their own bodies.

Recently, MOSEX, or the Museum of Sex opened at 233 Fifth Avenue in New York. Currently the museum, a recent hit with Manhatten tourists and residents alike, is featuring exhibits like: “Stags, Smokers and Blue Movies: The Origins of American Pornographic Film,” “Mapping Sex in America,” and “Men Without Suits: Objectifying the American Male Body.” If you’re in the city at any point, I recommend checking it out…I’ve heard some good things…

Technology.     Sex.     Politics.     Art.     And what in the *$@&! does it all mean?! This blog is a haven for philosophical discussion, political discourse, and mental masturbation.