PicoBlog

“Envy/Desire: was envisioned as part one of a six-part miniseries which would dissect dating as a transsexual in New York City. It was spawned from the lineage of Lena Dunham's Girls and Sex and the City ,two of my favorite pieces of art.

The other five episodes (which have now been adapted into a feature film script) included various other archetypal guys who date dolls: “The guy who won’t tell his friends about you,” “The repressed violent homosexual,” “The nerdy simp,”, ‘the hottest guy ever who only wants sex” and of course, “The crossdresser.”

For those who are not terminally online enough to know, this short comedy received a huge amount of backlash online, namely for its depiction of the aforementioned crossdresser. I’m not hopelessly naive and am aware that the film explores controversial, divisive and taboo themes. I’m also aware that there’s a huge subsect of Twitter (the place where this film received most of its intention) that was always going to find this film and its humour distasteful.

What I could never have foreseen was the sheer emotion of anger and hurt present in the backlash to a character whom i intended as a cartoonish parody of a specific kind of tr*nny chaser. The Letterboxd review page is nothing short of a war zone which includes everything from long essays about how toxic the film is as well as me and my co-stars, weird misogynistic rants, homophobic rants, and death threats. , but, the most upsetting reviews were the ones which said things like “I would have killed myself if I saw this film at the wrong time in my life.” This was so genuinely upsetting to hear and I can only reiterate that the film is not intended to mock anyone experiencing gender dysphoria, or say who is and who isn’t allowed to be trans. I i don’t believe in the concept of “being one of the good ones.”

Another challenging aspect was the way in which my stylistic and writing choices were sneered at and not believed. People tried to cement the idea that someone like me wasn’t capable of having an artistic vision or voice and my entire motivation in making this project amounted to me “being a pick-me”- it was very disparaging.

For those interested enough in what I was trying to convey I’ve compiled a breakdown of the movie and my choices here. It feels corny to do this as an artist, but it’s been cathartic for me - and I hope it means I don’t have to continue responding to people on Twitter.

1)BELLA’S INSECURITY

I wanted to establish Bella as an insecure character. I opened the film with a reel of myself (shot a few days before the film itself) at a time I was feeling insecure about my hair and posted it online for validation.

Bella is also a normie so I chose the song 2002 by Anne Marie to play over the top.

I’ve always been obsessed with straight guys, since forever. I’m not truly sure where this comes from, maybe it’s internalized homophobia, a desire to truly assimilate into heterosexuality, maybe it’s validation, maybe it’s just sweet how unaware they are, and love their silly little hobbies, or maybe they are just generally sexier than bisexuals. It’s something I used to care about more than I do now, but I tend to base protagonists on my past selves.

I’d been doing this running joke on Twitter for months, “My boyfriend is straight, he just uses Grindr to make more gay friends.” This was in a part promo for the film but was also a catharsis for me, getting over my preconceptions of what a man should be. I used to leave a date if he was too faggy, but now I don’t think I’d care.

The second TikTok brings all that full circle: it establishes that Bella is intent on having a Normal Straight Guy BF and also wants to show that off to her social circle on TikTok. I think this also sets up an unhealthy relationship dynamic., Bella fetishises Ethan’s straightness in a similar (albeit less overt way) while Ethan fetishizes her transness.

An obvious Carrie Bradshaw reference, I think this might have been Salomé’s idea, but it’s very important because the movie is an homage. There are some deleted parts of this opening sequence that I want to re-add for the extended cut.

4) THE FISH IS FISHING

During the first  Brunch Bella fishes for a compliment: “I feel like I look kinda frumpy.”- she’s very insecure. Which explains her patience with Ethan throughout the film

One major gripe I have with this film technically, a lot of it is overblown, but thanks to American Airlines turning our flight around we lost a day of filming. The whole movie was shot in under three days and we didn’t have a chance to do more than about three takes for each single.

But in the small time you get with these characters I wanted to establish a dynamic in which Bella looks up to, is almost intimidated by, and also kind of dislikes Natasha- If Natasha is Regina George, Bella is Cady Heron.

This is very important as it introduces the audience to the concept of chasers, and to the concept of being fetishised. It’s made clear that Bella & Natasha don’t enjoy the seedy life of a transsexual. Bella boasts she doesn’t use Grindr anymore, she’s above it all, she’s better, and she has a man. Natasha spoils this by implying he’s a chaser: “He follows all the dolls on the gram,” instantly connecting him to the fetishiser waiter. Critics call this too online, but these are literal convos I have. I think a lot of people forget that online stuff is a representation of things that happen.

Bella says her trade said something weird the other day and we flashback to an after sex scene. Bella asked “What did I do wrong" after they fucked, this girl is so insecure. And Ethan gives a wishy-washy pseudo-intellectual explanation of how the idea of being a woman turns him on. The entire movie is Ethan trying to make his fetish seem deeper than it is.

This whole scene was almost word for word based on a conversation between me and a guy I had very strong feelings for (no, he didn’t transition, and no, I have no resentment towards him.)

Natasha blows the dream cloud away and proclaims Ethan is AGP. The delivery is super serious, it’s such a camp moment. This is one of the most controversial moments in the movie for multiple reasons. A lot of people seem to think Natasha is my mouthpiece for promoting Ray Blanchard, and that this film intends to divide the “good” and the “bad” trans.

Natasha is supposed to represent a truscum person who feels above and removed from the world of the TS. I envision Natasha as someone who’s had so many bad experiences dating that she’s given up entirely- she’s a total cynic and retreats into religion to find purpose.(This isn’t expanded upon that much, but remember this was written as part one of a six-part miniseries.)

If you look at how AGP is presented here Natasha says “he’s a transvestite, you’re the muse.” My defence of the Ethan character has always been  a crossdresser and to me the term AGP seems to work perfectly to describe his specific feeling “he’s aroused at the thought of himself as a woman:” I was attempting to recontextualise the term in this scene, I didn’t want transbians to think I was coming for them.

There was a tweet saying “If anyone shares this post to my feed, I’m blocking them” with 4k likes. I think I naively underestimated how taboo this topic is to discuss, even in silly satirical ways.

The Red Scare podcast is a big part of my and Salomé’s lives. It’s basically why we met, but the reason I put this line is because I wanted to show that these two characters have very different politics but are still sistas. Bella is a lib, she writes off Red Scare as conservative trash that Natasha talks about. This also explains why she’s never heard of AGP, she’s just not that kind of girl. She even cringes at Natasha’s Catholicism later in the film.

“That just sounds like something you’ve heard on Red Scare” has been said to me so many times.

This is a complete accident we found in random footage we got out of car windows, and saw it as a sign from God that we needed to complete this film.

10. The Scary music intensifies

I’m obsessed with this whole sequence, it’s pure Kino cvnt. Props to the DOP Cameron Lee. Naively again I thought playing scary music over Blanchard’s pic would serve as enough proof that we are making fun of the way he is used as a boogeyman for trans people.

Crossfading Blanchard into Ethan on the nose symbolism. 

This is the only scene where we see Bella & Ethan interacting on a normal evening. I only had about a minute. I wanted to establish he’s a bit of a bro calling Natasha hot etc…

Also, the Ken Burns into Ethan when Bella nearly catches him is so fun. I knew this was such a silly concept of a movie that the editing and style had to be equally goofy. The film wouldn’t work as well if it was just a formulaic short.

So obviously this is another controversial moment, and yes, I knew I was playing with fire. We’re playing with Ethan trans or a transvestite as a plot hook. Someone described it as ‘cheeky’ and that’s how I feel about it. But the very serious undertone is this relationship is very important to Bella and it’s about to blow up in her face.

13 CAN’T SLEEP

Bella wakes up from a nightmare

Bella can’t sleep, she has nightmares about Natasha calling Ethan AGP. She then goes to his laptop and finds it on his computer. However, this is not clear in the final edit. We had shots of her going on to his laptop which I hope we can put back in the extended cut. Removing them was not my choice, I wanted them in, but the editor insisted on having them out (creative differences).

twitter user @thefemiurge: said “If you're ever doing this cinematic technique for a dream sequence you should probably just cancel the movie” regarding this sequence. Which confuses me as a critique. Sometimes I giggle to myself thinking these people are watching this as a serious film and not a cartoonish comedy. I wanted this part to feel like the IT Crowd or SpongeBob.

15 BIG BLACK COCK

So this Sissy Hypno is a pivotal moment in the movie. I wanted it to be ridiculous and uncomfortably long. One of my favorite movies is “Get Out”, I like how it addresses the weird fetishistic relationship liberals have with people of color. Sissy Hypnosis has a racial element to it, the sissies see black men as ultra-masculine which validates them in emasculating and degrading them - there’s something very Freudian going on.

My favorite shot of the movie.

One of my favorite scenes, I really wanted to amp up the camp silliness. Bella has just been to CVS to collect the pills that Ethan stole. And then is just shouting about Sissy Hypno when Natasha is in church.

Bella confronting Ethan was a difficult scene to shoot. It was the first thing we shot and it was hard to work out how exactly someone would act in this exact scenario. I eventually went for rage, although I think in real life I’d initially assume it was some kind of prank.

Again in this scene, we see Ethan trying to intellectualize his fetish- he brings up “If I Was Your Girlfriend”, a song in which Prince wished to be a woman purely to have better sex with his gf. He also quotes Madonna's “What It Feels Like for a Girl”.

But even when he tries to make it more relatable for Bella his mind still wanders, as he’s almost salivating picturing Natasha and Bella sharing a bed and wearing each other’s clothes.

17.CYNTHIA

George tore in this scene. I wanted the Cynthia character to slay, it’s a mimic of the dolls. What is so interesting about this scene for me is he says the same things as Bella and (particularly) Natasha- compliments, speculating on the waiter's sexuality. Although when Cynthia says it the vibe is so different. I think it’s interesting to delve in and ask why it’s funny to me: it’s funny because 20 minutes ago he was a bro, now he’s this. It feels very inauthentic.

The choice to include it’s Ma'am I felt was subversive, I wanted to include loads of viral online stuff- I’m unashamed of how online this movie was. it’s a movie by people on Twitter for people on Twitter. But I love the way George subverts the tone of the original video- correcting the waiter with class and decorum. People say I seethe at this Cynthia character, but honestly, I think she’s an icon.

The Bella/Natasha relationship is superficial. Bella is almost intimidated by Natasha and it informs the way she reacts to Ethan in public. She even defends him: “he just wants friendship.” She’s grappling with impressing her friend whom she looks up to and keeping her partner happy despite not understanding what he’s doing. When Natasha looks at Bella and Ethan and says “It was lovely meeting with you ‘ladies’,” it revoked Bella’s dollhood. She is now cringing. Bella’s character is almost with the social currency of heteronormativity- she makes TikToks showing off her straight bf & she boasts about not using Grindr anymore.

19.SAPPHIC

I feel like this incredibly awkward kiss is the ultimate debasement of the Bella character. She’s gone from a girl with a sexy alpha bf to someone to be winced at.

Ethan views female oppression as sexually validating: the hooker heels and “housework is liberating.” And this is why when he says “Trans Women are Women” it’s meaningless. At this moment I was taking a jab at leftist men, whom I believe love to say political slogans, but actually treat the people they care about as subhuman. 

The final scene in my opinion is the only time she has any autonomy in the film, she calls out Ethan, and she says she wants to be loved as a woman, but it’s revealed that he can’t give that to her. The confrontation leaves her isolated and alone.

20.ONE OF YOUR GIRLS

So a lot of people who dislike this film like to say that Bella & by extension myself hate Ethan because he represents some ghastly truth about myself and everyone who identifies with Bella he’s Freud’s The Uncanny. However, the reason that this situation hurts Bella is that his entire attraction to her is based on a fetishised idea of feminine aesthetics- she to Ethan is no different than the anime girls or BBC in the sissy hypno, an object for his self-exploration - nothing more.

I have no interest in policing who is or who isn’t allowed to be trans. Ethan could be trans if he wanted to be, the problem is the way he treats and dehumanizes Bella. It’s so beyond frustrating to have this aspect of my art overlooked in service of endless discussions of validity politics. IDGAF

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR PART 2

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