Gender Stereotypes In Tangerine

It is rare to find a Hollywood film that doesn’t show bland, overused characters who are confined to act according to their gender. More often than not, lead males act as heroes who, by the end of the film, meet their goal and are awarded with their female love interest. The female leads are usually just that- love interests. If they’re not, they’re usually passive victims waiting to be rescued by the masculine hero, only there to serve as pointless conflict. Hollywood has focused on maintaining gender norms and in doing so, have either forgotten, or more likely overlooked transgendered individuals. Tangerine (2015) serves as a positive representation of the transgendered community through its defiance of gender norms, its bridging of the gender
One of the most notable male characters in Tangerine is Razmik- a taxi driver who, at first, seems to follow the male gender role, not showing any emotion other than aggression when it’s called for. However, differing from the ideal masculine male, he’s revealed to be bisexual and it’s implied that he frequents transgendered prostitutes. He suppresses his emotions in front of his family, but when his mother in-law reveals his secret to his wife, he shows vulnerability. In Isabel Moranta Alorda’s “Masculinity and Violence in 21st-Century U.S. Film: 'A History of Violence' and 'Drive'”, she references conventional male characters saying, “...men’s struggle to define themselves as independent masculine beings becomes determinant. In order to construct their masculinity, men constantly need to prove that they are different from women.” (Alorda, 35). This is perhaps why Razmik feels the need to hide his feelings of discontent from his wife. In a sequence near the end of the film, he’s seen sitting silently next to a Christmas tree, seeming to reflect on his mistakes. Where before most of his facial expressions seemed empty and void of emotion, his expression in these shots look to be filled with deep sadness and regret. Through Razmik’s character, Tangerine challenges the stereotypical masculine
Likewise, in Hollywood films, transgendered people aren’t shown very often, but when they are, they’re shown to be laughed at or to cause discomfort in the audience. Some examples would be in Anger Management (2003) where a transgendered prostitute is shown for a laugh and in Silence of the Lambs (1991) wherein the main antagonist, Buffalo Bill, is depicted as a psychopath who kills and skins women to wear them as clothes. In Kate Bornstein’s Gender Terror, Gender Rage, she gives an example of a scene from The Crying Game (1992) wherein two characters prepare to have sex. One character is revealed to the other as being trans and the other character vomits in response to this realization. In a hypothetical inner dialogue of the non-trans character, she quotes them thinking, “...only women and faggots go for men…”. She then goes on to interpret the scene as “brilliantly showing us that it’s a common response.” (237). Tangerine subverts this situation in a scene where Razmik is looking around the streets for a prostitute. When the prostitute exposes herself to him, he realizes she’s not trans and angrily makes her leave his taxi. The prostitute leaves confused and frustrated, calling him a faggot. In a later scene when Razmik pays to perform oral sex on Alexandra, Razmik seems completely comfortable and, for the first time in the film, happy.