SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains spoilers for Season 6 of the TV show “Pretty Little Liars.”
After weeks and seasons and years of promising to reveal the identity of the antagonist on “Pretty Little Liars,” the producers finally delivered. During the summer finale of Season 6, character Charlotte “CeCe” Drake was exposed as the sociopathic serial killer that had been tormenting the girls for more than 100 episodes. It was also revealed that the character was a transgender woman, and had been born as a boy named Charles. Other than the massive plot holes and amount of questions that remained after this reveal, there are some pretty big issues that arise from making the antagonist of the show a transgender. America still has an extremely long way to go before the public and government fully accepts trans individuals, and Hollywood has been a major source of misinformation and disrespect towards the transgender community. The finale of “Pretty Little Liars” was no different.
When a transgender character is depicted as a villain, it immediately raises questions about the legitimacy of gender reassignment. These villains often feature obvious mental illness that are improperly linked to being transgender. Buffalo Bill, one of the antagonists in “Silence of the Lambs,” is a classic example of a transgender character that is unjustly represented in a film. Each of his scenes is more disturbing than the last, and a major focus of the film is his mental instability. He kidnaps women, holds them captive in his lair and then utilizes their skin for a suit he is creating. All of this is because he wants to be a woman.
One scene was carefully placed in the film to emphasize his desire to be a woman, and was intended to be creepy and horrifying. Buffalo Bill is shown applying makeup while wearing a wig made from a woman’s scalp. He then films himself dancing around the room, pausing to uncomfortably tuck his penis between his legs. The scene cuts several times to show the young woman most recently kidnapped, starving and desperate in a hole in his lair. This scene creates a strong connection between sociopaths and transgender individuals, and this is wrong. Buffalo Bill is attempting to make himself as womanly as possible by hiding his male features, especially his penis. By juxtaposing his desire to be a woman with his gruesome crimes, the film definitely associates gender reassignment with mental illness.
The “Pretty Little Liars” finale created a similar association. The character “A” had been tormenting the four main characters through blackmail and coercion. Throughout the six seasons, “A” was described as extremely adverse, volatile and remorseless. It was heavily implied that this character had severe mental illness, for “A” was willing to inflict torture, murder others and commit endless crime to seek revenge on the four girls.
In the finale, after “A” was revealed, she elaborated on her life and how she adapted “A” as her second personality. In a scene full of flashbacks and reflection, CeCe painted a picture of herself as a young boy. She tried on girls’ clothing and exhibited a desire to be female. CeCe was then supposedly admitted into a mental institution for being a danger to her siblings, though only one implausible example of this alleged danger was shown. CeCe’s father was clearly unreceptive to her behaviors, and he insisted on her hospitalization. The intolerance that CeCe faced and her time in a mental institution created her impulses to inflict anguish and revenge on others, and her actions throughout the series completely diabolized the only transgender character.
“Silence of the Lambs” debuted in 1991. This episode of “Pretty Little Liars” debuted last week. Both productions failed to protect transgender individuals from the stigmas that already threaten their identity. For decades, being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender was seen as a treatable mental illness. Many individuals endured electroshock, lobotomies and nausea-inducing drug therapy in an attempt to rid the body of gay and transgender desires. But there is absolutely no cure for gender expression and biological sex not being synonymous, nor does there need to be. Transgender individuals are not mentally ill and they are not inclined to commit horrific crimes to justify their feelings. Creating film and literature that supports this notion is discrimination. We are in the year 2015, stop acting like it is 1991.
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