The Strange Trend of Pretending to Have a Marginalized Identity in Movies
Image: compiled from movie posters hosted on IMDB
Stop me if you have heard this plot before. A character, usually a man, and usually a white man, is down on their luck. Their career is dead in the water for whatever reason, so they take on a new persona. They decide to impersonate a woman, and it revitalizes their career. They go from nobodies to stars almost overnight.
Or here's another one: a boy is in love with a woman who will not give him the time of day. He wants to get close to her but doesn't know how, so he lies about his sexuality to get in as her gay best friend, and, at least initially, all is well. He connects with her as an individual, and by the end (after a comedic reveal), they're dating.
There are a lot of films where a privileged character pretends to be a social minority for laughs. The character, either for prestige or romance, has adopted the persona of a less privileged person so that they can achieve their goals. Although the truth is almost always revealed to some (or all), they usually achieve one or all of their objectives, reinforcing problematic tropes in the process.
'They have it easier'
One trend we see a lot in these films is the misconception that stigmatized populations have things easier than more privileged people, at least in some ways. A common throughline in many of these films is that the role the main character adopts has immediate financial or social benefits.
In the film, Tootsie (1982), the character Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is such a difficult actor that no one will hire him, but these attributes as a woman allow him to gain success (albeit because a powerful woman is at the helm of the soap opera he was cast in). It's not that he doesn't experience harassment as a woman (he does), but he is depicted as a "better" woman because his upbringing allows him to act with assertion. He loses that career after his "big reveal," but not after wooing the heart of the woman he admires.
In Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), a film about a cis-gendered man named Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) dressing up as an older nanny to secretly take care of his children, the sexual harassment he receives dressing up as a woman is mainly played for laughs. And while Daniel may not be able to rekindle the relationship he had with his ex-wife, his cross-dressing revitalizes his career. He ends up hosting a new children's show under his Mrs. Doubtfire persona.
In Soul Man (1986), Mark Watson (C. Thomas Howell), a posh white kid, pretends to be Black after his parents cut him off so that he can secure a scholarship. He obtains this with some Blackface and little effort. Although the film does try to underscore the difficulties of the Black experience in America, albeit in a problematic way, Mark is still able to go to college for free for most of its runtime. He ends the film not by going to jail for fraud but by earning the affections of a girl with the "cool" pickup line: "How do you feel about interracial relationships?"
For most of their runtime, these films allow these characters to extract benefits for donning the role of a stigmatized population, and they end with either financial or romantic success. This outlook is false. Stigmatized populations do not have an easier time overall (a reality that is backed up in the data). If it was easier to be gay or a woman (or both), especially to be a gay Black or Latina woman in something like the film or entertainment industry, our lived reality would be much different.
Yet this falsehood is a real feeling that many people hold. For example, before conservatives were successfully able to end race-conscious admissions for universities via the Supreme Court case Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, a common argument was that such a process gave Black and Latino populations "unfair" advantages.
Given the pervasiveness of this belief, even a passive reinforcement of this idea in films can be pretty damaging.
'It's funny & educational'
Another component is that these movies allow the actors and the audience to promote stereotypes against the stigmatized population in question. And since the people acting out these roles (and writing and directing them) are usually not from the stigmatized population in question, there is a certain voyeurism with how they revel in these tropes.
In a scene from Soul Man where Mark is invited to a dinner party, we see how the white family views him in their minds, and it's all stereotypes. For example, one of the characters views him as a "pimp" eating a watermelon slice. These are portrayed as damaging stereotypes but also simultaneously given extended air time in a way that feels gratuitous.
We could also look at Big Mamma's House (2000), a police comedy that tells the story of Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence), who dresses up as a Black woman to stake out the wife of a dangerous criminal. The comedy mainly involves Malcolm in a fat suit doing over-the-top physical humor, and it has been well-criticized for perpetuating damaging tropes, particularly the mammy trope (i.e., a Black-faced minstrelsy character of a fat, loud, cantankerous Black woman). As Ukiya C. Henson writes in THE MAMMY RELOADED: African American Men Portraying The Updated Caricature In Contemporary Films:
“The mammy is further emphasized in the trailer to [Big Mamma’s House]. It begins by positioning the film as an action movie involving two agents going undercover. However, it soon becomes apparent that the film is actually a comedy centering on agent Turner’s undercover stint as the plus-sized, sassy, and nurturing matriarch, Big Momma. The trailer also features the tagline, “It aint over ’til the fat lady sings.” This expression places even more emphasis on Big Momma’s figure and weight. Thus, the underlying meaning is that House’s humor derives from an African American male dressing as a plus-size African American mammy.”
Similarly, the movie I Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) is about Chuck (Adam Sandler) and Larry (Kevin James), who marry each other to extract financial benefits. Hilarity ensues as they must pretend they are not committing fraud, and in the process, we have two straight men trying to pantomime gayness to prove their relationship. And while I don't care if two straight men decide to get married, there is something strange watching Adam Sandler suddenly having a flair for fashion the moment he has a chance to go out for a "girl's night." There is also a cringe-worthy "drop the soap" scene that, although it is meant to highlight the homophobia of Chuck & Larry's straight coworkers, goes on for way too long.
By taking on the aesthetic of a stigmatized population, these characters can act out the worst stereotypes imaginable while still having the psychic distance of "educating the viewer" on how awful these stigmatized minorities have it. How could the film be racist, sexist, transphobic, etc., when this privileged person is merely acting out that characterization to talk about how bad it is?
These narratives are trying to play "both sides" with how they depict discrimination and highlight injustice, all while giving space for the viewer to laugh at the stereotypes in question.
'They're heroes in the end'
Another aspect is that the film allows the pretender to learn about how awful being a social minority is, usually after simultaneously extracting all the perceived benefits, so they can swoop in and save the groups they are impersonating.
Tootsie has an entire subplot where Michael Dorsey, as Dorothy Michaels, pushes up against the misogyny on the set of her soap. She stops a man who uses his position to make out with women on set by publicly shaming him. She then causes a secondary character to gain self-confidence by being such a great example of female independence. In fact, in the movie, Dorothy Michaels becomes a role model for many women for being able to speak directly about misogyny.
In the film I Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Chuck punches a homophobe and becomes a mini-gay celebrity. In one scene, Fred G. Duncan (Ving Rhames), comes out to Chuck after being inspired by his "out and proud" relationship with Larry. Their relationship gave Fred the chance to come to terms with his sexuality and "be true" to himself. These two characters are portrayed as heroes. Larry ends the film with being able to keep his benefits. Chuck "scores" a new woman, and neither of them experiences consequences for their fraud.
In Soul Man, Mark Watson not only returns the money from the scholarship to the person he stole it from (with interest) but establishes a new scholarship and pledges to devote his life to serving "underprivileged" people. He also literally beats up a white duo that has been making fun of Black people the whole movie and is "rewarded" with the Black woman he has been courting (and lying to) the entire film, deciding to start a relationship with him.
There is a level of entitlement that comes from these types of plots. Whether we are talking about false rape accusations against Black men or grooming allegations against LGBTQ+ people (or both), accusations of sexual impropriety are some of the first things to be weaponized against social minorities. As a trans person, I have been called a groomer by people since I transitioned just because I exist. And if a trans person were to do the things depicted in these movies (i.e., to secretly court a woman by dressing in drag), they would be arrested and then held up as an example of immorality.
Yet here we have characters actively lying in one of the worst ways possible — in ways that are arguably predatory — and there are not only few consequences, but often these characters are depicted as heroes in the text to the communities they have infiltrated.
A hidden conclusion
Since most of these films are comedies, a common response is to say, so what? Who cares if a comedy has a whacky premise?
But I find that excuse to be intellectually lazy. Art is a mirror that influences our perceptions of who we are and who we believe others to be. The better question to ask is what these films are telling us about how dominant society views stigmatized populations, and often, the lessons are not very flattering. We have characters who pretend to be members of a stigmatized population and reinforce harmful stereotypes for the sake of "education" while simultaneously centering characters outside that population.
And, of course, this situation is rarely reversed. Except maybe the comedy White Chicks (2004), where two Black male cops named Marcus (Marlon Wayans) and Kevin Copeland (Shawn Wayans) dress up as posh white women (parodying that subculture to great effect), you don't get a whole lot of examples where socially stigmatized characters get to put on whiteness, maleness, cisgenderness, and the like to “punch up” for laughs. It's almost always a subgenre for “punching down.”
Thankfully, when we look at the dates of these films, most of them started to wrap up in the late 2010s. The most recent one I could find was Adam in 2019, where the main character of the same name pretends to be trans to date a woman. That movie not only takes pains to stress how f@cked up this action is, albeit pulling a few narrative punches, but some viewers were so upset by the premise that the film received calls for boycotts before it even came out.
Hopefully, we can put this trend to rest as we go deeper into the 2020s. We don't need to understand marginalized identities through the lens of someone who is not that identity. A white main character isn't necessary to explain how bad it is to be Black in America. A straight character isn't needed to understand gayness. Let's leave the Sociology 101 course films to people who actually understand these identities, shall we?