Hollywood, Don't You Dare Whitewash Stonewall

[stephaniec]

Hollywood, Don't You Dare Whitewash Stonewall

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernest-owens/hollywood-dont-you-dare-w_b_7946860.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender

The Huffington Post/by Ernest Owens     08/06/2015

"Enraged is an understatement.

Watching the trailer for Roland Emmerich's upcoming film Stonewall made me feel levels of betrayal.

Basically, this film is going to be about a fictional cis-white male who ends up being the leading voice and face of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. The character Danny Winters (played by Jeremy Irvine) gets rejected from his lily white small town and runs to New York City where he finally meets poor queer people of color and gets introduced to The Stonewall Inn. There, he is culture shocked by the rudeness and harassment of cis-white police which leads him to be the main rebel that throws the initial brick that sets off the major LGBT revolution."

[Patty_M]

I read Monica's report on this on Transgriot this morning.  Cis-washing Stonewall this way is outrageous.

From every account it was the queens and transvestites (that's what we were called back then) were the ones who started the riots.  It was the transgender people who threw the first high heel at the police.   And not just at Stonewall. 

The Cooper's donuts incident in 1959 was the same way.  At that event cops harassed cross dressers at a doughnut shop in Los Angeles but the "queens" had had enough.  One threw a coffee cup and the battle began. This incident hasn't gotten the ink on gay history sites it deserves.

Seven years later (1966) there was the Compton's Cafeteria riot in San Francisco.  Once again it was the transgender people who had enough and fought back.  There is a documentary about the Compton's riot called "Screaming Queens".  Terrible title but very informative.

This trailer downplays the role people like Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.  All they needed to do was to make an accurate movie but chose not to.  That's just sad.  The trans people deserve to be recognized as the ones who started this revolution.

[Rowan]

I am so mad about this movie I could spit. The strong, brave, revolutionary women (Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera) have been all but deleted, and replaced by a bunch of cisgender white guys.

I haven't been expecting much out of Hollywood for a while but this is a new low.

[stephaniec]

when I first saw the clip I thought wow, this is going to be good, then The criticism started to flow and I felt betrayed by Hollywood once again. the power of money to distort. So sad they couldn't of done it right.

[Ms Grace]

Folks, it's just a trailer... it shows less than 1% of the movie, out of order and out of context and with a specific narrative. Other trailers for the same movie may be cut and narrate differently. How many trailers in the history of trailers have ever represented the final movie with any degree of accuracy? Some parts shown in a trailer never even make the final movie, or the importance given to a three second grab is totally inaccurate. A massive amount of trailer footage misrepresents the movie (positively or negatively). Just with any movie I wait until it is actually released and I've seen it before I make a personal judgement on it.