I found this roaming around tumblr and well, I quite liked it. So even though I and many others have talked about this at length before some new members and old could have something new contribute, so, discuss?anonymous asked:
I've recently heard criticism of Let the Right One In as being transphobic, which I guess never really occurred to me before because I didn't read Eli as trans? But people took issue with the general concept of someone presenting as a girl as a form of deception (leading to murder). idk I wondered if you had any thoughts
I can see where there complaints are coming from—it definitely overlaps in the Venn diagram with an old and ugly trope about deceitful trans folk, albeit I think unintentionally.
It doesn’t particularly bother me in this instance because Eli doesn’t come across as deliberately presenting female. He’s mistaken for a girl, and that’s easier for him, it’s true (hence the overlap with that nasty entrapment stereotype).
But what he is is a child who was forcibly kept that way by the pedophile who made him a vampire. He was mutilated to keep him from ever having any control over his gender—he’ll never grow up to be a man, woman, or anything else. His body is frozen as a child and is out of his control forever, because his abuser liked him that way. And so it’s an incredible moment of vulnerability for him to share with Oskar “I’m not a girl” — the way he actually determines himself rather than the way the world determines him.
That doesn’t mean there’s not some unconscious overlap with stereotypes about trans people, but I appreciate the messier, raw and valuable character they’re going for there. My sad queer vampire boy.
Also I had a hard time categorizing it in the film thread, this, or book thread so yeah.