Private Parts

Trailer.

Available Summary:

"Young Cheryl moves into her estranged aunt Martha's rundown King Edward Hotel. One of its offbeat residents, disturbed photographer George, takes special interest in her. Cheryl begins suspecting that a resident was murdered." -IMDb.

Jack's Summary:

While this is chiefly a silly, overdramatic movie that I didn't find particularly upsetting, aspects of the plot have disturbing parallels to injustices experienced by trans men in real life, and transness is presented as torture rather than autonomy.

When this film's canonical trans male character, George, is found dead, amused policemen ogle his exposed non-op chest and remark, "Look at the jugs on this guy! Boy, oh boy! With knockers like that, I could go for this guy myself!" In death, he is reduced to being a freakish specimen, much like the FTM villain in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, released two years prior to this film. His body is a source of disgust, fascination, and arousal, accompanied by complete apathy towards the fact that he has been killed. (While undeniably transphobic, this scene also is consistent with the apathy which police officers show toward other dead bodies and victims of crime.)

Unlike Beyond the Valley of the Dolls however, a narrative of trans deception and perversion was planned from the very beginning of Private Parts, to the extent that injectable testosterone is clearly visible in George's cabinets, for viewers who are paying attention. Being assigned female at birth, and physically transitioning with testosterone, is the overarching horror and plot twist.

Another difference between the two films is that Private Parts doesn't just portray a trans man as a sexually obscene weirdo, but also as a feeble, pathetic, damaged person who only transitioned because he had an abusive mother who forced him to be trans. In that sense, Private Parts offers dual transphobic tropes, mirroring the logic used to mock real FTM journeys; transition as a manifestation of perverse, unacceptable sexual perversion, and transition as a result of bad parenting.

The idea that trans men can't make our own decisions, and must have instead been forced by our caregivers to adopt a male identity, is an old idea used to strip away FTM autonomy, and it's an idea which provides the foundation for Private Parts. As for what George's personal experience of gender is, how he identifies and would choose to live if allowed to make his own choices... it is not clear.

Cheryl, the female protagonist of Private Parts, desires George and even strips for him, spending much of the film being sexually assertive and confident, exploring exhibitionism and voyeurism of her own free will. She's certainly bolder than most hapless female victims of this genre, but she's ultimately terrified and physically intimidated by George when he advances towards her with a needle, seeking to inject his blood into her body in lieu of being able to ejaculate like a cis male.

While the killers in this film are ultimately both women (George's mother and Cheryl herself), and George ends up being a victim (albeit a very creepy one), that doesn't stop this film being incredibly transphobic and without consideration for trans male viewers.

Beyond transphobic tropes, this film conflates homosexuality with an attraction to underage boys, by way of a gay male character named Reverend Moon, who gets visibly excited when asked if he knows the whereabouts of a "clean-cut fifteen year-old boy".

Upon a rewatch, I properly absorbed the fact that the afore-mentioned fifteen-year-old boy goes on a date with Cheryl, which led me to wonder how old Cheryl herself is... and whether she is, in fact, a teenager herself. As for George's age, all we know is that he is approximately twice as old as Cheryl, giving the film (and George himself) a new level of creepiness.

In summary, Private Parts uses trans maleness as a plot device, portraying George as a martyr and his transition as a tragedy. It is not representation in the slightest.