Introduction

Abstract

This first detailed study of screen representations of transgender has the following main aims:

• To demonstrate that perceptions of transgender are mediated by culturally constructed images.

• To explore these cultural representations of transvestism and transsexuality in modern (late twentieth century) screen media (film, Internet), against the historical background of the evolution of such representations.

• To identify and account for the ambivalence that underlies the depiction of transgender in modern film.

• To reposition and redefine sexual desire against sexual fascination with transgender.

Not merely a topic of intellectual debate in universities and academic writings, transgender has become a major preoccupation in western culture. In the mid-1970s, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Lou Adler, 1975), a drag version of earlier science-fiction films, stimulated a fashionable interest in cross-dressing that influenced rock-stars and other icons of popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s, from David Bowie and Boy George to Divine, Ru Paul, and many others. This trend has continued into the new millennium.