#same director

Thirst (2009) dir. Park Chan-wook

(I should clarify that there’s also aspects of intersexism in this particular example) I was being coy because I didn’t want to start discourse, but it’s the character Gren from C*wboy B*bop. The original character was a man who developed breasts from a side effect of experimental drugs he was forced to take in prison, and this is shown to the audience through the classic transphobic trope of the “forced reveal” when Faye walks in on him in the shower. This element of the character is just kinda there and doesn’t add anything, and he dies at the end of the episode. Like, okay?

If the gender politics of this story were in doubt, the cross-dressing sex workers funny haha gag premised on how gross trans women are kinda seals the deal.

Anyway so the live-action Netflix adaptation cast a non-binary actor to play the character as non-binary, which would be pretty cool if the character they’re adapting weren’t *gestures at the first paragraph* all of that.

The actor argues that Gren is non-binary because he says the line “I am both at once and neither one” in reference to being a man with breasts. Like, if you think cis men being force-femmed is the same thing as being trans, sure. It takes a lot of ignorance to see a male character with breasts he never wanted referred to as “neither a man or a woman” and go “clearly this is about gender :)”. This is not something the character chose, it was forced upon them; that’s not how being trans works.

That’s what’s really galling about all this, the transmisogynistic revisionism of “the language didn’t exist back then.” But it was never meant to be some transgressive gender stuff; it’s just the usual chaser-y cis dude stuff.

From what little has been revealed about the adaptation so far, it sounds like Gren is going to have a very different story from the original, so at that point they might as well have come up with a new character. Or, like, make Ed non-binary idk.

Final scene: 

- Ep 11 of Why Secretary Kim

STAR & SKY: THE CONNECTIONS

Series: UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN (UWMA)

Star & Sky Connection: Same Director - NEW SIWAJ SAWATMANEEKUL

Intouch or In (KATSAMONNAT NAMWIROTE aka EARTH) has a close moment with the man he's in love with Korn (NOPPAKAO DECHAPHATTHANAKUN aka KAO) A pinky promise says they'll find one another if they die and are reborn NO MATTER WHAT.