Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood is a meaningful parody that brings to life the biography of Edward D. Wood Jr. (a struggling filmmaker, actor and writer who reveals his identity as a heterosexual transvestite) as he would have filmed it. Wood comes to terms with his fetishes and the comfort he finds in identifying with women while filming his personal hardships as he exposes them in the script for the movie Glen or Glenda. He undertakes this film project inspired by Christine Jorgensen, formally know as George William Jorgensen, the first known individual to have sex-reassignment surgery.
[...] Only when the child is three to four years old is that he or she learns about gender consistency, that gender cannot change over night and that a woman that shaved off all of her hair is still a woman, a distinction a one year old can not make and that Ed Wood at the age of four and three could not probably make either. His gender did change from one moment to the other until it got to the point where he felt very comfortable in both. [...]
[...] This is where the explanation for Ed Wood's personhood starts unraveling. This filmmaker's story seems to serve as a defense for ideas that support that life experiences influence gender more than that biological factors influence gender. Instead of steering towards the explanation that the characteristics that have to do with gender have been somehow molded by human evolution, our past and our present, instead (in this case) they have everything to do with interactions with other individuals; especially since it is commonly believed that the primary social influence on gender is the family. [...]
[...] Right from the second scene in the film we are exposed to the prejudice against sexual minorities as Edward walks into an office and overhears the secretaries talking: Secretary They say he was a girl trapped in a boy's body. Secretary I bet it hurt when they cut his thing off! (laughter) Secretary (explaining to Ed) You know that Christine Jorgensen freak? She . It's in Variety, come producer is making a biopic. (the newspaper's heading is : Boy-to-Chick Flick to Click) The protagonist's girlfriend Dolores, played by Sarah Jessica Parker also serves as the voice of the close-minded society and prejudiced history. [...]
[...] Ed Wood's mom, Lillian, probably rewarded Wood for pleasing her with her fantasies of having a daughter, while his father did the contrary and as a result you have a film that has beautiful man which feels more secure when dressed in a sweater, a skirt, pumps, a mustache and wigless when it comes to directing. A fruit that is not a fruit, as George Weiss, the president of Screen Classics, asks him after hearing the confession: George: You're a fruit? [...]
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