Happy Trans Day of Visibility! A day where we celebrate trans people and our contributions to society. It’s also a day where we recognize the struggles that trans people go through because of discrimination (feel free to buy me a coffee today). Instead of making a straightforward list of films by or featuring trans people (although you should watch Carnage for Christmas and The Estrogen Gospel), I wanted to delve into the concept of transhumanism.
The Best Horror And Sci-Fi Movies to Watch for Transgender Day of Visibility
What is Transhumanism?
Transhumanism focuses on changing human bodies through technology to achieve an advanced or new form of existence. As a trans person, the part of transhumanism that I find interesting is the autonomy to change your body outside of accepted norms. Whether that is top surgery to alleviate gender dysphoria, or turning your hand into a gun to usher in the era of the new flesh: I’m all for it.
Videodrome (1983)
We can’t talk about transhumanism without mentioning Videodrome by the king of body horror, David Cronenberg. Max Ren is the CEO of a TV station, who discovers Videodrome, an illicit broadcast signal showing snuff. As Max watches the channel, he begins to see things, which may be hallucinations or visions of a higher plane of existence. As his mind changes, so does his body. The film sexualizes the abject and dives courageously into the grotesque. Videodrome is a story of transcending one’s body and human existence to become something new, the central idea of transhumanism.
Titane (2021)
Titane is a wild ride. It’s disturbing but not excessively violent and ultimately has a positive message. As a young child, Alexia is in a car accident and needs to have a titanium plate inserted in her head. The titanium in her brain changes her, and she gets along better with cars than with people. As an adult, she is a dancer at motor shows. She gets very intimate with these cars and becomes pregnant. Alexia seems to have disdain for people, which escalates to murder at the beginning of the film. To hide her identity after the murders, Alexia starts living as a boy. Whether or not the character is truly trans, the trans metaphor is very present in this film. As Alexia becomes more and more pregnant, it becomes harder to hide her body and pass as a boy. The body horror of the film comes from Alexia’s feelings of dysphoria as her body becomes more alien to her while the car baby develops inside of her.
Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989)
Inspired directly by Videodrome, Tetsuo the Iron Man is another seminal work of transhumanism. A regular businessman hits another man with his car. The victim of the car accident is a metal fetishist, and is shown inserting pieces of scrap metal into his flesh for pleasure. After the accident, the businessman begins being tormented by mechanical body horror until his own body starts to change. The film’s audio is unique in that there is very little dialogue, and instead focuses on industrial music and percussion. Tetsuo the Iron Man also has elements of German Expressionism. In addition to being inspired by Videodrome, writer and director Shinya Tsukamoto was influenced by Blade Runner, which was inspired by the German Expressionist film Metropolis.
The Matrix (1999)
At this point, we all know that the Wachowski sisters wrote The Matrix as a trans metaphor, making it a perfect watch for TDOV. This film is known for its characters who can bend the fabric of reality because they recognize that their perception of reality is what makes it real. The central transhumanism question of the film is: Who can you be if your expression of yourself comes only from your mind? If you’re not bound by physical constraints, you can be whatever you want, you first just have to realize that you’re in control.
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
While Repo! is not scary, it uses horror aesthetics, and has the added bonus of being a musical. It is truly a master class on trans-humanism. It takes place in a future where people can finance new organs and elective surgeries through the corporation, GeneCo. However, if people aren’t able to pay their debts, the repo man will come and take their organs back. I imagine what being trans would be like in a future like this. People are modifying their bodies for all sorts of reasons, with much less medical necessity than being trans. However, the prospect of being forcibly de-transitioned if you’re unable to pay your debts to GeneCo is a little too close to real life for comfort. In the current political climate in the US, trans people’s access to care is threatened, not only by capitalistic medical insurance practices but also by the far right, who do not understand trans people and are opposed to our medical needs.
I hope these movies inspire you to consider your own bodily autonomy, but even more than that, I hope you have fun watching!
Trans rights are human rights! Long live the new flesh! Happy TDOV!