The Zoolander 2 trailer was packed to the gills with plenty of celebrity cameos, but one in particular is drawing the internet’s ire. LGBTQ activist groups have taken issue with Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of the androgynous model, All, starting an online petition to boycott the film. In the petition, activist Sarah Rose calls it an “an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals.”
“If the producers and screenwriters of Zoolander wanted to provide social commentary on the presence of trans/androgyne individuals in the fashion industry, they could have approached models like Andreja Pejic to be in the film. By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, the film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large.”
As can be expected, Twitter had plenty of opinions about this controversy, taking both sides of the argument.
https://twitter.com/lyingkitten/status/667024482612056064
@robbiereviews I mean, I can imagine ways in which the portrayal could be offensive. But everyone seems to be getting pre-offended here.
— Tom Chivers (@TomChivers) November 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/andrearitsu/status/668725197969694720
https://twitter.com/valkyrienoboken/status/667096409175433222
https://twitter.com/JessicaTripler/status/667034946784112640
The petition is only 500 signatures away from reaching the goal of 10,000, but we’ll see if there is any actual fallout. While the positive portrayal of minority groups in modern media is definitely an issue worth discussing, looking for the sensitive representation of anything in a Zoolander film seems to be an effort in futility.
(Via Mashable)
