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Film Analysis : Analysis Of Visions In The Soldiers Girl

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Soldiers Girl is a heartbreaking film based off of a true story created in 2003. The two main characters including Army recruit Barry Winchell (Troy Garity) and Transsexual drag queen Calpernia Addams (Lee Pace) unexpectedly fall in love when Barry lays his eyes on her in the local bar that she works in called Visions. While their love flourishes over time, it becomes extremely apparent that this would be nearly impossible with Winchell’s nosey bunkmate, Justin Fisher (Shawn Hatosy) who strongly disagrees with their relationship. This film does an exceptional job representing a transgender woman as one of the main characters, however she is more so portrayed as the catalyst leading to Winchell’s death in the end. The dominant message in this film is how Binary Thinking (“viewing, interpreting and judging reality in terms of mutually exclusive categories (X is either “this” or “that” and cannot be both)” can affect people In the Transgender community.
Transphobia which is the “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender or transsexual people” is a large aspect of this film (Dictionary). The film’s plot heats up during the scene in which Fisher brings all of his friends including Winchell to the bar, Visions. This is a drag queen bar which is something that Fisher knew before taking them. In the time there, the men throw out a lot of transphobic banter continuously trying to find out if the drag queen was a “chick” or a guy. When Fisher “forces”

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