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Brandon Teena Story Essay

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gender and sexuality harbored by millions of Americans. Falls City, an economically depressed small town with less than two black families with a population of about 5,000, typifies that rural section of the United States. Any known gay people would have been ‘escorted’ out of town. People here are used to the average and ‘good life’ basically meaning white, ‘middle class’, and heterosexual. Being on welfare was common in this county. The people of Falls City may have heard of gay liberation, but they've never met an uncloseted gay or transgendered person and definitely have no desire to do so; they are naïve and uneducated about genders besides the typical two genders associated with the sexes, male and female. Even the hero, Brandon Teena, was only slowly coming to an understanding of identity and sexuality. This essence of hypermasculinity and narrow-mindedness lingers in the film. As a matter of fact, in the documentary we learn that this county isn’t as model-like and close-knit as they portray as it has a high rate of domestic violence. An inmate even accounts that the men found the time to …show more content…

It isn’t always acted out verbally; instead it festers until it explodes in acts of violence where the committers can’t even understand the reasoning behind the unethical impulse. The film has formal interviews of the killers who are now in prison, some of their family members, Brandon’s mother and sister, friends, old friends, past girlfriends. Photos of [Teena] Brandon at various ages were included. As the images of Brandon appeared on the screen, I never figured it was a ‘girl’. The women that dated Brandon remained mostly affectionate and composed despite the weight of the issue plus the feelings he evoked. They were not lesbians including Brandon who strongly identifies as a male: “this isn’t a lesbian relationship Gina! I don’t know what you’re

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