Let Me Die a Woman (1978, USA)

Wow. I don’t even know where to start. Let Me Die a Woman is technically a documentary, though the level of artifice in the form is so high that it occasionally calls the entire project into question. The subjects are transsexuals and sex change operations as viewed through the VERY subjective lens of the late 1970’s and Doris Wishman's explotation cinema. Honestly, this may be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, and that’s even without considering the bizarre sexual politics of the text. The colors are saturated, the music would be more appropriate for a same-era horror film or melodrama, and the recreations of supposedly true events (a sexual encounter between a recent post-op subject and a Casablanca cab driver, the male-to-female transsexual who attempted self-surgery with a hammer and chisel, etc.) are luridly over-the-top.

As for the interpretation of gender identity . . . well, I hope to think that we’ve come a long way in the last thirty years. In general, the transsexual subjects are presented as sexual deviants, up until the point where they fully manifest/embody their desired genders - essentially, the change is seen as a quest to become “normalized” members of society. Homosexuals are actually the true deviants here – even some of the transsexual interviewees speak of homosexuals as abnormal. In fact, they’re all apparent abnormalities, as homosexuality, transvestitism, and transsexualism are seemingly birth defects, most often due to pregnant mothers-to-be ingesting too many hormones.

Yeah.

Despite (or perhaps because of) this outdated and often offensive text, Let Me Die a Woman is fascinating to watch, though occasionally hard to stomach – there is an extended sequence that shows a male-to-female sex change operation, and the sexual interludes might also bother some viewers. The subject matter is too serious for the film to be considered as true camp, but the style is too outrageous and filmic for it to be taken without question. Perhaps more interesting than an investigation of the sexual politics of Let Me Die a Woman would be an explication of what kind of film it really is. Even the latest generation of biased American documentary filmmakers (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock) probably couldn’t imagine making a movie quite like this.