Erik Piepenburg

It was a Sunday, around 3 p.m. on the East Coast, when millions of people held hands with strangers for 15 minutes in a human chain that was meant to stretch from New York to California. It was an effort to raise money for organizations fighting hunger and homelessness, and it was called Hands Across America. A Washington Post headline later suggested that it “might have been the most Eighties thing to happen in the 1980s.”

Hands Across America has largely been stored in the Gen X memory box along with its feel-good, cheese ball music video, which features cameos by Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams and other celebrities. Toto was the backing band.

Memories of the occasion are now resurfacing — through a sinister lens — thanks to “Us,” the new hit horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele.

In the movie, Lupita Nyong’o plays a mother haunted by a traumatic encounter she had as a girl in 1986. Her life is violently upended when a wicked version of her family shows up to hatch plans that, according to Peele, imagine “the dark side of Hands Across America.” The family first appears standing hand-in-hand like paper dolls, as did Hands Across America’s participants. That formation is a motif in the film’s advertising and a recurring, nefarious force in the story. Peele “draws a line between the Reagan and Trump presidencies, suggesting that we were, and remain, one nation profoundly divisible,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times.

For Katy Shrout, 9 at the time and now a 42-year-old eighth-grade English teacher in Atlanta, Hands Across America was a joyful moment “of epic significance.” With a mixtape booming in her boombox, Shrout joined hands with her parents, sister and her sister’s Cabbage Patch Kid, Iva, along a roadway in St. Louis.

“I was really pumped about it,” said Shrout. “I thought that when we were holding hands, I was holding hands with people in California and New York.” (The line actually had gaps in some areas; states not on the route organized their own similar events.)

In an interview, Peele said that as he was writing “Us” he stumbled across a commercial for the event and “got this really eerie feeling.” A Hands Across America commercial of the director’s own making plays at the beginning of the film. “There’s something cultlike about the imagery that makes me think of the Manson family singing folk songs as they leave the courtroom,” said Peele, who was 7 when the nationwide gathering happened. “There’s like an insistence that as long as we have each other, we can walk blindly past the ugliness and evil that we may be a part of.”

By infusing Hands Across America with malevolent power, Peele is cinematizing one of the main criticisms it faced in 1986: that it was “a superficial gesture that offered no long-term solution to poverty in the United States,” as The Times described homeless advocates’ objections in a front-page article the day after the event. Eventually, the initiative distributed about $15 million to various charities, lower than its target of at least $50 million.

In his “satirical poke” at Hands Across America, Peele said he wasn’t calling into question the “well intentioned, good people” behind it. “I don’t think the notion is an evil one,” he explained.

Yet as he reflected on it these years later, Peele said it struck him as an event “more for the people who are holding hands to cure hunger than for the people who are hungry themselves.”

There is no dark side to Hands Across America for Ken Kragen. A former talent manager whose clients included Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie, Kragen was the event’s main organizer. Now 82 and a business consultant in Los Angeles, he considers it the “biggest accomplishment” of his professional life. That’s in addition to his role as president of USA for Africa, the organization behind the song “We Are the World,” a 1985 hit featuring Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and other megastars that, according to Rolling Stone, raised over $63 million in humanitarian aid for organizations in Africa and the United States.

(USA for Africa is still around and hands out money to groups in Africa, in part from royalties from “We Are the World” downloads, according to Kragen, now a board member of the operation.)

Kragen said he wasn’t aware that Hands Across America was featured in “Us.” Not a horror movie fan, he remarked: “My wife’s going to see it.”

He said he was “delighted” the film might encourage a new generation to learn more about an event that, while it may not have solved the issue of hunger, “made a difference.”

“Putting 5.5 million people across the country was completely impossible, and we did it without the benefit of the internet,” he said. “That’s one of the most amazing things. The more younger people are aware that we pulled this off, the more likely they may create something that will help pull the country back together.”

Could Hands Across America happen again? Would a theme song with the lines “See those people over there/They’re my sister and brother” last a second without being annihilated by Twitter? Not likely, said Abby Aronson, who was 16 when she participated in Hands Across America in New Jersey.

“Today people always have something in their hands,” said Aronson, now 49 and a foreign service officer. “You would break the chain. You’d either have to participate or document. It’s harder today to be in a moment 100 percent.”

For Kragen, there are political roadblocks.

“With this administration, and particularly a leader who wants to divide people, it’s hard to find anything that everybody can agree on,” he said. “With the encouragement of the alt-right and the Nazis and the white supremacists, the chance of the line getting attacked are very real.”

Peele isn’t hopeful either. “Unless Beyoncé is leading the charge,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="19c6f389-779d-489e-9bd1-143cc4adb278" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/movies/us-hands-across-america.html">The New York Times</a>.

'Us' finds malice in a symbolic 1980s event

On May 25, 1986, something happened in the United States that — in this divisive American moment — sounds utterly bonkers.

“Girl” sounds like a film that transgender moviegoers might rally around. It depicts a teenage trans girl, Lara, raised by a single father who supports not only her dreams of becoming a ballerina but also her gender confirmation surgery. It’s set in Belgium, so much of Lara’s health care is paid for and her doctor and therapist are encouraging caregivers. And it’s a prize winner that is up for a best foreign-language Golden Globe on Sunday.

Yet “Girl,” which has been picked up by Netflix, faces a firestorm, one that pits the director, Lukas Dhont; the trans woman who inspired it, dancer Nora Monsecour; and the film’s supporters against trans activists and others who consider its scrutiny of a trans character’s body so dangerous that they urge no one to see it. Stuck somewhere in the heated debate are those who say that shunning “Girl” risks turning off cisgender viewers who might benefit from seeing a young trans character who’s as likable as she is complicated. (Cisgender is a term describing someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.)

Not long ago, when trans people showed up in movies, if at all, they were victims or predators. As advocates demanded increased visibility, shows like “Pose” made waves with more truthful depictions written and portrayed by trans performers. Problems persist, for sure. But the days seem to be gone when a movie like “Dressed to Kill” assumed trans women were psychos in skirts.

“Girl” asks a provocative question: Have we gotten to a place where a film can explore dark aspects of an individual trans character without feeling regressive? No one should have the burden of representing a class of people in a film; real people are complicated. But what happens when a movie is both art and a trigger?

That’s the question behind the two main criticisms of “Girl.” One is that neither Dhont nor his co-writer, Angelo Tissens, nor the young actor who plays Lara, Victor Polster, are transgender. (Dhont said he auditioned more than 500 performers, including trans actors.) Adding salt to the wound, Polster won an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival.

The other objection, the one that has prompted foes to label the film “traumatizing” and “sickening,” involves scenes near the end.

(Spoiler alert: Stop reading here if you don’t want to know more about the film.)

In a single long take, Lara calls paramedics, picks up scissors and cuts off her penis. Her back is to the camera, so viewers hear her screams but see neither the act nor blood. She recovers from her injury, and the final shot is of her smiling face. But there had been no obvious cues that Lara would harm herself, and it’s unclear why she takes this horrific step other than the fact that her gender confirmation surgery has been postponed and, like many teenagers, she’s impatient and impulsive.

The outrage has played out ferociously online. Film critic Oliver Whitney wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that “Girl” is the “most dangerous movie about a trans character in years.” Whitney, who identifies as trans masculine, told me that seeing a trans girl mutilating herself suggests “it’s part of her survival, and that’s harmful.” He said he was most upset that the film “sends a damaging message to all audiences, but especially to trans folks suffering from dysphoria who may not have access to medical care or information about medical transitions.”

Some opponents are framing “Girl” as a matter of life or death. Nick Adams, the director of transgender media at GLAAD, a media advocacy group for LGBT people, warned that the scissors scene “might provoke a young person to harm themselves beyond repair or even end their life.”

The concerns are heightened by the fact that the film is likely to reach a wide audience via Netflix. The movie was set to stream beginning Jan. 18 but has been moved, probably to the spring, according to Netflix, which declined to comment further.

When I spoke with Monsecour, she sounded tired of having to defend the film. “I know what the truth is, and ‘Girl’ is my truth,” she said.

She also said the reactions surprised her. “The words people have used to describe ‘Girl’ came close to my heart because the scenes they are criticizing are scenes that I had in mind during my transition,” she said. “To criticize Lukas for portraying those things made me think, ‘Am I the only person who had suicidal thoughts or was bodily focused?’”

As she has noted before, Monsecour said the scissors scene was fiction, not biography. “That didn’t happen to me,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to encourage anyone to do that.”

Dhont told me that the film comes from a place “of love and empathy for Nora,” and that he stands by it “100 percent.” He said he was happy the film “is part of a conversation,” and added, “I think of cinema as a medium that can present dark ideas or thoughts. We don’t hide away from them.”

Three trans women who saw the film at a screening in Los Angeles said it was the film’s dark territory that made it compelling. Crystal Stull told me “Girl” was “the closest that cis people in society will ever get to understanding just how bad dysphoria can really get.”

Jessica Hogan said: “Some films are made for trans people and some are made to help cis people understand.”

Ann Thomas, the founder of Transgender Talent, a talent listing service for trans people, chastised the campaign against it.

“The message these arrogant trans activists are saying is that Nora doesn’t have the right to tell her story,” said Thomas, who also defended “Girl” in an opinion piece for The Advocate.

One idea that foes and fans of the film might agree on is a content advisory card that tells viewers the R-rated film is for mature audiences. Netflix added a similar message to the TV series “13 Reasons Why” after it faced criticism from mental health professionals who said the show glorified suicide.

Netflix reached out to Trans Lifeline, which runs a suicide prevention hotline, and other organizations for suggestions about advisory language, but nothing has been finalized. Several trans people I spoke with urged Netflix to be specific about what they said were medical inaccuracies in “Girl.”

“We’re worried about harm reduction,” said Elena Rose Vera, the deputy executive director of Trans Lifeline, who has not seen the movie. “We just want to protect our community.”

Monsecour told me she hoped the trans community knew that “Girl” was a beginning, not an end.

“I have a platform to speak with ‘Girl,'” she said. “Without ‘Girl,’ I wouldn’t have that. There’s a lot of work to do, but I’m confident that more trans people will tell their stories.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="abbb6293-731f-485d-8aa1-c6ede9ad81ab" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/movies/girl-netflix-film-transgender-debate.html">The New York Times</a>.

Is a film about a transgender dancer too 'dangerous' to watch?

Not long ago, when trans people showed up in movies, if at all, they were victims or predators.

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Erik Piepenburg

Articles written by the author

'Us' finds malice in a symbolic 1980s event

Is a film about a transgender dancer too 'dangerous' to watch?