LGBT activists are calling for a boycott of the new Zoolander film on grounds of transphobia due to a recent trailer which features Benedict Cumberbatch as an androgynous model named “All”.
The character appears intended to satirise the rise in popularity of transgender models such as Andreja Pejić on the 2015 fashion circuit. However, an online petition, so far signed by more than 9,000 people, accuses the film-makers of presenting an “over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals”.
“In the Zoolander 2 trailer, an androgynous character played by Benedict Cumberbatch is asked by Zoolander and Hansel if he is a ‘male or female model’, and if they ‘have a hot dog or a bun’,” states the petition. “Additionally, Cumberbatch’s character is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals. This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority.
“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 Pejić 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.”
Some users on Twitter also suggested Cumberbatch’s character might be considered transphobic after the trailer debuted online last week.
Zoolander 2 sees Ben Stiller’s intellectually challenged male model returning to the big screen for the first time since 2001 alongside Owen Wilson’s Hansel McDonald. The sequel, also starring Will Ferrell, Penélope Cruz, Kristen Wiig, Benedict Cumberbatch and Justin Bieber, will see the pair emerging from retirement into a much-changed fashion world after being asked to find a killer of beautiful people. Directed, like the original film, by Stiller himself, it is due in cinemas on 12 February.
I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: #Zoolander2 looks pretty transphobic in regarded to Benedict Cumberbatch.
— Gabrielf (@gabsygabs) November 18, 2015
also it's 2015, we should have dropped both transphobic caricatures and benedict cumberbatch a long time ago
— Alex G (@EsPyramid) November 19, 2015
Really wanted to like the Zoolander 2 trailer but the seemingly transphobic Benedict Cumberbatch character left a bad taste. Also Bieber.
— Joel Jessup (@Bizunth) November 18, 2015
