this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Fauxmoi
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When I see such a film (Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is another example) I take it as an indicator how far we’ve come.
Yes, it was a different time. Not defending it, just saying that people did not have the same insights and viewpoints as we have today.
Judging past people by today's standards is not fair. You can judge their modern-day image by today's standards, but not their past selves.
To a degree.
It’s not always so black and white. Take for example child marriages where little girls were betrothed to older dudes. Or how some cultures would treat people based on race, gender, etc.
Some things can, and should, be judged critically (holocaust, “comfort women”). Some things can get a pass (movies like Silence pf the Lambs).
TL;DR history should be judged on a case by case basis and we should avoid blanket judgement.
That's a very good nuance
I’ll argue that Fatal Games is bad, was always bad, and forever will be bad, and it’s not because times were different. It’s because they picked a lazy bigoted trope to build the killer off of.
On the bright side, at least TOS was trying to push other social norms the right way, and they did some good. They didn’t get everything right but they got the ball rolling.
And on Trek: TNG started out with some pretty questionable episodes (especially the borderline racist planet), but it also gave us Measure of a Man, that reverse-sex planet with Riker, and introduced species like the Binars and that androgynous race which I tried to push some more boundaries. Then DS9 went ahead and gave us DAX, who I think in the early seasons did a good job kind of introducing some of the issues with identity that pertain to gender transitioning (I loved the Klingon approach: Dax, my old friend!).
i think that was a "agender planet people" ENterprise had the xindi insectoids, as genderless species too, and a putative 3rd sex in vissian.
I still think it's an absolutely hilarious, and likely unintended, stroke of genius with the Binars.
They take the Hat to the extreme, where every single aspect of their very being involves binary in some way, to the point of always working in pairs.
Except their gender.
Especially since Silence of the Lambs only came out like, what, 15 years ago.
fact checks himself; sees it is 35 years old
Well fuck.
Damn, seriously? It looks amazing for 1979.
Friend, I've got some bad news for you...
Is Psycho seen as transphobic? In the big exposition at the end of the movie
Tap for spoiler
someone accuses Norman of being a transvestite and the psychologist interrupts to clarify that Norman didn’t dress as his mother to “achieve a sexual change or satisfaction,” but specifically because he was “doing everything possible to keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive.”Contrast that with The Silence of the Lambs, where the character’s sexual “deviancy” is actually portrayed as a motivating facet of his murderous, perverted mind. Psycho seems pretty nuanced by comparison and even progressive by the standards of 1960.