In this difficult time for gender politics, we need to prioritize the most important and valuable discussions in the community. That’s why I keep thinking about a bizarre and barely remembered action movie from 2016. In The Assignment, Michelle Rodriguez plays a (cis male) hit man named Frank Kitchen who is kidnapped and forcibly medically transitioned into a woman as revenge for a hit he carried out against the surgeon’s brother. Dr. Rachel Jane, played by a practically sleepwalking Sigourney Weaver, is a disgraced plastic surgeon running an illegal plastic surgery office where she kidnaps people for medical experimentation and also provides high quality gender affirming surgery to those who can’t afford it. So, you know, a complicated character.
Where some may see a villain inflicting cruel and unusual punishment, I offer another perspective: Sigourney Weaver is the gender surgeon I wish I had. We have lost the political correctness battle, so give me butch Dr. Money. This movie is mostly just a thinly veiled fetish piece, but what trans people know that the writers never could, is that the best surgeons are freaks, perverts, and chasers. In a time where we are gripping onto healthcare by our fingernails, it’s time to admit we don’t need to worry about politeness — we need to worry about results. Sure, Dr. Jane kidnaps people, but she also gave Frank free HRT, new women’ s clothes, and a handbag. Meanwhile, my top surgeon made me buy my own compression garment.
What makes the perfect gender surgeon? Well-meaning queer resource centers may waste your time with suggestions like “vetted lists” or “portfolios” but that’s because they can’t tell you the real answer. The ideal gender surgeon is an off-putting and self-important asshole. Look, I don’t want the results of a clean, ethical medical professional nearly as much as I want the results of someone who’s got a freakish obsession with turning one body part into a different body part. Trans people are all too familiar with medical neglect. We are treated like freaks, medical anomalies, and looked down on for what is perceived as irresponsible and misguided mutilation of our own bodies. So when we want to be cared for, we have to take the extra effort to find someone who will care about our bodies. Someone who will really, really, really care. Like it or not, I’m trusting the guy trolling the ftm tag on Grindr. He’s got a vested interest in making my shit look sexy. I believe any good specialist has got to have some crazy sex stuff going on. There’s a surgeon at NYU Langone who only does breast removal, reduction, reconstruction and augmentation. We don’t think Dr. Boobs is kinda a freak?
Tony Shaloub (yeah, he’s in this too) accuses Sigourney Weaver of doing what she did because she is not having any sex. Of being “the female equivalent of some guy who was impotent”. This infuriates her. She insists that she has had sex whenever and with whomever she wanted for her whole life. In fact, she doesn’t even concern herself with her partner’s pleasure. In the world of this movie, that’s enough to make her a deranged madwoman. But I just see a woman who can’t be bothered with the things that aren’t important to her, like bedside manner, or any part of my body that she isn’t cutting into. And that’s good! I need her to be focused on what counts: playing god with my body. She picks her staff correctly too. Her sexual partner is her surgical assistant who has a vaguely described “exotic taste in prostitutes”. The movie itself is not creative enough to go all in on perversion, but this is a moment where we must read between the lines of the filmmakers’ own small mindedness. It’s like a Magic Eye for the true freaks. If you look in just the right way, hiring “exotic” sex workers will turn into sex swings and needle play right in front of your eyes.
I occasionally do a joke on stage about how when I was shopping around for doctors, I was looking for the Saul Goodman of top surgery. Someone who comes to you through word of mouth from someone in “your situation.” Someone ostentatious and braggadocious who will get results whatever it takes. If I’m getting an appendectomy I want someone calm and collected under pressure. If I wanna unbutton my shirt so low it verges on obscene, I need the guy with spinning rims. It’s my body and I want to look so good it’s criminal. After seeing The Assignment, I can amend this statement a little bit. Dr. Jane is not flashy in the Goodman sense, but she’s got a haughtiness to her that works for me. All competent surgeons have terrible bedside manner, and Dr. Jane is as pedantic and pretentious as they come. She spends her scenes in long monologues and admonishes Tony Shaloub for not recognizing when she is quoting great literary work. Unfortunately the movie can’t uphold the sophistication it intends. She quotes Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, like a shorthand for severe snobbery. In real life she would have strong opinions about Kant or own the complete works of Hunter S. Thompson. But it’s not her fault the writers haven’t read a book since high school. When Dr. Jane calls herself an artist, it’s like music to my ears. The perfect surgeon should be annoyed at the fact that her canvas is even awake at all. I want to be put to sleep and molded into my more perfect self.
Now let’s talk results. Frank recovers pretty much instantaneously with no visible scarring. He unravels his loosely draped bandaging to reveal perfect breasts and an unswollen jaw. He gropes at his new, no-dilator-needed vagina and drops to his knees screaming in despair. How ungrateful. Frankly, the fact that he even could drop to his knees and feel himself up immediately post surgery is an endorsement of the surgeon. With no time to lose, he’s on the path for revenge right away. My surgeon didn’t clear me to kill a man for at least three weeks! Weeks and months of recovery are an understood part of the gender affirming surgery process. It’s actually somewhat of an inhibiting factor given that it puts a hold on the ability to work, be a caretaker, or engage in raucous debauchery. Sigourney Weaver is a shining beacon for those of us who cannot lose even a moment of time shaking ass in the club. Frank wastes his time trying to track down his enemies when he could be at the beach.
You may, at this point, be asking if I am just reading into this character too deeply. Isn’t it obvious that the chaser that wrote this screenplay one-handed was just throwing things at the wall in an effort to write “evil woman who’s kinda lesbian with it who can do all the backstory exposition”? But you’re forgetting the most important part: Dr. Jane’s illegal surgical practice gives care to those who cannot deal with the exorbitant cost or wait times in traditional medical institutions. Sounds like someone has read her queer history! Dr. Jane’s motivation for force-femming this hitman is part revenge and part science. She is engaging in an experiment to prove that changing the body cannot change the essence of the person. In other words, that Frank is still a man because he “believes” himself to be. And because he likes to kill with a gun. Wait, is it woke to give bad people gender dysphoria for science? It’s a bizarre moment of sociological and political clarity thrown as a hail mary in the last third of the film. One could say that it’s problematic to have this sentiment come from the villain even if it’s supported by the narrative, but that’s lending the writers too much credit and implying that this movie is capable of making any salient point at all.
This movie is painted as a tragedy because Frank cannot detransition for some reason. This incredible gift is completely lost on Frank Kitchen because, at the end of the day, he is not transgender. Isn’t that the great irony of both life and this movie? This surgeon is wasted on a man who doesn’t want it. And this premise is wasted on a ‘70s pornographic understanding of transsexuality. But give a force-femme hitman plot to a couple of underemployed trans screenwriters and you might just get a result that could really make waves. (A24, call me!)
Great writing! 😆
✨ ENJOYABLE ✨
This is important work