Boys Don’t Cry has long been regarded as a milestone in LGBTQ+ cinema; yet, evolving cultural conversations around gender identity and representation have wedged the film between groundbreaking visibility and the limitations of its time.
Directed by Kimberly Peirce, Boys Don’t Cry tells the true story of Brandon Teena, a young trans man who was brutally raped and murdered in rural Nebraska in 1993. Starring Hilary Swank in her Academy Award-winning performance, the film dramatizes Brandon’s life and his search for love and a place to belong while grappling with a hostile environment and society’s failure to see him for who he truly is.
At the time of its release, Boys Don’t Cry was revolutionary. Representations of transgender people in cinema were virtually non-existent. When present, they were often caricatured in films like Tootsie (1982) or Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) or demonised in others, Psycho (1960) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), key examples of this.
Peirce’s film was a stark departure. It portrayed a trans person with empathy and pragmatism, offering audiences a refining perspective of a disenfranchised group. Moreover, it brought pressing attention to the violence faced by trans people and helped spark national conversations about hate crimes, echoing the real-life activism that followed Brandon’s murder.
However, 26 years on, the film’s impact has become more complex. Once hailed for its bravery, Peirce’s adaptation of Brandon Teena’s story now exists in a space of both admiration and critique from many in the trans community and scholars of queer cinema.
Chief among the concerns is the casting of Hilary Swank, a cisgender woman, in the role of a trans man. This issue has become central to broader debates about trans representation in Hollywood films, from Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club. Critics have pointed out how cis portrayals can unintentionally reinforce the idea that transness is merely performance, and how such roles often fail to open doors for trans actors themselves.
Swank has addressed this tension in more recent interviews. “It would be a great opportunity for a trans actor to play the role today,” she told The Times of London, but defended her casting as a product of the era. “It was a jumping-off board to start a conversation that was needed,” she said. “Actors are actors: we are supposed to play different people. But I would like to hope trans people are getting the opportunity to play non-trans people as well.”
Beyond casting, critics have also wrestled with the film’s intense focus on Brandon’s abuse. While Peirce intended to confront audiences with the realities of transphobic violence, some argue the film inadvertently contributes to a broader cinematic pattern in which queer and trans characters are defined primarily by their suffering.
This is not unique to Boys Don’t Cry. Earlier films like Philadelphia (1993), which, despite breaking ground in its portrayal of a gay man with AIDS, concluded with the protagonist’s death. This pattern risks reducing complex lives to cautionary tales, reinforcing a culturally-accepted script that trans and queer existence is associated with inevitable suffering and death.
Trans activist and writer Kate Bornstein, who attended the trial of Brandon Teena’s killers, captured the emotional toll of such representation, remarking, “You’re seeing a movie about yourself, and then yourself is murdered – why would you want to see that?” Her words point to the alienation many trans viewers may feel when the rare moments of cinematic visibility are inextricably tied to violence and erasure.
Film critic and trans writer Willow Catelyn Maclay articulates the psychological weight of this representational imbalance in her book, Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema. She observed that “If this is the only film about transness that is worthy of mainstream attention, then you internalise that feeling about yourself.” This statement speaks to the broader cultural implications of limited media portrayals. When narratives of suffering dominate, they can distort not only how trans people are seen by others but also how they come to see themselves.
Therefore, the lack of varied and affirming trans stories may encourage them to remain invisible in regards to media exposure when all that is discussed about them is what would happen if they became visible.
The film also complicates the truth behind Brandon’s story. His blossoming and unconditional love with Lana, the sole acceptor of his trans identity, is a mere fabrication. In real life, Lana ended her relationship with Brandon after he revealed he was trans. By depicting their bond as one of unconditional love until the end, the film constructs a glamorised version of events that offers emotional closure to audiences but distorts the truth. Though likely well-intentioned, this narrative invention creates a false sense of posthumous acceptance, potentially misleading viewers about the extent of Lana’s support and glossing over the more uncomfortable realities of trans rejection.
However, beyond these external comments, the film’s refusal to hold back on Brandon’s suffering and discrimination is commendable. Pierce doesn’t flinch in portraying the brutal realities of transphobic violence, from the harrowing assault scene to the word-for-word recreation of Brandon’s degrading police interview, where he’s forced to describe himself as having “a sexual identity crisis.”
Even Lana, for as much as she remains loyal to Brandon even in his last moments, refers to him by his birth name: ‘Teena’. Even in the movie’s fictionalised version of their romance, it leans into the tragedy that Brandon was unseen and unaccepted for who he was.
Yet, even in Pierce’s artistic vision, there are complications; one in particular is the emphasis on Brandon’s minor criminal activity of forging checks. Under Pierce, Brandon is a complex character prone to fabricated stories: a fiancée and child who don’t exist, adventures across the country, and a sister in Hollywood.
Although our protagonist, Brandon is as much a mystery to us, the audience, as he is to the characters in Nebraska, who inevitably reject him in response to his lies as well as his transgenderism. This portrayal risks reinforcing damaging stereotypes that conflate trans identity with deceit. As the narrative unfolds, the consequences of Brandon’s lies become tangled with his gender identity, a conflation that can feel alienating or reductive to trans viewers.
More than two decades after its release, and as the conversation around representation grows more nuanced, so too does the evaluation of Boys Don’t Cry. If the movie were made nowadays, would it feature a trans actor as Brandon Teena? Would the film adapt more aspects of Brandon’s life? Would the film have a more in-depth exploration of his transgenderism?
Nevertheless, the film remains a crucial landmark. It changed the landscape for queer and trans stories in cinema, offering an unprecedented level of visibility to a group long ignored or misrepresented. It also helped catalyse public discourse around hate crimes and trans rights, keeping Brandon’s impact and legacy alive. Kimberly Peirce argued that Boys Don’t Cry helped American culture become ‘more responsible’: “If cisgender, straight American audiences can empathise with Teena, then maybe Boys could create change.”
Boys Don’t Cry did many things right for its time, but its legacy today is best understood not as a flawless triumph, but rather as a necessary step in a longer journey and it began a conversation that the world is still learning how to finish.
Words by Joseph Jenkinson
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