MovieChat Forums > The Badge (2002) Discussion > Was she or wasn't she?

Was she or wasn't she?

posted 19 years ago by agathawords
13 replies | jump to latest

Just saw this film and am left only with the superficial, obvious question.
Was Scarlett a biological male?

Perhaps a question the director purposefully meant to leave us pondering , but I wanted to throw a line out there and get opinions. Maybe it's just as obvious to others that as viewers we're not supposed to know one way or the other.

In any case, I thought the movie presented its transgendered characters in a realistic and sensitive manner, and I appreciated the arc that Billy Bob's character moved through in learning to accept differences.

Any thoughts?

[–] 19 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Siel_O 18 years ago

she herself point out that he tried to have sex with her "without knowing if she's got a dick or not" so i guess you're wrong.
i'd like to believe she is a biological male but in truth it doesn't really matter.

[–] SilentJay76 18 years ago

Where was it ever implied that she's a male??

"Don't f_ck with the Jedi Master, son."

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] evil_henchman 16 years ago

I saw this movie a while back, but to me it was clear she was a biological male. At some point in the movie it's told, that transsexuals use a second slip when stripping to kinda hide their "parts" better and later Scarlett's shown in a scene where it's revealed she wears a second one. I understood this scene as a definitive answer to what she is or isn't. Otherwise it would made no sense to me to point this detail out, so the audience would know what to look for and then clearly present a scene showing this.

[–] nastydaddy1966 16 years ago

I walked away feeling same as evil henchman, thet yes they showed us her g-string to let us know she was, but who knows, maybe she wasn't bah-hah-hah! Anyways, I see most people on here didn't care for the movie, Me though, I enjoyed it, and though it was not the best movie ever, and maybe not even in my top 100, I was glad that I watched it and was entertained. In hind-sight, it's not like a truly bad movie, where I feel I just wasted 2 hours of my life.

In a thousand years, there will be no men and women, just wankers, and that's fine by me.

[–] knittingnoodle 14 years ago

i thought she was a female because she said that she and mona were legally married. if that part is true, and since i'm pretty sure there is no gay marriage in louisiana, then she's a girl.

[–] bravehome 14 years ago

To Evil Henchman:

I am not so sure at all it is made clear she is a biological male.

In fact, if you look closely at Darl's face in the scene where Scarlett has finished her strip show and is carrying her G-string off-stage, he has a rather relieved and satified look on his face. This would imply to me she turned out to be true female.

And, as has been pointed our ealier in this thread, going from homophobic to accepting is part of Darl's character maturation; going to being pleased that a possible romantic interest was revealed as a man would be a stretch...

[–] lisagirl117 14 years ago

I think she was born 100% female from the get go but I'm not sure.

I liked the movie quite a bit, watching the Billy Bob character slowly come to a more live and let live stance as he reconciled with his brother.

No matter how Patricia Arquette's character got to be female, birth or later, she was a very compelling and likable character. And hey, at this point a Julie Hagerty sighting is always good. I'll never forget her in "Lost In America".

I've just never gotten bigotry, live and let live, whatever floats your boat, we're all people and we're all different one way or another.

I voted this an 8.

[–] Forgotten_Hero 14 years ago

I left the film with the assumption that she was a natural born female, but now I'm not so sure. I could understand the "Why should that matter?" response when she's attempting to defend the honor of her late husband, but why continue to deflect the question or withhold the answer? And given the quality of the direction, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they had intented to portray her as a transgendered woman but were simply too subtle in this endeavor.

Who knows? Maybe it was meant to be left ambiguious or even up to the audience as to the gender of her birth. Personally, I'd like to believe that she was a biological female from birth. It's just too much of a stretch of the imagination that a homophobic sheriff, whose intolerance caused him to disown his brother, would find himself romantically attached to a transgendered woman and ambivalent about her gender of birth or male genitalia.

Be that as it may, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if that had been their very intent. The writting and direction were very hit-and-miss and the romance is somewhat forced as it stands.

[–] Demarates 13 years ago

The whole point of this movie is that it does not matter.

"Research has shown that frequently self-deleting threads is a telltale sign for sexual deviants."

[–] jharmon64 10 years ago

Thank you captain obvious.

But inquiring minds want to know.

I agree with an above poster, when he saw her dancing and "no tuck" was evident, he was convinced she was all female.

[–] BooksArsenal 10 years ago

I think it was pretty obvious that Scarlett was female.

I got a sense of estrogen just from the curvaceousness of her figure.

All the transgendered men I have seen just don't have that kind of curve; their upper bodies tend to be 'straighter,' and so do their hips.

I agree that the transgendered characters were presented sensitively.