Wednesday 10 January 2018

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)

The title of David France's documentary is a curious one. While the film is about the death of LGBTQ activist Marsha P. Johnson, and it touches on her life to some degree, it is about much more than that. The film doesn't achieve being a portrait of her as a person, but more as a symbol, a historical figure. The film doesn't end up answering many questions about her death or give us a great deal of insight into her life. Instead it is about her affect on the LGBTQ movement and the community.

Presented as a procedural, The Death and life of Marsha P. Johnson focuses on the efforts of another trans-activist, Victoria Cruz, as she attempts to investigate the mystery around Johnson's death. Although that investigation turns up very little, what it does is accomplish what the film is trying to do, give one of the most compelling cases to mainstream American society, about the struggles and persecution of trans people in America. Cruz' journey here is one through the lives of trans people in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and for many still today. Johnson is the catalyst for that. As she was such a torchbearer in her life, this film helps keep her in the role in death, despite her own community's often short memory.

The film focuses on many who knew Johnson, including another trans activist Sylvia Rivera, whose ups and downs are presented here as caused by the way not only mainstream American society treats queer people but how more mainstream LGB people treat trans people and people of colour. The film's point again, not so much about Johnson specifically, but about the barriers trans people often faced in that era. The film connects this to the present. Johnson's story may not have been made conclusively as a murder, but the film shows us that trans women especially are being killed still to this day and that their killers are not receiving the same punishments that other murderers are.

France centres Johnson in this story, ensuring that she and her legacy are always present. But he doesn't really tell her story. He tells s bigger story, ensuring her role in that, but leaving her a bit to the side. I would like to see a movie about her. This isn't that. That's not a critique, just an observation. This is about the nature of all sorts of violence that trans people faced in America and continue to face today and that is a story worth telling as well.

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
Starring: Marsha P. Johnson, Victoria Cruz, Sylvia Rivera
Writer/Director: David France

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