I thought that a good character to analyze for Queer Analysis would be Rayon from the movie Dallas Buyers Club played by Jared Leto. The movie came out in 2013 with Matthew McConaughey as the lead and Jared Leto's Rayon as a supporting character. The movie follows the true story Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a heterosexual white man living in Dallas who is diagnosed with AIDS during the AIDS epidemic in the US during the 80's. There was a huge stigma towards gayness during this time period, and anyone who contracted AIDS at the time was automatically categorized into this negative stereotype associated with being gay. Ron Woodroof experienced this and was consequentially ostracized by his close friends and family. The story follows his struggles to find the right treatment, highlights other characters who also have to deal with the disease, and how he and his new business partner Rayon collaborate together to get cheap effective drugs to those also suffering from the disease.
What I thought was most interesting about the character Rayon was how she constructed the identity of being transgender within the movie. Rayon was born male, but identified and presented herself as female. Matthew McConaughey's character initially associates her with the negative gay/queer/transgender stigma of the time, but eventually comes to respect her and enters into a business with her. While Leto's portrayal gives Rayon immense depth, she's caring and loyal, we still see how all of her qualities are based on the normalcy of McConaughey's masculine, white character. She's there and deemed important to the story line because he deems her to be. Everything she does in the movie is to support his business ventures, and he relies on her connections and savvy in navigating the gay/queer/transgender community. I really liked Leto's performance and was often moved by how he portrayed Rayon, but I couldn't help but think that she was still being defined and othered from the normalcy of McConaughey's character.
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