The Critically Review of The Garden Left Behind

Mingyuan Liu

The Garden Left Behind is a fascinating film about the social problem of transgender people. The main character, Tina, formerly known as Guevara, is an undocumented Mexican transgender woman who now lives in New York with her grandmother Miriam Cruz. This movie runs through their family love. Grandmother gave Tina love and understanding, and enlighten Tina. The movie is about Tina’s daily life and her experiences of being a transgender woman. The film not only describes the situation of transgender people in modern society, but also depicts a lot of empathy. In the first half of the movie, Tina has a group of friends who are transgender like her and a boyfriend who loves her. Her life is just like a normal woman. However, as time goes on, the death of a transgender man raises the alarm that the movie is not peaceful. All members of the transgender community campaign that march to call on the masses to give them a fair and candid treatment. At the same time, a bizarre behavior man at a convenience store caught the audience’s attention. Every time he saw Tina, he had an unusual reaction and expression. I always think about whether it is a secret love or a bad guy with other unknown purpose. At the same time, Tina’s gender dydphoria make her unable to undergo a full sex change operation, but she is willing to talk with the psychiatrist to open the heart, and to sell the car to raise money for the operation. But the bad news still appeared that her body is not allowed to undergo all the transsexual surgery so she walked down the street in despair, but encountered the strange convenience store man and his companions. While the peers of the bizarre man taunted, verbally harassed and insulted her, the convenience store man got out of the car with a baseball bat and beat her to death. Here the film fell into a long silence. After the man killing Tina, he held her in pain burst into tears. This leaves most audience in doubt. I think he loved Tina, but because of his discrimination and aversion to transgender people, he could not accept that the person he loved was a transgender person. He is contradictory and painful, but he has undoubtedly become the representative of the film’s most wanted warning. There are a lot of people in real life who regard themselves as a higher class people so that bashing transgender people and don’t see anything wrong with their actions. However, everyone is free and independent. Everyone has the right to decide what kind of person he or she wants to become, and should not be judged by others. Everyone should learn how to respect. In this drama, this convenience store boy becomes a powerful embodiment of hatred towards the transgender community. Similarly, Tina’s boyfriend accepts her, but doesn’t want to bring her to meet his relatives and friends because she is transgender, and doesn’t want to have a future with her. This also reflects the injustice and helplessness of transgender people in society. I think all the audience can relate to that feeling of powerlessness and despair after seeing this movie. At the end of the film, when grandma realized that the news of Tina’s death, the police asked the victim’s name, grandma slowly read out a word: Tina. Before this, although the grandmother never blame Tina had sex change surgery, but always call her Guevara, that is her previous name when she was a man. This also shows that grandma finally respects and understands Tina’s choice.

The movie is cruel, but the reality is often cruel many times, if I were Tina, would I be as confident and strong as she lived? Would I not be afraid of other people’s eyes and worldly prejudice to do surgery? Nothing is known, but it is imperative that they need to be treated fairly and justly. There is a system in the world called cissexism, which is a system that works against transgender and non-binary individuals. Cissexism is a subtle idea that many people hold based on the assumption that all people are cisgender. Julia Serano has developed a hypothesis that “cisgender gender identity, expression, and avatar are more natural and legitimate than transgender people”. I think it is ridiculous. The reason why transgender people choose to change sex must be that they think they should be another gender from the bottom of their heart, so the expression will be more natural than the original one, because it is to follow their inner choice, rather than simply follow the arrangement and obey. This statement feels full of malice to the transgender people, leaving them in a powerless environment for a long time, all people should be respected, either what most people follow or absolutely right, everyone is an independent individual. Why impose the standards of the public to others? As far as I know, from the article of “Canada’s gender identity rights Bill C-16 explained” illustrates that “the only effort that has been made to address this situation is a bill c-16 law that prohibits discrimination against these groups. Despite the recognition of transgender people as human beings, there is still a long way to go to abolish the concept of gender duality.” (2018) In addition, In an article “New bathroom finder app locates transgender-friendly facilities” shows that “gender-neutral toilets have been built for transgender people everywhere, and an app has been developed to find gender-neutral toilets for transgender people, which is a huge success in history.”

The main purpose of this article is to alert people to improve the protection of this transgender community and change the world’s perception and discrimination against them. The biggest benefit of the movie is that it can bring the audience into the plot of the movie more effectively and more truly so that they can feel the frustration of being a transgender person and understand why they are eager to change themselves. This movie is really an attractive, immersive movie. The title of the movie is The Garden Left Behind, and the garden is like a reference to the transgender community. They are discarded by the world, forgotten, despised, but the flowers in the garden are still beautiful alone, develop beautifully, grow up lushly, cultivate charmingly. It opened the door to a new world for every audience member, both those who knew it before and those who didn’t, to gain a new understanding of the transgender community. The Garden Left Behind is a masterpiece.

References

CBCDOCSPOV. Shut Him Down: The Rise of Jordan Peterson. CANADA’S GENDER IDENTITY RIGHTS BILL C-16 EXPLAINED, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/m_features/canadas-gender-identity-rights-bill-c-16-explained. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020

MyDoorSign. New bathroom finder app locates transgender-friendly facilities,https://www.mydoorsign.com/blog/bathroom-finder-lists-transgender-facilities/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

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