Rhys Ernst on the furore over his new film, “Adam”

By E.B. | NEW YORK

MOST INDEPENDENT film-makers are eager for publicity before their movies hit cinemas. Rhys Ernst is enjoying far more than most for “Adam”, his feature debut. The problem is that much of this attention is coming from those who want the film to fail at the box office. Hundreds on Twitter and Instagram are demanding that people #BoycottAdam. Several change.org petitions are calling for the film to be banned, and they have collected thousands of signatures. One claims that it is “deeply transphobic and lesbianphobic”.

This furore is surprising given that Mr Ernst is not only transgender himself, but also someone who has devoted his career to ensuring that trans and queer people are represented fairly and honestly on screen. He is perhaps best known for working as a producer and director on “Transparent”, an award-winning show, where he helped inform its sensitive portrayal of trans people and hired many trans actors and crew. In 2016 he created “We’ve Been Around”, a series of short films about trans people throughout history. Mr Ernst understands the political power of storytelling, and he wants his work to improve the lives of trans people, who made up around half the cast and crew of “Adam”.

This has left him a little thrown by the fact that so many of the calls to boycott his first feature are coming from people who identify as trans and queer, many of whom have yet to see the film. Some of the concern comes from the movie’s source material. “Adam” is adapted from Ariel Schrag’s novel of the same name, published in 2014, about a straight cisgender—ie, not trans—teenage boy named Adam who pretends to be a trans male in order to woo a lesbian he meets at a party. (Because most of the party’s revellers are queer, she presumes he is trans, and he never corrects her mistake.) Adam, with difficulty, maintains this charade even as they enter a sexual relationship, and they fall for each other. During sex Adam makes it clear that he is not trans, which seems to prompt his girlfriend to discover she is bisexual. The book’s critics complain that it peddles stereotypes about transmasculinity and suggests that a lesbian can be “cured” if the sex is good enough.

Mindful of the book’s reputation, Mr Ernst was apprehensive when the film’s producers, Howard Gertler and James Schamus, asked him to read the script, which Ms Schrag also wrote. But he was “stunned” by just how much it defied his expectations, he says. What he read felt impressively subversive, and he immediately began envisioning what he would do with it.

Although the coming-of-age story revolves around a white cis male, Mr Ernst liked the way Adam is an earnest but flawed outsider who spends the film trying to understand what it means to be trans. With teenage self-consciousness and some disarming naivete, Adam studies trans testimonials on YouTube and awkwardly hangs out with his girlfriend’s trans friends. His struggle to navigate a world that was not designed for him nicely subverts the way it is usually the job of trans people to blend in. The effect is funny, uncomfortable and even edifying. “Adam’s mistaken identity creates a metaphor of a trans experience for a non-trans audience,” says Mr Ernst. “It’s not an eat-your-vegetables kind of work, but people will leave this movie knowing a lot more.”

Starring Nicholas Alexander as a believably guileless Adam, the film is thoroughly charming. It earned broad acclaim when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year, and Mr Ernst received a special mention for directing when the film screened at OutFest in Los Angeles in July. Most people who see the film seem won over. “The things that people are afraid of seeing in this movie are not in this movie,” says Mr Ernst. Yet as the film’s opening day approaches, calls to #BoycottAdam have only gained steam.

Mr Ernst expected some controversy. Because trans people are rarely treated well on screen, and trans men are rarely considered at all, “people are really hungry for affirmative representation,” he says. He adds that tensions are especially fraught right now as queer and trans people feel that they are under attack. Donald’s Trump administration has banned transgender members of the armed forces from openly serving and denied them certain medical benefits, undermined workplace protections, proposed rolling back protected access to health care, and has argued that taxpayer-funded shelters should be allowed to turn away homeless people if they are trans. A backlash against the gains made by transgender people, in policies and visibility, is underway.

“It’s a difficult time to push people a little outside their comfort zone,” Mr Ernst acknowledges. “But that’s something that art should do.” He adds that it took years for gay people to feel secure enough to stop protesting against unflattering depictions of homosexuality. It is only natural that the same concerns should greet some of the first stories about trans people. Mr Ernst looks forward to when queer and trans people no longer feel the need to aggressively police the way they are represented. “As a trans film-maker, I want to create the kind of complicated work that I was never able to see.”

“Adam” is released in America on August 14th