Name: Cabase, Mary Grace A.

Degree: BSED-English II Set A

The Danish Girl Film Review

The artist Einar Wegener is in gender trouble. He was born in a male body yet; he finds
himself in the position of being unable to identify it. He therefore embarks on freeing
himself from his bodily prison by undergoing gender reassignment surgery in order to
become Lili Elbe, but eventually died due to unprecedented nature and the
accompanying risk of the intervention. Lili dies from the complications at the side of her
ever-loving wife Gerda. Lili is what we call nowadays as transgender. Before, Lili’s
condition is referred to as insanity or homosexuality (gender identity disorder). Before
up until today the topic about gender is still a hot issue.

The film dismantles notions of a fixed constructed identity. Based on the film, it shows
how they give the role of Einar to hide his gender identity but also enables him to
discover himself and perform as Lili. Einar knows without a doubt that he is a woman
but he was not to show it publicly because of discrimination. Viewed from different
angle, Einar might be able to realize what he considers an act- the act of performing as
Einar thus echoing his own words on the film “I feel as I am performing myself”. These
words are uttered in the context of accompanying his wife Gerda to the artist’s ball.
Implied in those words that Einar is not merely putting on a mask in order to fit in, but
that his entire personality as Einar Wegener is an act. They speak to a disconnection
between what he feels he is and everyone sees him to be.

Gender is not a free choice. To Einar, hands and their movements seem to represent a
prerequisite for womanhood. This means that at the artist’s ball, Einar practices by
imitating a woman who indicates via her hand movement. Einar repeats a similar
exercise on how a woman posits her hand when seated. In this sense, gender is in no
way a stable identity from which various acts proceed; rather it is an identity constituted
in time- an identity through stylized repetition of acts. Furthermore, gender is instituted
through the stylization of the body. If gender and its expressive modes are engraved on
us by means of societal inscriptions and conventions which are continually reproduced
and performed over and over then it shows that, in the film, Einar engraves on his own
body the gestures, modes and movements of the female gender by way of repetition.
Einar being a Lili which he created of his own, is now able to perfect his new role by
imitating the prostitute that he does not look as an object of sexual desire. Instead,
Einar sees the prostitute as a subject whose sexual expression be desired. Whereby
the creation of her serves as a basis for creating himself. He does not see someone
else doing a performance but rather the prostitute’s performance functions like a
reflection for his own identity. Her movements become his as if he were looking into a
mirror.