Brody, Jennifer Devere. “Boyz Do Cry: Screening History’s White Lies.” Screen 43:1 Spring 2002: 91-96. Print.
Situating Boys Don’t Cry within new queer cinema—which Brody argues trucks primarily in white images—Brody critiques director Kimberly Peirce’s rendition of Brandon’s story for its absenting of Phillip DeVine, a disabled black man that was killed with Brandon. The exclusion of DeVine, for Brody, is unethical and also representative of how the stories that circulate in mainstream America—whether in cultural productions or histories—consistently elide black experience. Contrasting The Brandon Teena Story with Boys Don’t Cry, Brody shows how egregious the latter’s coverage of DeVine is in comparison to the former. That is, while the documentary offered some information about DeVine—even if it was minor and could have been much more thorough—Peirce excised DeVine’s story from the script’s conception. Even at the film’s end, which includes a dedication to those who lost their lives, DeVine’s name is nowhere to be found. Brody concludes by indicting the whiteness that prevails in historicizing queer American experience, suggesting that scholars, activists, and artists need to stop eliding associations between queerness and blackness, as if interrogating blackness detracts from analyzing queer sexuality or as if blackness and queer sexuality are mutually exclusive.