Rigney, Melissa. “Brandon Goes to Hollywood: Boys Don’t Cry and the Transgender Film.” Queer Youth Cultures. Ed. Susan Driver. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008. 181-198. Print.
Rigney’s piece enters into conversations about whether to identify the real-life and fictionalized Brandon as either lesbian or FTM. Rigney claims that although Boys Don’t Cry appears to potentially “[render] gender in excess,” as Brandon “can be read . . . as butch, male, lesbian, transgender, transsexual, and heterosexual,” the film ultimately “subsume[s] [Brandon] within a lesbian framework and narrative” (185). In order to support her argument, Rigney turns to a couple of key scenes, such as the rape of Brandon and Brandon and Lana’s sex scene. Furthermore, Rigney posits that the film’s dependence on the narrative structures of melodrama, for instance, work against Brandon’s sexual and gender transgression. More specifically, Rigney suggests that Peirce’s rendering of Brandon as the typical male Hollywood star places him within a heterosexual matrix of audience reception and identification.