What if Will Ferrell’s Friend Were a Detransitioner?
A new Netflix film highlights Hollywood’s narrow appreciation of underrepresented voices
Some Friday night in the near future the Netflix algorithm will urge you to check out a brand new Will Ferrell flick. But this time the megastar funny man isn’t playing a giant adorable elf or the beta dad opposite the ever-yoked Mark Wahlberg.
In Will & Harper, Ferrell plays a guy who embarks on a road trip with an old friend, one he recently learned is transgender, and one whom Ferrell hasn’t seen since the transition. But unlike Elf, Daddy’s Home, and the rest of Ferrell’s best-known work, Will & Harper isn’t fiction. It’s a real-life documentary about Ferrell and his friend Harper Steele.
Hollywood loves to elevate underrepresented voices and Steele’s is just the type of voice it’s eager to elevate.
Consider Ferrell.
His contribution to the film extends far beyond his on-screen presence. He’s a producer and he participated in the film's January 22 premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. There audience members laughed, cried, and delivered not one but two standing ovations.
Critics have been equally smitten.
Will & Harper enjoys a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And with the buzztastic response, Netflix had to move fast. It took a “massive eight-figure deal” to snatch the film away from other suitors.
In a statement, the filmmaking team explained its hopes for Will & Harper: “It’s a movie about the power of friendship and acceptance that we hope can help shift the culture, and so we are excited to have a partner in Netflix that has the ability to reach the largest possible audience worldwide.”
Will & Harper has already conquered the biggest film festival, the biggest critics, and the biggest streamer. Don’t be surprised if eventually conquers the biggest awards shows too. Academy Award voters might not be able to resist its mix of celebrity and “teachable moment.”
The film seems poised to join other socially conscious Sundance films like Get Out, Fruitvale Station, RBG, and An Inconvenient Truth (which scored a triple standing-O in 2006) that jumped from the elite film festival into bigtime pop culture significance.
But is it really a good movie?
The roadtrip motif strikes me as contrived, and few things make me squirm like manufactured celebrity meetups—alas, Will & Harper is packed with those.
Look, it's Seth Meyers!
And Kristen Wiig!
And Tina Fey!
But I’ll watch the movie with an open mind. Although I can’t stand Sundance’s political myopia, its programmers generally reward high-quality filmmaking.
It’ll be interesting to see how the filmmakers address the film’s sensitive subject matter, and I’m a sucker for Will Ferrell, who actually has far more range than is reflected in most of his blockbusters. See, for instance, the sparse and under-appreciated dramedy Everything Must Go.
But if Will & Harper does rocket to mainstream success, it’s hard not to notice that the flourishing of this rather top-down cultural juggernaut hinges on a crucial detail, one that might make you ask, “Just how committed is Hollywood to elevating underrepresented voices?”
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Imagine a film equal to Will & Harper in every way—production value, Will Ferrell’s support, and so on—but with one difference. What if, instead of being transgender woman, Will Ferrell’s friend were a detransitioner?
Our parallel universe film would not be purchased by Netflix. It would not receive 100% from Rotten Tomato critics. Forget the double standing-O, it would never reach Sundance audiences in the first place, nor would it be accepted by any film festival of note.
Ferrell’s agency (UTA) never would have backed it. Ferrell’s agent wouldn’t let him appear in the film let alone sign on as a producer. But that wouldn’t matter because Ferrell almost certainly wouldn’t have pursued the project in the first place.
But why not?
Detransitioners’ voices remain underrepresented, so shouldn’t the entertainment industry elevate them too?
Of course, the issue doesn’t have anything to do with transgenderism per se. The industry’s narrow worldview mutes all kinds of underrepresented voices.
What if Will Ferrell’s friend joined the Israeli Defense Force, became a pro-life activist or an ex-Muslim?
Imagine if Ferrell were friends with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
As a child, the Somali-born writer suffered the pain of female genital mutilation. But she fled oppression to become a Dutch politician, global human rights activist, and public intellectual.
She was even blessed with movie star beauty and charisma.
Her story would shine on the big screen and Sundance could bestow some of its most prized tags to her biopic including “woman centered” and “BIPOC.” But as brilliant and brave as she is, Ali isn’t the kind of underrepresented voice Sundance, Rotten Tomatoes or Netflix would be eager to elevate.
You see Ali is an ex-Muslim turned atheist critic of Islam who recently came out as Christian. That’s not the kind of bio that makes the entertainment industry swoon.
Hooray for Hollywood's desire to broaden viewers’ perspectives, but it’s a shame the broadening is applied so narrowly.
Anytime Sundance, Netflix or any other industry organ speaks of “elevating underrepresented voices,” we should mentally slap a giant asterisk to the end of that phrase, one that points to the disclaimer— “As long as their views are monoculture approved.”
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
This is the sad truth of what Hollywood has become, politically motivated films and tv shows supporting only one side, flattening a narrative that allows for no nuance or complexity that comes with life. In specific life decisions like this.
It seems like it's all about what voices people feel need to be elevated. I would still think a trans person's voice is more relevant than a de-transitioner in terms of what the american public needs exposure to, given that most trans people do not de-transition, and most americans have never had a trans friend. Ideally, the film could, along the way, paint a nuanced picture of the trans world, including the uncertainty about the path kids might take towards discovering themselves, ultimately trans or not. So to me, it's not "should we elevate a trans voice" vs "should we elevate a detransitioner's voice" but "can we paint a complete and proportional picture of an issue that is emerging into the public consciousness.
I understand that your point was not that this film *should* have been about a detransitioning friend, but I just wanted to point out that it makes sense to me why holywood would be more interested in the trans story given its relevance, absent the political bias of flattening over any complexity about the issue, though that likely plays a role too.