Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Changing the Game debuts on Hulu as part of its Pride Month programming package. Michael Barnett’s documentary follows three transgender teen who find themselves at the center of social and political turmoil simply because they’re competing in organized sports. Of course, the film addresses hotly debated legal policies — namely, between scientifically informed and enlightened types and, to put it nicely, those who are less so — but the emphasis is on these young people and who they are. These are their stories.
CHANGING THE GAME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Mack Beggs lives in Texas. “I’m a man,” he says, “and I’m the state champion of female high school wrestling.” He wants to compete with the boys, but because his birth certificate states he’s female, he can’t. That’s state law. He’s in the midst of transitioning, and undergoing hormone replacement therapy. So his choice is to dominate the girl’s league and be berated for having an advantage, or not wrestle and forego the one thing that builds his confidence — which is precisely the ugly conundrum that such policies force, and purposely, I’d assert. Mack lives with his grandmother, Nancy, who still calls him “she” out of habit, but is loving and supportive and admits she didn’t know what “transgender” mean until her grandchild said he wanted to transition to male. She says she’s a diehard conservative Southern Baptist, but she’ll “step on some toes” when it comes to this issue. There’s a wonderful scene in which Mack needs to lose a few ounces in order to make weight, and his aging grandma says she’ll run the block with him. He might be there and back before she even gets halfway, but she’ll be there with him. And there they are, outside, hitting the pavement, Grandma Nancy hustling the best she can.
Sarah lives in New Hampshire, where, she points out, the license plate reads, “live free or die.” She will harp on that first part through the whole film, and good for her. Throw it in their faces, Sarah. She’s a skier. Her state laws allow her to compete with the girls, but she says sometimes she doesn’t give it her all because she’s worried how it’ll look when a girl who used to be a boy wins. She’s supremely confident — when she’s not giving makeup tutorials on her vlog, she’s advocating for herself and the trans community. She doesn’t have the sports issue like Mack, but she worries that she may be denied entry to a college or get fired from a job just because she’s transgender. So she’s doing something about it, lobbying to whoever will listen. She speaks at a government session for a new anti-discrimination bill, and has to follow a woman who fears that transgender people will be allowed entry to women’s locker rooms so they can commit sexual assault. It’s hard to tell whether the woman is misinformed or willfully ignorant.
Andraya lives in Connecticut, where she’s free to participate in sports according to how she identifies. That doesn’t mean everything’s fine, because when she runs track, attendees gripe that it’s “not fair” and that she has a physical advantage. To those people, her coach Brian says, sports are only about winning and losing, which is shortsighted; participating in sports raises self-worth and confidence, which is something one needs in life, not just on the track. Our view about “fairness” shouldn’t be so myopic. Andraya is Black, and she and her mother worry because transgender people of color are five times more likely to be murdered. All they can do is soldier on. Andraya doesn’t want to be an activist, but she really has no choice — and now she has a friend, Terry, a Black trans teen who was inspired by Andraya to run track.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Between this film, HBO’s The Trans List, Netflix’s Disclosure and the groundbreaking NYC drag-scene doc Paris is Burning, and you’ll enjoy a terrific cross-section of stories about transgender Americans.
Performance Worth Watching: Mack fearlessly shares a range of emotions throughout the film, whether the camera peers over his shoulder after a difficult wrestling match or he looks into the camera and says, “I always wanted to wrestle men. And now that I am, it’s frickin’ dope. It’s frickin’ dope.”
Memorable Dialogue: Clark, Mack’s wrestling coach, shouts some encouragement during the girls’ wrestling tournament: “ATTA BOY!”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Barnett maintains his focus on these three individuals’ stories. He doesn’t muddy them by adding political commentary, but does toss in a sampling of media discourse from anti-trans commentators, which significantly rouses our ire. The film might strengthen its persuasive angle with a segment on the science of being transgender, but it simply assumes its audience understands the concept and relies on its emotional content. Its bold and compelling emotional content, I might add.
That emphasis isn’t a bad thing, because Barnett’s subjects are open to sharing their experiences cogently, and sometimes quite bravely. He follows Mack, Andraya and Sarah as they compete in their sports and interact with their friends and families, to see them as they are; he sits them down for talking-head interviews, allowing them to reflect on it. He also elicits terrific commentary from their parents, some of whom admit they’ve had to change the way they think for the sake of their children. Sarah’s parents say they were inspired by their daughter to change; here’s hoping they set an example for others who rigidly believe the world functions only as they see it. That type of story is invaluable to documentaries like Changing the Game, which can say anything assertively. True persuasion arises from actually showing us how people have altered their lives for the better.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Changing the Game is a sturdy, credible and empathetic doc that mostly avoids the unseemly rigamarole of controversy, and focuses on people — real people — and the experiences that made them who they are.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
