Truth and Travesti(e)s in Rubem Fonseca’s and HBO’s “Dia dos Namorados”

Abstract

This article examines the representation of a transgender sex worker and the heterosexual men who encounter her in two versions of the same story, Brazilian author Rubem Fonseca’s groundbreaking 1975 short story “Dia dos Namorados” and an episode of the HBO television series Mandrake, inspired by Fonseca’s fiction and released in 2005. Considerable changes in dominant social attitudes in the intervening years led the makers of the television episode and Fonseca himself to position themselves as supportive of travestis and homosexuals. The adaptation shows the sex worker as more deserving of compassion than in the original text, while the main character, Mandrake, is in turn more understanding, as is fitting for a gentleman of 21st century Rio. However, both versions depict the travesti as fundamentally dishonest, a characterization that enforces harmful stereotypes; and both ignore the rampant violence that real-life Brazilian travestis have faced throughout the decades. My analysis serves to illustrate that gentler treatment and superficial professions of opposition to discrimination are not the same as a true reevaluation of the humanity of marginalized subjects.