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It Gets Better
Movie

It Gets Better

2012 • Unknown

Woke Score
8
out of 10

Plot

Saitarn, a retired post-op transsexual, falls in love with a local mechanic. Tonmai has inherited a gay cabaret bar from his father. And Din is a high school boy whom his father found out to be a trans. His father sends him upcountry to be ordained hoping it may make him straight.

Overall Series Review

The film interweaves three separate storylines centered exclusively on the lives of transgender and gay individuals in Thailand. The entire dramatic tension is generated by the characters' non-normative gender and sexual identities clashing with traditional family structures and societal views. Characters face rejection and misunderstanding from their fathers, and one story highlights a father's attempt to use a religious institution, a Buddhist temple, to force a change in his son's identity. The narrative consistently validates the queer identities of the central figures over the traditional expectations and institutions that attempt to suppress them. Identity is the primary driver of all conflict and romance. The film does not focus on Western racial identity politics, but it is a complete centering of the Queer Theory lens.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics8/10

The plot's existence is solely to explore the struggles of a specific identity group: transgender and gay people. Character merit is secondary to the profound effects of their immutable gender and sexual characteristics, which form the entire basis for the conflict. The narrative exists to articulate the systemic problems faced by this group within their society. The focus is on gender and sexual identity rather than on race or 'whiteness.'

Oikophobia7/10

Familial and traditional structures are framed as the primary source of the characters' pain and struggle. A father attempts to 'heal' his child's identity, making the father and his traditional family expectation the direct antagonist in that storyline. While the film is not a wholesale demonization of the home culture, it is a clear critique of traditional family and social norms that reject non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities.

Feminism5/10

The core theme bypasses traditional Western feminism, focusing instead on gender identity and expression. The narrative centers on post-op transsexual women and 'ladyboys,' which deconstructs the binary male/female roles. Men who represent traditional norms (Din's father, Tonmai's initial straight-man persona) are either the source of conflict or must have their masculinity redefined by attraction to trans individuals. The focus is on gender fluidity rather than 'Girl Boss' tropes or anti-natalism.

LGBTQ+10/10

Sexual and gender identity are the most important traits in this movie, driving all three central storylines. The plot centers on a post-op transsexual woman, a straight man falling for a 'ladyboy,' and a teenage trans boy finding homosexual love inside a Buddhist monastery after being sent there for 'correction.' The nuclear family is framed as oppressive or misguided in its attempts to enforce biological reality, making this a complete centering of the queer experience.

Anti-Theism8/10

One of the central plots involves a father sending his trans-identifying son to be ordained as a novice Buddhist monk, with the explicit goal of making him 'straight.' This use of a high-status religious institution for 'conversion' is rendered futile and ironic when the boy finds homosexual love with a senior monk within the monastery walls. The film uses a pillar of traditional spiritual life to showcase the persistence and naturalness of queer identity, effectively subverting the religious institution's traditional, conservative role.