The Gender Politics Controversy Dressed to Kill
Dressed to Kill was protested by feminist and LGBTQ+ groups upon its release in 1980 and has remained one of the most contested films in De Palma's career. The controversy centers on two related issues: the depiction of violence against women as spectacle, and the use of transgender identity as a mechanism for horror.
Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media organized protests at screenings
The organized response was immediate. Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media distributed leaflets at screenings:
"The distorted image of a psychotic male transvestite makes all sexual minorities appear sick and dangerous." -- Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media, leaflet distributed at screenings (1980) (not available online)
The Iowa City National Organization for Women picketed the film at the University of Iowa campus. These protests anticipated by decades the arguments about representation that would dominate cultural criticism in the 2010s and 2020s. (wikipedia)
The transgender depiction conflates gender dysphoria with violent psychosis
The killer's pathology -- a transsexual whose female alter ego murders to suppress masculine arousal -- conflates gender dysphoria with dissociative identity disorder and violent psychosis. Trans film critic Alice Stoehr identified the core problem:
"Elliott's pathology -- 'opposite sexes inhabiting the same body' -- bears minimal resemblance to actual trans women's experiences." -- Alice Stoehr, quoted in Crooked Marquee
The Crooked Marquee article, however, argued for a more complex reading -- that Elliott's character may represent someone unable to transition because of the era's restrictive psychiatric gatekeeping, and that Bobbi's violence is the product of a system that denied transition rather than of transition itself. The author contended that De Palma, "despite problematic framing, demonstrates research-backed understanding and ultimately crafts a story that tells us important things about trans people's treatment in the late '70s." (crookedmarquee)
The Psycho template carries the same pathologizing assumption Norman Bates introduced in 1960
The Psycho structure that De Palma borrowed is not neutral on this question. Norman Bates established a template -- gender variance as the source of horror, the cross-dressed killer, the psychiatrist who explains the pathology -- that Dressed to Kill replicates with more explicit content and a more specific diagnosis. The lineage runs from Psycho (1960) through Dressed to Kill (1980) to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), each film using gender nonconformity as a narrative mechanism for suspense and disgust. See The Hitchcock Connection (Dressed to Kill).
The 2020 documentary Disclosure placed the film in a broader pattern of transphobic screen images
The Netflix documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (2020) featured Dressed to Kill as part of a broader examination of how Hollywood has depicted transgender characters. The documentary places the film alongside Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in a lineage of films that present gender variance as dangerous, pathological, or the object of horror and comedy. (wikipedia)
De Palma has acknowledged the issue without fully engaging with it
De Palma stated in 2016: "I don't know what the transgender community would think of the film now." The statement acknowledges a changed cultural landscape without revisiting the creative decisions that produced the controversy. De Palma has generally defended his films as fiction rather than documentary, arguing that the killer's pathology is a plot mechanism, not a statement about transgender people. (wikipedia)
The violence-against-women critique and the transgender critique overlap but are distinct
The feminist critique focuses on the camera's treatment of women's bodies -- the shower scene, the elevator murder, the subway harassment -- arguing that the film aestheticizes violence against women and positions the audience as voyeuristic accomplices. The transgender critique focuses on the killer's identity -- arguing that the film uses gender variance as a source of horror. Both critiques are strengthened by De Palma's own statements about preferring to photograph women in danger:
"If you're going to follow around somebody to murder, I'd much rather be photographing a woman than a man." -- Brian De Palma, The Talks (2015)
Armond White offered an alternative reading: the film as a gay cinema landmark
Not all readings of the film's sexual politics are hostile. Armond White argued in Out Magazine that the museum sequence dramatizes the ritual of cruising -- wordless pursuit through public space, the erotics of looking, mutual recognition -- and that De Palma's "sexual audacity" was "precocious" rather than exploitative. White argued the film acknowledges "humanity's complex sexual variety" through both Kate's heterosexual adventure and the transsexual subplot. See Critical Reception and Legacy (Dressed to Kill). (out)