In the age of Netflix streaming, all of our old favourite films and TV programmes are undergoing closer scrutiny than ever before.
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And the latest movie to receive the millennial treatment is none other than Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which is currently being criticised by people for containing scenes of transphobia.
Podcast king Joe Rogan was recently re-watching the Jim Carrey classic with one of his kids the other day and decided to spark a debate about the nature of the film’s storyline.
Rogan stated: “Do you know what I made the mistake of doing yesterday? I watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective with my eight-year-old and my 10-year-old.
“I didn’t realise how transphobic that fucking movie is.”
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Going on to discuss the plot’s massive twist at the end – in which it’s revealed that the police chief played by Sean Young is actually a man – Rogan continued: “All the cops are throwing up… It’s off the charts. Everyone is freaking out. It is so insanely transphobic.”
Rogan was talking to a guest on his radio named Bari Weiss, who added: “When I saw that movie, I was 10. Transphobia was not a thing. Now it is a thing. That’s good. That’s good news.”
And of course, Twitter users decided to have their own say on the controversial Ace Ventura ending.
One user wrote: “Have you ever rewatched a movie from your childhood and realised shit is not only unfunny but hella offensive? Wtf? Why was I allowed to watch Ace Ventura?”
Another Twitter user also said: “At the very least it’s homophobic. Ventura re-enacts the shower scene from The Crying Game – a film about a transwoman – as a response to having kissed a man he thought was a woman. And it’s played for laughs. Grim.”
Someone else stated: “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is one of the most problematic movies ever made. Transphobic: this goes without saying. The dolphin’s name is Snowflake: the alt right’s degrading name for people who fight for social justice issues. Makes fun of mental illness: mental hospital scene.”
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However, not everyone has found the movie as offensive as others. Some users have defended the movie, with one person tweeting: “So people that are just now watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for the first time are saying it’s too offensive. Yeah it is because that’s what we did then. We watched offensive shit without getting fucking offended like a bunch of bitches… End rant.”
Another online tweeter added: “The character played by Sean Young was not trans. He was a man hiding as a woman to exact his revenge. Lighten up, it wasn’t about gender discrimination.“
Joe Rogan isn’t the only public figure to highlight the problems with the Ace Ventura plot. Trans model Munroe Bergdorf has revealed that she struggled with the movie’s plot as a young child.
She said on Instagram: “As an eight-year-old, I remember watching the film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, starring comedian Jim Carey, at a classmate’s house after school.
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“Sorry to ruin the ending if you haven’t seen it (don’t bother) – it ends in the movie’s villain being caught, stripped to her underwear and exposed as in fact ‘a man’. Then to add insult to injury, everyone in the room starts vomiting as they have all engaged in sex with her.
“Seeing a scene like this including a trans person, played by a cis woman – it may seem trivial to some but I carried that ‘punchline’ throughout my adolescence, it made me feel guilty and confused about who I truly was, so I pushed my true self into my subconscious and tried to be someone I was not.
“Fast forward two decades and I am so proud to be doing my bit for transgender visibility in the media. I’m by no stretch of the imagination a perfect person, but none of us are.“