Tropic Sprockets Goes Streaming / The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson

By Ian Brockway

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1946- July 6, 1992) was a trans actor, performer and activist. Johnson was on the front lines of Stonewall in 1969, one of the very first who fought back when the police raided the famous Christopher Street bar.

Born Malcolm Michaels Jr., Johnson was a charismatic personality and vivacious model who counted Andy Warhol as a personal friend. In a gripping documentary, “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson,” her struggle as well as the mystery of last days, burn vividly. Johnson died one summer in 1992. Her death, though inconclusive, is said to be a suicide. Her case was ultimately cold for decades.

At the time of filming, Victoria Cruz, herself a trans woman, works for the Anti-Violence Project and is driven at all cost, to find out what happened to Marsha Johnson.

Cruz, who is head dressed in a long coat, cowrie shells and feathers, stands as a sentinel. Day in and day out, she helms the phone, getting only dismissiveness, mixed messages and double talk. The film evolves as a kind of “Serpico” story.

The NYPD refuses to talk.

In addition to Cruz, most compelling is Sylvia Rivera who speaks in a pivotal gay rights speech in 1973 and gets horribly ridiculed and jeered. One expects to see tolerance instead of derision and it is shocking footage, painful to watch.

Although she understandably felt discounted and betrayed, Rivera fought on founding the STAR action group for trans rights.

The tension in the film steadily builds as apprehensive as a thriller. Victoria Cruz gradually realizes that the powers that be in New York City do not have Cruz’s, Johnson’s or Rivera’s best interests at heart. The files are inexplicably missing and she has no answers. Cruz does obtain an autopsy report which is somewhat laconic and states no undue trauma to the body even though it was discovered floating downward in the Hudson River.

The most enduring imagery in the film is of Victoria Cruz herself as a guardian superhero, watchful and resolute with purpose as she ponders the deep waters of the Hudson, protecting the memories of both Marsha P. Johnson and Islan Nettles, a transgender woman who was brutally murdered by an enraged, hate-filled man in 2013. The murderer of Islan Nettles was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

In 2012, Victoria Cruz was awarded the National Crime Victim Service Award by the then acting Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” is both a real life crime story and a testament to multiple individuals, all of them eccentric, beautiful and full.

This film is a Tropic Pick For the Pandemic, available for streaming on Netflix.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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