Transgender Dispossession in Transparent: Coming Out as a Euphemism for Honesty

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• 作者：Steven Funk ; Jaydi Funk
• 关键词：Transparent ; Transgender ; Coming out ; Dispossession ; Media studies ; Critical media literacy
• 刊名：Sexuality & Culture
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：20
• 期：4
• 页码：879-905
• 全文大小：540 KB
• 刊物主题：Social Sciences, general; Interdisciplinary Studies; Personality and Social Psychology; Psychology, general; Regional and Cultural Studies;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1936-4822
• 卷排序：20

文摘

Since the 1990s, television narratives have increased visibility for LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual) individuals and underscored the need for a deep exploration of the heterosexism (homophobia) that pervades much mainstream American programming (Lee and Meyer in Sex Cult 141:234–250, 2010; Manuel in Soc Semiot 19(3):275–291, 2009). One such serial, Transparent, has been credited by many major media outlets with transforming the way Americans think about transgender, gender expansive (Ehrensaft in Gender born gender made, The Experiment, New York, 2011), or trans*, individuals. Exploring Transparent through Butler and Athanasiou’s (Dispossession: the performative in the political, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013) framework of dispossession, this essay argues that the depiction of dispossession in Transparent may serve to hypostasize the gender binary rather than to disrupt it. By severing the rhetorical act of “coming out” from the historical pathologization of non-normative sexualities and gender expansiveness in America, Transparent risks undoing the very social progress that it has the potential to further. While the show could powerfully disrupt cisgender privilege (Brydum in The true meaning of the word cisgender, 2015), as of its second season, instead, it merely illustrates how the media produced trans* “coming out” narrative all too often reifies the gender binary and cisgender privilege. Although it is tempting to praise Transparent for its representation of gender expansiveness, its problematic use of the “coming out” rhetoric should not be ignored.