alexseanchai | (no subject)

Has anyone watched Transparent on Amazon Prime? I recall hearing about it when it premiered, and now it's back in the news because apparently people care about the Golden Globes, and I am taking a floating holiday from work today and thinking about marathoning a thing and hey look I have an Amazon Prime account. But I don't want to waste my time on a show that's not depicting us well, either. And the casting of an apparently cis man as the leading trans woman is cringey, you know? (Let's just not discuss the tone of some of the news coverage. Jeffrey Tambor stars as "a transgender man who transitions into a woman"? NO. NO THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS.)

And while the Wiki page is really encouraging, that doesn't actually say anything about either the quality of the show qua depiction of my people or the quality of the show qua show. So I'm hoping people whose opinions I trust have opinions on the show.

And if not, or if those opinions are universally negative, I'll just marathon Korra S1 or Sailor Moon Classic S1 or whatever. And I think I'm two episodes behind on Sailor Moon Crystal again...

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Everything Kate and I had heard is AWFUL.

Bah. Nod. Thanks.

Ugh. I couldn't bring myself to try it either. I'm not glad to be vindicated here, but glad I didn't watch it.

Yeah, you should probably go with a marathon of Korra (esp so you can make it to S3, it gets much better) and Sailor Moon Crystal (and is that on Hulu or Amazon Prime. I need to catch up!)

Nod.

Sailor Moon Crystal's on Hulu.

Thank you dear!

I also found a review that generally summed up my issues with little of the show that I saw, and the politics around its creation that are just plain headdesk worthy and harmful. It's by s.e. smith, whose commentary around kyriarchy I always find worth reading.

http://globalcomment.com/amazons-transparent-is-transphobic-bullshit/

Feh. FEH I SAY. Well. Guess I'm not watching that.

I've only watched the pilot of Transparent. There wasn't anything that pinged me as particularly problematic about trans* stuff in the pilot.

I really enjoyed the pilot- it was built on a very gentle sort of dysfunctional family humor, where it felt like the family's many failures to communicate with each other could possibly be overcome. But the 'reveal' about Jeffrey Tambor's character being trans* doesn't come until the end of the episode, so I can't really say anything about how the rest of the show handles it.

Nod, thanks.

Should probably say that the most appealing thing for me about the pilot was a portrayal of a secular California Jewish family that felt very organic and real. Obviously I'm a consumer of media who is particularly on the lookout for Jewish stories, and will watch even very flawed ones.

There's a scene in the pilot where Maura's shocked daughter asks "So are you going to dress like a woman from now on?" and Maura answers "My whole life I have been dressing up as a man. This is me." It struck me as a very correct piece of conversation, with Maura speaking in the language of 1960s self-actualization to try (mostly unsuccessfully) to bridge a gap with her Gen-X daughter. It's a really good scene as believable and compelling emotional drama- I'm not sure it's as good a scene in terms of contemporary trans* vocabulary.

Nod!