Transparent’s second season premiered on Amazon this past Friday and over the weekend there’s been a lot of good write-ups about the show’s storylines and major themes.
Action items/Takeaways
Participate in online discussion about how the show approaches the dynamics of gender, sex, and identity within a diverse family. Now’s the time to do it while discussion about the show is still fresh, Follow the hashtag #transparentTV and #transparentamazon on tumblr . Also check out the Transparent TV Fan Blog on Tumblr.Share articles via social media: The below articles from the New York Times and Rolling Stone are worth sharing via social media as an introduction to broader is an issues of gender identity and sexuality within families and as part of a broader community.Write an op-ed or blog post: The excellent article from Autostraddle posted below could serve as an excellent jumping off point for an op-ed on the value of diversity at work. The article talks about how the storylines and work culture on the set of Transparent is enriched and improved by its large number of trans employees working in front of the camera and as part of the crew.
Major Themes
The New York Times writes about how the show’s second season has allowed for a sophisticated and challenging exploration of sexuality and gender identity:
“What is being queer if not questioning everything?” asks Ali Pfefferman (Gaby Hoffmann), during an argument with her lover. Ali, who may be attracted to another woman, argues that she wants to avoid forcing a “heteronormative” model on their relationship. Her lover suggests that Ali, who only recently came out, is being perhaps a little self-serving. “Listen to yourself,” she says. “You’ve been queer for, like, 30 seconds.”
This Los Angeles tour of sex and identity is as intersectional as a 405 interchange, and it could all play like a graduate gender studies seminar if it weren’t so overtly funny. The show finds comedy in a shaman at a “wimmin’s music” festival (“Some of you I know from my drumming away racism group”) and in the culture clash when the Pfeffermans meet Colton’s conservative Christian adoptive family. (The paterfamilias greets Maura as “Colton’s Mee-Maw.”) Yet the show respects each character’s sincerity. Its spirit is that anything can be funny, but nothing is risible.
Rolling Stone talks about how season 2 has allowed the show to focus on family dynamics and interpersonal relationships:
“After spending its first 10 episodes exploring the simultaneous midlife crises of the upper-class Pfefferman family, the crown jewel of Amazon’s scripted programming is using its next round to show how making radical changes (regarding your gender, marital status or life choices) doesn’t mean that a person has figured everything out.
A writer from Autostraddle spent a day on the set of Transparent and wrote about the diverse and welcoming work culture for trans workers on and off set has impacted the show’s storylines.
This ethos of respecting trans identities, not othering them, extends beyond just the set. Both in the world of the show and in Hollywood, Transparent is hoping to make sure that trans people are in charge of, and profiting off of, their stories…
This heavy involvement from trans people has also helped to open up the world of possibilities for the characters on the show itself. While other shows and movies are stuck at a 101 — or even lower — level, Transparent is able to jump right into 301- and 401-level stories. In season two, shit gets real. Ernst told me that he, Drucker and Soloway don’t want to do any hand holding with their audience and instead want to “plunge into this waist deep.
