I was so excited for Transparent's third season that I ended up finishing it in a record two days after it dropped around this time last month. And, since I know it'll be some time yet before the fourth season drops, what else am I to do with my love for the show than write about it?
(That, plus a local queer thought leader took a shot at the show, and I felt an oddly strong drive to defend it. But more on that later!)
Transparent follows Maura, a retired professor living in LA, as she navigates her transition with her less-than-functional family full of delightfully complex characters.
I have to admit, I was skeptical at first-- I was VERY late to the Transparent bandwagon, and every person who exalted its merits to me in the long period before I gave it a chance came off as kind of tokenizing, as if they were just referring me to the trending queer show because I was the only queer in sight. Once I did watch it, though, that defensiveness melted as fast as it had formed, and I found myself hooked on the show with the quickness.
The diverse cast of characters adds delightful dynamics to the topical themes, which range from affairs to abuse to identity politics in a complex world. And while those themes may sound heavy-- and they are!-- there's more than enough comic relief to keep the show tolerably and entertainingly light.
And then, somewhere in the second season, it hit me-- I don't think I've ever seen a queer series quite like this!
One of my favorite things about Transparent is that it's a comedy. And sure, that may not sound like the most radical thing in the universe, but when it comes to queer media representation-- and especially trans representation-- it's a big deal! I mean, the last big trans media piece I saw was 2015's The Danish Girl, which was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it was also pleny tragic. And sure, there have been plenty of queer dramas, like The L Word, for example, but a trans comedy still feels like a rarity to me!
I bet you don't have to dig deep on social media to find queers bemoaning the lack of lesbian films with happy endings, or bi media representation, or any number of other LGBTQ representational issues that still plague queer audiences. Transparent feels unique in that regard. Much has changed in terms of representation since 2014's Trans Tipping Point, and yet a trans comedy like Transparent still stands out as groundbreaking.
AND it's been called the most Jewish show in history-- as if expanding trans representation weren't enough!
Sure, Transparent isn't perfect-- what is? My first criticism was that they were playing up the whole "rich Jew" thing at a time in which literal nazism, and antisemitism more generally, are on the rise in the world. But then it challenged the whole class issue by putting Maura in relationships with "real" queer folks-- which is to say people of poor-to-average economic means, and having her class position make her comically inept. And Season Three ESPECIALLY challenged the zionism/antisemitism issue by sending one of the main characters almost immediately to occupied Palestine, where she quickly develops close relationships to people living lives she'd never imagined before, much to the benefit of the audience.
In short, I feel like it's easy to criticize the show for touching on controversial topics, but also incredibly ignorant to make a hot take and completely miss the beautifully nuanced complexity it brings to these issues. At the end of the day, it's making a popular, big-budget show about these things, and thereby bringing them into our living rooms and lives, and I think we all have to give the show credit for that.
And that brings me to my queer thought leader quip from earlier-- sure, it's easy to call the show classist because it follows rich Jews living in LA. But that misses the entire point of the comedy, which is that these characters are all very obviously flawed, and are figuring these things out usually by messing them up. Nobody said anything like the characters' standard of living is normal-- in fact, it makes plenty of opportunities for us to laugh at them because they're rich and ignorant!
