Abstract Transtv: Transgender Visibility And
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ABSTRACT TRANSTV: TRANSGENDER VISIBILITY AND REPRESENTATION IN SERIALIZED TELEVISION by Joshua Blake Jones With the increased visibility of transgender figures in serialized television comes a plethora of case studies to examine the ways in which transgender identity is culturally represented and perceived. My thesis examines the representations of transgender figures in the contemporary American serialized television series Orange Is the New Black, Transparent, and I Am Cait. My goal is to explore how these male-to-female transgender people embody alternative masculinities and femininities as well as how their transitions are received by those around them. Their trans identity, I argue, results in negative treatment caused by (and especially due to) their socioeconomic status and race. The introduction outlines the film, critical race, and transgender theoretical frameworks informing the project, followed by an exploration of the three aforementioned series. The first chapter embarks on a study of the ways in which the casting of transgender actors is crucial to provide a meaningful significance to the narrative. This argument carries into the second chapter, which discusses what happens when a cisgender actor is cast as a transgender character. The final chapter moves away from casting practices and instead highlights the social ramifications of nonfictional transgender narratives on television. TRANSTV: TRANSGENDER VISIBILITY AND REPRESENTATION IN SERIALIZED TELEVISION A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Joshua Blake Jones Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2016 Advisor: Dr. Katie Johnson Reader: Dr. Erin Edwards Reader: Dr. Anita Mannur ©2016 Joshua Blake Jones This thesis titled TRANSTV: TRANSGENDER VISIBILITY AND REPRESENTATION IN SERIALIZED TELEVISION by Joshua Blake Jones has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Science and Department of English ____________________________________________________ Dr. Katie Johnson ______________________________________________________ Dr. Erin Edwards _______________________________________________________ Dr. Anita Mannur Table of Contents Introduction: It’s Not Just about Bathrooms 1 Trans(face) Is the New Black(face): On Laverne Cox and Casting Transgender Congruity 12 Transparent, A Cautionary Tale of Privilege, Injustice, and History Repeating Itself 26 Cait’s Makeover: “Jenner Trouble” in I Am Cait’s Transgender Activism 39 Bibliography 51 iii List of Figures Figure 1: 2 A woman holds a sign petitioning the abolition of "bathroom bill" legislation that targets the transgender community. Figure 2: 16 Sutured to Sophia through an over-the-shoulder shot, we look with her as Healy disengages from her request Figure 3: 17 Sophia reaches for a bobble-head, symbolic of the pawn-like status that Healy possesses within the prison industrial complex. Figure 4: 19 The camera captures an extreme close-up of Sophia right before she endures a physical hate crime. Figure 5: 22 Once the officer places Sophia in solitary confinement, the camera watches from outside the cell as she breaks down into sobs. Figure 6: 28 The camera swivels as Maura and her daughters walk by, heading toward the women's restroom. Figure 7: 29 The camera becomes sutured to Sarah as she confronts the woman who demands that Maura leaves the women's restroom. Figure 8: 36 As Ali searches for Maura, she stumbles across Yetta in a cross-temporal moment that connects the past with the present. Figure 9: 36 Ali holds the hand of young Rose, who will become Maura's mother, while the camera sutures us to Gittel in an over-the-shoulder shot. iv Figure 10: 47 In this screenshot, writer Jen Richards makes eye contact with health educator Chandi Moore and professor Jennifer Boylan after Jenner makes a comment that highlights her social conservatism regarding people who allegedly take advantage of welfare systems. Figure 11: 48 Jenner reacts with shock as she hears Laya Monarez discuss the violence she endured when her transgender identity was discovered by one of her clients. v Dedication To the lives that allow this thesis to exist: I hear you, I see you, and I stand with you. vi Acknowledgements So many people have supported me throughout this process, and yet I’m sure to forget several of them in the brief space I have to list out my acknowledgements. I apologize in advance for being so neglectful. First, to my committee chair, Dr. Katie Johnson, who has seen this project from its cloudy beginnings to its lengthy finale, who has provided unwavering support while I sobbed in her office during bouts of writer’s block and reveled in my writing breakthroughs. Thank you, Katie, for your passionate mentorship; I am forever indebted to you. To my other readers, Drs. Erin Edwards and Anita Mannur, I thank you for providing a safe space to experiment with my ideas, for your flexibility, and for the encouragement to continue fleshing out this argument in future endeavors. I would be remiss not to also mention the Miami University English Department as a whole, for its members—from tenured professors to fellow graduate students—have allowed me to bounce ideas off them without judgment and ramble on and on about my ideas while providing a safe and encouraging space to expand the parameters of what constitutes an “English degree.” Prior to beginning this degree, I never would have thought that I would be able to write a thesis about television shows, and I am extremely grateful for and excited about the opportunity to do so. In particular, I would like to thank the graduate director Dr. Madelyn Detloff for having an open-door policy as well as Dr. Yu-Fang Cho for facilitating a seminar that provided the theoretical connections that tied many of my ideas together. And to my brilliant best friend, my fierce ride or die, Michelle Christensen: Thank you for never letting me spiral into the pit of despair and for being my rock during this grueling process by reminding me to take time for myself so as to avoid overexertion. I love you. I appreciate you. I admire you. To my family: Mom, Dad, Krysta, and Adam. Thank you for always reminding me of my potential, for continuously telling me that I’ve got this. You were right. And, silly as it may be to do this, thank you to my fur-babies, Myles and Julian. Your feline sass and deep loyalty to your papa kept me grounded and entertained while I spent hours reading (and re-reading) books and articles, and watching (and re-watching) Netflix. It can’t be easy being a grad school pet, and your warmth while curled up beside me and your patience while I worked nonstop did not go unnoticed. And to the names of people I’ve forgotten, know that your support has meant the world to me. Thank you. vii Introduction: It’s Not Just about Bathrooms A middle-aged woman wearing dark blue jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt stands in the center of a photograph capturing a seemingly banal scene. Her fading auburn hair sways wispy in a slight breeze; her lips are pursed in mid-sentence as she directs her gaze at someone just to the right of the frame. She stands on a gray cement sidewalk, framed by two other people who look away from her and from the camera. There is a line of vehicles parked behind her, and behind that a green awning attached to a tan brick building. But it isn’t the building, the awning, the vehicles, the sidewalk, or even the people in the photo that demand the most attention. Rather, it’s the large sign that the unnamed woman standing in the center of the photograph holds. Her hands grip the top of the white poster. Black, handwritten letters scrawled across the sign spell out: “It Wasn’t About Water Fountains In the 60s and It Isn’t About Bathrooms Now. Stop the Hate.” This unnamed woman’s message, forever captured and uploaded to the Twitter- verse, echoes the message that I want to convey throughout the course of this thesis. In seeking an anecdote to begin this thesis, I searched for something that would encapsulate the epitome of my argument. Did I, as a cisgender white gay man, dare to write about my own journey into transgender studies? How would such a move appeal to the community to whom I feel so passionately allied? Deciding against an autobiographical narrative, I continued my quest. It was not until very late into the writing process that I stumbled across this photo, included below, as a I scrolled through my Twitter feed. This woman’s message responds to the “bathroom bill” legislation controversy that has been gaining political traction over the last few years—legislation that regulates who uses which public restroom, legislation that directly stigmatizes the transgender community. As this new vector of identity has become increasingly more visible in mainstream media, it has been repeatedly questioned and challenged for its non-normativity and perceived deviance. Transgender studies pioneer Susan Stryker has documented this stigmatization in Transgender History, in which she provides a century-and-a-half chronology of transgender identity and the historical forces that have shifted from the pathologization of transgender identity to its beginnings of acceptance and intelligibility. She begins with an analysis of the nationwide municipalities that began outlawing the act of cross-dressing in the mid-nineteenth century and marches forward through discussions of pivotal figures such as sexologists Richard von Krafft- Ebing, author of Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), and Magnus