Tag: television

The Best TG on TV (Spoilers)

 

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(Tip in Boy Form)

For fans of TG fiction, the best place to find it right now is on Emerald City embody in the character of Tip and watchable on Hulu and NBC.   Now, everything that follows is a spoiler, so you may want to just go and watch!  But, if you read on, just know I will be revealing a lot of Tip’s journey.

Thematically, one of the reasons I love this character is that he discovers he can only gain power by embracing his female self.  It is a nice twist on traditional gender roles, and when I say embrace his female self it comes down to him accepting that he is a princess and magically dressing himself in a fairy tale dress, earrings, a fancy dress and an elaborate updo in order to command the loyalty of a group of witches.

Now, to back up, when we first meet Tip he is being held captive by a witch, who feeds him special medicine everyday and tells him she is protecting him from the dangers of the outside world.  Right off, the situation is deliciously twisted, as Tip is being held in a tower sealed by brambles, and he is hoping that a male friend named Peter will rescue him from his captivity.  Sounds like a traditional damsel in distress, right?

Well, Dorothy comes along– this is an Oz-based TV show– and she frees Tip, who runs off with his friend Peter to be free and explore the world.  There’s only one problem: the next, Tip wakes up to discover he has turned into a girl.  He hides from his friend and is appalled and embarrassed to have a girl’s shape, so he and Peter set out to find someone to make more of the medicine the witch had been feeding him.

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(Tip in girl form)

All along, we get nice little crumbs of Tip’s struggle with his identity.  At one point he is in a restaurant, his boobs exposed in his too small shirt, and a waitress tells him that unless he’s planning on making some money off his boobs he should probably cover them up.  He is shocked and humiliated to realize men have been ogling him.  He freaks out when he needs to use a restroom and can’t decide which one to use (very timely), and then he gets the greatest shock of all when he and Peter find a chemist to analyze and make more medicine.

The chemist returns and tells Tip he can’t make him the medicine because it is black magic and will turn him into a boy.   “I am a boy,” Tip says, and the man says, “No.  You aren’t.  You were born a girl.”

This knowledge unnerves Tip, who is totally disoriented by the idea that he was born female.   He refuses to believe it.   This situation gets worse when his equally confused friend, Peter, tries to kiss him.

The journey continues on with Tip trying to join the army, but instead ends up at an all-girl orphanage run by Glinda, who wants him to be a nun.   Then, the Witch of the West arrives and offers to let him join her and learn to be a slut, which causes him to say, “So, as a girl my choices are to be a virgin or a slut?”

He chooses to go with West, but only find himself forced to wear dresses and work as her serving girl, making her tea and performing other menial tasks.

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(Tip as serving girl)

Now, this is all doled out very slowly over several episodes.   Finally, he discovers that not only was he born a girl, but a princess, which is just the worst form of girl in his mind, but then Witch of the West asks him a question.  “Do you want to be a boy who has nothing and no one, or a girl who is destined to rule Oz?”

This, to me, is where it starts to kick into high gear because he begins to understand his path to power only comes if he embraces his girlhood.  It takes a couple of episodes, and he briefly even manages to regain male form, but then he is once again powerless, and it is only by going full on princess that he can advance and have any power and future.

The actress who plays Tip, Jordan Loughran, is extremely talented and does a almost too good job portraying his confusion and alienation as he struggles to figure out who he is and what he can be in the world.

I am looking forward to see what happens, and eagerly watching the ratings to see if there will be a second season.  This is very cool stuff for a network TV show to explore.

Check it out!

 

 

 

 

Transparent (Spoilers)

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So, I finally watched Transparent, mainlining the two existing seasons over the course of a weekend.

And I don’t know what to say.

I liked the show.  I found it very watchable, and I feel it won on all fronts from a creative perspective: great writing, acting, directing, music.  However, The Pfeffermans are horrible people.  Unbridled narcissists, they crash into the lives of much nicer, more caring people and remorselessly shred their psyches and then cast these people aside like outgrown toys, occasionally popping back in to see if they can inflict new pain upon their victims.

Transparent feels very much like a soap opera, where a lot of the drama is driven by the lurid pleasure that comes from watching these people lure one victim after another into their web of lies and then wait for the moment when the poor person realizes that they are just another victim of a very sick family.

What makes Transparent different from Falcon Crest, however, is that many of the characters, not just the father, find themselves exploring their identities, sexual and gender.  The father, Maura, has come out as transgender and expressed her desire to live as a woman.   Sarah leaves her husband to rekindle a lesbian relationship she had in college.  Gaby pursues both a trans man and later a lesbian relationship with an old friend and one of her brother’s former conquests, and Shelly, the mother of the family, explores a lesbian relationship with her former husband.  So, with the exception of the son, so far, they are all what I would call genderfluid, open to exploring their own sexualities if not always very accepting of others.

But they are all assholes! Narcissists. They are a prevalent stereotype of LGBT people as people who love only themselves and do not seem to care at all how their actions impact others.  They are always me, me, me, and they lie and abuse people with impunity. So, isn’t it a problem that this show, being lauded as a ground-breaking step forward for LGBT people, portrays LGBT as horrible, selfish parasites?

No, and for this reason; because it is just like Falcon Crest. Or Dallas.  Or countless other shows where rich, entitled turds go around being selfish and abusive toward others. Transparent is not a documentary or an after-school special. It is a soap opera, and nice people are boring, so naturally these characters need to be flawed and terrible, because that is what viewers find entertaining.  No one is going to tune in to watch a well-adjusted family work out their problems like mature adults.  No one.  No one is going to tune in to watch a happily married couple go on an uneventful vacation.

There needs to be conflict.  Disaster.  Bad thinking.

In addition, among the victims suffering for the misfortune of getting involved with any of the human misery machines known as the Pfeffermans, are straight and LGBT characters alike.   We see that in the world there are good and bad people, and some of them are straight and some of them are not, and it is a good thing that this show can portray a balance.

If I were going to fault anything it would be the classification of this show as a comedy.   It seemed very clearly a drama to me.  There are some funny moments, but they emerge out of dramatic situations and are far less frequent than more dramatic moments.  It seems to me that the only reason that anyone would find this to be a comedy is if they are an immature person who thinks anything with non-traditional gender roles is automatically funny.  There is a scene, for example, where Maura has decided to perform at a LGBT talent show, and as she comes out and begins to sing all of her children begin laughing uncontrollably and then flee the room in the middle of her performance.

When Maura first emerged onto the stage, I was thinking– yes!  Do it!  Live your life!  I didn’t find it hilariously funny that she would have the courage to get up there and do it. Not at all.  Nor did I find it hilarious that her children would burst out laughing and then run out of the room.

But then I am one of those kind-hearted folks that people like the Pfeffermans would prey upon, so maybe that is why I found it sad people would be so hateful toward their own parent.

Transparent is a soap opera, and I would say a good one.  Season Two got more and more into gender identity, and I found it more and more interesting.  I am looking forward to the third season.  To me, I would call is Falcon Crest in transition.

If you are looking for a show about good people who are interested in growing and becoming better people– for real, not just for fashion– this probably isn’t the show for you.  But if you want to see horrible people being horrible, check it out.

Free on Amazon Prime