Pearls of wisdom:: Haunted objects, meta-theatrical pedagogy, and trans history in transparent

Millette, Holly-Gale (2017) Pearls of wisdom:: Haunted objects, meta-theatrical pedagogy, and trans history in transparent. Trans TV Conference, University of Westminister, London, United Kingdom. 13 - 15 Sep 2017. (Submitted)

Abstract

A significant thread of the complex, and continually converging, family storylines of Amazon Prime’s Transparent (2013) is Maura Pfefferman’s (Jeffery Tambor) daughter Alexandria "Ali" Pfefferman (Gaby Hoffman) interrogating the transsexuals and gender fluid Bohemians of pre-World War II Berlin. This line of enquiry is imbricated by a research degree thesis that Ali has recently begun to unpick. This thesis itself, viewers recognize, is situated in both Ali’s and the narrative’s working out of disconnected and obfuscated family history. Ali’s academic discovery of the Bohemian salons and queer characters of 1930’s Weimar Germany occur simultaneous to her own journey of lesbian self-discovery, and are importantly driven by her Trans-parent’s tragic family history, the legacy of which is symbolically contained in the large pearl ring that has been passed down to her. This ring belonged to Ali’s great-uncle/aunt, Gershon/Gittle (Hari Nef) – a transsexual seized and exterminated in the death camps of the holocaust – a narrative that hints at Milton Diamond’s (2013) genetic suppositions on Trans, but then obliterates the traces of this argument in trauma.

Transparent can, arguably, be considered as a network of family story-lines that see characters wrestling with ‘active positions of figuring out how to live with and against the constructions – or norms – that help to form us’ (Williams and Butler, 2009). We are witnessing characters taking stock and, forming, and reforming themselves ‘within vocabularies that they did not choose, and sometimes they have to reject in order to actively develop new ones’ (Ibid). This paper considers the open text of Transparent as a new mode of narrative complexity that, in its presentation form, provides echoes of trans-history. It focuses on: the haunted object of the pearl ring; the ‘post-televisual’ digital form that enables a non-linear discourse of trans-history; and on the pedagological theatricality (Loiselle and Maron, 201, e.g.) of the Pfefferman’s backstory.

The discussion of trans-history that Transparent offers is an undulating one, rooted in contemporary Judaica, in which all manner of trans-history and discourse can be considered and debated psycho-affectively. It is transformative television that presents as a holographic canvass on which is illustrated contending critical approaches to trans-history and the deliberations and material of unresolved trans-trauma haunting.

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Contributors

Author: Holly-Gale Millette

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