Transparent, set in Los Angeles, focuses on a divorced transgendered father’s transition from Mort to Moira, and the lives of her three emerging adult children. We’re introduced to the oldest child, Sarah’s mundane family life, middle child Josh’s successful career in film, and the youngest, Ali’s life in limbo, jobless and living off her brother. The series confronts us with as many situations that could be stuffed under the ever thinning umbrella-term ‘taboo’ as possible. Not only questioning gender roles and what is considered acceptable in modern day America, but also highlighting the speed of progression in the last twenty-five years concerning these notions.
Although Moira (Jeffrey Tambor) is the main character of this drama, the series also fluidly strings together the siblings confronting their own unresolved issues; like the breakdown of Sarah’s marriage or Josh trying to navigate the complex issue of whether or not men have a say when it comes to unplanned pregnancies.
The series rightly celebrates the LGBT society, using Moira’s conversations and confessions to allow the viewer an insight into the daily battles of someone who does not fit into the boxed definitions society neatly wants to tidy people into. We see flash backs of Mort as a professor treating her true feminine self as something she must hide away behind closed doors. A scene where she rents a hotel room in order to freely dress as a woman is presented like she were having an affair, as if having these desires to be a woman were in some way cheating on her biologically masculine identity.
With all this drama jammed packed into short half-hour sittings, one would imagine the series to become exhausting, but the excellence of the writing and acting ensures it never does. The characters’ very human reactions to the situations they find themselves in, such as Sarah’s shock at her father’s change manifesting itself as laughter keeps this potentially disorientating drama believable and grounded.
Like many good American dramas, this series cannot be found on your TV at home. Instead, it is available through Amazon’s online streaming service; good viewing now seems to be caught in a game of Chinese whispers. This series is definitely one worth watching, if not for the way it highlights progressive social change, then for the quick-wit and wonderfully crafted story lines.
Mira Mookerjee
Image property of Amazon Studios.