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Gals & guys both desire makin’ out with Bacon in new show
There’s only one way to follow up a critically acclaimed hit like “Transparent”: Go bigger. Go deeper. So two years ago, when Jill Soloway — the creator of the Emmy-winning Jeffrey Tambor series — picked up a copy of “I Love Dick” by Chris Kraus, she was completely blown away.
For more than 20 years, the artist’s 1997 book has been a favorite of feminists, theoreticians and critics as it blends different writing styles to reveal the writer’s psychosexual obsession with a man named Dick.
Now the novel is Soloway’s latest show for Amazon, debuting next Friday.
The series stars Kathryn Hahn and Griffin Dunne as a married couple whose relationship is tested when they both fall for the same professor: a man played by Kevin Bacon. Soloway says she sees the new series as a chance to explore feminism and femaleness, much the way “Transparent” delves into the areas of gender and Judaism. On television, at least until recently, “Women had to stay in these positive characters,” says Soloway. “That’s because women were still objects on
male storylines — the girl they were trying to get, the bitch they were trying to escape from or the mother they were trying to outgrow. But when you start to question the male gaze and you remove this feeling of being seen, the truth is just the subject.”
Hahn’s character “is not anyone’s plot twist,” Soloway says. “She just is. And I think that’s one of the things that will be so satisfying for viewers. ‘Oh, this must be what it feels like to be a man and sit in a theater, the world of art and stories originates from you instead of looking at you.’ ”
When Soloway won an Emmy last year for “Transparent,” she raised more than a few eyebrows for a fiery acceptance speech. She ended it with a passionate “Topple the patriarchy!” and later, while backstage in the press room, she compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Conservative news outlets had a field day with her comments, but criticism doesn’t upset the former “Six Feet Under” writer. In fact, she welcomes it.
“The negative press, it actually doesn’t feel like an insult, it feels like an opportunity for publicity,” she said. “I feel like if I’m upsetting some people with my art — fantastic!”
“Transparent,” which begins its fourth season later this year, has garnered multiple Emmys and helped bring the issue of trans rights into the mainstream.
Its popularity peaked around the same time Caitlyn Jenner revealed herself to the world.
“I’m very defensive of people trying to take down Caitlyn,” says Soloway. “There are a lot of public figures who aren’t political in the way that people want them to be political and they get left alone.
Soloway says some individuals hate transgender people even if they don't realize it – and one of the ways they express these negative feelings is by criticizing Jenner. “I don’t appreciate that at all,” she says.
“She (Jenner) is on her own journey and the fact that she transitioned publicly and comes from a conservative background, I think it’s a real opportunity for people to question their intersectionality and different kinds of oppression. I would never take her for task for that.”