See-through family entertainment
ALTHOUGH I consider myself a person of normal intelligence, I am occasionally forced to question that. Most recently, the doubt was brought on by the fact that I only realised after more than a year that the title of Amazon’s series Transparent was, in fact, a pun. And not even a subtle one: the show is literally about having a transgender parent. If you are sharing this moment of epiphany now for the first time, you’re very welcome, though I’m worried about you, too.
DStv has been screening the second series of Transparent, which has been a mixed delight for me. It’s a pretty impressive indication of where we are, progress-wise, that a TV show dealing with a topic as “edgy” as a parent transitioning can receive a mainstream airing. Then again, there’s another show about a parent transitioning which gets a lot more airtime: I Am Cait, chronicling Caitlyn Jenner’s reallife transgender journey.
Part of why I like Transparent is that it is the anti-I Am Cait in some regards. As a man, I thought Bruce Jenner seemed perfectly amiable but also — speaking frankly — a bit thick, though no doubt he cottoned on to the pun in Transparent some time before me. As a woman, Caitlyn Jenner comes across as perfectly amiable but still a bit thick, which is why I have little interest in watching her show with its soft-focus angles and flattering lighting.
Transparent is the opposite: jarring, sometimes shocking, and funny in a deeply subversive way. I say “shocking” not because of its transgender content, but because in a world where we’re used to seeing crazy stuff on TV, Transparent still manages to feel genuinely risqué. If you are a delicate flower, it’s not the right show for you. In the first season, we witnessed daughter Ali engaging in submissive sexual roleplay with a misogynistic trans-man. In the second, we’ve experienced 60-something mother Shelly getting, er, “seen to” in a bathtub.
Neither is something I can ever recall seeing on a widely popular TV show before. Transparent doesn’t so much push the envelope as take the envelope and rip it into a million tiny pieces. There is much to be applauded about that; it can make for uncomfortable viewing, but I’m of the firm belief that a bit of discomfort can be good for us.
My problem with Transparent, however, is that I find it a trifle depressing. I’m a fan of dark comedy, but these shows about self-destructive, self-involved millennials occasionally make you want to go and binge-watch something aggressively cheerful and comforting like
The Cosby Show. But Cosby is an alleged rapist, and it’s a new world out there — as Transparent makes abundantly clear.