Up Next: Representations of the Underrepresented in Streaming

Film and Television

By Hannah Wold

University of Colorado Boulder

Film BA Honors Thesis

To be Defended Monday, April 3

, 2017

Thesis Advisor

Melinda Barlow, Department of Film

Defense Committee

Melinda Barlow, Department of Film Honors Representative

Ernesto Acevedo-Muoz, Department of Film

Stephen Graham Jones, Department of English

Hannah Wold

Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………… 3

Introduction: Inclusivity in Streaming: An Economic Predisposition…………………………. 5

Part I: Grace and Frankie: Queer Identities and Baby Boomers……………………………… 23

Part II: Transparent: Deviant Identities and the Indefatigable Presence of Self……………... 51

Conclusion: Potentials in the Mechanics of Empathy…………………………………………. 91

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………… 96

Hannah Wold

Abstract

Throughout the history of the entertainment industry, the competitive pursuit of market

share has dictated a consistent reproduction and employment of those whose narratives mirror

the cultural dominant, constructing a dynamic whereby the popular film and television of

America overwhelmingly recreate a single social perspective, regardless of the plurality of

cultural backgrounds among members of the audience. The recent introduction of streaming

original series into the landscape of popular entertainment, however, has radically altered this

paradigm.

As the traditional platforms of national entertainment such as film, broadcast television,

and cable television struggle to adapt to the new conditions placed upon the market by streaming

companies Netflix and Amazon, the original series produced by these streaming studios

unabashedly embrace difference, a strategy that is aided by their alternative profit models.

Indeed, these streaming studios actively compete to become positioned as the purveyor of

narratives predicated upon minority perspectives through programming and marketing.

Additionally, Netflix and Amazon employ a greater plurality of underrepresented voices among

the creative staff producing original series. Streaming platforms thus not only portray and

interrogate the experiences of minority communities, they additionally employ those whose

cultural perspectives mirror the narratives appearing in streaming content. The series and films

produced by Netflix and Amazon can thus demonstrate the manifestation of the audacious

representation of underrepresented voices on streaming original content. Additionally, a close

analysis of Netflix’s original series Grace and Frankie and Amazon’s Transparent will

investigate the differing approaches to the representation of difference employed by each

streaming studio.

Hannah Wold

In this way, streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon represent a new frontier within

the entertainment industry in the representation of minority identities, a potential enabled by the

very profit structure of streaming services. This thesis will therefore seek to investigate the

quickly approaching horizon of altered dynamics of minority representation created by the

production of Netflix and Amazon original series which are predicated upon representations of

cultural difference.

Hannah Wold

Introduction: Inclusivity in Streaming

An Economic Predisposition

Renowned film scholar Siegfried Kracauer once noted, “the films of a nation reflect its

mentality in a more direct way than any other artistic medium” (Toplin 117). Indeed, throughout

the history of film and television, the culture-making of Hollywood is structured in society as a

consistent reintroduction and affirmation of American identity, a measure of the concerns and

ideals of a nation. Thus, film and television not only create social discussions of cultural

concerns, but also the very lexicon in which these concerns are discussed. But if the films and

television of a nation are to accurately reflect its mentality, they must similarly mirror its

population. Historically, the accurate portrayal of American diversity has been a pursuit with

which Hollywood has struggled, creating an enduring dynamic whereby a single perspective

tenaciously resurrects itself again and again to become the monolithic identity of American film

and television. Given the plurality of the society these cultural products endeavor to represent,

the scarcity of minority perspectives not only limits the narratives Hollywood produces, it also

restricts the participation of minority actors, producers, and audience members in the

conversations surrounding film. Surely, if film reflects the mentality of the nation, then all

constituent points of view within that nation must be inherent in its reproduction.

Additionally, while film and television persist in neglecting the narratives of many

members of the population, the potentials for empathetic understanding inherent in the cinematic

recreation of narratives of subaltern communities remain latent. Conversely, when film and

television do embrace the vibrant diversity of the society in which they are immersed, original

and vivid narratives induct the concerns and hopes of the traditionally overlooked into the

national discourse. In introducing unfamiliar perspectives to popular artistic works in the form of

Hannah Wold

protagonism, viewers are confronted with the realities of those with whom they may otherwise

have no contact, facilitating constructive social conversations. In this way, the representation of

diversity in American film and television is a fundamental act of compassion which engages the

strengths of cinema in aid of increased cultural awareness.

Though traditional media sources like film, broadcast, and cable television have tended to

eschew minority representation in favor of familiar narratives and characters, such a propensity

is strikingly absent in the recent introduction of streaming original content. Though the three

primary streaming companies Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu began exclusively as online

distribution platforms, each constructed its own studio and began producing original content

within the last seven years. These films and series are distributed through each company’s

streaming platform, access to which can be purchased with a monthly subscription. Additionally,

all episodes of streaming original series are released at once and episodes are occasionally

produced in unconventional lengths. Thus, the original series and films created by streaming

companies depart from industry norms, but there is perhaps no innovation as striking as the way

that these companies employ, represent, and study cultural diversity.

The plurality of perspectives represented across the original series of streaming platforms

is evident not only in the casting of many of the companies’ films and television, but also in the

way that many foreground experiences of cultural difference as their chosen subject matter.

Netflix and Amazon particularly display an affinity for narratives constructed upon themes of

identity, ostracization, and community. Indeed, both have created a great number of original

series organized around investigations of minority experiences. Though Hulu displays a

burgeoning potential within the market of original content, it has produced series and films at a

far less robust rate than Amazon or Netflix and few of the series is has produced have lasted

Hannah Wold

more than one season. Therefore, for the purposes of consistency and clarity, Amazon and

Netflix will be the primary foci of this analysis.

Additionally, in order to formulate a thorough and comprehensive illustration of the

differing approaches to the representation of subaltern identities employed by Netflix and

Amazon, this study will examine streaming original series Grace and Frankie, produced by

Netflix, and Transparent, created by Amazon Studios. Each of these shows narrativizes the

experiences of members of the LGBTQ community who reveal aspects of their identity to their

family in the later years of their lives. Both find echoes in one another in themes of alienation,

labeling, aging, and hope, and therefore embody ideal points of comparison with one another.

Additionally, each show employs unusually high numbers of female and queer perspectives.

Thus, by examining the dynamics of difference within the construction of Grace and Frankie

and Transparent, a view to the attitude of each company concerning minority representation and

employment may be obtained.

In order to appreciate the industrial factors driving the diversity among streaming original

services, however, it is first necessary to outline the differences between traditional media and

streaming platforms, as well as the consequences of these disparities. The economic paradigm in

which a streaming service creates its own digital content that can only be accessed through a

subscription to a website represents a relatively new development within the entertainment

industry and stands in opposition to existing models. Throughout the history of the film industry,

the quality and fiscal success of the cultural products disseminated by Hollywood have been

largely measured by rates of audience attendance, quantifiable in the metric of box office ticket

sales. Similarly, broadcast television relies on measures of audience viewership garnered through

Nielson ratings, which determine the valuation of the advertisements that are sold during a given

Hannah Wold

program. Thus, “networks do not sell programs to audiences, but rather sell audiences to

advertisers” (Green 112). Finally, cable networks operate in a similar manner, relying on Nielson

ratings to sell advertisements while supplementing this income with the addition of subscription

or pay-per-view fees which allow the viewer to access the network’s channel. In this way, film,

broadcast television, and cable television all heavily rely on rates of viewership in order to

market the advertisements upon which their revenue model is predicated.

Thus, traditional media platforms define success through ticket sales and viewership

metrics, but as there is an inflexible number of audience members at any given time, each

company must vigorously compete to gain the attention and favor of potential customers. A

highly pluralistic industry climate is therefore created, whereby market share becomes a defining

standard of a studio’s success, a model in which, “though profit-seeking is only comparative, it is

as desperate and ruthless as if it were absolute” (Green 112). Additionally, each studio or

network can produce a limited number of films or series at a given time. For example, television

stations can only air one or two shows per hour and the number of films available to watch in

movie theaters is finite. Thus, given the dictate that market share is to be maintained, a television

channel or film studio has a restricted range of content with which to capture a viewer’s

attention. Of course, this model has been altered somewhat in the proliferation of cable and

broadcast television websites through which a viewer can access content online even when it is

not airing on the network’s channel, but the studio’s website is nevertheless confined to content

that it broadcasts one at a time on air.

As the level of competition for audience members among film and television studios is so

fierce, every company aims to capture the largest target market possible with each of its

products. In this way, Hollywood tends to endeavor to create narratives that will appeal to the

Hannah Wold

widest possible audience, and, more importantly, the audience that is most likely to spend money

on discretionary items like entertainment products. Therefore, “if profits are to be maximized,

the basic task becomes one of responding to the concerns of a segmented, but decidedly white,

middle-class public” (Toplin 34). In attempting to appeal to the greatest number of potential

customers as a result of the intense drive to maintain market share, a homogenization process

thus occurs among the cultural products of Hollywood. Consequently, the perspectives and

narratives of those making up a lesser degree of the potential audience are passed over in favor

of offerings that appeal to and reflect the cultural dominant. This fact is evident in the stiflingly

low rates of representation among people of color, women, and sexual and gender minorities

both in front of and behind Hollywood’s cameras. Because studios “cannot cater to minority or

exceptional tastes unless those can be isolated as an identifiable group of potential customers,”

the representation of these minorities remains deflated throughout the industry (Green 113).

Indeed, in one examination of the standards of minority representation in the

entertainment industry conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

at the University of Southern California, all major film, broadcast, and cable television studios

were proven to employ and represent minority figures in miniscule rates. The survey, which

catalogued the films and series distributed by prevailing Hollywood studios between September

, 2014 and August 31

, 2015 revealed that the majority of film studios do not remotely

resemble the diversity of the American population, as illustrated by the 2010 Census, in regards

to both on-screen representation and off-screen employment. Only two film companies (Sony

and Viacom) were proven to approach an accurate balance, and did so only in regards to the on-

screen depiction of racial minorities (Smith). Cable and Broadcast television performed

marginally better, but the limited inclusivity displayed was frequently confined to on-screen

Hannah Wold

representation, with the employment of minority directors, writers, and creators dipping

considerably lower.

This inequality of representation and employment is a striking figure, but even more

telling is the correlation found between the employment of minority creative staff and the

resulting depiction of underrepresented figures on screen. Of the surveyed series, “the percentage

of onscreen underrepresented characters increases 17.5% when an underrepresented director is at

the helm of a scripted episode or film” (Smith). Similarly, “stories with a female director

attached had 5.4% more girls/women on screen than those stories without female direction…For

writers and creators, the relationship was more pronounced (10.7% and 12.6% increase,

respectively)” (Smith). Thus, when members of a minority community are employed in the

creation of film and television, they enthusiastically affirm their own cultural experiences in the

work they produce. Considering the dearth of minority and female creative staff employed in the

film industry, it is therefore hardly a surprise that the study found that, throughout all major

companies performing in the entertainment industry, no studio or network accurately depicted

the diversity inherent in American society.

The results of the survey conducted by USC’s Annenberg School demonstrate that the

stories the entertainment industry tells almost inevitably are created by and relate to the

experiences of straight, white, cisgender males. Of course, the creation of narratives about

straight white males is not inherently pernicious, but when Hollywood doggedly performs a

perspective informed by and concerning a single demographic, the presentation of those outside

this context becomes problematic because “every representation of the Other stands in for the

particular version of otherness as a whole, in a way that (non-ethnic) white men never do”

(Green 75). The overabundance of films and series concerning the dominant narrative therefore

Hannah Wold

not only overemphasizes the experience of those who are white men, it simultaneously devalues

the work of those who are not. The portrayal of minority perspective becomes a performance of

difference, rather than a constituent contribution to the narrative and themes of the film or series.

The limitations inherent in this condition become apparent in the fact that minority characters are

rarely presented as “the iconographic idols who give a narrative its moral center” (Green 49).

Thus, by formulating minority characters as alien due to its competition for market share, the

entertainment industry in turn alienates the minority actors, producers, and audience members

who perform in, create, and consume their cultural product.

While the lack of individuality among the representations of subaltern communities in

traditional film and television manifests an objectification of difference, the economic model

employed by streaming services enables an intrepid avowal of the experiences of those outside of

the cultural dominant. Indeed, the revenue models of streaming services are so different from

those of traditional media sources as to even encourage diversity in original streaming

programming. One stark difference between the model upon which streaming services are

predicated and the model of industry counterparts is that streaming platforms do not have the

limited offerings that confine film companies or television stations. Streaming services are

therefore liberated in the content they can deliver at any given time. For example, if a viewer

watching a television channel wasn’t satisfied with the program that was airing, he or she would

switch to another channel, a detrimental trend for the first channel’s broadcast company. The

audience member watching a streaming service, however, is able to access the content that he or

she wishes to choose at any time. In this way, the large number of choices available at any given

time on a streaming platform eliminates the need for a series or film to provide a narrative that is

a familiar construction of prevailing themes and cultures.

Hannah Wold

Additionally, by relying only on a monthly subscription fee, streaming services have

freed themselves from the subservience to viewership metrics that has defined the choices of the

broadcast, cable, and film industries alike. In establishing a steady source of funding through

subscription, Netflix and Amazon are able to place less credence in viewership numbers when

developing original content and renewing existing programs. Of course, streaming services

consider viewership in programming decisions, but can additionally weigh factors external to

these metrics. For example, when speaking about elements of decision-making that supplement

the creation of new original content, Netflix executive Cindy Holland noted that the company

ensures “that we’re talking to the great media leaders of tomorrow who may not look like us and

who may not be from here” (Ryan). Indeed, the altered relationship of streaming services to

viewership numbers is demonstrable in the fact that Netflix is notoriously opaque about the

audience size of its various programming series; the company does not use the figure as a means

of competing in the market, preferring the keep the information internal so that content decisions

are not unduly affected by the measurements.

Thus, in consequence of its altered revenue model and its profusion of content

alternatives, streaming platforms need rarely be concerned with the possibility that the creation

of an original streaming program will negatively affect their income. If Netflix or Amazon

decides to produce an original film or series in which a given customer has no interest, it is

unlikely he or she will rescind membership. Unlike broadcast, film, or cable networks, in which

the lost interest of a potential customer translates to lost revenue, the customer of a streaming

service will still pay a subscription fee because the series and films that she or he paid to watch

are still accessible regardless of new original programming. Thus, while the production of new

original series may result in a poor investment of funds, it is unlikely that such an endeavor will

Hannah Wold

decrease the flow of revenue itself; indeed, the proliferation of original series and films that are

accessible only through a subscription to the streaming website will likely increase membership,

rather than decrease it. Thus, while traditional media must court the risk of lost revenue upon the

premiere of every new film or series, streaming platforms can comfortably anticipate the much

more likely result of increased market saturation and income. This new freedom in turn allows

the studio to implement “programming for diverse and eclectic tastes and for an increasingly

global audience,” a goal of original content as cited by Netflix’s Cindy Holland (Ryan). The

potential for the production of narratives exploring the experiences of people of color, females,

members of the LGBTQ community and other underrepresented groups is therefore intrinsic to

the very model of streaming.

Finally, streaming series are emancipated from the requirement that broadcast or cable

television “whether imaginative or mindless, is ideologically unambiguous and without irony” so

that episodes can conclude within the time limit (Green 143). As all episodes of a season of a

streaming series are released at once, there is no need for the simplicity of narrative demanded

by the weekly gaps between traditional cable and broadcast episodes. Thus, streaming services

are free to produce complex stories representing, interrogating, and embracing subaltern and

otherwise invisible identities within their original streaming series. What is more, they are

capable of addressing the very experience of difference, riddled as it is with ambiguity,

uncertainty, and controversy. In this way, the revenue models of streaming services decentralize

the role of viewership metrics due to the implementation of a subscription fee, allow a

multiplicity of audience choice, and embrace systems of distribution ideally suited to the

presentation of ambiguous and complex subject matter, creating a fertile environment for the

production of minority narratives.

Hannah Wold

If the unique economic system of streaming allows Netflix and Amazon to produce

stories constructed by more diverse characters, cast, and crew than those found in film or on

broadcast and cable television, this fact should be apparent from the content of their original

series and films. In the aforementioned survey of film and television studios conducted by USC

entitled “The Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment (CARD)”, Hulu,

Amazon, and Netflix were examined as the three main streaming services producing regular

original content. Though the findings of the survey are undoubtedly illuminating, it must be

noted that the three studios had been producing original material for less than a year and a half at

the time the study began, and consequently provided a sample of content that was less than half

the size of that examined for all other platforms. Nevertheless, USC’s CARD report highlighted

the extent to which Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu present and employ minority perspectives in

comparison with the measure of American diversity as furnished by the 2010 US Census.

Within certain metrics, streaming services provided representation unparalleled by any of

its counterparts. The onscreen representation of females in streaming original content, for

example, far outperformed the offerings of other platforms and even behind the screen, the

presence of women was far above the standard; indeed, Amazon was the only company rated

Fully Inclusive (a designation signifying the correspondence of the percentage of representation

to the US census) for hiring female directors (Smith). Additionally, streaming services tended to

represent females over the age of forty with striking consistency, despite the fact that the study

called this metric “one of the most politicized areas in Hollywood” (Smith). In fact, the

representation of females was so consistent at streaming studios that the study noted that

“clearly, the contributions and presence of women are valued at each of these companies”

(Smith).

Hannah Wold

In addition to the uncommon frequency of gender equality at streaming studios, the

content produced in them presents an egalitarian notion of gender and sexual identity. Indeed, of

all of the series and films reviewed in the CARD report, “all but one of the transgender

characters appeared on streaming series” (Smith). In addition, though the survey found that

“LGBT characters can be shown in domestic partnerships or marriage but depicting this

community raising children on screen is largely avoided in media storytelling,” this assertion is

not consistent with the productions of streaming services. Of the fifty-one streaming series

included in the study, several feature members of the LGBTQ community acting as concerned

and engaged parents, both in flashback and within the timeline of the narrative; indeed, the

parenting of LGBTQ members will figure largely in the themes of both Grace and Frankie and

Transparent.

While streaming services were proven to excel in many areas of diversity representation

and employment, there were other metrics in which it lagged. Though it provided the highest

percentage of series with racially underrepresented main characters, its employment of racially

diverse and female writers was starkly lacking. Perhaps no group was as underrepresented

industry-wide and especially within streaming as women of color, who enjoyed almost no

representation behind the camera. This gaping absence is a gulf which plagues the entirety of the

entertainment industry, and which highlights the increased barriers to entry in place for women

of color, whose perspectives are clearly overlooked. This disparity embodies a clear area of

improvement available for the streaming industry, and indeed one that it must endeavor to

address if it is to maintain its position as an industry leader in diversity.

In fact, these specific weaknesses have been cited as areas of potential future growth by

streaming administrations. When asked if she was satisfied with the diversity of Netflix

Hannah Wold

directors, executive Cindy Holland replied, “No, we absolutely want to increase it further.”

Additionally, streaming services are frequently indicated as companies that offer a specter of

hope in diversity of representation and employment. Darnell Hunt, lead author of UCLA’s recent

“Hollywood Diversity Report”, “feels the medium is becoming more inclusive with the bevy of

new distributors and producers, particularly such digital platforms as Netflix and Amazon”

(Siegemund-Broka). Similarly, the CARD report itself cited Amazon as one of the four

companies which “demonstrated strong performances across television and digital

programming” (Smith). In this way, though clear areas for improvement are evident, streaming

services are aware of the need for development of these areas, a recognition that industry experts

indicate as a positive sign in the progression towards representational egalitarianism within the

industry.

Another encouraging element of streaming services noted by industry experts is the fact

that, though the creation of original streaming content is a relatively new endeavor, Netflix and

Amazon already display striking momentum in their efforts for diversification. Given the fact

that streaming services are still solidifying their position within the market, it is perhaps even

more promising that Amazon and Netflix have created a host of shows that have garnered both

popular and critical acclaim for their presentations and employment of othered people and

communities. Indeed, within the first year of premiering the flagship series of its original

content, Netflix and Amazon both aired programs that explored racial, gendered, and sexual

difference; Netflix aired Orange is the New Black, featuring a heavily diverse cast of females and

transwomen, and garnered much support from audiences, critics, and groups like GLAAD.

Similarly, Amazon’s Man in the High Castle has become a perennial standby and has garnered

Hannah Wold

several Emmy awards for its depiction of revolutionary forces attempting to uproot a totalitarian

regime.

Amazon and Netflix have not only endeavored to position themselves as the providers of

diverse original content through their productions, both have unabashedly aligned themselves

with the aesthetics minority representation through their advertisements as well. In this way,

even their marketing techniques are frequently predicated upon a timely affirmation of the

perspectives of those who are frequently underrepresented in the industry. Additionally, both

services deploy these advertisements which focus on marginalized voices in coy response to

current social and political climates. Of course, film and television have always been in

conversation with current events, but the use of advertising as a form of layered political

commentary, particularly through social media, is implemented in exceptionally pointed fashions

by both Amazon and Netflix.

For example, Netflix has initiated a series of advertising campaigns which air on social

media that cleverly respond to the tumultuous political situations of the day by employing clips

from their original series. Following a recent scandal in which President Donald Trump was

revealed to have privately endorsed nonconsensual sexual contact, Netflix aired a short video

captioned only with the slogan “#sherules”. This advertisement featured the strong female

characters of original series and films such as The Crown, Orange is the New Black, What

Happened, Miss Simone, and Grace and Frankie with a female voiceover overlaid listing the

various settings and climates in which the characters assert their power. These videos emphasize

diversity, featuring women of color, pregnant women, women over the age of seventy, and

transwomen. They pluck various lines spoken by these women in the context of the original

content in order to create a pastiche of clips as an ode to the strength of female characters within

Hannah Wold

their programming. These clips reflect a quiet self-awareness, an assertion of Netflix’s position

in culture-making and an acknowledgement of the responsibility this entails. A clip of Nina

Simone asking, “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” is followed by female

superhero Jessica Jones saying, “Respect. Get some” in an editing choice that appears to directly

address the apropos political conversation. Finally, the promotional video ends with the comment

that, “Revolution must come from within,” spoken over the words, “Here’s to the women that

rule our screens”. In this way, Netflix uses even its promotional materials as an endorsement of

the female agency that was categorically impugned on the contemporary political scene.

Netflix recently aired a similar endorsement of their female characters on March 8

International Women’s Day and the date set for a nation-wide strike of female workers in protest

of the administration of President Donald Trump. In the video, the female characters of popular

shows like Stranger Things, House of Cards, and The Crown walk out of the frame. Their male

counterparts are left behind, calling their names before the show freezes. The video ends with the

assertion, “Our stories don’t work without women. And the world wouldn’t, either.” In this way,

Netflix capitalized upon the political discourse of the day to demonstrate its commitment to

affirming feminist ideals. In recognizing the strong female characters central to its most popular

shows, Netflix invokes the iconography of International Women’s Day, but by proving that its

shows would not be the same in their absence, it made allusion to the much more politically

oriented strike that occurred on the same date. Thus, Netflix provided both an affirmation of

some of the traditionally underrepresented characters in its series as well as a tacit political

statement about the company’s alignment with a national protest in this brief marketing

campaign.

Hannah Wold

Finally, in perhaps its most ringing political response, Netflix posted a promotion on

social media for its popular dark political drama House of Cards on January 20

, 2017. The date

of this advertisement coincided with the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, an event

that was widely construed as detrimental to many minority groups. The video begins with a

close-up of the violently waving red and white stripes of an American flag accompanied by an

ominous rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance recited by young children. The frame slowly

zooms out to reveal that the flag is hanging upside down outside of the white house, festooning a

stormy sky. The video ends with the release date for the next season of House of Cards. When

the advertisement appeared on social media, it was accompanied with the caption “We couldn’t

possibly comment”. Of course, each of these promotions in themselves function as standard, if

surprisingly pointed, marketing. But when taken in consideration with one another and with

current events, timing and content seem far from serendipitous. Indeed, Netflix deliberately

positions its marketing campaigns as responses to the contemporary political climate, particularly

in regards to the discussion and treatment of minority groups. Thus, Netflix not only produces

original content that narrativizes difference with diverse production teams, it further wishes to

position itself in the market as a studio whose starkly vocal interest in the issues of minority

representation set it apart from its competitors.

If Netflix is attempting to be the only studio in the original streaming market with a

strongly stated and highly political position in the cultural conversation surrounding the

treatment of subaltern communities, then it is finding fierce competition with Amazon, whose

advertisements are similarly assertive. Rather than providing a stirring collage of their amassed

original series as Netflix does, Amazon instead allows its individual series and films to speak for

themselves. As many of Amazon’s original series are depictions of incitations to revolution by

Hannah Wold

marginalized groups, its original content provides plenty of material for its own brand of political

advertising. Indeed, Netflix’s messages of latent female insurgency find an echo in the

advertisements of Amazon. For example, much of the marketing for Amazon Studios’ new series

Z: The Beginning of Everything about the life of Zelda Fitzgerald centers around the phrase

“Well-behaved women don’t make history”. Additionally, trailers emphasize a deconstruction of

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work as having been largely supplemented by the writing of Zelda.

In a similar narrative about female authorship, the Amazon series Good Girls Revolt tells

the story of the impact of second-wave feminism on female researchers and writers at Newsweek

in 1969. Its plot centers on the strife engendered by the attempts of female writers to get credited

in the magazine with their own writing. In its very title, Good Girls Revolt rebuts the standard

that television “cannot offer any series that would permanently place [a female character] in the

role of angry social reformer, dissident, or revolutionary; that is not a state of mind in which to

find the kind of distraction that advertisers want us to find” (Green 159). Yet the marketing for

the series clearly outlines the growing social and political awareness of its on-screen females,

who, even within the trajectory of the trailer, increasingly refuse their own erasure.

Finally, a promotional campaign for Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, which aired

on March 10

, 2017, even inspired its own political controversy. The series explores the

dystopian potentials of an America ruled by Axis forces following the defeat of the Allies in

World War II, and thus reflects on themes of totalitarianism, xenophobia, and resistance. As a

facet of the marketing campaign for the premiere of season three, Amazon created a website that

functions as an amalgam of the “Resistance Radio” deployed in season three. Between song sets,

the false radio station aired messages such as, “‘hijacking the airwaves, a secret network of DJs

broadcast messages of hope to keep the memory of a former America alive’” in an invocation of

Hannah Wold

the show’s themes of resistance (Andrews). This message, however, was misconstrued when

“some Trump supporters seemingly mistook it for an anti-Trump radio station and expressed

their displeasure” (Andrews). In this way, the latent political content of Amazon’s programming

can even be mistaken for political rhetoric when taken out of context.

Netflix and Amazon thus both display marketing techniques in which they attempt to

position themselves as the dominant voices in the industry on the subject of minority

representation and its ensuing political themes. Of course, this is not to say that other industry

platforms like film, cable, and broadcast television do not offer political messages in their

fictional scripted films and shows, but in competing to become widely acknowledged and

respected voices in the representation of minority characters, Netflix and Amazon present an

uncommon model in marketing. Traditionally, “for structural reasons, the producers of

commercial visual culture cannot afford to become too immersed in any subcultural nuances that

can’t be quantified as part of the audience for their product” (Green 102). For this reason, studios

have tended to sequester themselves from narratives predicated upon specific social subgroups,

yet Netflix and Amazon staunchly vie for the positioning of their content as the product that most

emphatically represents difference.

Nor does it appear as if Netflix and Amazon are in error as they pursue a market position

as the purveyor of uniquely diverse stories. Indeed, the “Second Annual Diversity Report” by

UCLA recently found that “viewers preferred films and television shows with moderately

diverse casts, according to Nielsen Ratings and box-office reports” (Siegemund-Broka). Thus,

audiences desire the unique narratives inherent in the presentation of unfamiliar perspectives,

narratives that the economic innovations of the streaming platform have allowed Netflix and

Amazon to embrace. It is this eagerness for plurality shared by streaming companies and

Hannah Wold

audiences alike that defines narratives such as Grace and Frankie and Transparent. Indeed, this

analysis will seek to prove that it is the affirmation of identity over traditionalism that

continually imbues these series with the passion and warmth for which they have been praised.

The dauntless spirit of their protagonists, whose resolute declarations of selfhood in the face of

occasionally overwhelming cultural retribution presents an indefatigable call to compassion and

understanding, in relation to the self as well as others. Finally, this irresistible presentation of

intrepid honesty provides a vehicle for the empathy intrinsic to the formulation of these series.

Thus, in the performance of the graceful and tenacious subjectivity of characters whose identities

rest outside cultural norms, Netflix and Amazon herald their own compassionate approaches to

the portrayal of diversity in their original series, an attitude that permeates Netflix’s Grace and

Frankie and Amazon’s Transparent.

Hannah Wold

Part I: Grace and Frankie

Queer Identities and Baby Boomers

Though the quantitative data surrounding the offerings of Amazon and Netflix provide an

illustrative map of the trajectory of each company’s overall commitment to diversity, it is

additionally vital to examine the ways that otherness is presented in the original content itself. If

streaming platforms indeed circumvent the norm that “there is something in the nature of

American popular culture—or in the relationship between commercial filmmakers and their

audience—that predisposes the popular film medium toward the traditional rather than the

innovative,” then the streaming content must tangibly embody this innovation in its treatment of

difference (Toplin 33). In order to garner an understanding of each company’s conception of

difference, an examination of its original content is therefore necessary. Both Amazon and

Netflix have a vast array of original content, so the programs chosen for close reading are those

created by each company that most strongly reflect one another’s themes and subject matter. In

2014, Amazon introduced its original series Transparent and 2015 saw Netflix premiere Grace

and Frankie. Both shows examine the familial repercussions of a late-in-life announcement of

nontraditional sexual or gender identity, and thus provide good context and points of comparison

for one another.

In Grace and Frankie, Netflix posits a nontraditional sitcom whose continued existence

would be difficult to imagine on network television. The show features four main characters, all

above the age of seventy. When the show opens, Grace, played by Jane Fonda, is married to

Robert, a successful divorce lawyer played by Martin Sheen. Robert’s law partner Sol, played by

Sam Waterston, is married to Lily Tomlin’s Frankie, an aging hippie. These four characters form

the structure of the narrative and amiably depict respectable septuagenarian life, a dynamic the

Hannah Wold

show is quick to deconstruct. In the opening scene of the pilot, which is titled “The End,” Grace

and Frankie wait at an upscale restaurant for their husbands to arrive. Despite their clear disdain

for one another, they make strained conversation, each agreeing that the big announcement

promised by their husbands is that they will retire from their law firm. Robert and Sol arrive

looking nervous, greet their wives, and announce over lobster that they have been carrying on a

homosexual affair for the past twenty years. The understandable shock of Grace and Frankie is

aggravated when they go on to announce that they each wish to divorce their respective wives

and marry one another.

It is upon this revelation that the rest of the show is built. Grace and Frankie, each in a

state of shock, flee to the beach house that is mutually owned by their families, and eventually

take up permanent residence there. Robert and Sol, meanwhile, move in together and begin the

process of learning to negotiate not only their newly visible relationship, but also their altered

social positions as openly gay men. As the men increasingly occupy the identities they have

hidden for years, their former wives must adapt to the benefits and drawbacks of their newfound

positions of sexual and quotidian independence. Consequently, they discover facets of

themselves they had long since sacrificed to matrimonial harmony, and find their horizons

broadening while simultaneously grieving for their lost familial traditions and stability.

In this way, Netflix posits its second original comedy as an exploration of deviant

sexualities, the complications of aging, and familial locations of identity. Though queer identities

are seen with increasing frequency on network and cable television, Netflix gives the series

exceptional freedom in regards to representation and language, as well as control over and

diversity within production. Additionally, the show attempts to appeal to an older generation of

viewers, a demographic not typically sought in standard models of television development. By

Hannah Wold

reimagining its audience, the show aimed for a unique iteration of its themes, which co-creator

Marta Kauffman, of Friends fame, described in an interview: “As good as Girls and Transparent

and all those shows are, there’s a chill to them. They are not centered in a warm, happy, loving

place” (Koblin). It is this warmth that she hoped would appeal to Baby Boomers. Additionally,

Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said of the series, “The show created for [Fonda and

Tomlin] by Marta and Howard is warm, very funny, and anything but wholesome. We can’t

wait” (Netflix, Inc.). In this way, Netflix facilitated the production of Grace and Frankie by

allowing it linguistic and creative freedom in regards to representations of sexuality and aging as

well as creating a platform for a new iteration of a show designed to appeal to an unconventional

demographic.

Considering Grace and Frankie’s non-normative demographic, subject matter, and

sexually deviant characters, the show is primed to explore themes surrounding appearance and its

social consequences. The structure of the narrative is built upon the otherness of nontraditional

and indeed controversial sexuality, and yet it is an otherness that has no external markers. This

condition is highlighted by the fact that Frankie and Grace both spent forty years with their

respective husbands without identifying their partners’ true sexual orientations, although, they

later admit, there were relational signs that they did not want to acknowledge. The identities

persistently kept invisible by Robert and Sol thus prove problematic in the representation of

difference because “it is almost entirely through one’s physical appearance that one manifests

one’s identity and emotional state” in social relations and particularly in film (Greven 78). The

crevasse between appearance and identity is therefore thematized in the series, in regards not

only to depictions of queer sexuality, but to normative orientations as well.

Hannah Wold

Additionally, as the show endeavors to portray an identity that is so absolute and yet so

concealable, it naturally integrates the motif of communication. The characters relentlessly find

themselves challenged to communicate the realities of their inner landscape to others. Indeed, the

narrative consistently implies that Robert and Sol’s failure to do so kept them sequestered in

failing marriages for so many years. Similarly, however, Grace and Frankie’s cluelessness

surrounding their husbands’ sexuality is implied to be a result of the realities that they chose to

impose upon their husbands, consequently ignoring nonverbal cues. In this way, the show traces

the characters’ growing ability to express their needs and identities, as well as their propensity

for listening when others are being expressed to them.

Of course, the structure of the show hangs upon the revelation of the characters’ queer

identity, so naturally one of its foremost concerns is the experiences and social realities

surrounding its gay protagonists. Throughout the two seasons of Grace and Frankie, Robert and

Sol each attempt to reconcile their identities with both the cultural implication of their newly

announced sexuality and the gay subculture into which they find themselves initiated. Robert and

Sol, both in their seventies, are suddenly cut adrift from the social position to which they have

been accustomed and consequently, they try on various roles and expressions associated with

queer culture as they come across them. The second episode of the show, for example, finds

them trying to reestablish normalcy following the separation from their wives. The opening

sequence shows Robert and Sol waking up next to one another for the first time as an open

couple, and thus the commencement of their lives as openly gay men. They begin to try to locate

and measure their relationship to cultural standards and stereotypes of gayness almost

immediately. Robert, emerging from the shower, says, “Just because we’re out now doesn’t

mean we’re going to be gay with a vengeance” but as he announces this, he walks into the frame

Hannah Wold

and reveals that he is wearing a downy bathrobe, holding tea, with a towel wrapped around his

head. The audience does not need Sol’s following laugh to understand that Robert, finally free to

embody stereotypical gay attributes, is displaying outer markers associated with gayness while

simultaneously disavowing them.

Thus, many episodes find Robert and Sol attempting to locate their personalities and

identities among the varied cultural expectations of queer culture. The process is not easy nor is

it ever solidified. Robert observes in the first season that he will “never not be coming out.” They

experience both friction with straight culture and dysphoria within gay culture, forever caught

between the two. Sometimes, the resulting manifestation of their attempts to define themselves

are joyful, such as when they happily discuss how they will introduce one another to friends. Sol

suggests “boyfriend,” but Robert says that he is too old to be anyone’s boyfriend, and they agree

that “longtime companion” is from “before famous people played gay in movies.” Thus, Robert

and Sol are allowed to relish the reinvention that accompanies their new openness about their

identities. Simultaneously, the audience is allowed to relish the self-awareness of both the

characters and narrative, which playfully indicates that it is aware that it is representing gayness

in a cultural climate of increasing representative freedom.

In other instances, however, Robert and Sol find the labels associated with gayness to be

offensive and distasteful. When Sol finds out that Robert slept with someone else many years

before when they were broken up, a gay friend answers Sol’s outrage with the comment, “Oh,

come on. If you can’t shed the conventions of a hetero life, what’s the fun?” When confronted by

someone from his own subculture with a stereotypical expectation of the promiscuity associated

with gayness, Sol is appalled, responding, “I’m not gay to shed conventions, I’m gay because I

love this man.” As they reconcile, Robert reassures Sol, “There are a lot of ways to be a couple.

Hannah Wold

We just have to find the best way for us.” Thus, Robert and Sol find themselves endlessly

defining themselves against the expectations of gayness that meet them within both heterosexual

and homosexual culture.

Finally, Robert and Sol occasionally incorporate new characteristics into their identities

and open themselves up to the novel experiences unique to queer culture. In episode three of the

second season, for example, Robert is in the hospital following surgery. His young gay nurse

recommends that he go to Drag Queen Bingo, a local gay social event where they play bingo,

drink, and “sing show tunes.” Sol bridles at the flirtatious attendant and says, “We’re not that

kind of gay.” Hurt, the nurse leaves the room and, when Robert says he’d like to attend, Sol says

“But you’re hardly grand marshal of the gay parade.” Robert responds that he had to pretend for

many years that he wasn’t interested in things like that, saying, “Hey, we’re out, so let’s go out.”

In a typical sitcom resolution, Sol reconciles by bringing Drag Queen Bingo to Robert’s hospital

room. In this way, Robert and Sol adapt to their new social positions and explore the subculture

that was denied to them when they were constrained by the necessity of performing

heterosexuality.

Perhaps the most condensed presentation of Sol’s and Robert’s negotiations of their

identity as it intersects with heterosexual and homosexual cultures occurs in an episode titled

“The Bachelor Party” in which Sol’s sons Bud and Coyote try to throw the classy, fashionable

bachelor party that Robert and Sol have requested. Ultimately, they succeed and the party turns

out to be terribly boring. As people begin to leave, Bud and Coyote ask for help from Brianna,

Robert’s daughter. Brianna, taking the concept of a bachelor party to the extreme (amid

interesting conversations as to whether the party should be treated as a bachelor party or a

bachelorette party), rents a mechanical bull in the shape of a penis and installs it in the front yard.

Hannah Wold

The excited guests stream onto lawn, leaving Robert and Sol inside, along with one other guest;

Nelson, a retired partner at Robert and Sol’s law firm who Robert has been trying to impress all

night, expresses his disapproval in no uncertain terms. Robert tells Nelson that it was never their

intention to offend, even offering to show him out the back so he doesn’t have to look at the

phallus. Sol says, “Just to be clear, we have the right to celebrate any way that we want.” Nelson

bridles at this statement, and responds in a tirade that is unique; no other character expresses the

feelings that Nelson does, and his speech, the finale of the episode preceding the long-awaited

wedding, is carefully timed to undercut the new victories and freedoms experienced thus far by

Robert and Sol:

You know, Robert, you and I go a ways back. And I have to admit, every once in a

while, I began to wonder about you. The pocket squares, always humming opera,

the beautiful wife you never paid that much attention to. Then I heard about you

and Sol and I thought, the less I know about that, the better. But I came tonight

because I am your friend. And then what do you do? You throw your lifestyle in

my face. I don’t have a problem with you being a homosexual, but when did you

become such a faggot?

Thus, the most vitriolic opposition to Robert and Sol is expressed as the emotional finale

to an episode celebrating the upcoming wedding of the protagonists. It is a sentiment that has

been a persistent undercurrent to the narrative, but never before has it manifested at the level of

speech or character. Additionally, the markers of gayness with which the show has been

contending suddenly connote xenophobia when invoked in the midst of social backlash. Previous

comedic playing of these stereotypes becomes retroactively suspect in light of the real

consequences of their existence.

When confronted with the first aggressive response to homosexuality, the show’s

carefully constructed answer reasserts the independence of Sol and Robert’s identities. Following

Nelson’s tirade, Robert takes a swing at him in true melodramatic fashion, only to be stopped by

Hannah Wold

Sol. Robert, disheveled from the scuffle, says to Nelson, “You’re right. And you’re just lucky

that that faggot stopped this faggot from knocking you on your ass.” This scene represents a very

different construction of labeling from that which is playfully displayed when Robert and Sol

decide how to introduce each other, and consequently, the denouement of the episode is

structured to respond to the accusations leveled against Robert and Sol by Nelson. As the social

consequences and mores surrounding Robert and Sol’s deviant sexuality palpably hang in the

atmosphere, the two look at one another for a moment, their surroundings manifested mostly in

the distant cheers from the outside crowd. Sol grabs Robert and kisses him, then asks if he would

like to go outside and take part in the festivities surrounding the phallic party inflatable. “Oh

God no,” Robert responds and Sol says, “Neither do I.” In this way, the episode allows Robert

and Sol to be defined not just by their justifiable outrage at Nelson’s attitude toward them, but

also by the choices they make that set them apart from the stereotyping Nelson portrays.

Indeed, Grace and Frankie as a whole continually grapples with the concept of gay

stereotype, frequently endeavoring to overcome it only to later succumb to standardized cultural

expectations of gayness. As is illustrated by Nelson’s tirade, the show invokes stereotype in

order to rebuff it and demonstrate the shortcomings of presumptive labeling. But it just as

frequently embeds stereotype into its examination of how Robert and Sol measure themselves

and their identities against the gay community. Implications of promiscuity abound, as well as

overly flamboyant characterization of incidental gay characters. Additionally, Robert and Sol

occasionally identify such stereotypical characteristics within themselves when defining their

identities to others and themselves. Fashion expertise, disregard for standards of masculinity, and

associations with musical theater are all cited by Robert and Sol as markers of their own

sexuality. While this type of cultural shorthand is perhaps expedient for the narrative to employ

Hannah Wold

in order to present unambiguous character development for Robert and Sol, it simultaneously

complicates the picture of nuanced and highly individual sex and gender identity that the show

attempts to convey.

In this way, the characterizations of Grace and Frankie are fraught with a strange double

standard; it seems that Robert and Sol are free to express their sexuality as they see fit, but other

members of the queer community that they encounter tend to adhere rigidly to the social

delineations of cultural expectation. While the show excels at deconstructing the propensity in

film in which “non-straight characters are defined primarily (if not solely) by their sexuality” in

regards to Sol and Robert, its incidental queer characters are not granted the same freedoms

(Benshoff 310). Sol is portrayed as a Jewish man of devout faith, an excellent lawyer, and a

caring father in equal measure to his sexuality, and Robert appears stubborn, argumentative, and

emotionally inaccessible throughout both seasons. Thus, Grace and Frankie works to present a

varied and multifaceted idea of the lives of its leading men, defying cultural expectations

regarding both the social roles and personality characteristics associated with queerness.

If Robert and Sol are afforded a rich complexity of strengths and foibles, however, the

other gay characters—the gay friends of Robert, Sol, and Frankie, the gay nurse, and the gay

caterers—are all mere markers of the gay community. The show is never subtle in its

presentation of themes and motivations, and this awkwardness is perhaps nowhere as obvious as

it is its deployment of representatives from the gay community. If, “in order to construct ‘visible’

sexuality, characters must ‘perform’ sexuality,” then these characters are performing as

caricatures of themselves (Benshoff 310). Defined solely by their sexuality, they exist for Robert

and Sol to either embrace or disavow the choices and characteristics they represent. Of course,

this is not particularly surprising, as the characters exist in the framework of the show too briefly

Hannah Wold

to afford them time for character development. But surely this is an unproductive exercise in

which the show indulges to provide easy character growth for its main characters. While the

narrative’s focus on Robert’s and Sol’s endeavors to situate their personal and cultural identities

is insightful and interesting, such a complex illustration of inner landscapes must be at least

hinted at in all the characters, to ensure tonal continuity at the very least. More significantly, the

narrative’s limited allocation of depth in conjunction with gay characters can undermine the very

fluidity of identity that it invokes these characters to portray.

Additionally, the visual presentation of homosexuality self-consciously lags behind the

show’s occasional representations of heterosexual sex. Robert and Sol are candidly depicted

kissing and holding hands, sometimes multiple times an episode. The rest is to be inferred when

the couple are shown sharing the same bed. In fact, the show is careful to highlight the way that

these newly public displays of affection and terms of endearment unsettle their family members.

However, the same discomfort displayed by family unnerved by these manifestations of Robert’s

and Sol’s relationship are echoed in the text’s visual treatment of the relationship itself. Though

the two freely engage in the types of physical contact that, in their heterosexual equivalent,

would have easily cleared even the most stringent measures of the Production Code, they seem

after that to hit a glass ceiling. The show does not depict any sex acts more involved than a kiss

between their two homosexual protagonists, a structure that is surprising considering the fact that

the premise of the show is built on their twenty-year affair.

While Grace and Frankie’s visual representation of homosexual sexuality slightly lags

behind its depictions of the heterosexual equivalent, it must be noted that these representations

nevertheless mark progress. As recently as 1981, a made-for-television movie “could not depict

any scenes of affection between characters of the same sex” (MediaSmarts). The later popularity

Hannah Wold

of series such as Will and Grace, which featured homosexual characters, prompted networks to

recognize that portrayals of homosexuality could be lucrative, but “this profit-motivation means

that networks are careful in their portrayals of queer characters” (MediaSmarts). Even on current

network television, similar such displays of same-sex affection are not to be found in many

network shows, the exception perhaps being ABC’s Modern Family. Thus, network television is

bound to its profit margin, and indeed, the great cost of creating a television series “may be the

greatest hurdle to any minority group gaining widespread and fair exposure on television”

(MediaSmarts).

Fortunately, a recent study by GLAAD found that representations of queer characters

have increased on network, cable, and streaming television, to reach record levels of

representation. Simultaneously, however, it noted a disturbing trend that “broadcast series more

specifically—failed queer women this year, as character after character died, continuing the

harmful ‘bury your guys’ trope” (GLAAD). It also noted that, while numbers may be increasing,

it is additionally important to locate original characterization not constructed upon stereotype.

Thus, broadcast television inhabits a tentative space in regards to representations of queer

characters; it enjoys the profit that some of the more popular queer portrayals have garnered, but

is careful never to overstep the cultural status quo. While broadcast series “continue to ‘sanitize’

the portrayal of gay and lesbian life, specialty and pay-TV channels have begun to show more

cutting-edge, controversial and critically acclaimed series about gays and lesbians”

(MediaSmarts). In this way, the exorbitant costs of television production increase the risk

associated with its failure, causing networks to remain in step with cultural norms. Platforms like

Netflix with alternative profit models, however, have enjoyed an exploration of new and

increasingly rich portrayals of queer culture and characters.

Hannah Wold

While Robert and Sol remain somewhat chaste in onscreen representation, it is Grace the

divorcee who is afforded both of the representations of sex that occur in the show’s two seasons.

And in fairness, the show as a whole does not present as entirely comfortable with the subject of

sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual. In the entirety of its thirteen hours, there are only two

scenes visually devoted to sex, both between Grace and her boyfriend. One is played as a

comedic commentary on the effects of aging, and one is presented in earnest. Both are extremely

brief. It is therefore exclusively through Grace that the show’s representations of sex are

mediated; the camera stays out of everyone else’s bedroom. When a plot point involving sex

must be established, there is a typical cut to post-coital discussion in which each participant is

covered and separate. Grace’s daughters Brianna and Mallory are never even shown kissing their

respective boyfriends or husband. Thus, for a show whose discussions of sex are frank and

integral to the plot, its depictions of them are surprisingly celibate in regards to heterosexual and

homosexual sex alike.

If the show is shy about visual representations of sex, it joyfully avows frank discussion

of the topic. Frankie, depicted as an open, sex-positive hippy, cajoles Grace into embracing her

own sexuality. Indeed, many of Frankie’s hobbies concern sexual realities; she makes her own

lube and, later, goes into business with Brianna to market it. She paints vaginas, discusses the

female orgasm with an uncomfortable Grace, and acts as the show’s voice for issues regarding

sex and aging. Grace is allowed her share of the conversation as well, after she is gifted a

vibrator that aggravates her arthritis. In fact, the second season ends with Grace and Frankie’s

pledge to create a vibrator that is easier for the elderly to use. This strategy of open discussions

about typically avoided topics is a key component of the show for creator Marta Kauffman, who

insists that “no subject be taboo” for the narrative to highlight (Blythe). In this way, the series

Hannah Wold

speaks loudly on subjects that rarely enter public discussion while simultaneously displaying an

unsurprising lack of depictions of sexual activity, considering the trends of the sitcom genre. One

factor that may in part be responsible for this dynamic is the show’s unconventional

demographic; older viewers might be uncomfortable with visual representations even as they

identify with the sexual problems that the characters experience as symptomatic of aging.

In this way, Grace and Frankie tend to control the representation of and discourse about

sex, and it is not only through depictions of sex that the females are afforded more attention.

Though it is the homosexual relationship between Robert and Sol that forms the foundation of

the series, the show’s focus is in fact on the nonsexual relationship between Grace and Frankie.

This is made clear not only by the title, but by the title sequence as well, which features the

opening verse of the Stealer’s Wheel song “Stuck in the Middle with You.” The title sequence

pictures a wedding cake with marriage figurines on it, and shows in each successive cake tier the

progression of the characters’ lives previous to the show. It begins with the traditional marriage

cake-toppers of the two heterosexual couples, moves up a tier to show the figurines holding

babies, moves up again to show the two groomsmen figures getting closer, and by the next layer

they are kissing to the astonishment of the female statuettes. Finally, the top tier of the cake

shows only the two female figurines, who stand side by side with their backs to the camera,

facing an uncertain future together. In this evocative image, it is not an invocation of

heterosexual or even homosexual union that tops the traditional wedding cake, but one of

nonsexual female friendship.

In fact, by the time the show opens, Sol and Robert have solidified their relationship and

begin seamlessly operating as a couple after they come out; it is therefore the relationship

between their two marooned ex-wives that forms the basis of the relational and personal growth

Hannah Wold

of the show. Of course, as people with stark differences in personality, taste, and communication

styles, Grace and Frankie begin the show with barely concealed animosity, a dynamic the pilot

takes care to highlight even before the revelation of the affair is announced. The audience

understands as soon as Grace and Frankie greet each other at the restaurant with unconvincing

warmth that the show will invest the majority of its emotional currency in their relationship. As

each struggles to confront the new realities of their single lives, and finds inadequate support

from their children and friends, each ends up turning to the other. By cheering each other back to

emotional health, they provide adamant counterpoint to the fact that “women rarely right wrongs

against women directly on TV” (Green 94). As each falteringly becomes the other’s confidant

and advisor, they begin to advocate for one another’s interests. Indeed, the second season finale

finds them choosing the company of one another over that of their families when they storm out

together following a domestic dispute. Thus, Grace and Frankie’s relationship is placed at the

emotional center of the show, despite its variety of homosexual and heterosexual relationships.

What is more, Grace and Frankie narratively and visually presents the relationship

between its title characters with an egalitarian balance reserved from all other characters. While

the rest of the cast persist in power struggles and secrecy, Grace and Frankie seem to have

nothing to prove to one another and therefore are able to communicate and address conflict

openly. For example, after she gets a new boyfriend, Grace pretends to enjoy activities and foods

she despises in order to appease him. When Frankie confronts her about it, she says that she

worries that if she doesn’t do the things her boyfriend likes, “he will find someone else who

will.” She never hesitates in criticizing Frankie’s clothes, food, and habits, however, and never

falsely represents herself to Frankie. It is therefore implied that she never worries that Frankie

Hannah Wold

will replace her, perhaps because, in their unique situation, both knows that the other is

irreplaceable.

Additionally, whenever the two women appear on frame together, they are presented

symmetrically. Their figures walking down the screen are always equidistant from the center of

the frame and two empty chairs balance the shots of the living room. Indeed, the final shot of the

first season shows the two walking away from the camera on the beach, sharing a blanket and

framed in the center, their two figures having become one. This visual treatment is reserved to

Grace and Frankie, as the other characters find relationships with one another entrenched in

conflict that is reflected in their framing. Only when Robert and Sol are getting married are they

afforded a symmetrical composition. Grace and Frankie’s relationship thus is granted exclusive

narrative and visual equality, despite and perhaps because of their platonic status.

In this way, the nonsexual relationship between Grace and Frankie takes priority

throughout the show and even the focus on Robert and Sol’s relationship is occasionally

displaced in order to explore other issues relevant to the characters. If Grace and Frankie

professes to be an examination of queerness in a family setting, it hides an even closer look at a

reality not often discussed or represented in mainstream American film and television; the show

is almost unparalleled in its unblinking scrutiny of the process of aging. All of the main

characters are over seventy years old, and while there is a healthy company of young supporting

characters, the show’s clear focus is on the trials experienced by those well past middle age. This

narrative attention is rare in an industry in which protagonists tend to be only slightly over the

legal drinking age, if not younger.

Though all of the main characters of the show experience the difficulties of aging, there

are perhaps none who feel its harsh realities as sharply as Grace, played by Jane Fonda. Again

Hannah Wold

and again, she encounters obstacles and prejudice because of her age. As an actress renowned in

the beginning of her career for her beauty, she represents an ideal embodiment of the themes of

aging expressed throughout the show. Indeed, one source used in research, which was published

in 1998, specifically cites her when it says that film “subjects women in visual culture to the

tyranny of age, so that women who were once major performers (Elizabeth Taylor, Bridgette

Bardot, Jane Fonda) tend to disappear from view” (Green 40). It is true that Jane Fonda, though

prodigiously prolific throughout her early career, experienced a steep drop off in film

appearances as she aged. Of course, her lack of film credits between 1990 and 2005 can be in

part attributed to her then-husband Ted Turner’s assertions that he needed her in the home.

(French 25). Nevertheless, she remembers the trials of aging in an image-focused industry, citing

standards of appearance as her motivation in 1987 to get the plastic surgery that she had

previously so staunchly disavowed.

Another indication of Fonda’s increased agency is the very fact that her character is

granted a place in the title. Previous, sexualized works such as Barbarella allowed her role to

title the film, but more serious roles were sequestered from that privilege. When, for example,

she appears as prostitute Bree Daniels, “the very title, Klute, suggested that it was really about

the detective, John Klute” (French 86). Yet there are few viewers of the movie that would

attribute the narrative of the film to the stoic and reserved private eye, especially after seeing

Fonda’s surpassing performance in the climactic scene. In fact, it was Fonda rather than Donald

Sutherland who was granted the Oscar for her performance, and it is her expert control over the

character that “forces the viewer to reconsider the notion of women in the movies” (French 91).

Therefore, Fonda’s very appearance in the title role of Grace and Frankie represents a departure

from industry trends. By recognizing the centrality of her performance to the series, the title

Hannah Wold

orients the audience into alignment with its two female protagonists and signals its intention to

preferentially highlight their experiences.

As a renowned former beauty, Jane Fonda’s Grace is perfectly poised to provide a

marked visual representation of the way that she has aged, and the show wastes no time in

deconstructing her image. In the first seven minutes of the show’s pilot, titled “The End” in an

invocation not only of the episode’s subject but also of the stage of life of its protagonists, the

ways that Grace has sought to combat aging are highlighted. Grace looks pristine when the show

opens at the restaurant in which Robert and Sol announce their longstanding affair, the picture of

keeping-it-tight and impossible standards. Her blonde hair is voluminous, her skin remarkably

smooth, and her figure is trim. Later, after she has returned from the dinner, she sits alone at her

vanity, facing the camera, her softly lit bedroom behind her. In a silent long take, the camera tilts

up from Grace’s upside-down reflection in the metallic top of her make-up table to rest on her

face, frontally framed and staring into the camera. She reaches up and takes off her false

eyelashes, one by one, and then removes the hairpiece that had gone undetected until now, never

breaking her steady gaze at the camera and the audience.

A reverse shot over Grace’s shoulder shows her taking off the hairpiece in her mirrored

reflection, and ensures that the audience knows that their viewpoint was previously positioned in

the place of her mirror. Having divested herself of the false hair, Grace sits in her chair and

regards her reflection. The camera resumes its position as her mirror, this time framing her face

more closely. Beyond her plain makeup, there are no more beauty enhancements that can be

envisioned, but Grace once again reaches behind her head and detaches an elastic strap stuck to

her skin but hidden under her hairline. As she pulls it off, her taut skin is released and visibly

Hannah Wold

wrinkles. She again looks closely into the camera at her reflection with the elastic still hanging

off her and sighs, the first noise to punctuate the sequence.

In this way, Jane Fonda looks into the camera and visibly ages as we watch. It is a

moment of vulnerability for a spikey character who has just received shocking news, but even

more than that, it is an announcement of the show’s intentions regarding the treatment of aging.

Fonda, an actress famous for her scanty or nonexistent outfits in Barbarella and other films of

her husband Roger Vadim, for arousing a decency outcry after appearing semi-nude on a

billboard, and for appearing on the cover of Penthouse Magazine exposing a false carved breast,

has just methodically undressed before the camera in order to reveal an entirely different kind of

bareness. It is a simple and realistic onscreen confession, informed by the fact that when “taking

the sheer gamut of Hollywood history into consideration, the theme of female transformation

seems to be everywhere” (Greven 59). Yet this is a kind of transformation rarely seen on

American screens, even if it is performed in real time, as is evidenced by rampant career

stagnation of aging stars. And, to ensure that the audience is aware that such a metamorphosis is

an illicit one, Grace quickly hides her beauty aids in a drawer when Robert enters the room.

Additionally, one would be hard-pressed to imagine a star whose image is as

controversial and paradoxically vulnerable as that of Jane Fonda. As the face of the Vietnam

protests, “Hanoi Jane” is no stranger to the incisive deployment of her fame in the aid of a

political cause. Though it has been over forty years since she broadcast messages of peace over

Radio Hanoi, she has remained for some an unforgivable radical. Nevertheless, her political zeal

has not waned with her increasing age, as she has championed women’s rights, fought against

teen pregnancy, and even spent her seventy-ninth birthday protesting the Dakota Access

Pipeline. While some see Jane Fonda inspecting a North Korean antiaircraft gun and others

Hannah Wold

imagine her at a podium with her fist raised in the air, her radical image is coupled with openness

and accessibility. She is the same actress who, in the finale of Klute, allowed her nose to run

freely while she cried. Her body is frankly displayed in her workout videos, and she has been

open about her past eating disorders, plastic surgery choices, and body image struggles. Thus,

Jane Fonda’s image is simultaneously constructed from her indefatigable activism and her

insecurities and vulnerabilities.

This sequence is additionally narratively significant, a prefiguration of the themes that

Grace and Frankie will later explore. By inhabiting the gulf between appearance and reality, the

show can effectively highlight the societal pressures experienced and occasionally given into by

the characters. Of course, this sequence illustrates how Grace, having just discovered her

longtime husband’s homosexuality and affair, is taking a look at herself and her life. Moments

later, she admits, “I thought we were normal. I thought we were like everybody else. I thought

this was life.” This statement, shortly following the demonstration of her herculean efforts to

conform to social standards regarding her appearance, heralds the freedom that Grace will

experience because of her forced departure from the norm. It is revealed later in the episode that

Grace is the retired CEO of a beauty company. While grocery shopping, she comes across a shelf

with her products, all emblazoned with her face. A fellow customer asks, “Is that you?” to which

she responds, “It used to be.” Grace’s make-up table transformation grants an understanding that

this reinvention will benefit her, even if her character is devastated in the moment. In this way,

the pilot’s visual treatment of Grace’s age heralds the themes and tone that will carry the show.

Grace and Frankie thus announces its intention to closely examine the aging process

within its first minutes, and indeed, the subject in unshakeable for the duration of the series. A

similar sequence to that of the pilot appears later in the season, in an episode called “The Sex,” in

Hannah Wold

which Grace anticipates having sex with a straight man for the first time since she married her

husband forty years ago. Her nerves build throughout the episode, culminating in her pre-coital

preparations. In a similar shot structure to the pilot, the camera pans right from billowing white

curtains to reveal Grace stepping out of the bathroom into her empty room, dressed in a floor

length sleeveless nightgown. She self-consciously walks toward the camera, again in the position

of the mirror. Light music signals the fact that the subject is being treated humorously this time,

but the unflinching gaze of the camera is no different. A reverse shot of Grace’s reflection over

her shoulder shows her trying different poses in an attempt to look alluring. Each one she tries

she finds inadequate, struggling to hide her spider veins and loose skin. Now on the bed, a shot

of Grace looking off-screen at her reflection further details her attempts, and as she shakes out

her hair, she hurts her neck. When she brings her hand up to her neck, she notices the loose skin

hanging off her upper arm. She bats at it and it shakes, the high-key lighting revealing its

gelatinous wobbling, before she finally decides to turn the lights off and call her partner in.

In this way, Fonda’s body is accessible to the audience in a way that it is not to her sexual

partner. Indeed, as he fumbles through the dark room, she will consent to him turning on the

lights only for a moment, and only after she is under the covers. The episode thus grants a

privileged look at an exposed female body. Unlike the traditional filmic gaze so famously

defined by Laura Mulvey in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, however, Fonda’s image

does not seem to be “coded for strong visual and erotic impact” but rather is marked as the

opposite (Mulvey 837). In fact, shots of a woman preparing for sex, familiar to any filmgoer, are

almost parodied in this presentation. Though she was once undeniably an object of erotic

spectacle (and her later career likely suffered because of it), Fonda here rewrites her filmic

representation with a vengeance. By exposing the flaws of her aging body, Fonda undermines the

Hannah Wold

potential for traditional sexual objectification. This represents a fairly radical paradigm for

television, as even “seemingly socially critical television series with beautiful stars…can only

repeat the essential relationship of cultural patriarchy while seeming superficially to question it”

(Green 155). But, in a subversion of the dynamic highlighted by Mulvey, if she is not the object

of the camera, then she must be its subject. In this way, Fonda deconstructs her own erotic image

in order to be the subject of the audience’s identification.

In addition to a presentation of the appearance of age, Grace and Frankie examines its

physical and cultural implications. Many jokes are made about deafness, technological illiteracy,

and back problems, frequently at the same time that the show critiques the larger social structures

surrounding aging. In one striking episode, Grace fights to be noticed, finding that the roles of

her younger self have expired. Feeling at loose ends, she decides that she will go back to work at

the company that she handed down to her daughter Brianna. When she arrives at Brianna’s

office, she discovers that the packaging of her product, which was previously branded with her

face, now shows a plant. Brianna tells Grace that the new packaging is in pursuit of “a younger

customer,” to which Grace replies, “I’ve been erased.” Later, she calls her other daughter,

Mallory, and asks if she is irrelevant. Busy with her own children, Mallory responds, “Mom, not

to me. I gotta go.” Thus Grace finds that the seminal positions of her middle-aged life—that of a

CEO and a mother—are no longer needed, and indeed are in danger of literal erasure.

Later, as Grace and Frankie wait at the register of a store to buy cigarettes, they grow

increasingly frustrated when the clerk, who is shelving products, doesn’t notice them. After they

have called to him several times, he appears to be coming over to help, only to help a young

woman in a tight shirt instead. Grace, losing patience entirely, yells, “Do you not see me? Do I

not exist? You think it’s all right to ignore us just because she’s got grey hair [indicating

Hannah Wold

Frankie] and I don’t look like her [pointing at the young customer]?” Grace, incensed, storms

out, leaving the clerk and his customer confused and irritated. In the car, Grace says, “That

lacked poise and I’m sorry, but I refuse to be irrelevant.” Next to her, Frankie lights up a

cigarette that she has stolen from the store, replying, “Can’t see me, can’t stop me.”

Thus, though Grace fails to resurrect the structures of her younger life, Frankie

demonstrates to her the alternatives enabled by old age. Frankie’s illicit procurement of the

cigarettes additionally demonstrates that the two, though unable to change the social mores

reinforcing their erasure, will nevertheless creatively defy this framework in order to meet their

own needs. Implicit in the episode is the assumption that it is this very act of defiance that will

allow the characters to retain their social power. Finally, the episode can be read as an

embodiment of the methods of the show; though both Fonda and Tomlin experienced in

traditional Hollywood the erasure that Grace encounters, they nevertheless find alternative routes

for self-expression in the original streaming series platform.

Indeed, Grace and Frankie seems to have founds its ideal home in Netflix. Though HBO

and ABC both wanted to give the show a pilot, it was ultimately awarded to Netflix, partly

because of Netflix’s promise to get the show running without a lengthy development stage.

Additionally, co-creator Marta Kauffman, cites Netflix’s freedom from censorship and obscenity

regulations present in network and some cable television as one of the main boons of working

with the streaming service. Indeed, Kauffman says that this freedom is key to her “approach to

this show that no subject be taboo, and Netflix has been the perfect platform for this purpose”

(Blythe). In an interview concerning Grace and Frankie’s open treatment of older female

sexuality, vibrators, and facilitators, Kauffman said,

“It’s not there because it’s shocking. It’s there because it’s real…It’s really

cool to be able to go all the way and not use the word ‘showerhead’

Hannah Wold

instead of ‘vibrator’ or whatever it is. You couldn’t do that on network

television. You can barely do it on a lot of cable TV shows” (Blythe).

Thus, the open atmosphere enabled by Netflix’s agency concerning language has allowed a more

honest portrayal not only of homosexuality and aging, but of sex itself.

In addition to allowing greater linguistic and representational freedom on the show,

Netflix has granted Grace and Frankie diversity in its production team that is rare elsewhere. Of

course, this diversity begins with Fonda and Tomlin themselves, as “Ms. Kauffman and Mr.

Morris created the show just for them.” (Koblin). Both credited as executive producers, they

each have discussed how they have brought personal experience with aging, independence, and,

in the case of Tomlin, homosexuality into the plots of the show. Additionally, an aberrant

number of producers, writers, and directors on the show are female, and even a visiting reporter

noted “the crew looks to be around 60% women—still a relatively unusual sight on a set”

(Blythe). Kauffman attributes the egalitarian atmosphere of her set to the fact that “we don’t

allow intolerance on the set, and women have an equal voice to men. That’s just how it should

be” (Blythe). Thus, Grace and Frankie’s production team is not only diverse, but remains

actively committed to standards of inclusion.

In fact, Tomlin’s and Fonda’s control over and centrality to the plot of Grace and

Frankie indicates a new freedom afforded to them by the streaming platform. For example,

Fonda’s previous experiences clearly inform the transformation and growth of Grace, a fact that

is not surprising considering Fonda’s background in Method acting. Even more than acting

technique, however, many plot points seem to be taken directly from Fonda’s speeches and blog.

Indeed, Grace’s comments about her efforts to please her boyfriend by adapting to his hobbies

and preferences almost copy Fonda’s previous assertion in a speech to a women’s group in

which she says, “I thought if I didn’t become whatever he wanted me to be, I’d be alone, and

Hannah Wold

then I wouldn’t exist” (Hershberger 142). Grace’s struggle to find what she wants, which is a

controlling theme of season two is echoed in her assertion that “after a certain point, age eleven

to be exact, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore” (Hershberger 77). Finally, Fonda’s own blog

describes her own experience with a late-in-life divorce, citing her need to seek a kind of

wholeness after she turned 60, a pursuit previously hindered by her desires for validation and

perfection. Indeed, as Grace separates from her past life, she embodies the way that Fonda

describes “becoming the subject of [her] own life” following the split (Fonda.com).

Of course, Fonda’s influence over the experiences of the characters is matched only by

the input of Lily Tomlin, whose sexuality remained, until recently, an open secret in Hollywood

for decades. Tomlin, who has been with her wife Jane Wagner for forty-five years, was married

to her on December 31, 2013 (McNeice). Indeed, she is hailed as a “figurehead for lesbians in

Hollywood,” as she carried on her relationship despite cultural and social pressures. When

speaking about her communication of the topic earlier in her career, Tomlin said, “I wasn’t

totally forthcoming. Everybody in the business knew I was gay, and certainly everybody I

worked with and everything like that. I just never had a press conference to announce it”

(Buxton). Indeed, she was so well known as a member of queer culture that Time Magazine

approached her in 1975, telling her that she could be on the cover if she came out. Tomlin

demurred because she “wanted to be acknowledged for [her] work” rather than her sexual

identity (Buxton). She adds that she doubts her career would have been as long if she had chosen

to come out so early. Thus, Tomlin’s presence playing a straight character in a narrative about

queer identities informs the series with both authenticity and irony. The series thus not only gives

a voice to fictional perspectives of gay characters, but real experiences as well by affirming

Tomlin as one of the central figures and executive producers of the show.

Hannah Wold

Finally, Grace and Frankie confronts a series of other nonconventional identities and

social issues throughout its trajectory. In one episode, Sol complains that someone he hasn’t seen

for while still thinks of him as “the hippie Jew with the black son and the communist wife.” And

the narrative does indeed explore these multifaceted aspects of the characters’ lives. Due to

Frankie’s inability to have children, Sol and Frankie have adopted both of their boys, a fact

which provides the show with the rich outlet to explore issues of identity both inherent and

external. In an episode in which Coyote is trying to find his birth mother, he tells his brother

Bud, “I just want to sit across the table from someone that looks like me. Can’t you understand

that?” Bud, who is African American, replies, “No, what would an adopted black Ashkenazi Jew

living in San Diego understand about that?” In this way, the series postulates a formation of

identity that is based both around something inherent and balanced with external influencers. As

Sol and Robert try to find their place in the queer community as well as the mainstream through

the identifiers of their identity, Bud and Coyote demonstrate that they are doing exactly the

same. The show thus postulates an image of identity as relational, an ever-changing landscape in

which one must simply relate to those who mirror themselves, whether externally or internally.

Another social issue the series ambivalently addresses is that of substance use. One of the

underlying themes of season two is Grace’s increasing reliance upon alcohol to help her through

difficult emotional times. This culminates when Grace goes on a bender, insulting and alienating

Frankie, who finally addresses the issue of her drinking. Even the beginning of the show,

however, insinuates substance as a universal means of emotional coping. Upon the revelation of

Robert’s and Sol’s affair, almost all of the family turns to alcohol and prescription drugs to cope,

an issue that remains unaddressed. Finally, the most striking example of the series’

demonstration of substance abuse is embodied in Coyote, who is newly released from rehab

Hannah Wold

following a years-long descent into addiction. Due to Netflix’s freedom from the decency

dictations of the FCC and other industry forces, flashback episodes explicitly depict Coyote’s use

of narcotics. Thus, the series can explore themes of addiction and recovery through its unique

focus on substance use.

Despite its foregrounding of non-normative sexuality and its radical treatment of

advanced age, Grace and Frankie constructs its narrative and themes upon cultural assumptions

that enable and mediate some of the minority representations. After Robert and Sol’s

announcement, Grace and Frankie flee to the beach house shared by their families. This would,

of course, not be possible if both families were not upper middle class. Indeed, many of the

show’s plots are enabled by the fact that its characters have abundant financial resources. The

only reference to financial hardship occurs when Sol must confront the insurance company over

an exorbitant bill following a medical procedure in season two. Indeed, it is only Frankie whose

career is not implied to be hugely lucrative and she comes into money of her own when she

begins to sell her lube. Sol and Robert are partners in a law firm specializing in divorce, Grace

was a CEO of her own company, and even most of the kids are shown to have high-paying jobs.

Another concession made in the first season of Grace and Frankie is to the

representations of social roles of women. Any allusions to Grace’s time as a CEO perfectly

illustrates the template for depictions of working women in which “primary emphasis [is] placed

on their difficulties in balancing dual roles” and in fact it is only after she almost misses a family

event that Grace decides to retire in a flashback episode (Green 70). Later in the same episode,

when discussing Brianna’s clashes with her male boss, Brianna says that the problem stems from

the fact that she is, “hypercompetent, intuitive, and assertive,” traits that she has indeed

previously demonstrated. Grace replies, “Yeah, which translates as intimidating, argumentative,

Hannah Wold

and strident.” Grace thus acknowledges the double-standard in place for working women, but

goes on to say, “You have got to figure out how to play well with others,” reinforcing the very

principle she has critiqued. Brianna, in a representation of the season’s conflicting ambivalence

regarding women in the workplace, responds, “Or figure out how to be the boss.” The audience

is aware from previous episodes that Brianna will go on to make an excellent CEO, but the

verbal and visual pushback to her position is constant. Additionally, the show’s title sequence

reinforces traditional gender roles in the home.

Finally, if Grace and her daughter Brianna clash over Brianna’s professional life, such

conflict is absent in Grace’s relationship with her other daughter Mallory because Mallory is a

stay-at-home mother. This fact is relentlessly illustrated by the fact that, whenever Mallory is not

with the family, she is depicted doing housework. Not a minute of the show depicts Mallory

taking care of her own needs, and though this is perhaps an accurate depiction of the life of a

mother, it nevertheless represents a depressing route to personal fulfillment. What is more,

Mallory is consistently praised and inhabits the position of the dutiful daughter, while Brianna is

undoubtedly the rebel of the family. In this way, the season takes a skeptical look at working

females, affirming their competence but withholding its endorsement.

Season two, however, makes visible efforts to change its message regarding women in

the workplace. Grace mentors an incorrigible young woman attempting to get a professional job

in one episode, and Frankie’s business acumen is tested as she goes to market her lube with

Brianna’s company. Brianna herself is shown increasingly in the setting of her office as CEO,

effectively managing the company. Thus, the show balances its portrayals of its workingwomen

and presents more narrative affirmation of female characters actively pursuing their own

interests. Meanwhile, however, Mallory has become pregnant again, and is sentenced by her

Hannah Wold

doctor to bed rest. While motherhood is of course as valid a route for a female character to

choose as professionalism, Mallory is consequently sequestered from the narrative and once

again disappears into her role as wife and mother. Nevertheless, the previous season’s

ambivalence regarding the roles of women is solidified in season two as an affirmation of the

tenacity and activity of its female characters.

In this way, Grace and Frankie makes a bold, if occasionally flawed, attempt at

portraying the realities of two groups not often seen on network television: that of the gay

community and that of females over seventy. Of course, as queer culture has become

increasingly accepted among the mainstream, LGBTQ characters have enjoyed expanded

visibility in film and on American network television. Nevertheless, they remain a group that is

underrepresented and the inadequate representation they are afforded is riddled with stereotype, a

fact that Grace and Frankie attempts, if not entirely successfully, to address. Perhaps more

significantly, Grace and Frankie takes an honest look at aging which is unparalleled in works of

its genre, except, perhaps, for The Golden Girls. Its stark visual presentation of physical

attributes attendant with advanced age, as well as its defiance of the traditional relationship

between the female body and the camera elide into a fresh aesthetic that encourages

identification with old women, a thoroughly invisible demographic. This fact, combined with the

presentation of nontraditional sexual identity and its aim at targeting an unpopular demographic,

would make its appearance on network television surprising. In an increasingly young cast of

film and television actors, Grace and Frankie’s direct confrontation with the norms surrounding

the portrayal of age as well as cultural attitudes toward aging, sex, and sexual identity would be

out of place. Its position as a streaming original series on Netflix thus affords Grace and Frankie

a platform that would otherwise be lacking.

Hannah Wold

Part II: Transparent

Deviant Identities and the Indefatigable Presence of Self

As comedies focalized around the familial consequences of a late-in-life announcement

of deviant sexual and gender identity, Netflix’s Grace and Frankie and Amazon Studio’s

Transparent represent two iterations of the portrayal of similar perspectives, themes, and

phenomena. They therefore present an ideal point of comparison between the methods of these

two original streaming platforms in approaching a narrativization of otherness. Indeed, the two

shows share a great deal; both detail the lives of three generations of an affluent family living in

California in which the patriarch has revealed him or herself to be queer. Both share the typical

thirty-minute structure of an original streaming sitcom, yet both find that comedy is eclipsed by

the looming themes and realities associated with their chosen subject matter. Finally, both shows

attempt to analyze and deconstruct traditional trends apparent in network and cable television’s

approach to appearance and gender. In this way, Transparent can partner with Grace and

Frankie to provide a glimpse into the unique constructions of otherness presented on the original

streaming platforms created by Netflix and Amazon.

In Transparent, Amazon Studios presents an intimate examination of a Jewish family

whose normative lives are disrupted when their father Mort, played by Jeffery Tambor, suddenly

announces that he is a woman, and has privately identified as a woman for the entirety of his life.

Mort and Shelley (Judith Light), who met and married in their early twenties, have raised three

children and finally divorced by the time the show opens. Their children, Sarah (Amy

Landecker), Josh (Jay Duplass), and Ali (Gaby Hoffman) are all adults living in Californian

suburbs, firmly rooted in their routines yet simultaneously unmoored and apparently unhappy.

Sarah is married with two children, Josh is successful in the music industry, and Ali is drifting

Hannah Wold

and dependent. As Maura gradually comes out to each of her children, they begin to question

their own identities; Sarah feels the decay of her marriage and the pull of deviant sexualities,

Josh begins to question his past and his relationship with women, and Ali explores her own

gendered and sexual preferences. In this way, the announcement and ensuing alteration of the

family’s patriarch leads the family to embark upon their own pursuit of self-awareness.

In fact, it is a similar pursuit of awareness that facilitated the creation of Transparent; the

story featured in the series is inspired by creator Jill Soloway’s own experience with a

transitioning father. Her own parent came out as transgender at age 75, after forty years of

marriage, a reality that informs the entirety of the series. With episodes directed and written by

both Soloway and her sister Faith, the series occasionally feels like a confessional documentation

of the results of a confusing and fractured youth, with an emphasis on the centrality of a flawed

but supportive family. The series does not belong exclusively to the Soloway sisters, however; a

battalion of queer and transgender consultants, cast members, and crew ensure that the story is

accessible and accurate for both cisgendered and transgendered viewers. Indeed, the initiative,

spearheaded by Soloway and trans associate producers Zackary Druker and Rhys Ernst, has been

dubbed the “transfirmative action program” and has “led to the hiring of more trans people than

on any other show in TV history, including fifteen speaking roles and one hundred extras”

(Kang). In addition to the cast, Drucker and Ernst have emphasized the hiring of ten trans

members of the crew. In this way, Transparent endeavors not only to bring the issues relevant to

transgendered life to the screen, but also attempts to amplify the often-ignored voices of real

transmen and transwomen working in the industry.

Indeed, the title sequence of the series manifests this hybrid creation of Soloway and her

team of consultants on the transgendered experience. Created by Ernst and Druker, the sequence

Hannah Wold

combines found footage of bat and bar mitzvahs with clips from Frank Simon’s influential film

The Queen. Premiering in 1968, The Queen is “one of the earliest screen portrayals of ‘female

impersonators’” (Vider). The title sequence is accordingly populated with grainy close-ups of

early drag queen stars, including Crystal LaBeija

. These iconic clips are interspersed with party

scenes in the first season, and with historic and personal moments in queer history like marches,

kisses, and marriages in later seasons. The depiction of queerness is therefore manifold and vital,

but is also carefully interwoven with images of family and the humbler pageantry of family

gatherings; indeed, Soloway’s own cousin is shown expressively dancing by himself in one of

the clips. As the nostalgic tone and seamless editing of the title sequence blends queer and family

histories, the words of the title cascade down from the top of the frame, repeating in unique

shades of orange, red, or pink in a tasteful invocation of the pride flag. Thus, the themes of the

show as well as a brief history of ‘female impersonators’ are catalyzed in the title sequence to

picture the dialectic between family and gender identity that will carry the series.

Transparent thus handles the presentation of queerness and gender dysphoria with a

careful and loving touch, informed by the experiences of the crew and their loved ones. Perhaps

it is for this reason that the show places at its focal point the structure of a dysfunctional but

loving family. The beginning of Transparent figures the Pfefferman family as deeply divided

and aggressively self-interested. In the pilot, each is factitiously concerned with their own lives

and when their father calls asking them to dinner, they speculate that he has cancer. Their

expected emotional reaction is foregone in favor of discussions of inheritance and tax incentives.

They arrive at his house and, while sloppily eating prime rib, Mort endeavors to come out to his

children while they argue over the likelihood of Mort’s potential diagnoses. Frustrated, Mort

instead announces that he plans to move out and offers the house to Sarah and her husband. His

Hannah Wold

children listen with barbeque sauce smeared over their faces, the picture of a sloppy lack of

situational and self-awareness. Finally, they begin to argue over his decision to gift the house to

Sarah. Exhausted, Mort falls back in his chair.

As the family dinner comes to a close, Mort sees his children off and closes the door after

them. At the decisive snap of the front door, he immediately unbuttons and removes his shirt.

Bare-chested, he picks up the phone and his shirt drops to the ground. The phone speed dials and

Mort says, “I couldn’t do it. My God, I had no idea it was gonna be so hard.” As he speaks, he

walks off screen and into an adjoining room. A cut to a low angle shows his feet emerging again

into the hall, the shot offering an understated visual pun as Mort literally comes out of the closet.

In the foreground, his discarded shirt remains out of focus, and the folksy music swells as the

camera reveals the hem of a skirt floating at his calves. The skirt is colored in stark pinks,

oranges, and reds, inserting the first burst of color in the otherwise monotone scene and evoking

the red-tinted rainbow of the title sequence. The skirt swirls around his legs as he turns and

shuffles away from the camera, his crumpled shirt, and our previous conceptions of him. The

nightgown is subsequently revealed in full as Mort lies in bed reading, his white comforter

covered by the nightgown, unfurled and hanging over the side. In this way, this early scene in the

pilot does not hesitate to explicitly represent how repellant the external trappings of masculinity

are to Mort, and furthermore, the scene visually signals his intention to leave them behind.

Though the scene announces an early manifestation of Mort’s dysphoria regarding

gender, it defines his activity with equal weight as solitary, and allows the audience an

understanding of Mort that has not yet been extended to his family members. He waits to indulge

in outward expressions of non-normative gender identity until after he is alone, and the audience

is privileged with insight into his identity through an activity that has been carefully sequestered

Hannah Wold

from the eyes of his family and friends. Interestingly, it is an act that is subsequently echoed by

both Josh and Ali. In the very next scene, Josh enters a room only to remove his flannel shirt and

drop it to the ground. Later, Ali walks into her apartment and quickly strips, leaving her clothes

in her entryway and examining her naked body in front of a full-length mirror. Thus, the pilot

takes care not only in providing clear parallels between his plight and those of his children, but

also in indicating that it is not only Mort who is confined by strict necessities of appearance. Yet

each of these characters appears in the frame alone when they bare themselves in this way; the

close binding of clothes is abhorred by everyone and yet this detestation is kept completely

private. In this way, clothes gradually become equated in the pilot with the strict social confines

that prevent the characters from inhabiting the liminal spaces in which they can access a truer

expression and understanding of self.

Though Mort’s nocturnal cross-dressing signifies the first representation of non-

normative sexual or gender identity as connected with the family’s patriarch, Mort’s physical

appearance remains firmly rooted in the masculine even after he dons the nightgown. It is not

until several minutes later that the pilot presents Mort dressed as herself, in full avowal

physically and narratively of her femininity. An establishing shot of a Los Angeles LGBT center

alerts audiences to the forthcoming representations of queer identity and a long take of the

meeting room within follows. The shot allows the stark whiteness of the room to invade the

screen, disrupted only by sparse clutter along the far wall and the meeting group, who sit in a

circle at a considerable distance from the camera. The small group of LGBT members is dwarfed

by the vastness of the space, and the frame is balanced by two objects hanging on the walls

above the group: to the right of the circle hangs a crucifix and on the left rests an American flag.

Thus, even within their own space, the congregation of queer Californians is not free from these

Hannah Wold

two monolithic influences upon their subaltern existence. The size of the room combined with

the imposing presence of these two emblems insinuates an uncomfortable bareness onto the

huddled group.

The physical vulnerability of the meeting visually foreshadows the narrative impact of

the scene, which begins with a story relayed by Mort, who the audience cannot yet see among

the gathered community members. As he speaks, the camera pans in close-up over the faces of

his rapt listeners. They smile and nod in an understanding and solidarity that the audience, not

yet privileged with a glimpse at the speaker, does not have access to. His tone is conversational,

but his speech provides the dawning realization upon which the series will build:

“I went to Target and I just—I took her out—you know what I mean. And

I got into a—you know—a checkout line and the girl at the cash register

said ‘I need to see some ID with that credit card of yours’ and um—you

know what that’s like, right? And I just knew. I said, ‘This is gonna be

good. This is gonna get ugly,’ and so she just kept looking at me—”

It is at this point in Mort’s speech that the camera comes to rest on his face. Any

questions left unresolved by Mort’s proclivity for women’s nightwear are answered immediately

and the context for Mort’s story is provided. She, as the audience now understands her to be, is

framed in a medium close-up against a wall of white tile, staring into the camera. Her hand is

raised to chest height, mimicking the credit card inspection performed by the employee. She is

dressed in a gray wrap, the hair of her brown wig stylishly waved. She wears make-up, earrings,

and feminine rings. She continues her story after a brief pause and provides an uncomfortably

accurate vocalization of the audience’s very feelings of realization upon being presented with the

image of Mort’s physically avowed identity: “—and then she said, ‘Oh,’ like that, you know?

And she rung up the—batteries—something. And that was—I mean, that was a big victory. And

I didn’t, uh, I was like, ‘Do not cry in front of this woman.’” This visual confession of Mort’s

Hannah Wold

identity is quickly followed by another revelation of her character when the group leader says,

“Thank you for your share, Maura.”

In this way, the pilot carefully acquaints the audience with

Maura’s character and habits before confronting the camera with a physical manifestation of her

previously inaccessible interiority.

Additionally, by providing Maura not only with physical anonymity for the duration of

her tale but also with a sympathetic and engaged audience in the support group, she is allowed to

be both vulnerable and resolutely herself. The camera meticulously documents the reactions of

her queer audience before it reveals her to the series’ audience, thus underlining the empathy felt

by those who have experienced similar moments to that which is detailed in Maura’s quotidian

tale. Though many of the series’ viewers have no personal background in gendered dysphoria

and its social consequences, the preemptive representation of universal understanding in the

LGBT center both aligns the audience to Maura’s plight and presents a distinctly othered

community. Though the transgendered members of the group are not visually differentiated from

the cisgendered members with deviant sexuality, the assembled community is nevertheless

coherent, each identifying with the experience of social friction because of one’s expression of

self. The ingrained empathy of the support group encourages a similar reaction in the audience,

but is accompanied by a realization that all members of the group have some experience of her

struggle. Thus, they share a commonality that is denied to the straight cisgendered audience

member. The audience thus is simultaneously aligned with and distanced from the details of

Henceforth, the family’s father will be referred to as Maura and with a feminine pronoun,

except for instances in which she is interacting with someone to whom she has not yet come out,

in which case she will be referenced as Mort/he for analytic clarity, despite her clear

identification as a female.

Hannah Wold

Maura’s struggles as a transwoman, which consequently appear more immense for their

triviality.

In this way, the pilot details the quotidian struggles of Maura as she embarks on her

physical avowal of her own femininity, but the next episode takes care to underscore the larger

consequences of her new externalization of identity. After Maura successfully comes out to

Sarah, she visits the house of Divina (played by transwoman Alexandra Billings), a woman she

meets at the support group, to indulge in a celebratory drink. As Maura admires Divina’s

apartment, Divina, who will go on to become a mentor for Maura, gently warns Maura of the

upcoming trials associated with transitioning. As Maura sits at Divina’s vanity and examines

herself in the mirror, Divina speaks from the other side a partition, saying,

“You know, sweetie, this is a really big journey that we’re on, and you’ve just

started on it so you’ve got to learn to let go of everything anybody thinks of you.

A really, really good friend of mine said this to me when I first transitioned—she

said, ‘You know, in five years, you’re going to look up, and not one of your

family members is still going to be there. Not one.”

Divina thus heralds a warning that will imbue the rest of the series with a sense of

looming dread. Divina goes on to affirm that she has retained none of her family members since

becoming a woman. This quiet expectation immediately solidifies the final consequence of

queerness as the show posits it in the loss of loved ones. Following episodes and seasons

capitulate upon the henceforth unnamed fear that Maura’s family will dissolve upon the roiling

sea of uncertainty, prejudice, and past injury in which they endlessly find themselves adrift. The

survival of the family is never assumed, and each subsequent disappointment endured by Maura

or her children seems a death knell for the Pfefferman family’s continued cohesion. When all of

her children leave Maura’s talent show early, when flashback scenes show the persistent absence

Hannah Wold

of parental guidance, and when Josh struggles with the consequences of past romantic

encounters, the friction of the family seems corrosive.

These frequent scenes of disconnection and pain are, however, mitigated by the

occasional affirming image of familial solidarity. Sarah can be counted on to support Maura in

fiercely vocal defense whenever she is accosted by family or strangers, Ali and Josh

unhesitatingly stage an impromptu therapy session in a bathroom when Sarah has matrimonial

regrets, and all three children openly welcome Maura’s new girlfriend Vicky. Sometimes, this

solidarity comes as a simple affirmation of identity; for example, when Maura is feeling dejected

after she fights with Divina in season two, Ali and Sarah invite her to a women’s music retreat.

Similarly, this unyielding support is pictured as all the more loving when its attendant challenges

are acknowledged; after Maura announces her intention to begin medically transitioning, Josh

privately says, “I mean honestly, does it matter how I feel? She’s got to do her.” In this way, the

conflict of the show is bound together by fleeting images of complete understanding not afforded

to the characters in settings outside the family. Additionally, the family is fluid in its acceptance

of new members. When Josh finds out he has a son, for example, the teenager is quickly adopted

into the larger family unit. The final image of the first season provides a resounding assertion of

familial union when the family is asked to join hands in a rare protestant prayer, led by Josh’s

newfound son. Ali, who has just fought with Maura, grabs a strand of Sarah’s hair when she is

told to connect herself to the prayer circle. Thus, the season provides a final solace in an image

of disjointed but resolute family coherence.

Of course, the model of the family as a haven for self and a spring of happiness is not

unfamiliar in film and television. Indeed, “Hollywood cinema (and television even more so)

regularly attests that happiness, or even survival, can only be framed within some version of the

Hannah Wold

family and normalized sexuality” (Green 29). In this way, the family is typically structured as a

return to normalcy through which any previous endorsement of aberrant behavior that occurs in

the film or series can be suppressed in a reassertion of heterosexual homeostasis. The role of

family in Transparent, however, presents a stark departure from this norm. It cannot be said that

even half of the family exhibits the normalized sexuality attendant on this model. What is more,

the family does not function as a suppressor of honest self-expression, but rather a facilitator of

it, particularly after Maura embodies herself. When Sarah asks Ali why she suddenly began to

explore lesbianism, Ali says, “I guess I just crossed a line that I always had there for some

reason”. Later in the same episode, Sarah admits, “I used to have, you know, the perfect house,

the perfect husband. I liked to compartmentalize, but I don’t anymore. I’m very—I’m living—I

mean, it’s a mess”. Indeed, the new freedom felt by the family upon Maura’s announcement was

experienced by creator Jill Soloway after her own parent came out. When speaking about her

newfound willingness to present as butch, Soloway observes, “By blood, I come by my non-

binariness…I just got this news, you know, it’s okay to be this way.” (Soloway and Myles).

Thus, both Sarah and Ali are implied to have been freed by their parent’s example of affirmation

of self over conformity to an ideal.

As is indicated by Soloway’s conception of her inheritance of queer identity, family

appears not only as a site of personal and cultural exploration, but also as the conduit of a

stalwart past. Each character is both benefited and trapped by the historical context of their

genetic roots. Of course, as a Jewish family whose ancestors fled Nazi Germany, a certain

cultural and familial trauma is imbued in the rituals and memories of the Pfefferman family. But,

as Ali observes when speaking of her lineage, “this whole pain and anxiety that’s been passed

down through the generations, and not just the Holocaust or the pogroms or the Jew shoes, it’s

Hannah Wold

sort of more like, uh, like metaphorical Holocaust.” And while the series details the hesitating

steps of its protagonists as they forge ahead with new identities, it keeps one eye on the family’s

heritage.

Indeed, the past stubbornly manifests itself in the family’s present and future. Many

episodes in the second season are devoted to detailing the flight of Maura’s mother from Nazi

Germany, and prove that Maura’s transgendered identification was shared by her aunt, who

perished under the Third Reich. In flashback, cast from previous episodes portray the ancestors

of the Pfefferman family and those surrounding the queer culture of Weimar Germany; the

actress who plays young Ali here appears as her grandmother Rose, incidental characters from

previous episodes play the LGBT scholars of the Magnus Hirschfield Institute, and Hari Nef, a

prominent transwoman, plays Rose’s sister, who has been designated “transsexual”. Remnants

of the past materialize in the present endlessly; a burlesque player lounges on a modern hotel

balcony, Nazi youth follow Ali through the forest, and a campfire becomes the burning of LGBT

literature in Nazi Germany. In this way, the Pfefferman family is caught in its legacy. Their

actions and identities are informed by the liminal ghosts of the past, yet they are largely

unacquainted with their stories.

Another aspect of familial inheritance explored by Transparent is the concept of a

genetic memory of the experiences of ancestors passed on through generations. As Ali begins to

research her past in season two, she says to her girlfriend Syd, “Did you know there is such a

thing as inherited trauma in your actual DNA?” The concept, still a young scientific field, is

called epigenetics, and posits a deep genetic memory reaching as many as seven generations

after a deeply affecting event. In this way, the Pfefferman family is not simply influenced by the

culture and artifacts of their past, such as the persistent presence of Great Aunt Gittel’s ring, but

Hannah Wold

also by the very genetics of those who experienced these traumas. The series formulates this

relationship with the past as if the family experiences these tragedies as their predecessors did, in

some way destined to revive ghosts of the past and live in their shadows.

Additionally, these ancestors are proven to have some shared experiences, proving that

the identities with which the characters are struggling are inherent and inescapable. For example,

Gittel is pictured being physically dragged away by the Nazis for her deviant sexuality, but her

legacy appears a mere episode later, when Gittel’s sister gives birth to a baby we know to be

Maura. As season three depicts Maura’s childhood during the height of Cold War terror, it

reveals the struggles of the Pfefferman family to live in an aggressively conformist society. As

an elementary aged Mort steals away to the fallout shelter to cross-dress, Rose and Grandma

Yetta factitiously conceal his actions from his grandfather. When he is discovered in a dress with

jeans around his ankles, Yetta explains to her husband, “All the Boymelgreen men, they want to

be women. This—this family is cursed is what.” Rose, helping Mort into his jeans, replies, “It’s

not a curse on our family. This is our family.” In this way, family appears not only as a

contemporary incitation of self, but also as a predictor of it, formulated as fostering descendants.

As each member of the Pfefferman family embarks on their own personal exploration of

identity after being catalyzed by Maura’s transformation, each becomes increasingly focused on

interiority of the self to the exclusion of the requests and feelings of others. In this way,

Transparent posits an uncomfortable connection between self-discovery and selfishness. The

series heralds this theme when, moments after Maura appears as herself onscreen for the first

time in the pilot, she says of her children, “They are so selfish. I don’t know how it is I raised

three people who cannot see beyond themselves.” And indeed, future scenes figure Sarah, Ali,

and Josh as almost ruthlessly self-involved; Ali casts aside her friend and girlfriend in favor of

Hannah Wold

sexual freedom, Josh neglects his fiancé, who recently miscarried, so that he can propose a new

record label to his friend, and Sarah speaks to a friend about her own sexual explorations while

ignoring the existential crisis of her listener. As they increasingly question their own identities

following their familial revelation, each becomes self-centered with a directional intensity. Their

energies become focused on the reformation of their selves, and externalities quickly fall away in

the wake of the new significance inherent in everyday activity.

Of course, though Sarah, Josh, and Ali undoubtedly demonstrate their own tireless

pursuit of self-interest time and again, it is Maura who is the first to establish the correlation

between self-discovery and self-centeredness. As flashbacks in season one reveal how Maura,

then Mort, copes with her concealed transgendered identity, the series underlines her

complicated strategies to balance her home life and her interior identity. Early episodes reveal

how she longs to integrate the two, but such a union is impossible because it depends upon a

revelation that would dismantle the very family from whom she wants recognition. In a brilliant

series of shots in the second episode of season one, Mort, presenting as a man in a flashback,

gazes into the expansive window of his home after getting out of his car. He has just suffered a

disheartening day at work, in which he toyed with wearing a women’s shirt in the privacy of his

office before finally discarding it. Inside, he can see the figures of his wife and three children

eating dinner. A sudden reverse shot reveals Maura standing in front of the car, herself and

watching the activity of her children. As she watches, the flashback’s Mort enters the scene and

kisses his wife and kids. In this way, Maura is shown longing for an irretrievable past in which

her hidden identity allows her to interact with her family without breaking them apart.

Despite Maura’s yearning to integrate herself with her surroundings, the opposite is

frequently the case. Many episodes depict Maura sacrificing elements of herself for her family

Hannah Wold

or, conversely, the wellbeing of her family for the expression of herself. When the latter is the

case, Maura must blatantly suspend her responsibility as a father in order to find shreds of time

to become herself. For example, several episodes in season one detail Mort’s willingness to let

Ali cancel her Bat Mitzvah so that he has the freedom to enjoy a camp for cross-dressers. Josh

comments, “It’s so obvious now why Dad wasn’t around. It’s because he was busy playing Little

Bo Peep.” Even when Maura does not make a conscious decision to allow her newfound identity

to supersede the events of her family, her non-normative actions and presentation typically does

so anyway. Through no fault of her own, Maura’s altered appearance and social position

dominate conversation wherever she goes, so that both funerals and weddings find their focal

point in her expression of self. In this way, Maura’s self-exploration and consequent coming out

demand the attention of those around her, monopolizing the lives of her family.

Though Maura’s search for identity is frequently linked to the self-centered attitude of

many of the characters and can even be destructive in its domineering presence, it is

simultaneously formulated as a vital act of courageous parenting. Though her approach to her

own final embodiment of self was naturally fallible, Maura nevertheless provides for her children

an example of self-examination and honesty that they cannot help but recognize. Following

Maura’s revelation of herself to Ali, Ali cuts off her ponytail and embraces the gender dysphoria

with which she has been struggling. Maura is thus able to exemplify “transformation as a kind of

agency and a kind of liberation, even as it inevitably intersects with the very forces of

normativity to which it provides an alternative” (Greven 32). And if her early forays into her

self-expression were occasionally injurious to her loved ones, they were also intrepid. In this

way, Maura’s revelation of herself is a manifestation of her leadership as a parent.

Hannah Wold

In being open with her children about herself and her struggles, Maura tacitly provides an

example of the challenging and even ruthless necessity to realize and manifest one’s own

identity. In the wake of such devastating honesty, Ali, Josh, and Sarah are compelled to examine

their own lives and recognize the facets of their identities and pasts that they had previously

preferred to leave untouched; Ali explores lesbianism and gender studies and Josh questions his

past relationship with the family babysitter. Sarah throws herself into deviant sexual identities

and communities, including lesbianism, bisexuality, and sadomasochism. Ali, Sarah, and Josh

even begin to explore religion, each taking their own approach to finding something larger than

themselves. Indeed, religion becomes the framework in which each character can identify

vestiges of self in relation to community; Ali finds Judaism to be ideally correlated to her

experience of gender and femininity, Sarah finds purpose and community in hosting religious

gatherings, and Josh comes to understand his son through a brief foray into Christianity. In this

way, Maura’s winding route to coming out forged the way for her children’s paths to self-

examination and self-discovery.

Thus, Maura’s occasional self-centeredness appears in the narrative as a requisite

component of necessary introspection, and indeed becomes integrated into the presentation of

familial love. As Maura, Shelly, Ali, Josh, and Sarah each embark upon their own interrogation

of their lives, the rest of the family can be counted upon to understand the necessary implications

of support or space that the character requires. When speaking to a group of women at the temple

about her experience as the ex-wife of a transwoman in episode two of season three, Shelly

comments, “They say when one person in a family transitions, everyone transitions, and that

could not be more true.” In this way, though the characters may struggle with external friction

regarding their focus on self during their periods of self-discovery, there is an implicit

Hannah Wold

understanding within familial space regarding this absorption. Though they may let one another

down, forgiveness is not far behind. As Josh’s ex-girlfriend Raquel preaches in season three, the

Torah posits thirty-six people who uphold the righteousness of the world, the identity of whom

nobody knows, including the thirty-six sanctified. The point, Raquel explains, is to treat each

person as if they are one of the few upon whose actions the divinity of the world depends. It is by

this model that each member of the family treats each other’s understanding of self. Though they

may be disappointed by one another, each nevertheless treats the experience of every other

member of the family with latent holiness.

As a series whose exploration of appearance, self-discovery, and self-centeredness is

constant, Transparent finds its ideal iconography in a set awash with mirrors. Mirrors and

reflective surfaces invade the frames of most scenes, and frequently figure as the focal point of

the action. Characters both minutely examine their own reflections and catch them by accident at

inopportune times, suggesting an omnipresence of unabashed and jagged reflexivity. No

character’s actions pass unexamined because they cannot escape the glimpses of their mirrored

existence. Even if their actions evade the mirrors, they are captured by the tacit camera, whose

documentary presence is just as ruthless as the ephemeral commentary provided by the mirrors.

This condition is ironically punctuated when in a flashback, young Ali observes, “So if there is

no God, I mean, honestly, like everything we do, no one sees it.” The scene, however, prefigures

Mort’s determination to allow Ali to cancel her Bat Mitzvah, a decision which will be unearthed

later, after Maura has begun her transition. Thus, all of the actions of the characters are witnessed

explicitly by the series’ audience and implicitly by its characters, who hold one another

accountable for past mistakes.

Hannah Wold

Frequently, a scene will be pictured almost exclusively in a mirror, with no real-world

equivalent provided. For example, when Ali finds herself trying to attract the attention of a

transman whose self-professed type is “high-femme,” she remodels her gender-neutral look to

highlight her feminine features; she wears make-up, exposes cleavage, and yanks the laces of a

dress closed around her waist. In effecting this change in the dressing room of a boutique, Ali

and her friend Syd stare into the full-length mirror. The edges of their bodies skirt the sides of

the frame, but all of the action and its significance occur in the mirror. In rebuilding her

appearance, Ali affects an altered relationship to her gender and her body, attempting to explore

through externalities what is inherently internal. Naturally, it is the mirror that best expresses this

outside-in approach to identity, and so the entirety of the scene is pictured within mirrored space.

Later in the episode, Ali declines getting high with her siblings, remarking, “I feel weird today.”

Thus, Ali’s earlier transformation, viewed entirely in the mirror, has alienated her from herself

and from her body.

If Ali feels occasionally estranged from her appearance in scenes such as these, Maura is

overtly betrayed by her reflection on numerous occasions. Upon entering a female bathroom for

the first time on a shopping trip with Ali and Sarah, Maura is immediately accosted with row

upon row of highly lit mirrors. In a scene which adroitly prefigures the apropos debate

surrounding legislation regarding transgender bathroom use by nearly a year and a half, a pair of

girls who are standing in front of their own reflections begin to mock and laugh at Maura. They

alert their mother to the situation, who proceeds to berate Maura. Though Sarah comes to her

defense without hesitation, Maura’s appearance has already betrayed her, a fact that is made

explicit when the hysterical mother says, “That is clearly a man.”

Hannah Wold

Similarly, in episode five of season one, Maura is having lunch with her trans friends

Shea and Divina when a man at the bar begins to ogle Shea. Divina and Shea comfortably laugh

about it, Shea commenting that the man is too square to be her type. Both have medically

transitioned years ago, and thus have extensive experience in being perceived as women. Maura,

whose transition is still new, appears to be enthralled by the novel experience. She says to Shea,

“You get that all the time, don’t you, cause you’re so pretty.” Maura’s pleasure quickly turns to

dread, however, when the man approaches the table and Maura realizes that she knew him before

she transitioned. Maura’s physical transformation is still confined to wigs and jewelry, and as the

man flirtatiously greets Divina and Shea, Maura realizes that in close proximity she will be

unable to pass. When the man turns to her, she drops her voice to a baritone and greets the man

by name, taking his proceeding shock in step. Later in the season, Ali asks Raquel why it is

Jewish custom to cover the mirrors during a wake. Raquel responds, “It’s about being free from

vanity, about being free from that extra layer of being seen.” But Maura’s previous travails in

bathrooms and restaurants have proven that Maura is never free from being seen.

Though Maura’s appearance in this way distances her from the demographic she hopes to

join, it simultaneously becomes increasingly pleasing to her as her external condition aligns with

her internal identification. Thus, mirrors can be allied with Maura’s steps into femininity as

frequently as they can deter them. In flashback episodes in season one, Mort relaxes into herself

as she dons outer signifiers of womanhood and sees them reflected back at her in the mirror.

When speaking to an early cross-dressing friend, she agrees with her assessment that “Nobody

has seen me but me” when both reveal their feminine selves to each other. After Maura

transitions, she becomes increasingly adept at styling herself according to female fashions. In

season three, she affects a makeover on her birthday that allows for tasteful expression of both

Hannah Wold

her age and her gender identity in yet another scene that occurs almost exclusively in a mirror. In

season two, she is pleased by her silhouette in the mirror when she inserts false breasts into her

one-piece bathing suit. Ultimately, the relentless inclusion of mirrors manifests the tenuous

relationship between identity and exteriority explored by all of the characters, as well as

providing a stark reminder of the dictates of appearance in social interaction.

In this way, mirrors and reflection become a crucial component in measuring personal

choices and the relation of self to surroundings, but other doublings are similarly intrinsic to the

series. Throughout Transparent, Maura is afforded a series of subtle doppelgangers which act as

barometers for her own identity and actions. The first of these doubles appears early in the series.

Following Divina’s warning about the fragility of family during transition, sirens can be heard

and an ambulance arrives at Divina’s apartment complex, The Shangri-La, which is also a small

hub of queer culture. It appears that one of Divina’s neighbors, a “sweet old queen,” has passed

away. As the paramedics cart the covered body away, the assembled queer folk of the building

gather in an impromptu funeral procession, observing their fallen comrade; Maura holds the

doors for the paramedic pallbearers. The late resident, whose name, Murray, offers ample

parallel with that of Maura, thus provides the first chilling double for Maura upon her entrance

into queer society. Indeed, Maura goes on to rent Murray’s apartment, and takes up residence in

the absence of her first queer match and predecessor.

Another clear double that Maura encounters on her early investigations into queer culture

is Mark, who cross-dresses as Marcy. Shown in flashback in season one, the two are delighted to

have found another so similar to themselves; both are middle-aged fathers who experiment with

gender fluidity in secret. Again, Mark/Marcy’s similarity to Mort/Maura is signaled in the

similarity of both their given and chosen names. Additionally, when Mark announces his last

Hannah Wold

name to be “Pollard,” it is revealed that the two even have the same initials. In this way, Maura is

afforded the relief of a likeness, through which she can find elements of herself and adopt

figments of her culture. In fact, it is Marcy who bestows Maura’s name upon her. Maura’s

original choice, Daphne Sparkles, is presciently rejected by Marcy, who instead says, “You need

something elegant. You’re Maura.” Thus, Marcy and Maura build a culture that is exclusive to

the two of them, which allows each to receive advice and share their experiences, but most

importantly to have their identities validated by one another.

While Maura can locate herself by locating a double, she can similarly position herself by

recognizing difference. For example, when Marcy and Maura attend a camp for transvestites,

what at first appears to be the perfect locale for Maura to express herself begins to echo the

alienation she feels in the outside world. Though she initially understands herself to be

surrounded by doubles, she discovers that their aversion to transgendered attendees rivals that of

the outside world. Maura’s first inkling that she is not as similar to those around her as she had

supposed occurs when Marcy calls homes and invokes gender stereotypes to cajole his son about

sports. Standing next to the pay phone in a sundress, Marcy drops his voice to talk to his wife,

and lowers it even further when he speaks to his son, calling him “man” and responding to his

story about how the coach benched him with the assertion, “You gotta man up, you know what

I’m saying?”

Maura finds further alienation when a fellow transvestite speaks about how an attendee

was kicked out for using hormones at the camp. The transvestite remarks, “We are cross-

dressers, but we are still men,” to which Marcy responds, “We are men!” Marcy goes on to say,

“that’s not what this place is for…they should be in a different place.” Thus, Maura is confronted

with manifestations of transphobia in a group she had previously considered to be her

Hannah Wold

community. What is more, the similarity of names between Marcy and Maura marks a narrative

signal that the two are similar, and yet they sharply diverge in regards to this crucial point. Thus,

Maura’s search for those who are like her is frequently met with stark alienation, despite the

internal and narrative signals that the two are mirrored images of one another.

Names are not only used throughout the narrative to indicate Maura’s potential doubles,

they are also proven to tacitly contain elements of self within them. For example, Maura’s given

name, Mort, seems to prefigure both the implication and the fate of the name. As the root of the

Latin word meaning “death,” the name “Mort” alerts the audience to the figurative death that

continuing under a male identity would represent for Maura. Similarly, the etymology of Mort’s

name augurs its ultimate disposal. In this way, Mort’s given name is inextricably linked to

elements of her identity and is thus a distillation of the friction of her social standing. By

accepting the name “Maura,” Mort is freed from the death inherent in her current cultural

position, as is represented by her name.

Additionally, the invocation of Maura’s chosen name as well as modified titles that

acknowledge her altered position are always coded in conversation as respect. Maura finds

herself correcting people regarding her name frequently, and the listener’s receptivity to her

amendment is an infallible prediction of how the rest of the conversation will progress. Even

more telling is the implementation of pronouns and terms of endearment. The transwomen that

surround Maura waste no time not only in referring to her by her preferred gender and name, but

also in applying gendered pet names like “girl” and “honey”. Additionally, in a scene that

provides a parallel to Robert and Sol’s discussion of what to call each other in Grace and

Frankie, Ali says, “Daddy, oh my God, what am I supposed to call you now?” She finally settles

on “Moppa,” a combination of Mom and Poppa, which becomes Maura’s identifier for her

Hannah Wold

children for the rest of the season. At the opening of season three, Maura asks her children to

discard this pet name in favor of the more straightforward “mom,” an alteration that immediately

threatens Shelly. Nevertheless, all members of the family adopt this nomenclature despite their

quickly hidden expressions of shock and discomfort.

Conversely, in a heated exchange, Len, Sarah’s ex-husband, yells, “Are we talking about

Grandpa Mort? Grandma Mort? What is it exactly?” Maura, presiding at the head of the table,

responds, “I’m sorry about the Mort and the Maura and the he and the she. I’m just a person and

you’re just a person and here we are.” Similarly, the first character of the series depicted using

Maura’s correct pronoun is Tammy, Sarah’s lesbian love interest. Her immediate alliance to

Maura as a member of her community announces her empathy for Maura’s situation as well as

her adaptability regarding gender fluidity. While Sarah and Ali employ feminine pronouns

hesitating only to indicate how initially alien the concept is to them, Josh lingers in his use of

male pronouns for much of the first season. This reluctance to transfer linguistic signifiers of

gender corresponds to the series’ assertion that sons are always the most difficult to come out to.

Thus, the series employs names as an indication of the identity of both the named and the one

who does the naming; Maura’s employment of her chosen name presents her feminine identity

and outs her queerness, but more importantly, the willingness of those around her to use this

name as well as appropriate pronouns outs their adaptability and openness to the topic.

In this way, naming, mirrors, and doubles provide structuring themes for the series and

allow an externalization of internal struggles with identity. Of course, another key component of

identity and representation of otherness is apparent in the nature of the relationship between the

queer bodies that populate the series and the visual depiction of them. In contrast with Grace and

Frankie, nudity, both sexual and banal, dominate the screen in scene after scene. Transparent

Hannah Wold

delights in depictions of the body both as a means to pleasure and as the frank battleground of

identity. An early scene in the pilot which finds Josh and Ali inspecting a Jim Croce album

highlights the nature of televisual and filmic depiction of bodies when Josh says, “You could not

get that nose on TV today. In a million years”.

Naturally, the show will go on the etch the irony of this statement into its structure, as it

joyfully captures masses of bodies that refuse to conform not only to standards of beauty in

popular culture, but also to binary conceptions of gender. For example, a series of shots of a

group of dancing transvestites mixes close-up shots of curves coded female with the ecstatic

male faces of their owners. Similarly, when Ali, Maura, and Sarah attend a Lesbian music

festival, shots of the female body en masse flood the screen. This is not such a rare phenomenon,

of course, but the starkly varying body types, ages, and gender expressions of the half-naked

gyrating women mark a clear departure from the norm. In fact, writer Ali Liebegott remarked of

the scene, “Even when we were doing the shooting, and we had 500 background women, we

were really trying to capture the freedom that it represented for women of all body sizes and

types to be empowered to go naked” (Thomas, Slate). What is more, they all appear in open

daylight in long take; there is no coy camerawork that invites a voyeurism of illicit nudity here,

but rather an avowal of female agency as regards female bodies.

In this way, Transparent proudly depicts bodies clothed and nude, large and small, old

and young, in a stark departure from tradition. As an extended meditation on the nature of

identity and its expression, Transparent additionally claims the body as a conduit to representing

inner change. This is a dynamic that has persisted throughout film, as “this is the wrenching core

of the phenomenon of transformation, throughout cinematic representation, in so many different

genres: physical outward transformation greatly exceeds one on an emotional level” (Greven 78).

Hannah Wold

Indeed, when Maura finds that she is unable to receive the sexual reassignment surgery she has

been longing for, she discards the spandex that give her false breasts and curves in the finale of

season three. As she gazes mournfully down at the crumpled wad of tan elastic, she says, “I think

it’s one thing to wear this stuff if you know you are going to transform into a new shape, but

otherwise it just feels like a costume. It feels like I’m hiding. It feels like—it feels wrong.”

Physical markers of inner change and experience therefore act as the emotional currency of the

series, necessitating an altered approach to the traditional relationship between body and camera,

especially in regards to the female forms that manifest this change.

As clothing, hairstyles, and the application of make-up work to signify the emotional

state of the character, these feminine accoutrements which have typically been used to focus

attention on the female form must be appropriated to redirect emphasis onto the female’s interior

experience. Indeed, Soloway has admitted, “I feel like it’s really my responsibility as a feminist

and as a filmmaker to take the opportunity to place the camera in [terms of] how it feels to be a

woman, instead of how women look” (Kang). One of the ways that Transparent achieves this

altered dynamic is by foregrounding the naked bodies of the characters in moments of

heightened vulnerability; Sarah microwaves dinner nude after an embarrassing night at the

school fundraiser, Ali walks onto the balcony of a hotel in her underwear after Sarah annuls her

marriage, and Maura opts to keep only her bra on as she becomes intimate with her girlfriend

Vicky. In this way, the nudity of the female body is reclaimed for emotional expression, rather

than employed in its typical function as an object of voyeuristic pleasure.

The altered approach of the camera to its subjects throughout Transparent is no accident;

indeed, Jill Soloway has created her own answer to the standard structure of filmic representation

as identified by Laura Mulvey. In order to deconstruct the male gaze that has dominated the

Hannah Wold

relationship between a camera, its subject, and the audience, Soloway has formulated her own

series of techniques that she implements in writing and on set. She has termed her subversive

strategies “the Female Gaze” and has formulated a series of identifying characteristics in

tripartite form to mirror the audience-camera-subject dynamic inherent in the male gaze. The

first component she describes as an approach in which one remains rooted in one’s body as a

way of “feeling seeing” (Soloway). She describes instructing her cinematographer to choose a

feeling to embody when filming, so that the frame can evoke a feeling of being in feeling, rather

than looking at the characters.

The second element of Soloway’s Female Gaze employs the camera in the pursuit of “the

very nuanced and occasionally impossible task of showing us how it feels to be the object of the

gaze” (Soloway). In order to accomplish this feat, she positions the camera as the receiver of the

look, so that the audience can experience through the characters how it feels to be seen. This

represents a stark departure from the traditional formulation, which encourages the audience to

perform the act of seeing as a validation of the film dialectic itself. The feeling of being seen is

certainly inextricable from scenes in which Maura finds herself being physically assessed by

straight and queer characters alike. The phenomenon of being looked at is not exclusively

disavowed, however, as Shea enjoys the attention of a man at a nightclub, saying that it feels

good to be looked at after she put so much work into looking the way she does. Another method

Soloway cites in the creation of this new dynamic is the relation of coming-of-age stories of

women, who learn how to become what men see. This dynamic is certainly accessible to the

audience as both Ali and Maura cycle through a series of gendered presentations ranging from

high-femme to butch to male.

Hannah Wold

Finally, Jill Soloway enumerates the third aspect of her practice of filming in the Female

Gaze as the returning of the gaze. Thus, the characters not only embody what it feels like to be

looked at, but acknowledge that they can see others seeing them. Soloway in this way attempts to

distill “how it feels to stand here in this world having been seen our entire lives” (Soloway,

Topple Productions). Additionally, when characters name the sight that has been directed upon

them, they reclaim control and agency within the frame. With this control, they are allowed to

reject their own objectification in a demand for subjectivity. They are furthermore able to

structure others as the object once their self-awareness grants access to subjectivity. What is

more, the object of their gaze tends to be those seeking to objectify them. In this reflexive model

of a capturing of the male gaze, the female and othered characters of the show are able to

embody their own points of view without apology or permission; the presentation of their

struggles and their bodies are not filtered through any perspectives but their own. Soloway thus

reinvents the dynamic of camerawork involved in the representations of female and othered

bodies in order to free their perspectives from the confines of the dominant narrative. She

considers this an act of revolution, and figures the Female Gaze as a conscious effort to create

empathy as a political tool. In this way, Soloway pioneers not only new subject matter, but new

expressions of subjectivity within the very methods of cinematography on Transparent.

In addition to altered relationships with the camera, Transparent does not hesitate to

depict male, female, and non-binary bodies as sexual. In a stark contrast to Grace and Frankie,

the series visually foregrounds sex as a fluid facet of identity. If “queer theorists have analyzed

all gender and sexuality as performative acts,” then Transparent wastes no time in presenting the

performance of this aspect of the character’s experience of sexuality (Benshoff 342). And, given

the orientations and experimentation of the characters, non-normative sexuality is depicted to

Hannah Wold

perhaps an even greater degree than traditional representations of heterosexual sex. Indeed, the

second episode of the series announces the show’s intention to focus on non-normative sex by

featuring a fairly explicit extramarital sex scene between Sarah and her ex-girlfriend Tammy.

The show continues upon this theme by exploring the realities of homosexual and transgender

sex, as well as heterosexuality as it applies to transgender attraction. Interestingly, though the

series never explicitly shows a penis, the use of dildos and other facilitators abound as both

Sarah and Ali have sex with women and transmen.

Even Josh, the only member of the second generation who is presented only in couplings

with women or transwomen, is shown to struggle with his sexuality, hysterically admitting in

season one that Maura’s transition has so unsettled him that he is afraid he will never again get

an erection. And when Josh experiences heterosexual attraction to a transwoman, he begins to

question his previously normative sexual identity. In a series of shots that perhaps represent the

closest dynamic to traditional depictions of sexualized females that occurs on the show, season

three finds Josh attending a strip club as transwoman Shea undulates onstage. The camera

quickly traverses her bare curves as she maneuvers on the pole on stage while Josh watches, an

open avowal of the sexuality of transpeople and a complication of Josh’s conceptions of his own

mechanisms of sexual attraction. Even Josh’s heterosexuality thus appears problematic, and “it is

a rare film that actually acknowledges (hetero)sexuality as a complex topic, and not just an

unquestioned structuring principle” (Benshoff 353). In this way, visual representations of

normative and non-normative sexuality abound, and act as manifestations of the characters’ own

fears and identifications.

In both its sexual and nonsexual depictions of the female body, Transparent must

formulate ways to code and represent non-normative expressions of femininity. Of course,

Hannah Wold

Maura functions as the show’s focal point both narratively and in regards to visual

representations of the transgendered body. Transparent here encounters an obstacle, however, as

Jeffrey Tambor plays the trans parent of the title. As a cisgender straight male, Tambor cannot

embody the medical and surgical changes that many transwomen embark upon when beginning

their transitions. In working to portray the struggles of a transgender woman, both mentally and

medically, Tambor has described his extensive education from the show’s transgender

consultants and producers as invaluable. Indeed, the casting decision of a straight cisgender male

in the role of a transwoman has garnered its share of controversy, a perspective acknowledged

and validated by both Tambor and Soloway. While accepting his second straight Emmy for the

role of Maura, Tambor announced, “I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male

playing a female transgender on television,” a sentiment Soloway has echoed (Miller).

Nevertheless, the series must work to code a cisgender male body as female, just as Tambor must

work to portray a subaltern identity despite his experience as a straight male.

One of the ways that Transparent addresses this gulf is by surrounding Tambor with

transwomen playing trans characters, a relatively rare phenomenon in television. In this way,

Maura is granted an outlet to compare her physical expression of femininity with those around

her. For example, Alexandra Billings, a transwoman who is notable in the LGBTQ community,

plays Divina, Maura’s guide through her transition. Additionally, transwoman Trace Lysette

plays Maura’s friend Shea, whose beauty is noted by Maura, Josh, and the camera upon multiple

occasions. Thus, the series presents a host of bodies in various stages and manifestations of

transgendered transition. An observation that Soloway notes when she received criticism for the

casting of Tambor as a transwoman is that there are many ways to express femininity. Indeed,

Soloway’s own Moppa excused herself from the drugs and surgeries that might be increasingly

Hannah Wold

considered requisite. Thus, by working to portray multifaceted expressions of gender identity as

well as by populating the show with transwomen whose bodies and experiences inform their

performances, Transparent comfortably presents an ambiguous sliding spectrum of gender

presentation.

As Maura finds her way to her own expression of femininity, she finds herself

incorporated into two intersecting but distinct identities; in physically and culturally embracing

femininity, she gains entrance to womanhood, but as a woman medically designated male since

birth, she is also accepted into the queer community. Of course, women and transwomen express

many of the same characteristics; throughout the series, transwomen and women are presented

styling themselves according to the same cultural standards, being approached by men in similar

fashions, and valuing the same traits in themselves and others. Nevertheless, Maura must learn

the distinguishing codes and signifiers associated with her distinct positions as a woman and as a

transwoman. Just as the queer characters of Grace and Frankie must locate their identities as

they relate to gay culture, Maura must become acquainted with the customs, expectations, and

even the medical facts associated with trans culture. She also, however, must learn how to act,

dress, and carry herself as a woman.

As Maura takes some of her first public steps presenting as a woman, she is educated by

both transwomen and cisgender females as to the nuances and larger values of femininity.

Maura must learn to traverse a gendered landscape fraught with the double standards and barriers

associated with her newly expressed gender. In her first shopping trip dressed as a female, Maura

is enticed by the facials offered by the employees of a local department store. Sarah, who has

been experiencing this kind of advertising her entire life, says to Maura, “Just so you know, like,

now that you’re gonna spend time in this world, you—you need to know that the makeover is

Hannah Wold

free but they expect you to buy everything that they use”. Thus, as a recent inductee into the land

of the feminine, Maura must be warned about the advertising schemes directed at women. She is

fully incorporated into the world of the female not just as a transwoman, but as a woman.

Though Maura’s femininity can be expressed simply by her womanhood, she similarly

encounters spaces in which her transgendered status becomes her defining characteristic.

For example, Maura finds herself much less accepted at an all-women lesbian music festival

This presentation of a “world of women without ‘women’ is off the charts” in its appearance on

screen as an affirmation of deviant female forms. (Green 92). Nevertheless, Maura finds out that

the policy of the festival is to accept only women born women, and when her status as a

transwoman is revealed, many of the assembled women express their displeasure with her

presence. One comments on the reality of Maura’s penis, while another says, “I don’t give a shit

about your penis. It’s about the privilege.” The attendees of the festival thus strictly define

Maura as a transwoman; she may be a woman, but her status as a transwoman redefines all other

identifications she may have.

An early scene in season one provides perhaps the best distillation of the interaction

between female and transwoman facets of identity occurs as Divina is factitiously coaching

Maura on the nuances of both. After she helps Maura insert clip-in hair extensions, she comes to

the front of Maura’s chair and examines the way her trainee is sitting. Noting her spread legs, she

gently pushes them together, saying, “Your male privilege is leaking all over the place. And

you—but you don’t have to slouch. Keep yourself up and owning it. It’s called femininity.” In

this way, Divina gives a quick lesson in the hallmarks of proud womanhood, while

simultaneously identifying the vestiges of masculinity still clinging to Maura’s bearing. The

lesson is purely one in the cultural positioning of females; it is an instruction that could be given

Hannah Wold

to any female, whether trans or cisgender. Mere moments later, however, as Maura is walking

unsteadily in heels, Divina advises her to “try to breathe and be in it.” This is a directive that can

almost exclusively be applied to transwomen. Though all gender is performative, Maura here

endeavors to enact a performance with which she is unfamiliar. Indeed, when portraying Maura,

Tambor “anticipated that his largest challenge would be external…instead, Tambor has been

surprised by the ways that his character is exposed emotionally” (NPR, Fresh Air). Even the

portrayal of Maura has been accompanied by an unexpected vulnerability in the emotional

performance of gender. Thus, Maura’s incorporation into intersecting but diverse identities as

both woman and transwoman require her to be mindful of the distinct strictures of both.

Of course, Maura finds similar complications in the interaction between her femininity

and her transgendered status when she begins to approach dating again following her transition.

When Maura’s ex-wife Shelly reacts to the news of her transition, she quickly asks if she still

likes women. Maura responds, “Shel, it’s still me.” Later, Maura admits that she has always been

fascinated with the female form. As a transgendered woman, however, questions of sexual

identity arise; when Maura and Shelly begin to live together again, Ali asks the pair, “So are you

guys lesbians now?” Thus, Maura struggles to find a position for herself in a culture which

demands “corporeal coherence and psychic obeisance” of its sexualized women (Greven 32).

Though none of the female characters are particularly cohesive, it is Maura who stands out as

defying cultural standards. She encounters even more trouble when she discovers that the

testosterone blockers she takes lessen sex drive and the ability to get an erection. When Divina

says that she needs to listen to her body, Maura responds, “well, my body and I haven’t really

been talking.” In this way, Maura struggles throughout the series to locate her identity in regards

Hannah Wold

to the manifestations of femininity and her transgendered status when they are complicated by

her desires for companionship and sex.

Given the inability of the show to express Maura’s physical transformation, the presence

of other transitioning and transitioned women is crucial to present the very bodies which most

closely resemble the interiority of the main character and to provide a platform to discuss key

issues of transgendered experience. One key difference in the realities of transgendered

individuals as compared with other members of the queer community, for example, is that

medicine and surgery are vitally important to identity. Of course, as Tambor cannot embody

these physical changes, they cannot be experienced or spoken about by Maura. So, while Maura

is free in the third season to explore the possibility of gender reassignment surgery, reality

dictates that she cannot perform it. Naturally, the third season ends with her discovery that this is

an impossibility. It is not only Tambor’s status as a cisgendered male which dictates this plot

point; indeed, it is not uncommon for older transpeople to decline surgery and hormones, much

as Soloway’s own parent did upon transitioning. As Transparent faithfully shows, the medical

implications of gender reassignment surgery are considerable; consequently, it is not uncommon

for older members of the transgendered community to be unwilling or unable to embark upon

such a hazardous endeavor.

Nevertheless, the presence of Maura’s younger friends who have already transitioned

medically provides ample examples of the physical challenges associated with transitioning. The

trio discuss breast implants, the weight gain involved in taking estrogen, and the surgical

removal of testicles. Divina coaches Maura through giving her an estrogen shot and Maura

endeavors to politely inquire as to whether Shea has a real vagina. Shea answers in the

affirmative when she says she has a “pussy pussy”. And, while Maura experiences her own

Hannah Wold

unique trials in dating as a male-bodied transwoman, the romantic lives of her friends are

anything but simple. Indeed, Shea reveals to Josh the complications she has experienced in

romance when she says, “Dating while trans is a real shit show. If you don’t get the pussy,

you’re fetishized by a bunch of cock-hungry Johns and if you do get it, you know you’re still

stigmatized. It’s like a no-win situation.” Shea thus details the romantic and sexual implications

of gender reassignment surgery and goes on to highlight to economic ones when she says, “I

even had a trans auntie tell me ‘Miss Shea, girl, don’t you go get that pussy, darling. You know

what they say: A chick with a dick is always paid.’” In this way, the show is allowed to explore

the romantic, sexual, and economic consequences of the medical implications of queerness while

simultaneously exposing and normalizing the physical markers of transgendered transition.

Additionally, the presence of transwomen familiar with the medical implications of

transitioning allows the series to assert a cool distance from male influence over the female body.

As the transwomen of the series attempt to manipulate their bodies to closer align with their

identification, the input of the men surrounding them never seems to be far away. For example,

after Maura is prescribed testosterone blockers, she encounters Divina’s boyfriend Sal, who

identifies himself as transamorous. Later, Sal seeks a private moment with Maura to discuss the

nuance of her physical transition. He proudly cites his previous successes in Divina’s and Shea’s

transitions as proof of his own prowess in sculpting the female body. After suggesting a face lift

and cheek implants, and specifying the size Maura’s breasts should be, he goes on to extoll the

beauty of Shea, his last success. Never breaking his lecherous gaze on Maura, he says, “Shea’s a

beautiful girl. Gorgeous. Work of art. When she was done, I felt like fucking Michelangelo. I

wanted to sign my name on her ass.” Shea is here presented as own-able and claimable by Sal,

who adds her body to his personal accomplishments without hesitation.

Hannah Wold

This masculine assertion of power over feminine bodies insinuates its implications not

just upon the transwomen, but of the cisgendered women of the show as well. Ali frequently

notes unhappiness with her weight and modifies her body to suit the desires of her sexual

partner. Interestingly, when Ali is attempting to woo Leslie, an older lesbian poet, she encounters

a similar pervasive dictation of appearance. Despite Leslie’s radical feminism and her status as

an aging hippie, one of the primary characteristics noted about Leslie is her propensity to date

women considerably younger than herself. Ali’s previous visit to Leslie’s house has already

highlighted Leslie’s propensity to minutely analyze lesbian pornography, presumably for

academic purposes, but the pictures of naked young women that adorn her house belie her

voyeuristic tendencies

iii

. In this way, the traditional depictions of assertions of power over the

female body are dislocated from their typical sources, allowing new insight through this

unfamiliar representation. Leslie’s status as a female and the medical distance afforded by

Maura’s still male-presenting body alienates the established expectation that such presentation

“naturalizes the domination of men over women” (Green 39). In this way, the displacement of an

assertion of external control over the body by an outside force or person onto a non-normative

body or relationship encourages a more nuanced and personal understanding of the topic.

One of the primary issues implicitly and explicitly woven into many of the conversations

surrounding queer and female bodies throughout Transparent is the issue of age, an organizing

theme which finds a clear echo in Grace and Frankie. Much as Grace and Frankie find

themselves limited romantically, sexually, and socially by the realities and cultural perceptions

concerning their status as septuagenarians, the cast of Transparent is endlessly frustrated and

confused by the implications of their various ages. Of course, there is no character who feels the

sting of aging as acutely as Maura, whose condensation of her preferred form occurs in her

Hannah Wold

seventies. Not only is she frustrated by the medical limitations of her aging body, she struggles to

find her place in the queer community because she is several decades older than many of her

peers. Indeed, one of Tambor’s favorite aspects of playing Maura is that “she doesn’t know

where her friends are, she doesn’t know where her home is, she doesn’t know what to do at the

LGTBQ center.” (NPR, Fresh Air). Additionally, within the queer community, Maura is subject

to “the ways that queers have submitted themselves to the beauty myth, with all of its attendant

exclusivities, disciplinary standards, and disastrous emotional consequences” (Greven 79).

Because she does not exhibit the “conformity to gay-culture-established standards of beauty and

physical finesse” required of the transwomen who are deemed sexually attractive, she struggles

to find romantic partners within the community (Greven 79). In this way, Maura’s age manifests

itself as yet another marginalizing agent within a marginalized community.

As Transparent carefully inscribes the detriments of advanced age both within and

outside of the LGBTQ community into its narratives, it simultaneously disavows the very

distaste for aging bodies to which its characters fall prey. Indeed, in season two, as Ali is

becoming acquainted with Leslie, Ali is warned that “Leslie harbors a little disdain for the aging

female body”. Nevertheless, just as Grace and Frankie takes care to frequently confront its

audience with images of aging women, Transparent delights in the portrayal of older bodies. Ali,

whose journey through gender fluidity frequently finds a foil in Maura’s, thus experiences the

same prejudices that Maura does when attempting to initiate queer sex. Ali spends the show in

her early thirties and is the youngest of the family, while Maura is the oldest, and yet both find

their age to be a sexual barrier. Though the narrative portrays the frequent rejection of older

bodies within the queer community, the screen presents no shortage of older female and queer

forms. Indeed, though Ali is implied to be unacceptably old in soliciting Leslie’s interest, this

Hannah Wold

declaration comes only three episodes after an extremely long take of Sarah and Ali conversing

naked in a sauna. The series thus is freely inscribed with images of naked female and queer

bodies whose age might, in a different series, preclude their depiction. In this way, Transparent

invokes the complications of aging attendant on queer and female bodies while simultaneously

portraying the rejected bodies with gusto.

If the exploration of the nuance of aging for transgendered women allows an uncommon

analysis of the assertion of control over the female body, it also garners a much more solemn

glance into the darker realities of the community. As a demographic burdened with high rates of

HIV and AIDS, the LGBTQ characters of the show are depicted struggling with their own

experiences of the condition. When Maura suggests in episode seven of season two that Divina

could find a better romantic partner following Sal’s cosmetic analysis of Maura, Divina says,

“My God. Who do you think you are talking to?...I’m a 53-year-old ex-prostitute HIV-positive

woman with a dick. And I know what I want and I know what I need.” In this way, Divina cites

her diagnosis as a factor limiting her realistic romantic options, and simultaneously underlines

the facets of privilege tacitly implicit in Maura’s life. The romantic and sexual problems

associated with an HIV-positive partner are further highlighted when Shea reveals to Josh that

she is HIV positive after the two begin to explore the possibility of a physical relationship in

season three, episode six. Josh, who is fairly uneducated about the nature of HIV, additionally

provides a phenomenal platform for the series to enhance awareness surrounding the realities of

the disease. Through Josh, Transparent is able to debunk false notions, such as the widespread

misconception that the disease can be transferred through saliva.

Finally, the illumination the series provides on topics of medication and other realities

experienced by transgendered people allow an exploration of another rampant issue that plagues

Hannah Wold

the transgender community. When Maura begins work at a hotline for troubled trans youth, she

begins to encounter the crippling rates of suicidal thoughts and tendencies present among her

community. Indeed, while Shea aids Maura in training for the position, Shea admits, “I’ve had

those thoughts—suicide and—sometimes I feel like it would be easier if I just wasn’t here.” Shea

goes on to reveal a long struggle with suicidal tendencies, beginning in high school and

persisting to present day. When Maura gets a call from a suicidal transgirl named Elizah, she

embarks on an odyssey to find and prevent the young woman from killing herself. Such

narratives additionally highlight the privilege that has enabled Maura’s transition, though

personally difficult, to never prove life threatening. Those who are shown to be struggling the

most are those who do not have the family or the money that Maura does; Elizah is an African

American teenager who has migrated through a slew of foster families throughout her lifetime

and Shea construes her new position at a strip club as an occupational improvement. In this way,

Transparent takes care to depict the consequences experienced by those in the transgender

community whose struggles were not alleviated by the aspects of Maura’s life which enabled her

to have a relatively uncomplicated transition.

Transparent thus provides a rare outlet for transgender stories and transgender voices. It

complicates and personalizes the location of identity, depicting it as an occasionally destructive

but ultimately courageous and necessary pursuit. It employs and presents prominent members of

the transgender community, whose influence over narratives told about their demographic has

previously been limited. Most importantly, Transparent provides a representation of a flawed but

loving family whose actions coalesce into a plea for empathy in interaction and honesty in self-

reflection. In creating its own space in which stories about subaltern identities can be told by

those who have experienced the cultural consequences of their own marginalization, Amazon

Hannah Wold

Studio’s Transparent thus embodies a uniquely joyful affirmation of those whose voices have

not been heard on other platforms.

In this way, Transparent earnestly represents the struggles, loves, and triumphs of a

subaltern community. When asked about how she felt working for Amazon, Jill Soloway

responded, “I can’t believe the whole world is seeing some of the stuff on Transparent” (Hammer

Museum). Similarly, writer Ali Liebegott has commented, “I’m mostly astounded that I’ve lived

long enough that my queer experience has become a commodity” (Thomas, Slate). And indeed, it

is difficult to imagine a series on any platform other than Amazon Studios that offers the content

that has led the show to become a perennial winner of critics’ awards, GLAAD recognitions, and

audience favor while simultaneously commodifying queer voices. Soloway frequently and

effusively acknowledges the impact of the streaming platform not only upon the staff and cast of

the show, but upon its very existence. For example, when speaking at the Toronto International

Film Festival, she observed,

“As recently as five years ago, I was told ‘You need to have a rootable white,

you know, handsome man at the center of this story and he needs to feel good—

we need to feel good about him or we can’t put this on television.’ That was five

years ago. And then—Amazon and Jeff Bezos who completely, you know,

upends and reinvents everything” (Soloway).

Soloway thus credits the very appearance of the series, centered as it is upon the tumultuous lives

of flawed but courageous queer people, females, and transwomen, to the novel approach of

Amazon to the very concept of protagonism.

Amazon’s approach to filmmaking is in fact so innovative that it is difficult to find its

match on network television or even in Hollywood filmmaking. The series’ widespread

employment of trans actors, producers, and writers and the revolutionary value it places on

marginalized voices has excited frequent comment. In granting Jill Soloway access to its

Hannah Wold

considerable resources as well as phenomenal creative agency, Amazon created a thoroughly

unique iteration of television. Indeed, “Soloway made choices that none in Hollywood have

before…holistic trans inclusion in big-budget film was unknown until Transparent” (Tourjee).

Soloway herself imagines the products of Amazon Studios as transcendent of the very word used

to describe the industry when she comments,

“You know, we’re using the word ‘TV’, but it couldn’t be more different from

CBS and NBC and ABC. [Amazon producers and executives] are people who

come from the world of connecting with and recognizing and inspiring and being

inspired by artists and finding a really amazing way to distribute that quickly and

effectively, so ‘TV’—I don’t even know if that’s the right word.” (Soloway).

In this way, Amazon Studios has not only produced a thoroughly unique series whose depiction

of queer and female perspectives is unprecedented, it has done so by reimagining the role of the

studio in the dynamic between a creator and her work.

Crystal LaBeija was the founder of the formulated family of queer youths called the House of

LaBeija, which was later popularized in Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1991).

The festival is mentioned throughout season two and is explicitly portrayed in episode nine of

season two, called “Man on the Land”. In fact, this portrayal of all-women’s clothing-optional

music festival is a parody of a festival that, until 2015, occurred annually in Michigan. The

festival, called “Michfest,” which began in 1976, “’has been the crucible for nearly every critical

cultural and political issue the lesbian feminist community has grappled with for four decades,’”

said founder Lisa Vogel (Ring, Advocate). Indeed, the festival has sparked controversy that is

echoed in the episode because of its guideline that only “womyn-born-womyn” are allowed to

attend, a stark exclusion of transwomen. Vogel has defended the statement as an intention rather

than a rule, but many artists have consequently boycotted the festival. Interestingly, the Indigo

Girls, who appear in “Man on the Land,” are among the boycotters. In an interview, band

member Amy Ray admitted that she worried that appearing in the satire of the festival would

offend its loyal following, but cited the series’ employment of transgender people as one of her

main incentives to appear on the episode. Michfest held its last gathering in 2015, the same year

“Man on the Land” aired.

Hannah Wold

iii

The formation of the character of Leslie, played by the notable lesbian actress Cherry Jones,

created another parallel between the experiences of the characters and the biography of Soloway.

When formulating ideas for potential love interests for Ali, the concept of an older academic

lesbian character prompted one of the writers, Ali Liebegott, to mention the work of renowned

feminist poet Eileen Myles. Soloway researched Myles and happened to be speaking on a panel

with her several weeks later, which she admits to attending with the intention of seducing Myles.

Indeed, Myles would go on to become Soloway’s girlfriend, as well as the key inspiration in the

creation of Leslie. Transparent even features multiple poems by Myles. In an interesting parallel,

Soloway admits to being the oldest woman Myles has ever dated, despite being nearly twenty

years her junior. Additionally, Soloway cites the period of her romantic relationship with Myles

as the last time she presented “high femme”. During their relationship, the pair penned a feminist

manifesto on female influence in art and politics, one of their primary subjects being porn. The

two have since separated, but remain on friendly terms.

Hannah Wold

Conclusion:

Potentials in the Mechanics of Empathy

When addressing her audience at the Toronto International Film Festival, Jill Soloway

asserted that “all TV, all filmmaking, all culture-making is people going, ‘I’m okay, and people

who are similar to me are okay’” (Soloway). In Netflix’s Grace and Frankie and Amazon

Studios’ Transparent, two streaming platforms take their first steps into original content creation

by positing stories predicated upon experiences of otherness. The subjects of the series are those

whose identities place them outside standards of normativity, yet each show endeavors to

perform a kind of intrepid social boundary maintenance. They carefully etch the pains, pleasures,

and dreams of those whose previous cultural appearances have been inscribed only with

difference. In placing as protagonists those who are most underrepresented and stereotyped,

Grace and Frankie and Transparent bravely deconstruct previous conceptions of marginalized

demographics and their communities, celebrating individuality while simultaneously reclaiming

the right to portray both self and difference as a cohesive force. Both Grace and Frankie and

Transparent portray the constant struggle of the characters in their relation to the cultural

dominant as a reclamation of personhood, a disavowal of the latent causticity in allowing identity

to be asserted upon oneself from outside societal forces.

What is more, Grace and Frankie and Transparent are constructed by producers, writers,

and creators who wish to question the very nature of protagonism and representation; Jane

Fonda’s stark activist background has led the content of her work to be informed by the politics

of the otherwise voiceless and Jill Soloway named her studio “Topple” as an incitation to “topple

the patriarchy”. In this way, the presentation of subaltern communities on both Grace and

Frankie and Transparent is a directional illustration of radical difference. As is apparent in

Hannah Wold

Grace and Frankie’s intricate examination of stereotype as well as Transparent’s formulation of

an entirely new filming style, these series are not content to merely provide superficial

placeholders of marginalized characters to satisfy the demands of their demographic and media

watch-groups. Rather, they actively engage in discussions of gender identity, age, sexual

preference, racial difference, and cultural conceptions of gender in order to formulate a rich and

vital narrative of the nature of inhabiting an identity that is separate from the dominant order.

In this way, Netflix and Amazon present series which approach the representation of

subaltern communities in narrative as an inherent and demanding element of the vitality of their

programming, necessitating an altered approach even to the nature of production itself. Further,

this radical approach to the presentation of difference is not merely confined to Grace and

Frankie and Transparent, nor even to presentations of the LGBTQ community; Netflix and

Amazon have consistently produced original series with rich presentations of ethnic, gendered,

and sexual diversity. What is more, both companies show every sign of continuing to pioneer

series and films which give voice to under-examined cultural perspectives and investigate the

nature of difference.

Indeed, the upcoming Netflix original series Dear White People is an adaptation of the

2014 film of the same name, and positions itself as a direct address from a position of otherness

to the dominant order. Additionally, Netflix series such as The Get Down populates the screen

with the music and trials of African American musicians in the 1980s and the short documentary

The White Helmets recently garnered an Oscar for its depiction of the challenges faced by Syrian

crisis workers. Even within original Netflix series that don’t specifically focus on the experience

of othered characters, the studio demonstrates its commitment to diversity; its thriller hit

Stranger Things tirelessly deconstructs the heterosexist formation of the horror genre’s treatment

Hannah Wold

of women, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt underlines the racial prejudices experienced by its

African American protagonist, and Master of None examines the experience of Southwest Asian

immigrants in America.

It is not only Netflix original series which etch observations concerning identity politics

into its series; Amazon Studios is similarly oriented towards the presentations of

underrepresented identities and realities. Indeed, the productions of Amazon are perhaps even

more vehement in their endorsement of the affirmation of self over societal pressures. In shows

such as Good Girls Revolt, a distillation of second wave feminism occurs in the writer’s room at

Newsweek. In Man in the High Castle, the protagonists attempt to foment hopeful resistance to

the fascist regime through pirate radio. I Love Dick, another offering by Jill Soloway which was

created by an all-female writer’s room, was affirmed by Soloway as “a tool of the matriarchal

revolution” (Staff, Variety). In this way, Amazon similarly offers series which emphasize the

empowerment of the culturally oppressed through an indefatigable assertion of voice. Even Hulu,

which was not examined in detail in this analysis due to its dearth of original material, is

beginning to formulate its own position in the paradigm of presentations of otherness on

streaming platforms. The studio will soon begin to air its adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s

dystopian feminist novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which examines a reality in which women have

exclusively inhabited the roles that they have been culturally proscribed, consequently living as

servants and near-prostitutes.

Of course, this is not to say that both Amazon and Netflix are devoid of aspects in which

they could improve their diversity; both would undoubtedly benefit from expanding their hiring

practices to include more people of color, more women, more members of the LGBTQ

community, and especially more women of color, whose representation industry-wide is

Hannah Wold

indefensibly scarce. Nevertheless, through the efforts of Netflix and Amazon, offerings of film

and television series find a respite from the traditionally hegemonic standards of production and

representation in companies whose presence in the market of original series and film is less than

five years old. While more than a century of film history and more than half a century of

broadcast television have produced an abysmal representation of minorities both on screen and

behind it, streaming services have introduced a model of production wherein minority

representation frequently surpasses the industry standard. Thus, in the last five years, Netflix

and Amazon have achieved the unthinkable dual task of breaking into a century-old market in

which the major industry influencers have remained unaltered since the nascence of cable while

simultaneously outperforming its predecessors in many measures of minority representation.

Roger Ebert once famously commented, “The purpose of civilization and growth is to be

able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a

machine that generates empathy” (Collette). In fact, Jill Soloway said of the quote, “Roger Ebert

said film is an empathy machine and this is true of television, and all story” (Soloway). Indeed,

empathy is so intrinsic to the creation of cultural products that it can hardly be separated from

narrative or themes; it weaves its way into the structure of the story, becoming a purpose unto

itself. In the production, distribution, and viewing of shows like Transparent and Grace and

Frankie, which respectfully consider as their subject the lives of those whose legitimacy within

cultural narratives is relentlessly questioned, a graceful induction into the experience of empathy

for the traditionally invisible occurs. Of course, it is vital for viewers to see affirmations of their

own identities onscreen, but similarly essential is the frequent engagement with narratives that

skillfully represent those with whom the viewer is unfamiliar.

Hannah Wold

One of the stories frequently told by Jeffrey Tambor in interviews about the experience of

playing Maura concerns the moment a man assessed by Tambor as “obviously a CEO or hedge

fund guy” recognized Tambor on a flight (Fallon). Anticipating a xenophobic criticism of his

performance as a transwoman, Tambor was surprised when the man instead said, “‘I want to

thank you for teaching me something I had no idea about’” (Fallon). In this way, the creation of

stories about the experience and circumstances of otherness not only affirms the reality of those

who have lived within subaltern identities, it simultaneously generates awareness and

understanding among those who have not.

In another stirring affirmation of the powers of art, Roger Ebert said, “Art is the closest

we can come to understanding how a stranger feels”. And while the entertainment industry has

generated stories for generations about remarkable lives and interesting people, the stories it has

neglected, those concerning people whose narratives have been consistently overwritten and

ignored, represent an opportunity in the creation of empathy which has yet to be mined. Thus,

the production of stories surrounding those whose experiences have yet to become part of the

dominant cultural narrative embodies a vital effort to create empathy for those least likely to

receive it. By engaging with minority characters for the duration of each episode and each

season, viewers are thus interpolated into a practice of intimate and vulnerable identification.

The honest portrayal of realities of social difference is thus not only an economic boon enabled

by the revenue model employed by streaming services, it is a bold contradiction of the familiar in

an attempt to pioneer new mechanics of empathy.

Hannah Wold

Bibliography

Adam, Seth. "List of Award Recipients: 27th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles the

Beverly Hilton, April 2, 2016." GLAAD. GLAAD, 11 Apr. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Andrews, Travis M. "Amazon Launched a Fake Radio Station to Promote ‘The Man in the High

Castle.’ Angry Trump Supporters Thought It Was Real." The Washington Post. WP

Company, 13 Mar. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017

Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and

Sexuality at the Movies. 2nd ed. Malden, MA, USA: Wiley- Blackwell, 2009. Print.

Blyth, Antonia. "On The ‘Grace And Frankie’ Set, Women Take Center Stage." Deadline.

Penske Business Media, 10 June 2016. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Buxton, Ryan. "Lily Tomlin's Long Road To Publicly Discussing Her Sexuality." The Huffington

Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Apr. 2015. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Calvo, Dana, prod. Good Girls Revolt. 5 Nov. 2015. Amazon Studios. Web. 20 Mar. 2017

Chaisson, Reba L. For Entertainment Purposes Only?: An Analysis of the Struggle to

Control Filmic Representations. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2000. Print.

Cosgrave, Bronwyn. "Jane Fonda: The Reluctant Fashionista."New York Times; ProQuest

Central, Sep 21, 2016, Web. 15 Mar. 2017

Collette, Olivia. "Moving Through Empathy: On "Life Itself"." RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital

LLC, 27 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Duffer, Matt, and Ross Duffer, prods. Stranger Things. 15 July 2016. Netflix. Web. 20 Mar.

2017.

Emmrich, Stuart. "Jill Soloway of 'Transparent': A Daughter's Story." Dec 19 2015.

Web. ProQuest. 16 Mar. 2017.

Fallon, Kevin. "How 'Transparent' Changed Jeffrey Tambor and Judith Light." The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast Company, 26 Sept. 2016. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Fonda, Jane. "About My Faith." Jane Fonda: Official Website and Community. N.p., 10 June

2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Fonda, Jane. Jane Fonda's Words of Politics and Passion. Ed. Mary Hershberger. New York:

New, 2006. Print

Freeman, Hadley. "Does It Matter That Transparent's Jeffrey Tambor Isn't Trans?" The

Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 08 Oct. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Hannah Wold

French, Sean. Jane Fonda: A Biography. London: Pavillion, 1997. Print

Gilbert, Mathew. "A Mixed Result for LGBTQ Representation on TV." Boston Globe. Boston

Globe Media Partners, LLC, 07 Nov. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Gillan, Jennifer. Television and New Media: Must-click TV. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011.

Print.

Green, Philip. Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood. Amherst, MA: U of

Massachusetts, 1998. Print.

Greven, David. Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman's Film,

Film Noir, and Modern Horror. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.

Grothaus, Michael. "Despite On-Screen Diversity, Streaming Media Lacks Minority Faces

Behind The Scenes." Fast Company (2016): n. pag. Fast Company. 24 Feb. 2016. Web.

2 Oct. 2016.

Hatcher-Mays, Meagan. "Netflix Instant Has a Diversity Problem." The Daily Dot (2013): n.

pag. The Daily Dot. 9 Dec. 2013. Web. 2 Oct. 2016. Web.

Holmes, Linda. "'A Machine That Generates Empathy': Roger Ebert Gets His Own

Documentary." NPR: Monkey See. NPR, 03 July 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Kauffman, Marta, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin, prods. Grace and Frankie. 8 May 2015. Netflix.

Web. 20 Dec. 2016.

Kang, Inkoo. "Transparent's Jill Soloway Continues TV's Sexual (R)evolution." Village Voice.

N.p., 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Kilson, Kashann. "How Netflix Shows Are Leading Hollywood's Diversity Charge." Inverse

(2016): n. pag. Inverse. 4 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016.

Koblin, John. "Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, Together again, in 'Grace and Frankie'."New York

Times; ProQuest Central, Apr 23, 2015, Web.

Kohan, Jenji, prod. Orange Is the New Black. 11 July 2013. Netflix. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

Larkin, Alexandra, and Sophie Lewis. "Netflix's 'The White Helmets' Wins Oscar." Cable News

Network. Turner Broadcasting System, 27 Feb. 2017. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

McNiece, Mia. "Lily Tomlin on Her 45-Year Relationship with Jane Wagner." People.com.

Time Inc, 19 Jan. 2017. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Hannah Wold

Miller, Julie. "Transparent's Jeffrey Tambor Says He Wants to Be the Last Cisgender Actor in

Trans Role." HWD. Vanity Fair, 18 Sept. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism :

Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP,

1999: 833-44.

"Netflix, Inc.; Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin Back Together again in "Grace and Frankie," A New

Original Comedy Series on Netflix." Entertainment Newsweekly, 2014., pp. 110

ProQuest Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Collection; ProQuest Central, Web.

NPR, Fresh Air. "Actor Jeffrey Tambor On 'Transparent': 'I Loved It From The Very

Beginning'." NPR. NPR, 10 Dec. 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Prestwich, Dawn, and Nicole Yorkin, prods. Z: The Beginning of Everything. 6 Nov.

2015. Amazon Studios. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

"Queer Representation in Film and Television." Queer Representation in Film and Television.

MediaSmarts, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Ring, Trudy. "This Year's Michigan Womyn's Music Festival Will Be the Last." Advocate. N.p.,

21 Apr. 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Ryan, Maureen. "Netflix’s Cindy Holland Reveals Streaming Service’s ‘Commitment to

Diversity’." Variety. N.p., 19 Nov. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2017

Schoon, Robert. "Is Streaming TV Less Diverse Than Old Fashioned Entertainment

Sources?" Latin Post. N.p., 1 Mar. 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016.

Siegemund-Broka, Austin. "Diverse Casts Deliver Higher Ratings, Bigger Box Office: Study

(Exclusive)." The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Smith, Stacy L., Marc Choueiti, and Katherine Pieper. Inclusion or Invisibility: Comprehensive

Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment. Rep. USC Annenberg School for

Journalism and Communication, 22 Feb. 2016. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

Soloway, Jill, prod. Transparent. 26 Sept. 2014. Amazon Studios. Web. 20 Dec. 2016.

Soloway, Jill. "The Female Gaze." Topple Productions, LLC. Toronto International Film

Festival, 11 Sept. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Soloway, Jill, and Eileen Myles. "Eileen Myles & Jill Soloway - Hammer Museum." The

Hammer Museum. University of California: Los Angeles, 27 Oct. 2016. Web. 15 Mar.

2017

Hannah Wold

Spotnitz, Frank, prod. The Man in the High Castle. 15 Jan. 2015. Amazon Studios. Web. 20 Mar.

2017.

Staff, Variety. "Jill Soloway: Amazon Show ‘I Love Dick’ ‘Is a Tool of the Matriarchal

Revolution’." Variety. Penske Business Media, 23 Jan. 2017. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Thomas, June. "Why Did Maura Pfefferman and Her Daughters Go to a Trans-Exclusionary

Wimmin’s Festival?" Slate Magazine. N.p., 14 Dec. 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Toplin, Robert Brent, ed. Hollywood as Mirror: Changing Views of "Outsiders" and "Enemies"

in American Movies. Westport (Conn.): Greenwood, 1993. Print

Toulmin, Stephen E. "Trans Aging: We're Still Here." Transgender Rights Toolkit: A Legal

Guide for Trans People and Their Advocate (2016): 1-4. Transgender Rights Toolkit.

Lambda Legal: Making the Case for Equality, 2016. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Tourjee, Diana. "Meet Two of the Trans Minds Behind the Groundbreaking New Show

'Transparent'." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 16

Mar. 2017.

Townsend, Megan. "GLAAD's 'Where We Are on TV' Report Finds Progress in LGBTQ

Representation on TV, but Much Work Still to Be Done." GLAAD. N.p., 12 Jan. 2017.

Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Tucker, Karen Iris. "Amy Ray Explains How the Indigo Girls Came to Perform

On Transparent." Slate: Outward. Slate Magazine, 14 Dec. 2015. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Vider, Stephen. "There’s an Amazing Bit of History Hiding In Transparent’s Opening

Titles." Slate Magazine. N.p., 23 Oct. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Villarreal, Yezmin. "The Love Story of Jill Soloway and Eileen Myles." Advocate. N.p., 27 Oct.

2016. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Wong, Brittany. "Mary Williams' Book: Jane Fonda's Marriage To Ted Turner 'Ate Her Alive,'

Adopted Daughter Writes In New Memoir." The Huffington Post.

TheHuffingtonPost.com, 08 Apr. 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Hannah Wold

100