Transparent and the optics of gender(ed) identity

Abstract

Using ‘the transparent’ as its lens, this article discusses three scenes from Joey Soloway’s Transparent, aiming to trace how it invites reflection on the advantages and risks of visibilisation as well as on the plights and recompenses of invisibility. When scholars from political science, social science or economics discuss transparency, many share an overwhelmingly positive understanding of it, which has, lately, come under pressure. Adding to this critique, I argue that Transparent draws attention to the fact that transparency, particularly for the queer subject is deeply ambivalent. To back up this claim, I offer close readings: i) of the establishing shot, which breaks the 180°-rule to warn against trusting what is offered to be seen; ii) of a scene in which Maura describes withstanding pressure from the heteronormative gaze, and iii) a scene in which Ali begins to interrogate her own practices of in_visibilisation. Through its mise-en-scène, this last example offers ‘the translucent’ as an alternative term, a middle ground between a potentially oppressive, isolating and thus silencing invisibility and a potentially exposing, objectifying and thus threatening visibility.