Watching each episode of a show like Transparent , where every character evolves beautifully, is special. It works like a catalyst stimulating your own inner unknowns; setting an epiphany into motion. Transparent tells the story of Maura Pfefferman, who’s born in the wrong gender, as Mort. After what seems like a lifetime, she decides to live her truth, she comes out as a transgender. Her family — ex-wife Shelly and their kids, Sarah, Ali and Josh — at first, reluctant, slowly come around and accept her.
About a couple of weeks after it was released online globally, I devoured the ten episodes.
While the first season dealt with Maura’s issues, the current one expanded the show’s universe to telling the audience about every family member’s life, their troubles, confrontations, desires and happiness. Each episode revealed something about the Pfefferman clan, and sometimes, much to my discomfort, a little bit about myself. Here’s what I learned so far.
Gender and sexuality are so often confused . Transparent is a lesson in understanding identity and identifying sexuality. Centred round Maura, who’s born Mort, the audience learns how stifling it is to live a life embroiled in lies and secrets. Maura, after the transition from male to female, is still very much sexually attracted to women, as she vociferously declares her love for vaginas.
Clichéd as it may be, love transcends gender . In one particularly liberating scene, Maura pleasures her ex, Shelly, in a bathtub. The makers of the show have handled the subject of sex beautifully, keeping it tender when required and raw at other times for a heightened effect. It’s especially heartening to see older actors depict the universal feeling of yearning intimacy and sexual desire. Shelly still loves her spouse, despite the change. After all, you fall in love with a person and not a gender.
Self discovery will be a continuous, if not-always-pleasantly surprising journey for the rest of our lives . Maura’s eldest daughter Sarah, divorces her husband for an ex-flame, a woman named Tammy. She then leaves her new lady love on their wedding day. While she is first reluctant to accept it, Sarah’s growing intrigue into kink helps her find semblance in a chaotic new stage of her life. She’s middle-aged with two children.
Like self-discovery, oppression too will be an incessant parasite plaguing us forever . In a parallel arc, Transparent shows us a Jewish family in 1930s Berlin. A mother wants to free her daughter and transvestite son from the Nazis. In the present day, Maura and her family are battling their own forms of oppression. The founders of a feminist forest festival insist on only having cisgender women attend the event. You’d think as an oppressed gender, women ought to be more inclusive. But it’s a sharp metaphor for discrimination. There’s always going to be something that excludes someone, somewhere.
Grief can only be overcome by truly mourning and feeling it . Mort has long since died, metaphorically of course, giving birth to Maura. While they’re the same person, the Pfefferman family has lost a father and a husband — a man who they once loved. Maura’s son, Josh, hasn’t mourned Mort’s loss. He’s still in shock a year after his father’s transition. For anyone who’s lost someone, death or otherwise, you’ll know bereavement is an all-consuming emotion that can only be overcome by truly experiencing it. I learned that after five full hours of watching Transparent .
Transparent is a lesson in understanding identity and sexuality
