Movie Review - Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (Pride Month)

This documentary basically takes what I do in print and turns into a visual conversation. It's film criticism where a marginalized community gets to speak about the films and TV shows that have or are supposed to represent that particular marginalized community. What's great is that the conversations are honest and aren't sugar-coated. People speak the truth about how Hollywood in particular has portrayed them. Specifically, this is about how Hollywood has portrayed the transgender community. It's a very comprehensive criticism where transgender people go through 100 years of Hollywood films and TV shows and deconstruct it all. Long story short, most of the depictions that are cited here are problematic and have been more hurtful to the transgender community, as they've been helpful or just simply accurate.

One of the first criticisms is how Hollywood made jokes about transgender people or constantly make trans-people the butt of jokes. It was always humor at the expense of trans-people, laughing at them and not with them. However, the second criticism and probably one of the most powerful criticisms is how Hollywood makes transgender people the villains. This was done going as far back as black-and-white films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, to the monstrous portrayal in the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991). As trans-people talk about this aspect, it's clear that this is how Hollywood treats many minorities. Whether it is gay people, Black people, Latino people or Muslim people, villainizing these minorities is a constant complaint about Hollywood. This documentary goes through numerous examples of how that's done to trans-people and how complicated it is.

On the flip side, there has been a disturbing trend, particularly on television of the 1990's and early 2000's, where trans-people are constantly portrayed as victims. The victimization of trans-people has been especially egregious on cop shows or police procedural shows and medical shows. Of course, it's true that trans-people and especially black trans-women have been victimized in huge disproportionate ways in real life. However, when that's all the stories on TV that a person sees, that has an effect on the collective psyche and the specific psyche of trans-people who watch. If there's a takeaway from this, that psychical effect is what director Sam Feder is trying to convey. These things have an effect on the collective psyche, which affects how people see transgender people and thus how they're treated.

What's important to know is that for the longest time, the images on the silver screen or the images on the small screen didn't match the lives of actual trans-people day-to-day. For decades, there was never a depiction that just showed a trans-person living their regular life. It's either victim, villain or butt of joke. After the turn of the 21st century, the tide did start to shift, but other problematic things popped up. One of those problematic things is cisgendered people taking transgender roles. There was also the general white-washing of LGBT history, which means focusing on white people within the LGBT community and focusing on white people more. It also means changing history that had Black and Latino people in the forefront, so that white people are instead in the forefront.

The title of the film comes from the idea of trans-people feeling like they have to disclose that they are transgender. Essentially, it's the idea of coming-out. It's not exactly the same as coming-out for a gay or lesbian person. It's not the same mindset. What I gathered is that for some trans-people, the fact that they're trans isn't a secret to be disclosed. Also, if a trans-person chooses not to say that they're trans, it's not them lying or betraying people with whom they interact.

There is this interesting aside where the film talks about this idea of cross-dressing and specifically cross-dressing for Black men in America. There was a TV series called White Famous. In it, there's a scene where a Black comedian is told that he has to cross-dress in order to achieve success in Hollywood and that show makes the joke that Hollywood requires Black men to emasculate themselves by cross-dressing in order to be successful because then they're not seen as "threats." There's also another interesting aside about the lack of trans-male representation overall.

With all the criticisms though, there are good things that this documentary points out. Some of those good things are unlikely shows and films. There's a whole segment about 80's and 90's talk shows. The Jerry Springer Show in a weird way becomes a celebrated program for trans-people. The funniest example though is listening to Lilly Wachowski explain why a Bugs Bunny cartoon was one of the most positive transgender examples in all of the media prior to the recent decade.

What's great are all the amazing and beautiful trans-people that this documentary collects. Hearing from all of them is incredible. Many of them are actors in the industry and the hope is that we see more of them in more positive projects that give us the kind of representation that they want to see. While things in the media have gotten better since 2010, there still is a long way we still need to go and this documentary is a tool for that.

Rated TV-MA.

Running Time: 1 hr. and 47 mins.

Available on Netflix.