DISCLOSURE
US, 2020, 108 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Sam Feder.
In recent years, there have been a considerable number of documentaries, many from the United States, portraits of people who have transitioned from one gender to another. They have been informative. They have been sympathetic. There have been strong interviews with this people themselves, their families, doctors, psychologists… And they have enabled the public who view these documentaries to appreciate why a person has made the decision to transition, the repercussions, physically, mentally, emotionally, and the step towards a new life in the different gender.
In this documentary, one of the interviewees remarks that most people have not encountered someone who has made a gender transition. And then hands that many trans-people have not encountered them either. To that extent, the general public seems to be rather “sheltered” in experience of this significant experience in the lives of many individuals, the repercussions of the change, for themselves, family and friends. Acceptance and non-acceptance.
Which means that for many people, most people, information about transition comes from the media. This is through interviews, talk shows… But, there are also the images of trans-people over the last hundred years in film and television.
The value of this documentary is the large number of excerpts highlighting the impact of film and television on public consciousness about transition. The filmmakers have found some very early clips of films on this theme, even from 1914, mainly about men dressed as women, becoming women. There are fewer clips about women becoming men.
With the selection of clips from sitcoms over the decades, the interviewees indicate how detrimental these images, situations, interpretations can be, singling out particular aspects, aspects of cross-dressing, aspects of violence towards trans-individuals (especially African Americans in the US), the comedy of characters discovering that a woman was physiologically a man and consequent vomiting in discussed (clips from a number of popular films including Ace Ventura). The clips range from films and television series from the 1970s on.
The film has a wide range of interviewees, especially those who have made transitions to actor or actress, especially focusing on love and Cox, interviews, her career, and being an executive producer of this documentary. The range of interviewees has more trans-women than trans-men. However, they speak of their experiences, their work in theatre and on screen, their difficulties, the greater understanding and acceptance as the 21st-century has moved on.
This could be a significant film for the general public, opening up the themes of transition as well as looking at and listening to how trans-people have been presented in the entertainment media and the consequences for public consciousness.
