Transparent need
There are two ways in American media to introduce the viewing public to a minority group: you can present a member of the group as a “normal” and “respectable” member of the middle class (think of the gay couple Mitch and Cam on Modern Family) or as someone who’s as screwed-up as any member of the human race. Transparent goes with option two.
Transparent, an original television series streaming on Amazon, follows the affluent, Jewish, Los Angeles–based Pfefferman clan as patriarch Mort transitions to being Maura (played in a mournful and tender key by Jeffrey Tambor). As Maura assumes her female identity and comes out to her children, the revelation of her secret drags a lifetime of other family secrets out into the light.
Eldest daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker) throws herself into an affair with her college girlfriend, whose existence she had hidden from her husband. Josh (Jay Duplass), the middle child and only son, reveals that he began sleeping with the family babysitter when he was 15. When he falls madly in love with two different women in a short period of time, his younger sister Ali calls his behavior a “love addiction.” Meanwhile Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) experiments with sex (the act) and gender (her self-presentation) with abandon, glee, terror, and confusion.
