Transparently Rendering the Past
[vc_row][vc_column][title type="subtitle-h6"]August Glomski[/title][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="11/12"][vc_column_text]
Amazon’s critically acclaimed show Transparent is reaching for new heights as it turns back to grapple with one of TV’s most compelling, and challenging, themes: the past. In most shows, dalliance with the past typically comes in the form of flashbacks, but inherent in this method of time travel is a discontinuity in scene where the audience is ripped form the present and thrust into an earlier, and often disorienting, moment in time. To hail the past almost always requires a caesura in the present, but Transparent utilizes another method that artistically fuses these time-periods into one.
Transparent follows the painful, touching, and darkly comedic story of Maura—a recently-out transgender woman—as she learns to navigate the world from an ostensibly new gender. With three adult children who carry significant baggage of their own, much of the show centers around Maura’s family as they both struggle and celebrate the emergence of a woman they’ve known, but also haven’t, for their entire lives. The tone vacillates between heartbreaking and uplifting in a way that toys with the emotions and has you begging for more with each roll of the credits.
The series is also unapologetically artistic. Rich metaphors and tableaus of human insecurity parade across the screen, and viewers are given the chance to engage in the decoding of symbolism and artistic decisions. Its episodes often end with ambiguity, asking audiences to do a bit of work themselves to uncover deeper meaning, and the result is refreshing. Much like its main character, Transparent knows itself as an art-form and has no qualms in boldly revealing that self to the world.
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Starting in its second season, the show embarks upon an exploration of the past that reveals glimpses of horror in Maura’s family history. Viewers slowly piece together a narrative that tells of Maura’s aunt, Gittel, who was a transgender woman living in Nazi Germany. The show pins this exploration of the past to Maura’s youngest daughter, Ali, as she embarks upon her own journey of discovery regarding both sexuality and Judaism. Most of these forays back in time are achieved thorough moments of flashback that one would traditionally expect. However, the climactic moment with the past occurs in Season Two’s penultimate episode, Man on the Land, and it is here that the show employs a powerful technique to foster communion between past and present. Rather than leaning solely on flashback, Man on the Land brings the past into the present by placing actors from both time periods on the same plane, and the effect is a stunning fusion of temporality.
The scene in question follows Ali as she walks through the forest in search of her missing mother. Her first step into the past is just that, a literal experience of walking in the shoes of an ancestor when Ali looks down and sees that “Jew shoes”—colorful slippers tipped with bells that Jewish women were forced to wear in the middle ages—have suddenly appeared on her feet. She continues walking, and characters from her family’s past materialize out of the forest and brush past her. In the distance, the glow of a bonfire attracts her attention, and she moves towards the beckoning source of light.
When she comes upon the fire, which operates as a symbol of both holocaust and illumination, she encounters her grandmother and transgender aunt standing before her. We recognize these characters from earlier episodes, but this is the first time that Ali seems to visually acknowledge their presence. Other past characters surround the bonfire as well, and a haunting story unfolds as Ali and her grandmother watch swastika-wearing soldiers approach Gittel. Horror ripples across their expressions as they then witness Gittel being carried off into the shadows of the forest.
On a surface level, this scene functions to reveal a painful moment in Ali’s, and therefore Maura’s, family history. The memory that is reenacted tells of the persecution that befell the family when they were still living in Germany at the time of WWII. Furthermore, this specific moment is particularly impactful for the show because it aligns Maura’s struggle as a transgender woman with a history of injustice that has forever plagued the transgender community.
Yet, on another level, the bonfire scene articulates a specific method for interacting with the past that has larger, thematic ramifications on the show. Upon first watching, I was intrigued by the decision to present the ancestors without any use of special effect. No visual tricky is employed to differentiate time. The firelight flickers uniformly on the faces of both Ali and her ancestors, and a union is thereby forged between the two. A leveling of temporality results from this portrayal as characters from the past seemingly command equal agency over their present surroundings. The connection is further emphasized when Ali and her grandmother grasp hands. In this gesture, Ali welcomes the past into her own life through a symbol of unity. Finally, this scene is set to the chilling sound of Alice Boman’s voice which repeats the refrain from her song Waiting—“Are you coming back? Are you coming back? I’m waiting”—to ultimately highlight a reemergence of family history.
As a result, the bonfire scene represents a rendering of the past that invokes family history by placing the past in a contemporaneous space with the present. Season two touches upon the backstory of Maura’s family briefly throughout its course, but the bonfire scene gives new direction and meaning to this theme. The placement of past and present on the same stage suggests the past is very much alive and resonant in the present. What more, the repetition of Boman’s voice asking are you coming back? points to the past as something that needs to be discovered, a journey that will likely continue to unfold in the third season. The bonfire scene may leave us wondering where the show’s exploration with the past will next venture, but it seems apparent that the distance between past and present is disappearing, leaving the metaphorical screen between the temporalities suddenly transparent.
Featured image courtesy of Amazon
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