In today’s world, we are surrounded
by depictions of gender, either male or female. Magazines, movies, and
television shows are just a few of the outlets the media get to us through. A
topic that we have discussed in class is the queer community. We learned what
LGBTQIA stood for, and I started becoming more aware of how they are portrayed
in the media. It seems like our society, at least pop culture, is beginning to
be more accepting of gays and lesbians, but I have not seen or heard much of
anything about transgenders. As I previously wrote in one of my blog posts, 30 Rock is my all-time favorite show. In
this show one of the main characters is dating a man who dresses as a woman. 30
Rock addresses the issues transgenders bring up in the episode “Respawn,” where
some people are less than pleased with Jenna and Paul’s relationship.
Jenna
is one of the main characters on 30 Rock
and is known for her eccentricities. She plays an actress on the show and in
one episode falls in love with someone named Paul. Paul leads his everyday life
as a man, but works at a restaurant where he impersonates Jenna. As their
relationship develops, he presents himself only as a Jenna look-alike: wig,
makeup, heels, and all. Everyone on the show does not give this a second
thought and their storyline is an interesting one. The specific episode that
addresses how other people perceive and react to their relationship is the
episode “Respawn”. In this episode Jenna is asked to be the spokesperson for Wool
by a council of business-suit-and-tie men, and of course she is thrilled at the
opportunity. Being a celebrity, there is quite a bit of media coverage on her
and her relationship with Paul.
Unfortunately, the tight-laced men of Wool have no desire for their
spokesperson to be presenting herself this way. They demand that Jenna begin
leading a “normal, wholesome” lifestyle.
Jenna
and Paul’s lifestyle is anything but “normal” and that is the way they like it.
This opportunity though is to good to pass up, so Jenna decides to convince the
head councilman, Eugene that she is normal. To prove this, Jenna invites him
and his wife over for dinner with her and Paul. She convinces Paul to dress
like an ordinary man and conduct himself in that appropriate way. In the middle
of dinner Paul exclaims, “We’re normal! And being normal is American!” This
line sums up how we, as a society, are encouraged to behave. This show
regularly makes fun of how Americans act and react to situations not deemed
“normal”. This episode is a perfect example for how we are encouraged to be
normal in every situation. In order to book this deal, Jenna must portray
herself as someone she is not and this happens all the time.
Americans
have such a narrow, specific view about what is normal and any deviance from
that is highly frowned upon. Mainstream magazines and media never feature
transgenders in any of their articles or pictures, aside from the very rare
mention about Cher’s son. How would people react to a transgender person being
featured on the cover of Us Weekly? They would be shocked and probably
infuriated, especially because our English language does not even have any
gender-neutral pronouns aside from “they”. Hir is becoming more popularly used,
but not quite enough that it is used in mainstream culture.
Mainstream
culture is not very accepting of cross-dressers or transgenders. That is why 30 Rock is such a great show because
they have no problem addressing and featuring people not deemed “normal” by pop
culture’s standards. In this episode, while Jenna is in the meeting, Eugene
brings forth a somewhat controversial image of her and Paul. He asks her in a
disgusted voice if he is a cross-dresser. Jenna chuckles and says, “Goodness!
No. Paul is a gender-dysmorphic bigenitalian pansexualle.” This shocks Eugene,
just as it would shock most of the American population. By pretending to be
“normal,” whatever that is, she is not staying true to a part of herself and to
Paul.
At
the end of the episode, after Jenna and Paul have impressed Eugene with their
“normalness”, she goes to the photo shoot to take pictures for Wool. After the
shoot, Paul stands on the stage with his back to the audience dressed in his “normal”
attire of his Jenna costume. Eugene saunters over congratulating Jenna and
starts stroking her back and complimenting her in a seductive voice. When Jenna
turns around and Eugene sees that it is Paul, he is speechless. Then Jenna, who
was dressed as a man pretending to be one of the set constructers, turns around
and Eugene is outraged. Jenna follows with a speech addressing how she does not
care if they give her up as spokesperson, she has no desire to be normal and
never will. She decided to stay true to herself and Paul, and not give in to
whatever normality Eugene wanted.
Paul and Jenna are perfectly comfortable with their
lifestyle and have no desire to change it or even pretend to change it. Even
though our society pushes that one acts normal and straight, they do what is
normal for them. Everywhere we look there are advertisements and billboards and
pictures featuring straight men and women. I cannot recall the last time I saw
an advertisement featuring a gay or lesbian or transgender. Unfortunately, this
is probably to be expected considering how far we still have yet to go as far
as gender equality. It may be another fifty or one hundred and fifty years
before being part of the queer community is no longer taboo in pop culture.
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