The Cisnormative Wall: Distinguishing Gazes in Modern American Television and Film Featuring Transgender Characters (2013-2020)

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dc.contributorDe Los Reyes, Guillermo
dc.contributorNordmarken, Sonny
dc.contributorVollrath, Lesli
dc.contributor.authorNewman, Kat
dc.date.accessioned2021-09-10T17:43:37Z
dc.date.available2021-09-10T17:43:37Z
dc.date.issued2020-11
dc.description.abstractThis thesis analyzed modern American television and film works: "The Danish Girl (2015)," "Orange is the New Black (2013)," "Dallas Buyers Club (2013)," "POSE (2018)" and "Euphoria (2019)," in relation to the transgender representations they presented onscreen. The works were selected after what TIME magazine called the "Transgender Tipping Point," in response to the recent increased visibility of transgender characters in media. This thesis argues that increased visibility does not equate to positive impacts on the lives of real-life people who are transgender. The television and film works are used to discuss transgender tropes as depicted onscreen and in real-life, and to articulate the nuances that decipher cisnormative gazes from transnormative gazes. All of these pieces take a run at cisnormative assumptions that have traditionally excluded transgender people from the mainstream. What is at stake is whether they do enough to break through what I call the cisnormative wall, the cisnormative rhetoric that prevails in the United States. When dealing with the representation of transgender characters, the first question that arises is: Is the character portrayed by a cisgender or transgender person? Other important questions I explore are: Is the transgender character minimized to simply their transgender status? Does the work conflate sex, sexuality, and gender identity — intrinsically linking sexuality to gender expression? And can the transgender character be categorized as “victim� or “villain?� (As previous representations have cast these titles upon them). Using both qualitative and statistical data, this thesis incorporates a combination of television and film analysis using Transgender Studies texts and statistical data centering the transgender population living in the United States to place the works on a spectrum from cisnormative to transnormative.
dc.description.departmentHonors College
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/8182
dc.language.isoen
dc.relation.ispartofSenior Honors Theses
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectTransgender
dc.subjectCisgender
dc.subjectCisnormativity
dc.subjectTransnormativity
dc.subjectQueer
dc.subjectSocial science
dc.subjectFilm
dc.subjectGender
dc.subjectTelevision
dc.subjectPop culture
dc.subjectSexuality
dc.subjectCisgender gaze
dc.subjectTransgender gaze
dc.subjectVisibility
dc.subjectRepresentation
dc.subjectWomen's, gender, and sexuality studies
dc.titleThe Cisnormative Wall: Distinguishing Gazes in Modern American Television and Film Featuring Transgender Characters (2013-2020)
dc.typeHonors Thesis
dc.type.dcmiText
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.levelBachelors
thesis.degree.nameBachelor of Arts

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