Transamerica

So, I saw the movie “Transamerica” with QGPA on friday. Good movie, I recommend it.

I found it touching, particularly its portrayal of the main character. She’s not a soldier’s boy transsexual. She doesn’t want attention, in fact she’d rather avoid it. She just wants her body to match her sense of self, and she is willing to do whatever it takes in order to get there. She loathes the bureaucracy and the way her sense of self has been medicalized. I found one of her lines very interesting and fairly compelling: “Gender disphoria is categorized as a mental disorder. Isn’t it odd that a mental disorder can be fixed by surgery?”.

There’s a very valid comparison to be made to Priscilla. Both are road trips. Both involve an unexpected child. Both involve a rural guy falling for a transsexual, portrayed in a positive light. On the other hand, Transamerica’s main character values an unobtrusive life, which definitely couldn’t be said of the Priscillans. And Priscilla conflates transsexualism, drag queen tranvestitism, and homosexuality. That alone made me uncomfortable with it. Transamerica lays out transsexualism as something very different from homosexuality. Transamerica is also updated in alot of ways. There’s much less fear of physical violence, and much more awkward family dynamics, and much more interaction to the outside world. And there’s the belief that normality is possible. It’s a reflection of the social change that we are in the midst of. And that adds a great deal to the movie for me.

But even aside from that element, it was worth the time to watch it. The characters and conflicts are believable and engaging.