Each of these shows isn't necessarily THE problem with representing the trans community but each one is another brick in the wall meant to keep trans people seperated as The Other
I think these jokes are trying to subvert a popular transphobic joke at the time where a straight guy ends up accidentally involved with a trans woman & is horrified. Both with Barry Zuckercorn & Steve Holt, we are set up to think this is what will happen, then the twist is they are more interested in trans women. It was possibly meant to be more progressive, but there's still 0 representation. Trans people don't exist as people, just a funny idea, like in what they are responding to. In this case, they are potentially a sexy idea instead of just a gross one, but how much of an improvement is this really?
Probably the best way to put it. I love this show but the people making excuses for the show are exhausting. You are absolutely correct that they were trying subvert "straight guy shocked by trans woman" with "straight man actively looking to sleep with trans woman" but the core of the joke remains the same.
It more feeds into the problem of people who fetishize trans identity rather than treating them as people. Though I would argue that that can be said about all LGBTQIA identities since in most common culture those identities are fetishized by cis people to a disgusting degree.
I interpreted Barry as looking for a drag queen rather than a trans woman. However that may be me trying to defend a show I enjoy that has also hurt me as a trans person.
I personally feel it could go either way. The inclusion of the word "silly" is what makes it murky for me. Because drag can be silly! But I also might be leaning on my naïveté for the same reason.
That scene with Barry was more homophobic than it was transphobic. The entire joke was that Barry was secretly gay. He was looking for a man in drag, I don't think the writers even had trans people in mind. All the implications are still there of course, just not intentionally.
I first found out I was trans in 03. And yeah; trans people got treated like shit in the media. There was so much hostility in general that I ended up staying closeted til 2019.
@@nigeladams8321I basically drank and dissociated a lot. I have very few memories from the last couple decades. There was kid me, there's current me. Everything in the middle is a blur, and feels like a bad nightmare.
I can totally sympathize with that. I was closeted to myself until 30 years old when i just basically wanted to be dead. Then I had to convince myself transition might be the thing that got the funk out but of was such a scary idea to me with all my internalized transphobia. Its now ten years past that and I still struggle but I finally got thin enough for men to treat me very poorly like they do cos women, yay🎉
@@nanopandaI mean this doesn't excuse the transphobia that's being brought back to the mainstream, but low rise jeans are very much back in vogue along with many other "y2k" fashions
Yeah I've always imagined the joke is more on him for that aspect and I personally find it kind of funny for that but all the other jokes just suck so bad
If the rest of the show had a clear baseline that trans people are valid that whole joke could have been left in verbatim and worked much better. Instead of being expected to laugh at Barry's hypocrisy/cognitive dissonance and how much mental gymnastics go into being a transphobic chaser it feels like we're more expected to laugh at him for wanting to sleep with a trans woman and the fact that he's obviously ashamed of it. I do have an idea of what could have made it better other than being in a more openly pro-trans show in the first place. Imagine if they played the same scene but in a later part of the episode he pulls up to a trans sex worker, does his self-loathing confused chaser disrespect and creep routine and she tells him to get lost. She's portrayed as normal, well adjusted person while Barry (and by extension creepy transphobic chasers) are laughed at from the perspective of the trans person. Just a thought.
@@chezmix64i mean, the joke IS on him and it has a transphobic angle to it, even though we can project our point of view on it and fond it funny for that reason.
@@xXxzAAa0aAAzxXx oh yeah, I know. I was just saying that interpretation is an interpretation I use to cope and always find some humor in it for myself but none of the other jokes have any excuses I can make up for them to myself
I have never liked Jeffrey Tambor. My father's negative attitude towards me as a trans woman was partially formed by that man. My father was afraid I'd look like him as I advanced in age.
Just wanted to mention, dressing as woman could also mean you enjoy drag. It doesn't necessarily signal a different gender identity. Or even just a disregard for social gender norms.
@@falconeshield definitely. And they try to conflate it with trans people to try to make their point that being trans is a choice. It's a mess out there. lol
Just came here to say it. Drag enthusiasts, gnc people and even just regular genderqueers also exist, and while their struggles might be undoubtedly connected to transmisogyny, they are not one and the same, and this deserves to be pointed out. The intersectionality of identities and bigotries is more complicated than just pointing to the people with the most pokemon cards.
The biggest issue when discussing about shows having this kind of characters is they don't have anyone who actually knows the difference and so mixed messages happen galore
Fr fr,idk 😂why people assume sexual orientation is determined by how you dress,like I dress liek a girl and date girls doesn’t mean I’m trans or anything
People say TV isn't real life, but I feel like TV raised me far more than my busy parents. Who taught me life lessons? Cartoons, TGIF shows, Mulder and Scully, etc... Art does influence on a personal level, whether we like it or not.
Thanks for saying this. My parents never taught me healthy relationships so I learned bad lessons of friendship and romance from TV. And I'm worried that a lot of the country is being raised by TV writers.
A year ago I had a really vivid dream that I was watching AD and Gob came out as non-binary and it was so realistic that when I woke up I genuinely wasn’t sure if it was a dream or an actual episode
As a big AD fan, who also admits that it has aged poorly, I think I always excused the Maebe/Lindsay/Steve plot by saying, well, Maebe is canonically a terrible person, so of course she'd be transphobic. We're shown time and again that she holds views that we are not supposed to think are okay to hold, or does things that are shockingly horrible to do. However, I think I'd ready to read that episode as a joke at the expense of trans people, even if Maebe is in the wrong, because I think we're actually meant to think that Maebe is in the wrong BECAUSE being compared to a trans person is just that horrible. The joke doesn't work if that's not what the audience believes. So yeah. Maebe is a bad person, but the show doesn't think it's because she's transphobic.
I think the best show to ever have characters be awful to trans people but still be good at it is Its Always Sunny there isn't any moments where I'm like ugh that joke was mean spirited even when they're being shitty it's really impressive how they pull it off. I love Arrested Development but they didn't handle this stuff well
I’ve been watching your videos for a while now, and I just want to say that it’s been a pleasure watching your performance style develop! You’ve always come across as confident and funny, but with each new episode you settle more comfortably into your onscreen presence, which really allows those qualities to shine through 😊
There's a lot I like about Arrested Development, and as you said, it's not the worst, but the Maeby/Lindsay stuff as well as the weird George Sr storyline does always leave a bad taste in my mouth
@@xXDexter3000Xx Very impressive that you deducted my entire relationship with the show from a comment about two small aspects of it that definitely encompasses my entire opinion on it
trans masc here, I love your channel! The way you connect instances of transphobia to the general culture is great, it’s so important to remember that even fictional instances of bigotry don’t just exist in a vacuum.
Did Hurwitz ever apologize for throwing Jessica Walters under the bus when he was questioned over Tambor's behaviour? Even if he just said "I was wrong and I learned from it" I would be happy to forgive him.
He was asked a question and answered honestly. Jefferey Tambor got cross on set. Belive it or not people get cross and angry occasionally, he apologized, nothing more needs to be made of this.
I am once again asking for you to talk about A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netlfix. There’s a chapter where Count Olaf disguised himself as a woman named Shirley to sneak into a Lumber Mill and somewhat flirts with the Mill owner. I feel that the bit wasn’t intended to be transphobic per say, but atleast in the books I feel that it didn’t try to avoid transphobia. The bit with him dressing as a woman might just be a joke of seeing an incredibly sinister villain dress up in a dress. Neil Patrick Harris talks about this character in an interview and talks about how he wanted to avoid the falsetto voice because he believed that to be disrespectful and instead went with a much more cliche secretary in the 80s kind of voice, which is in character for Count Olaf to choose said voice. Anyways it’s an interesting topic and I’d love to hear your opinion on it.
I started watching Arrested Development in high school, and I had trans friends (art school, homestuck gatherings), so the transphobia really stuck out to me at the time. I was watching other sitcoms that had plenty of transphobia, but they were never as funny as Arrested Development was when they weren't being transphobic. The best parts of the show were always the wordplay ones like "Lucille/Loose Seal" and ridiculous scenarios that snowballed over time. I think that if I had a different set of life circumstances where my only exposure to trans identities was transphobic sitcoms, I still would have noticed how lazy those jokes were in comparison to the jokes that still make me laugh when they cross my mind.
There is a trans episode of Bones, a Fox murder forensics drama. I remember it having complicated representation and also talking about Christianity. The episode starts with the trans person dead, which is not a great start. There is a moment where a cis person with the super power to read body language confirms trans joy. The episode was called "The He in the She" so there's that...
I remember that episode! I was really into Bones for a few months and then immediately forgot it existed and moved onto other shows (neurodivergent brain lol). One of my issues with the show was that the main character Temperance was very clearly coded as autistic/neurodivergent (and the real person she is based on is openly autistic) but it's never discussed as an aspect of her identity and character
@BeautyNonsensePoetry I don't know about Kathy Reichs (Who Bones is based on), but her mentor Bill Bass is a POS who believes in stuff like the above, as well as racial biology. He said that indigenous people were stupid for being upset with him for desecrating the graves and bodies of thier ancestors, because he thinks studying them and having them in a museum is more important.
bones is one of my fave shows ever! i remember watching that episode somewhat recently and it held up better than i expected but it def has problematic elements
Hello! I don't know if this will reach you, but I was just hoping you could do an analysis on Disney's 'Wizards of Waverly Place.' The reason for this suggestion is that in the 4th season, 5th episode, Max Russo, one of the main characters, turns into a girl. This is by magic, and doesn't seem to apply anything trans at first, but, Max stays a girl for a number of epidoes, and there are some noticable trans undertones. I don't know if this is enough to create a whole video on, but I think it is definitely worth taking a look because Wizards is one of Disney Channel's most successful sitcoms and impacted so many people, including me.
An edge case is Tobias. He is frequently implied to be a closeted gay man, but there was a sequence where he dressed as a British nanny for several episodes. It was mainly a Mrs. Doubtfire parody, but there were probably some trans jokes wedged in that I don’t remember.
It's so unfortunate IMO that that movie seems to have had an effective pro-transphobia effect on many viewers, because I really think it tried hard not to do that. The villain in the story is explicitly stated to not be trans, and just someone with many serious issues and self-loathing that comes out in gender confusion among other ways. And of course it's clear how the whole vibe and connotation could cause audiences to come away with a reinforced notion of "trans people = likely to be psycho killers" but even worse it seems that a lot of people DO think Buffalo Bill's character is ACTUALLY trans and he's explicitly NOT and I'm just like nnnooooooo
It's so weird to me that she apparently made this whole video essay without having watched a single episode of the show in question. Same thing (mispronouncing the name of one of the MAIN characters in a show) happened with the recent Bones essay. It makes me wary of her research for these in general.
ive been watching Transparent because i stumbled across it while scrolling through prime and its such a weird show, like its really trying to portray being trans in a sympathetic light but then it just falls flat sometimes
Arrested Development was a very formative experience of media transphobia for me, especially that episode with Lindsay and Maeby. Yikes. The homophobia around Tobias and later Gob was also a real hot mess
having “formative experiences” w television sitcoms is the exact reason the majority of adults have the brains of children. there’s absolutely nothing harmful about any of the jokes in AD unless u urself are too self-serious to take a joke.
i hope someday you do a video on A League of Their Own! the amazon series was actually incredible, totally in my top 3 queer shows. and if you wanted you could even go into the original movie and how queerness played a part in the real life story, and how it’s depicted in a movie that isn’t open about that. but even just the amazon show alone would be awesome to see a video on. there’s a character whose story (imo) could be seen as nonbinary representation, which is really cool to see in time period media when a lot of people just pretend nb people didn’t exist yet. i think this show is great at showing what some queer people in this position might’ve been going through internally when the language and nuances of today didn’t exist, and that they are still very relatable even across decades.
I see maeby using slurs the same way I see the always sunny cast -- you're not supposed to agree with her, you're supposed to dislike her and hate the things she does. I think the problem with arrested development is they don't lean harder into the "these people suck" angle so people don't understand they're not supposed to be looked up to.
this is a pretty lame defense. it's the last, or one of the last punchlines of the episode. it's very clearly supposed to be a "ha ha gottem" moment from maeby directed towards her mom where we are supposed to laugh WITH maeby. i don't think you'll die if you acknowledge the show was being actively transphobic and nasty.
there's also no punishment for maeby like there would be in an always sunny episode. the reason for this is because the episode DOES NOT view it as a bad thing. saying this is an always sunny situation where we're supposed to view maeby as an asshole is just so asinine and dismissive of the problems.
@@beatofromuminekorealnotcli4574 I'm literally saying that I wish Arrested Development was a smarter show that did stuff like that, not defending how or what they did. Arrested Development IS a show where every single character is a horrible person who lies, does awful things, etc, and if they leaned into that it could be a better show. There's a very real chance I've just always watched the show "wrong" but I legitimately have always felt the bluths are supposed to be scum of the earth and you're not supposed to agree with them but I guess they could also just be using terrible people as a way to say terrible things and get away with it. I promise you I'm not defending this scene or joke in the show, so please don't read it like that.
It seems like the common troupe of shows nowadays is “trans people.. don’t you mean *the punchline* ?” I’ve learned to ignore a lot of that shit but even with that, the “joke” is getting old
Suggestions?? I’d love to hear your take on transness in American Dad. Particularly the episode “LGBSteve” from season 11(or 12. The move to TBS was weird) Anyway it’s actually pretty surprising. Season 10’s "Stan Goes on the Pill" also seems like the kind of thing you’d talk about
As someone who watched the show many times I always saw George’s changes as an ironic twist to a hypermasculine character and assumed it was a testosterone thing. It made him somewhat pitiable to me when his more “feminine” traits were made fun of by the characters and show itself. It’s quite sad to learn that it was just the show making fun of him and trans people by implying that if you feel those things you’re not a man (btw I love your videos and I will never stop watching them)
Arrested Development viewer here. For a long time, I saw those scenes as subverting the transphobia of the era. Especially Steve seeing a women he respected and was attracted to (who turns out ot be his biological aunt) despite Maeby's below-the-belt transphobia. Your video has given me a lot to think about and tells a lot of harsh truths. I didn't even know AD was setting up George Sr. to come out as trans, just that he was growing as a character by slowly growing away from his patriarchal role and connecting with the parts of his personality he had repressed. But setting him up to come out as trans would have told a very different message - that cis men aren't feminine, and that each part of his evolution as a character should be seen as 'clues' all along.
I had an experience with someone similar to barry. Sugar daddy who liked "traps" and femboys. After a few months, i told him I'd come out as trans and was planning to transition. He told me "well im glad but we're done then. I like boys in skirts, not real women "
Maeby is meant to be pretty unlikable, her disrespect towards trans people, and her attempted use of trans-ness as a repellent is a repudiation of that behavior, not an endorsement of it. Add to that that Steve Holt is one of the few likeable characters in the show (the lovable oaf stereotype) and his acceptance is more of a invalidation of Maeby's behavior. Also, Barry's actions feel more like the "Trans chaser" than anything involving Steve Holt.
to me it doesn’t seem like a repudiation or an endorsement, just an insensitive joke that the writers probably didn’t examine further. and steve holt’s primary trait is being stupid, and his acceptance seems like it was written more to just foil maeby’s plan/do something unexpected rather than teach the audience to be nice
I do agree she was a bit of the rebel type. Her thing in the story was trying to get her parents to give a flying fk about her personal life. Bad attention is better than no attention, etc etc. She kinda reminds me of Stewie or Roger in their respective Seth MacFarlane titles. That being said, the "tranny" part was pretty uncool. And Steve Holt, that dude was just excited for anything and everything. He took like by the cajones and rode it right on down the highway to hell. STEVE HOLT! To me he was just an adorable meat brain (ie the beefy dumbass that's really sweet and friendly). It's been a while since I watched it though, so I may be wrong.
It’s always weird seeing a show I watched well before I realized I was trans pop up in this series since I almost never remember there being trans representation in them. Especially with shows I was incredibly of its so weird that I somehow was completely oblivious to this stuff happening. At least for this show I can chalk it up to not watching past season 3, but still I didn’t even realize the blatant transphobic joke in that season 1 episode. I guess it goes to show that some much of this flys just under the radar for anyone that isn’t knowledgeable of it (for a lack of a better word).
I haven’t seen any of this video yet, but I want to say this is the best scarf ever, and the complementing scarf and hair colors are absolute eye candy.
I'd say I found it funny in the same way you spoke about It's Always Sunny in Philly: we aren't laughing at trans people, we're laughing at how horrible, and unexpectedly just stupid these people are. I do get now I'm older that, the people who I was laughing at for being stupid, were in fact the writers, but at the time I thought it was the characters, and I think it's still a valid way to view the show even if it was not entirely intended. (though the final season was shoot anyway, so who cares).
i mean i do enjoy Arrested Development as a comedy, like I said in my intro spiel, it was innovative for the form of reality tv-esque sitcoms and was witty and well-acted. Criticism doesn't always mean that I hated something, especially when like this, I would attribute it more to just flaws with the writing staff being cisgender people attempting to do trans jokes or trans bits.
(Another thought, it did the opposite of normalising these ideas for me, as in by associating transphobia and trans related bigotry with these funny fiction monsters, it made me understand more clearly how not normal and stupid these perspectives are. that's definitely not gonna have been everyones expereince though, so sorry that the show is unpleasent for you.)
Well I think the key difference is that In Always Sunny, the trans woman was a character who served as the straight woman to be baffled at the transphobia of the leads. She's a normal woman living her life, the joke is how they behave around her. In Arrested Development, there is no trans perspective to these jokes. The jokes presume that being a trans woman is inherently funny; so we laugh at the leads BECAUSE they want to sleep with trans women, are mistaken for a trans woman, or might be a trans woman. A trans woman couldn't just live her life in the setting without being treated like a punchline.
It's perfectly fine to like something while also considering elements of it to be uncomfortable or cringeworthy. I recently finished binge-watching The Muppet Show and Muppets Tonight in their entirety. While I enjoyed the experience overall, there were certain things that made me cringe in both of them. The constant fat jokes about Miss Piggy, a sketch filled with Japanese stereotypes, Steve Martin singing a song in mock Chinese, several unflattering depictions of Native Americans, the objectification of women through a character named Spamela Hamderson, Gonzo scoffing at the idea of dancing with a male because it's "weird" (he literally used that word), and Asian characters singing the song Oklahoma as "Okrahoma" were just a few examples of such moments. Does my objection to those scenes mean that I hate The Muppets? Absolutely not! As you can probably tell by my avatar, I absolutely love them, I just don't love every single thing they do.
@LilySimpson Don't sell yourself short! Your videos are not only informative, but your delivery is easy to digest and pleasant to listen to, you work very hard to make really wonderful videos.
Arrested Development is my BIGGEST “sad farewell”. It helped me through so much and I loved it and watched it so many times and yet I have realized I can and will never watch it again around the time the final season came out. I will cherish the memories and cringe at the humor I used to find ‘hilarious’
Hihi, just wanted to recommend Wilfred, the show with Elijah Woods where he sees his neighbor's dog as an Australian guy in a dog suit. There's a lot of transphobia in the first couple of episodes which is directly tied to the main plot (the classic "oh no does the girl I like have a penis", and one relating to trans porn performers) and then that kind of transphobia kind of disappears from the show. But early on a recurring character is introduced and it's a big teddy bear that Wilfred is in a relationship with? It's really weird, but Wilfred acts like he's in a real relationship with Bear and like they bicker with each other and it's not exclusively a sex punchline. The thing is Wilfred never consistently genders Bear as male or female. I guess the joke is that teddy bears don't really have genders. But they eventually get married when Wilfred becomes like a born again Christian for one episode? Later on Bear's characterization gets more consistent and they basically allude to Bear being feminine and also as having a penis. It was strange in terms of the transphobia because yeah the context was often sexualized but I think Elijah Wood eventually never really batted an eye in regards to Bear's gender and just accepted it. And one episode we have a bit where we see the world from Wilfred's perspective and he sees Bear as an attractive woman in a bear suit, like how Elijah Wood sees Wilfred. And this was an episode after a conversation alluded that Bear has a penis. I think why this show sticks out to me is that like as a nonconforming trans person I kind of liked the gender ambiguity of Bear and like how casual it became for the characters, and how their relationship wasn't always about some sex punchline. The joke was that Elijah Wood's perspective sees a literal teddy bear and sometimes thinks Wilfred's relationship with Bear is silly even though Elijah is hanging out with a person in a dog costume everyday. It wasn't the kind of transphobia that I expected from TV at the time and I both braced for transphobia from the show but also sometimes kind of enjoyed the jokes or bits at the time. Honestly that's the entire show to a tee, sometimes it was great, funny, even adorable sweet or sentimental. But sometimes it also gave you something awful and gave you so much whiplash. Honestly maybe this is probably best left as a really weird anecdote, that show was really strange
In a different show that openly validates trans identities you could have the Barry Zuckercorn scene verbatim without it being a problem and the joke coming off as 100% at his expense. In that case the ignorant, derogatory things he says to the sex worker about trans people and his response to Gob accidentally pokes at his preferenfes in a way that he sees as gay and undesireable is actually even funnier. It would be mocking the hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics it takes to be the kind of person who is bigoted against a group but also can't resist how attracted they are to them. Basically I think it coulr have been a good joke with nothing changed except the show it's in having obvious pro-trans positions. The dialogue, the acting, the editing, the way he drives away immediately, all great at delivering the joke, it just happened to be ignorant and mean spirited in the context of the show.
For context, Oscar and Lucille have been having an affair on and off for years now so he’s pretty numb to it. That’s why he never questioned the implications like you’re doing now.
Nice takes there Lily! For some bizarre reason, my comfort content is watching cool new creators take apart my old comfort content. And you are very good at that!
People in the comments saying "George SR could just be interested in drag" are overlooking the idea that cis male drag queens don't typically have emotional breakdowns over feeling wrong in the male form.
This series makes me realise how few trans men there are in shows. The only one I can think of is Orphan Black. It'd be interesting to see Lily's take on that. From what I remember, it was... decent? The trans masc character was a more comedic character, but I don't recall the humour being at his expense. Though it was played by the same female actor who played all of the clones the series focuses on.
I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on Danish Girl. Cus I feel like it's one thing to have horrendous trans rep in media for fictional characters, but Lili Elbe was a real person. I know I watched the movie once, but that was back when it came out and I think I've forgotten most of it. I do recall another trans movie I saw around the same time, French film Tomboy, which I liked until the very end because omfg, I wanted to just stab that mother. Also, if Hollywood ever attempts another film about an historical trans person, I'd easily want to know about Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and Stonewall.
Usually over the course of a Lily video my thought process is something along the lines of "That's a bit of a reach/oh yeah I remember that, that was bad... oh my god... oh my god?? I did NOT remember that, it's so much worse than I remembered, dear GOD how is it this bad??" This one... didn't quite make it to the finish line. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly offensive jokes and stereotypes, and it's probably for the best that the George Sr. trans storyline got cut because it was likely not going to be handled well (also, there's a season 5?? since when?? why did no one tell me?). But I feel like it gets the same asterisk that IASIP does: all of our protagonists are TERRIBLE people. We're not supposed to root for them when they're being transphobic, any more than when they are being sexist/ableist/homophobic/racist--which they are, o f t e n. The show never puts us in the shoes of agreeing with them like so many other sitcoms that Lily has covered do (seriously I'll never think of HIMYM the same way again). That being said, I of course understand feeling attacked by it or finding some of the jokes unnecessarily cruel. Casual dropping of slurs isn't great! Though I have to admit that at the time the early seasons aired, I was unaware the T word was a slur. Idk if that was me being a naive teen or if it was thought of differently then--or if it fully was a slur but I didn't know it because I heard it so much, which would be quite awful! The only hill I will die on is that the Barry cutaway joke was fucking hilarious. Probably because unlike some of the others, it isn't at the expense of trans people, it's just a quick and punchy set up/subversion punctuated with a car squealing away. Obviously it's setting him up as a chaser, which in no way makes him a trans ally, but I do still get a giggle out of the sentiment of "you're not a trans woman? Then get the fuck out of here! Cis women do not interact!!"
I don't have a problem with cis people playing trans characters. They're actors, let them act. I'd rather have cis people play trans characters than have an expectation that trans people can only play trans characters.
@@kwagmeijer26 That's basically what I was saying. The expectation is that trans actors play trans characters, and I think that's bad. Even when the character is never said to be trans, the simple fact that the actor is makes some people jump to conclusions.
I think it's okay, but only in contexts where they play characters of the same *gender* as them. I don't want to see trans characters being "played" by someone who "isn't really a man/woman". I want the gender to be clear, and everything else to be secondary.
@@tamarbeker1701 I disagree. If you're telling a story about someone transitioning, let's say f to m, the body should be feminine. I wouldn't mind them getting a female actor to play what ends up being a male role for this. When someone is acting, the body is the only thing that matters. Gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, all those things are beyond the person's body and can be played by anyone.
@@gengarvenom1180 I think that stories about someone transitioning are a bit of a grey area, mostly since their body has to start looking one way and end up looking another way, but 1, most trans characters are already post-everything, so a cis actor would probably look not very different than a passing trans one in them, and 2, it does matter to me that trans representation will be more than just "men/women playing a gender that isn't their own", because this is kinda already how we're being perceived. Hope we can at least agree to disagree?
I don't think you gave this show the grace that you gave Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is to say, these characters are always, from the start, presented as morally flawed and absolutely not people you root for or emulate. I have to say, I'm 40 something and until I started watching your videos I hadn't realized how much the media had shaped my notion of transness. Shocking, really, and a bit gross. I'm so happy I've been getting informed by actual trans creators instead of gobbling up all the transphobia that got spoonfed to me throughout my teen and young adult years. Your work is super important ❤
Watching these trans creators are also biased and they might not dig into the jokes deep enough, and judge it superficially instead of dissecting the joke. the subject is not always the target of the joke, and it's sometimes hard to see, especially if it's about something you get emotional about
Another great one! I don't know if Yu Yu Hakusho is on your list, but there's a terrifying bit of transphobia that really caught me off guard and killed my rewatch.
Scary this released the same day im rewatching arrested development and just watched the altar ego episode and heard the transphobic comment and went “oop”
I was watching an old 80's sitcom called It's a Living and surprisingly they had a Trans episode. While it had a lot of cringey comedy because the 80's, it actually gave the Trans character, a post op woman named Louise, agency.
@@agnessofiacastrocarvalho774 I don't know if "a agency" is a typo or wordplay but yes the whole story is the sleazy piano player starts dating her and so all the other characters are like, he doesn't know does he? Now I believe the agency comes from the fact that she breaks up with him before he finds out. So they avoid his reaction entirely.
100$ the writers think transman is another way to describe a trans woman they’re THAT out of touch. Their writing is just insanely derivative of transphobic jokes from before it’s time, which makes it even more ‘tired’ like damn give some new jokes already if you wanna continue punching low.
It was cringey and questionable in several areas like this when it was running. But I have been a fan of Arrested Development overall. I was younger and totally didn't understand what the shirt meant at the time. It is efforts from those like you over the years advocating for more representation that have gotten us to a better place with hopefully more understanding. Biases take a while to unlearn or be able to identify as micro aggressions, but effort is appreciated.
I know you're probably not going to read this but I was brewing Mizzix madness at 1 am when I watched this (my first video on your channel) and thought I was hallucinating i still think i might be hallucinating
Lily are you going to only cover adult sitcoms or cartoons? I think it would be interesting for a trans perspective on "High Guardian Spice" and their trans character that just announces hes trans in a really awkward way. I would also like to suggest Cleopatra in Space S2E2 "Cyrano" where Brian is taken over by an AI that controls his body for him and ends up changing it in a way that comes off as body dysphoria since Brian as a cyborg wants to pass as male human but not look overly masculine. Near everyone just hates when Brian looks buff too.
What a weird show. Thank you Lily, I appreciate you and your excellent work. I love your writing style and keeping your tangent comments in script, like you embrace them or atleast I feel you do and it inspires me to explore my own tangent thoughts... I don't know how to explain it, but you're the first I have come across.
Love this channel. Growing up watching shows like this one, you easily miss stuff like this, so it's incredibly important to be able to identify what Hollywood did right and wrong. A lot people might not realize the crap they watch might become their first fold in an otherwise smooth brain. Internalized forever.
It's hit or miss and some of the humor hasn't aged well. If you don't like it by the end of the second episode, it's probably not your thing. I liked it personally.
It's an incredibly long watch overall but there's significant trans rep both good and bad in the One Piece anime (the bad being older episodes and the good being later on as Echiro Oda has evolved as a manga writer.) There's gnc characters, trans characters, at least one genderfluid character and one that appears to be non-binary and they're almost all important characters that get treated with respect (eventually. Ban Chan was a joke character for a while.) One notable exception is Kamabaka Island, a place also known as the "island of the queers" where characters who may or may not be trans are drawn very specifically to look like men in dresses. That was the bad rep I mentioned though even then there's a main character who's overwhelmingly happy when he puts on a dress and frolics on the beach with the others until he rejects it. I personally think that character is trans but refuses to accept it because they like women and can't wrap their head around being a woman who likes women but that's just my theory. Pretty sure there's a list of lgbtq+ themed episodes & or story arcs floating around so you wouldn't have to watch nearly 30 years of content. For anyone else reading this who wants to check it out a) it's worth watching the whole thing even though it's nearly 1100 episodes at this point and b) the Sabaody / Marineford arc and the Wano arc have most of the trans bits if you don't want to watch all of it. Again I'm sure there's more specific episode guides but I'm all about context.
I know I felt so conflicted with how Iva was overall a really solid character in Impel Down and Summit War and then they get back to the island and all 3D characterization disappears and Iva just becomes another butt of the joke. I’m on the Punk Hazard arc rn so I’m looking forward to when the representation gets less awful
@@Shadeflower15 It gets amazing around the Wano arc. You'll get there fairly soon. Just need to get through Zoa & Whole Cake Island. There's no trans rep afaik on that arc but Sanji's going to redeem himself a bit with his reaction to a secret about a certain character.
Hey Lily, love your videos, been watching them for a while now. You should check out “Dead Like Me,” I forget which episode but that show had the absolute best trans representation I’d seen, for a long time when I was growing up. Might be a good pallet cleanser after sitcoms like this.
i completely forgot about the transparent episode. so glad they didn't go through with the whole plot arc... i get to keep the things i actually like and remember about this show.
I love this show and have watched it many times over. I think a lot of it still holds up as a very funny comedy, but it’s a shame it has this element that dates it and taints it a bit.
I can still enjoy Arrested Development (the first seasons) as the characters are supposed to be flawed, offensive and unaware of their own stupidity, including the „straight man“ Michael. None of the Bluths are particularly sympathetic or aspirational so I don’t quite share the criticisms. Saying that I concede that this kind of humor often didn’t land because it takes place in an equally whacky world.
I watched Arrested Development sometime between Trans Parent being a thing & season 5 coming out, and I had thought up until now that the Trans stuff in season 4 was a reference to the other show. Looking back on it, I wonder if this show is one of the reason I didn't realize I was trans until after high school. The whole stuff about George Senior having low testosterone & that making him trans, I just sort of assumed that was how people became trans. Irony is that when they took my levels for HRT, I did actually have abnormally low testosterone for a cis man.
also when i rewatched the show a few months ago i was legit shocked at how many times they said the r slur. i used to really love the show but im not gonna rewatch it anymore
I hold this show very near my heart for many reasons, one being that I have emetophobia and it’s hard finding comedy shows that don’t have people vomiting a lot, so this rang sad but true. Probably every red flag was never registered to me as transphobic or homophobic. I know they practically are now, but I do think most of the jokes could be interpreted differently. I never thought the lawyer was looking for trans women, rather drag queens and he just had a lot of internalized homophobia. Tobias being a huge marker for me personally realizing it’s ok to be gay myself, etc. I do wonder how maebes actor feels about all this considering she’s a fantastic activist and wonders if she ever found anything very mean spirited to say the least.
Definitely appreciate you going into detail on those examples, I'd completely forgotten about the Georgina Bluth plot, but that's definitely what they're gesturing at. For a show that's generally pretty well structured, it's interesting to see where their lack of knowledge can take the real impact out of a plot line or joke.
I've never seen most of the comedies you cover, but it's super interesting to see how they've represented trans people (sadly it seems usually not well) I would like to cast a vote for the 2022 Quantum Leap reboot/sequel to go on that list of projects you may get to someday. I think it's really neat and it has a non-binary main character who really reminds me of the trans and enby people I know, in addition to a dedicated trans episode (season 1 ep 12 "Let Then Play") which made me cry (but in a good way). Love the work you do and I look forward to watching more!!
I love Ian. They're legitimately my favorite character on the show. Plus one for a positive trans rep episode on modern Quantum Leap. Oh, and Let Them Play was so amazing. That episode alone is worth a whole essay. (😭 in a good way)
@@Toni-lo9ms Same!!!!!! I love Ian so much. They're amazing. After the first couple episodes they were a primary reason I was so invested in the show tbh
Ok wow Ive never seen "low hormone levels will turn a cis man trans" before. Kinda wild how the rest of it is all extremely tired and repetitive transphobia and then we have such a really out there nonsensical "reason" behind it!
love your videos and well thought out video essays. i was waiting for one on arrested development as it's a show i did enjoy but find myself unable to return to it due to the transphobia making me uncomfortable. 😔
If you are looking for something that is not a US based family show there's always the series Ranma 1/2. The show/book is about the wacky martial arts hi-jinks of a boy who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water, and reverts back when splashed with hot water. The series is also filled with more than its fair share of romance for our titular Ranma.
Each of these shows isn't necessarily THE problem with representing the trans community but each one is another brick in the wall meant to keep trans people seperated as The Other
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
Where's the pudding?!
@@slantedframes2334
🎸
@@nocontextwhatever did you eat your meat. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat
@@slantedframes2334 I can never have pudding because I'm vegan 🤷♀️🤣🤣
I think these jokes are trying to subvert a popular transphobic joke at the time where a straight guy ends up accidentally involved with a trans woman & is horrified. Both with Barry Zuckercorn & Steve Holt, we are set up to think this is what will happen, then the twist is they are more interested in trans women. It was possibly meant to be more progressive, but there's still 0 representation. Trans people don't exist as people, just a funny idea, like in what they are responding to. In this case, they are potentially a sexy idea instead of just a gross one, but how much of an improvement is this really?
Probably the best way to put it. I love this show but the people making excuses for the show are exhausting. You are absolutely correct that they were trying subvert "straight guy shocked by trans woman" with "straight man actively looking to sleep with trans woman" but the core of the joke remains the same.
It more feeds into the problem of people who fetishize trans identity rather than treating them as people. Though I would argue that that can be said about all LGBTQIA identities since in most common culture those identities are fetishized by cis people to a disgusting degree.
I interpreted Barry as looking for a drag queen rather than a trans woman. However that may be me trying to defend a show I enjoy that has also hurt me as a trans person.
I personally feel it could go either way. The inclusion of the word "silly" is what makes it murky for me. Because drag can be silly! But I also might be leaning on my naïveté for the same reason.
I don't think the writers knew the difference
I don't have any faith in the writers knowing/caring about the difference
That scene with Barry was more homophobic than it was transphobic. The entire joke was that Barry was secretly gay. He was looking for a man in drag, I don't think the writers even had trans people in mind. All the implications are still there of course, just not intentionally.
@@bryansutton9323The thing is, when your “critique” is indistinguishable from the thing you’re criticizing, you’ve failed.
I first found out I was trans in 03. And yeah; trans people got treated like shit in the media. There was so much hostility in general that I ended up staying closeted til 2019.
Damn, that's a long time to be closeted. You're incredible for having made it through that
@@nigeladams8321I basically drank and dissociated a lot. I have very few memories from the last couple decades. There was kid me, there's current me. Everything in the middle is a blur, and feels like a bad nightmare.
I wish we brought back ugly fashion from 2003 and not transphobia...i miss low rise jeans
I can totally sympathize with that. I was closeted to myself until 30 years old when i just basically wanted to be dead. Then I had to convince myself transition might be the thing that got the funk out but of was such a scary idea to me with all my internalized transphobia.
Its now ten years past that and I still struggle but I finally got thin enough for men to treat me very poorly like they do cos women, yay🎉
@@nanopandaI mean this doesn't excuse the transphobia that's being brought back to the mainstream, but low rise jeans are very much back in vogue along with many other "y2k" fashions
The pace you release these videos at is borderline supernatural
Borderline? I can barely even eat as regularly as Lily makes content
*quality videos
its the superpower of being trans
Supernatural...? This is Arrested Development.
Nothing supernatural, the host has a whole slew staff backing them up. Its a pretty well funded show, if you know what I mean.
Fun fact, "some trans stuff to nibble on" explains my entire dating life
😂
I wouldn't mind a little bite
Is it just me or is the Barry scene just a really accurate representation of a chaser?
Yeah I've always imagined the joke is more on him for that aspect and I personally find it kind of funny for that but all the other jokes just suck so bad
If the rest of the show had a clear baseline that trans people are valid that whole joke could have been left in verbatim and worked much better. Instead of being expected to laugh at Barry's hypocrisy/cognitive dissonance and how much mental gymnastics go into being a transphobic chaser it feels like we're more expected to laugh at him for wanting to sleep with a trans woman and the fact that he's obviously ashamed of it. I do have an idea of what could have made it better other than being in a more openly pro-trans show in the first place. Imagine if they played the same scene but in a later part of the episode he pulls up to a trans sex worker, does his self-loathing confused chaser disrespect and creep routine and she tells him to get lost. She's portrayed as normal, well adjusted person while Barry (and by extension creepy transphobic chasers) are laughed at from the perspective of the trans person. Just a thought.
@@chezmix64i mean, the joke IS on him and it has a transphobic angle to it, even though we can project our point of view on it and fond it funny for that reason.
@@xXxzAAa0aAAzxXx oh yeah, I know. I was just saying that interpretation is an interpretation I use to cope and always find some humor in it for myself but none of the other jokes have any excuses I can make up for them to myself
@@chezmix64 fair enough
I have never liked Jeffrey Tambor. My father's negative attitude towards me as a trans woman was partially formed by that man. My father was afraid I'd look like him as I advanced in age.
I’m so sorry 😢 about that
💐
holy crap
Why tf is your dad concerned about whether you're hot or not 😂
lmfao
Just wanted to mention, dressing as woman could also mean you enjoy drag. It doesn't necessarily signal a different gender identity. Or even just a disregard for social gender norms.
Considering modern America is hurting and hating on drag artists now, the point matters
@@falconeshield definitely. And they try to conflate it with trans people to try to make their point that being trans is a choice. It's a mess out there. lol
Just came here to say it. Drag enthusiasts, gnc people and even just regular genderqueers also exist, and while their struggles might be undoubtedly connected to transmisogyny, they are not one and the same, and this deserves to be pointed out. The intersectionality of identities and bigotries is more complicated than just pointing to the people with the most pokemon cards.
The biggest issue when discussing about shows having this kind of characters is they don't have anyone who actually knows the difference and so mixed messages happen galore
Fr fr,idk 😂why people assume sexual orientation is determined by how you dress,like I dress liek a girl and date girls doesn’t mean I’m trans or anything
People say TV isn't real life, but I feel like TV raised me far more than my busy parents. Who taught me life lessons? Cartoons, TGIF shows, Mulder and Scully, etc... Art does influence on a personal level, whether we like it or not.
Thanks for saying this. My parents never taught me healthy relationships so I learned bad lessons of friendship and romance from TV. And I'm worried that a lot of the country is being raised by TV writers.
i watched this when i was like 13-14 and the transphobia didnt even register w me!! and i already KNEW i was trans!! i think thats how common it is
A year ago I had a really vivid dream that I was watching AD and Gob came out as non-binary and it was so realistic that when I woke up I genuinely wasn’t sure if it was a dream or an actual episode
omw to write this fanfic
As a big AD fan, who also admits that it has aged poorly, I think I always excused the Maebe/Lindsay/Steve plot by saying, well, Maebe is canonically a terrible person, so of course she'd be transphobic. We're shown time and again that she holds views that we are not supposed to think are okay to hold, or does things that are shockingly horrible to do. However, I think I'd ready to read that episode as a joke at the expense of trans people, even if Maebe is in the wrong, because I think we're actually meant to think that Maebe is in the wrong BECAUSE being compared to a trans person is just that horrible. The joke doesn't work if that's not what the audience believes. So yeah. Maebe is a bad person, but the show doesn't think it's because she's transphobic.
I think the best show to ever have characters be awful to trans people but still be good at it is Its Always Sunny there isn't any moments where I'm like ugh that joke was mean spirited even when they're being shitty it's really impressive how they pull it off. I love Arrested Development but they didn't handle this stuff well
Everyone in AD is a terrible person and they are all purposely written like that.
@@NoxNyx666 but the bigotry is the JOKE not them being terrible pos
I’ve been watching your videos for a while now, and I just want to say that it’s been a pleasure watching your performance style develop! You’ve always come across as confident and funny, but with each new episode you settle more comfortably into your onscreen presence, which really allows those qualities to shine through 😊
My feelings as well!
Yep!
There's a lot I like about Arrested Development, and as you said, it's not the worst, but the Maeby/Lindsay stuff as well as the weird George Sr storyline does always leave a bad taste in my mouth
Yea that one hurts quite a bit tbh.
Maybe pimping Lindsay was the lowest point of the show for me
Agree
this is bc yall cannot accept that AD is a show about people succumbing to their degeneracy, not a happy feel-good sitcom.
@@xXDexter3000Xx Very impressive that you deducted my entire relationship with the show from a comment about two small aspects of it that definitely encompasses my entire opinion on it
trans masc here, I love your channel! The way you connect instances of transphobia to the general culture is great, it’s so important to remember that even fictional instances of bigotry don’t just exist in a vacuum.
Did Hurwitz ever apologize for throwing Jessica Walters under the bus when he was questioned over Tambor's behaviour? Even if he just said "I was wrong and I learned from it" I would be happy to forgive him.
He was asked a question and answered honestly. Jefferey Tambor got cross on set. Belive it or not people get cross and angry occasionally, he apologized, nothing more needs to be made of this.
I am once again asking for you to talk about A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netlfix.
There’s a chapter where Count Olaf disguised himself as a woman named Shirley to sneak into a Lumber Mill and somewhat flirts with the Mill owner. I feel that the bit wasn’t intended to be transphobic per say, but atleast in the books I feel that it didn’t try to avoid transphobia. The bit with him dressing as a woman might just be a joke of seeing an incredibly sinister villain dress up in a dress.
Neil Patrick Harris talks about this character in an interview and talks about how he wanted to avoid the falsetto voice because he believed that to be disrespectful and instead went with a much more cliche secretary in the 80s kind of voice, which is in character for Count Olaf to choose said voice. Anyways it’s an interesting topic and I’d love to hear your opinion on it.
Personally I reallly liked how they interpreted "Henchperson of indeterminate gender"
I started watching Arrested Development in high school, and I had trans friends (art school, homestuck gatherings), so the transphobia really stuck out to me at the time. I was watching other sitcoms that had plenty of transphobia, but they were never as funny as Arrested Development was when they weren't being transphobic. The best parts of the show were always the wordplay ones like "Lucille/Loose Seal" and ridiculous scenarios that snowballed over time. I think that if I had a different set of life circumstances where my only exposure to trans identities was transphobic sitcoms, I still would have noticed how lazy those jokes were in comparison to the jokes that still make me laugh when they cross my mind.
There is a trans episode of Bones, a Fox murder forensics drama. I remember it having complicated representation and also talking about Christianity.
The episode starts with the trans person dead, which is not a great start. There is a moment where a cis person with the super power to read body language confirms trans joy. The episode was called "The He in the She" so there's that...
I remember that episode! I was really into Bones for a few months and then immediately forgot it existed and moved onto other shows (neurodivergent brain lol). One of my issues with the show was that the main character Temperance was very clearly coded as autistic/neurodivergent (and the real person she is based on is openly autistic) but it's never discussed as an aspect of her identity and character
@BeautyNonsensePoetry I don't know about Kathy Reichs (Who Bones is based on), but her mentor Bill Bass is a POS who believes in stuff like the above, as well as racial biology. He said that indigenous people were stupid for being upset with him for desecrating the graves and bodies of thier ancestors, because he thinks studying them and having them in a museum is more important.
This episode scarred me as a child. It’s pretty transphobic.
bones is one of my fave shows ever! i remember watching that episode somewhat recently and it held up better than i expected but it def has problematic elements
Hello! I don't know if this will reach you, but I was just hoping you could do an analysis on Disney's 'Wizards of Waverly Place.' The reason for this suggestion is that in the 4th season, 5th episode, Max Russo, one of the main characters, turns into a girl. This is by magic, and doesn't seem to apply anything trans at first, but, Max stays a girl for a number of epidoes, and there are some noticable trans undertones. I don't know if this is enough to create a whole video on, but I think it is definitely worth taking a look because Wizards is one of Disney Channel's most successful sitcoms and impacted so many people, including me.
it is on my board of ideas
An edge case is Tobias. He is frequently implied to be a closeted gay man, but there was a sequence where he dressed as a British nanny for several episodes. It was mainly a Mrs. Doubtfire parody, but there were probably some trans jokes wedged in that I don’t remember.
casting my vote again for Silence of the Lambs, v controversial trans topics there 😬 thanks for covering AD, love ur videos Lily!
It's so unfortunate IMO that that movie seems to have had an effective pro-transphobia effect on many viewers, because I really think it tried hard not to do that. The villain in the story is explicitly stated to not be trans, and just someone with many serious issues and self-loathing that comes out in gender confusion among other ways. And of course it's clear how the whole vibe and connotation could cause audiences to come away with a reinforced notion of "trans people = likely to be psycho killers" but even worse it seems that a lot of people DO think Buffalo Bill's character is ACTUALLY trans and he's explicitly NOT and I'm just like nnnooooooo
I can't get over you pronouncing Gob's name as Gee-Oh-Bee.
It's so weird to me that she apparently made this whole video essay without having watched a single episode of the show in question. Same thing (mispronouncing the name of one of the MAIN characters in a show) happened with the recent Bones essay. It makes me wary of her research for these in general.
ive been watching Transparent because i stumbled across it while scrolling through prime and its such a weird show, like its really trying to portray being trans in a sympathetic light but then it just falls flat sometimes
Arrested Development was a very formative experience of media transphobia for me, especially that episode with Lindsay and Maeby. Yikes. The homophobia around Tobias and later Gob was also a real hot mess
having “formative experiences” w television sitcoms is the exact reason the majority of adults have the brains of children. there’s absolutely nothing harmful about any of the jokes in AD unless u urself are too self-serious to take a joke.
What I'm learning from this is that I dodged a bullet by not liking the pilot and not watching any more of it.
I can’t believe arrested development almost had a force fem arc
i hope someday you do a video on A League of Their Own! the amazon series was actually incredible, totally in my top 3 queer shows. and if you wanted you could even go into the original movie and how queerness played a part in the real life story, and how it’s depicted in a movie that isn’t open about that.
but even just the amazon show alone would be awesome to see a video on. there’s a character whose story (imo) could be seen as nonbinary representation, which is really cool to see in time period media when a lot of people just pretend nb people didn’t exist yet. i think this show is great at showing what some queer people in this position might’ve been going through internally when the language and nuances of today didn’t exist, and that they are still very relatable even across decades.
I see maeby using slurs the same way I see the always sunny cast -- you're not supposed to agree with her, you're supposed to dislike her and hate the things she does.
I think the problem with arrested development is they don't lean harder into the "these people suck" angle so people don't understand they're not supposed to be looked up to.
this is a pretty lame defense. it's the last, or one of the last punchlines of the episode. it's very clearly supposed to be a "ha ha gottem" moment from maeby directed towards her mom where we are supposed to laugh WITH maeby. i don't think you'll die if you acknowledge the show was being actively transphobic and nasty.
there's also no punishment for maeby like there would be in an always sunny episode. the reason for this is because the episode DOES NOT view it as a bad thing. saying this is an always sunny situation where we're supposed to view maeby as an asshole is just so asinine and dismissive of the problems.
uhhh I just hate maeby she's so awful. This sounds like a realistic thought doesn't it?
@@beatofromuminekorealnotcli4574 I'm literally saying that I wish Arrested Development was a smarter show that did stuff like that, not defending how or what they did.
Arrested Development IS a show where every single character is a horrible person who lies, does awful things, etc, and if they leaned into that it could be a better show.
There's a very real chance I've just always watched the show "wrong" but I legitimately have always felt the bluths are supposed to be scum of the earth and you're not supposed to agree with them but I guess they could also just be using terrible people as a way to say terrible things and get away with it.
I promise you I'm not defending this scene or joke in the show, so please don't read it like that.
It seems like the common troupe of shows nowadays is “trans people.. don’t you mean *the punchline* ?”
I’ve learned to ignore a lot of that shit but even with that, the “joke” is getting old
Suggestions??
I’d love to hear your take on transness in American Dad. Particularly the episode “LGBSteve” from season 11(or 12. The move to TBS was weird)
Anyway it’s actually pretty surprising. Season 10’s "Stan Goes on the Pill" also seems like the kind of thing you’d talk about
As someone who watched the show many times I always saw George’s changes as an ironic twist to a hypermasculine character and assumed it was a testosterone thing. It made him somewhat pitiable to me when his more “feminine” traits were made fun of by the characters and show itself. It’s quite sad to learn that it was just the show making fun of him and trans people by implying that if you feel those things you’re not a man (btw I love your videos and I will never stop watching them)
So happy to see you pumping out quality videos and improving with each!!! Just don't burn yourself out bb lol
Arrested Development viewer here. For a long time, I saw those scenes as subverting the transphobia of the era. Especially Steve seeing a women he respected and was attracted to (who turns out ot be his biological aunt) despite Maeby's below-the-belt transphobia. Your video has given me a lot to think about and tells a lot of harsh truths. I didn't even know AD was setting up George Sr. to come out as trans, just that he was growing as a character by slowly growing away from his patriarchal role and connecting with the parts of his personality he had repressed. But setting him up to come out as trans would have told a very different message - that cis men aren't feminine, and that each part of his evolution as a character should be seen as 'clues' all along.
Taking Netflix into account...
...biological GREAT-aunt, actually.
If you haven't seen it, just don't ask.
I had an experience with someone similar to barry. Sugar daddy who liked "traps" and femboys. After a few months, i told him I'd come out as trans and was planning to transition. He told me "well im glad but we're done then. I like boys in skirts, not real women "
Ummm...win?
strangely very affirming lmao
Maeby is meant to be pretty unlikable, her disrespect towards trans people, and her attempted use of trans-ness as a repellent is a repudiation of that behavior, not an endorsement of it. Add to that that Steve Holt is one of the few likeable characters in the show (the lovable oaf stereotype) and his acceptance is more of a invalidation of Maeby's behavior.
Also, Barry's actions feel more like the "Trans chaser" than anything involving Steve Holt.
The new world champion of reaching, everyone!
an interesting comment followed up by a dumbass reply
I love youtube
to me it doesn’t seem like a repudiation or an endorsement, just an insensitive joke that the writers probably didn’t examine further. and steve holt’s primary trait is being stupid, and his acceptance seems like it was written more to just foil maeby’s plan/do something unexpected rather than teach the audience to be nice
I do agree she was a bit of the rebel type. Her thing in the story was trying to get her parents to give a flying fk about her personal life. Bad attention is better than no attention, etc etc. She kinda reminds me of Stewie or Roger in their respective Seth MacFarlane titles.
That being said, the "tranny" part was pretty uncool. And Steve Holt, that dude was just excited for anything and everything. He took like by the cajones and rode it right on down the highway to hell. STEVE HOLT! To me he was just an adorable meat brain (ie the beefy dumbass that's really sweet and friendly). It's been a while since I watched it though, so I may be wrong.
@@Cat-vl2ch You gotta admit his enthusiasm is admirable, though.
I am genuinely impressed by your level of output, Lily! (Please don't overwork yourself ❤)
It’s always weird seeing a show I watched well before I realized I was trans pop up in this series since I almost never remember there being trans representation in them. Especially with shows I was incredibly of its so weird that I somehow was completely oblivious to this stuff happening. At least for this show I can chalk it up to not watching past season 3, but still I didn’t even realize the blatant transphobic joke in that season 1 episode. I guess it goes to show that some much of this flys just under the radar for anyone that isn’t knowledgeable of it (for a lack of a better word).
I haven’t seen any of this video yet, but I want to say this is the best scarf ever, and the complementing scarf and hair colors are absolute eye candy.
I'd say I found it funny in the same way you spoke about It's Always Sunny in Philly: we aren't laughing at trans people, we're laughing at how horrible, and unexpectedly just stupid these people are. I do get now I'm older that, the people who I was laughing at for being stupid, were in fact the writers, but at the time I thought it was the characters, and I think it's still a valid way to view the show even if it was not entirely intended.
(though the final season was shoot anyway, so who cares).
i mean i do enjoy Arrested Development as a comedy, like I said in my intro spiel, it was innovative for the form of reality tv-esque sitcoms and was witty and well-acted. Criticism doesn't always mean that I hated something, especially when like this, I would attribute it more to just flaws with the writing staff being cisgender people attempting to do trans jokes or trans bits.
(Another thought, it did the opposite of normalising these ideas for me, as in by associating transphobia and trans related bigotry with these funny fiction monsters, it made me understand more clearly how not normal and stupid these perspectives are. that's definitely not gonna have been everyones expereince though, so sorry that the show is unpleasent for you.)
absolutly. I don't think we disagree, just have different ways of talking about it. good video btw, I enjoy your stuff!@@LilySimpson
Well I think the key difference is that In Always Sunny, the trans woman was a character who served as the straight woman to be baffled at the transphobia of the leads. She's a normal woman living her life, the joke is how they behave around her.
In Arrested Development, there is no trans perspective to these jokes. The jokes presume that being a trans woman is inherently funny; so we laugh at the leads BECAUSE they want to sleep with trans women, are mistaken for a trans woman, or might be a trans woman. A trans woman couldn't just live her life in the setting without being treated like a punchline.
It's perfectly fine to like something while also considering elements of it to be uncomfortable or cringeworthy.
I recently finished binge-watching The Muppet Show and Muppets Tonight in their entirety. While I enjoyed the experience overall, there were certain things that made me cringe in both of them.
The constant fat jokes about Miss Piggy, a sketch filled with Japanese stereotypes, Steve Martin singing a song in mock Chinese, several unflattering depictions of Native Americans, the objectification of women through a character named Spamela Hamderson, Gonzo scoffing at the idea of dancing with a male because it's "weird" (he literally used that word), and Asian characters singing the song Oklahoma as "Okrahoma" were just a few examples of such moments.
Does my objection to those scenes mean that I hate The Muppets? Absolutely not! As you can probably tell by my avatar, I absolutely love them, I just don't love every single thing they do.
Nice to see you covering this show! One of my all time favorite shows ever but i always have to skip that one lindsay episode
Holy shit, you make videos really fucking fast
idk i feel like once a week is reasonable for the quality level of what im currently doing
most productive video essayist
@LilySimpson Don't sell yourself short! Your videos are not only informative, but your delivery is easy to digest and pleasant to listen to, you work very hard to make really wonderful videos.
@@LilySimpson considering how well structured your videos are and how deep you dive into some topics, thats arguable, but im not complaining
Hey thank you for citing my Slate article! I love your work on UA-cam about media representation. Please keep it up. 💜
Arrested Development is my BIGGEST “sad farewell”. It helped me through so much and I loved it and watched it so many times and yet I have realized I can and will never watch it again around the time the final season came out.
I will cherish the memories and cringe at the humor I used to find ‘hilarious’
Despite all the awfulness that is this show’s trans politics, we all know one thing.
Steve Holt would totally be an ally.
*STEVE HOLT!*
Hihi, just wanted to recommend Wilfred, the show with Elijah Woods where he sees his neighbor's dog as an Australian guy in a dog suit.
There's a lot of transphobia in the first couple of episodes which is directly tied to the main plot (the classic "oh no does the girl I like have a penis", and one relating to trans porn performers) and then that kind of transphobia kind of disappears from the show.
But early on a recurring character is introduced and it's a big teddy bear that Wilfred is in a relationship with? It's really weird, but Wilfred acts like he's in a real relationship with Bear and like they bicker with each other and it's not exclusively a sex punchline. The thing is Wilfred never consistently genders Bear as male or female. I guess the joke is that teddy bears don't really have genders. But they eventually get married when Wilfred becomes like a born again Christian for one episode?
Later on Bear's characterization gets more consistent and they basically allude to Bear being feminine and also as having a penis. It was strange in terms of the transphobia because yeah the context was often sexualized but I think Elijah Wood eventually never really batted an eye in regards to Bear's gender and just accepted it. And one episode we have a bit where we see the world from Wilfred's perspective and he sees Bear as an attractive woman in a bear suit, like how Elijah Wood sees Wilfred. And this was an episode after a conversation alluded that Bear has a penis.
I think why this show sticks out to me is that like as a nonconforming trans person I kind of liked the gender ambiguity of Bear and like how casual it became for the characters, and how their relationship wasn't always about some sex punchline. The joke was that Elijah Wood's perspective sees a literal teddy bear and sometimes thinks Wilfred's relationship with Bear is silly even though Elijah is hanging out with a person in a dog costume everyday.
It wasn't the kind of transphobia that I expected from TV at the time and I both braced for transphobia from the show but also sometimes kind of enjoyed the jokes or bits at the time. Honestly that's the entire show to a tee, sometimes it was great, funny, even adorable sweet or sentimental. But sometimes it also gave you something awful and gave you so much whiplash.
Honestly maybe this is probably best left as a really weird anecdote, that show was really strange
for someone with that poster i cant believe you havent done any star trek episodes
In a different show that openly validates trans identities you could have the Barry Zuckercorn scene verbatim without it being a problem and the joke coming off as 100% at his expense. In that case the ignorant, derogatory things he says to the sex worker about trans people and his response to Gob accidentally pokes at his preferenfes in a way that he sees as gay and undesireable is actually even funnier. It would be mocking the hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics it takes to be the kind of person who is bigoted against a group but also can't resist how attracted they are to them. Basically I think it coulr have been a good joke with nothing changed except the show it's in having obvious pro-trans positions. The dialogue, the acting, the editing, the way he drives away immediately, all great at delivering the joke, it just happened to be ignorant and mean spirited in the context of the show.
I never watched this. Thank you for explaining this show. oh shit, its a futurama cancel and renewals silliness going on.
Not having the best of time right now, so thank you for another video. I needed that.
literally bingeing this channel as you uploaded - you're a treasure and i love it here!
For context, Oscar and Lucille have been having an affair on and off for years now so he’s pretty numb to it. That’s why he never questioned the implications like you’re doing now.
Nice takes there Lily!
For some bizarre reason, my comfort content is watching cool new creators take apart my old comfort content.
And you are very good at that!
People in the comments saying "George SR could just be interested in drag" are overlooking the idea that cis male drag queens don't typically have emotional breakdowns over feeling wrong in the male form.
The scarf outfit looks really good!! I wasn’t sure if it was a hickey cover-up (if it is, you go girl) bc I don’t see them often but it looks good!!
This series makes me realise how few trans men there are in shows. The only one I can think of is Orphan Black. It'd be interesting to see Lily's take on that. From what I remember, it was... decent? The trans masc character was a more comedic character, but I don't recall the humour being at his expense. Though it was played by the same female actor who played all of the clones the series focuses on.
I can only think of the guy from two and a half men.
@@brady5006 I'd never seen that show to know there was one there. But yeah, trans masc representation is rare.
I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on Danish Girl. Cus I feel like it's one thing to have horrendous trans rep in media for fictional characters, but Lili Elbe was a real person. I know I watched the movie once, but that was back when it came out and I think I've forgotten most of it.
I do recall another trans movie I saw around the same time, French film Tomboy, which I liked until the very end because omfg, I wanted to just stab that mother.
Also, if Hollywood ever attempts another film about an historical trans person, I'd easily want to know about Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and Stonewall.
Usually over the course of a Lily video my thought process is something along the lines of "That's a bit of a reach/oh yeah I remember that, that was bad... oh my god... oh my god?? I did NOT remember that, it's so much worse than I remembered, dear GOD how is it this bad??" This one... didn't quite make it to the finish line. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly offensive jokes and stereotypes, and it's probably for the best that the George Sr. trans storyline got cut because it was likely not going to be handled well (also, there's a season 5?? since when?? why did no one tell me?). But I feel like it gets the same asterisk that IASIP does: all of our protagonists are TERRIBLE people. We're not supposed to root for them when they're being transphobic, any more than when they are being sexist/ableist/homophobic/racist--which they are, o f t e n. The show never puts us in the shoes of agreeing with them like so many other sitcoms that Lily has covered do (seriously I'll never think of HIMYM the same way again).
That being said, I of course understand feeling attacked by it or finding some of the jokes unnecessarily cruel. Casual dropping of slurs isn't great! Though I have to admit that at the time the early seasons aired, I was unaware the T word was a slur. Idk if that was me being a naive teen or if it was thought of differently then--or if it fully was a slur but I didn't know it because I heard it so much, which would be quite awful!
The only hill I will die on is that the Barry cutaway joke was fucking hilarious. Probably because unlike some of the others, it isn't at the expense of trans people, it's just a quick and punchy set up/subversion punctuated with a car squealing away. Obviously it's setting him up as a chaser, which in no way makes him a trans ally, but I do still get a giggle out of the sentiment of "you're not a trans woman? Then get the fuck out of here! Cis women do not interact!!"
I don't have a problem with cis people playing trans characters. They're actors, let them act. I'd rather have cis people play trans characters than have an expectation that trans people can only play trans characters.
I am with you on that, however, we also need to make sure we normalize the concept of trans people playing cis people of the same gender as well.
@@kwagmeijer26 That's basically what I was saying. The expectation is that trans actors play trans characters, and I think that's bad. Even when the character is never said to be trans, the simple fact that the actor is makes some people jump to conclusions.
I think it's okay, but only in contexts where they play characters of the same *gender* as them. I don't want to see trans characters being "played" by someone who "isn't really a man/woman". I want the gender to be clear, and everything else to be secondary.
@@tamarbeker1701 I disagree. If you're telling a story about someone transitioning, let's say f to m, the body should be feminine. I wouldn't mind them getting a female actor to play what ends up being a male role for this. When someone is acting, the body is the only thing that matters. Gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, all those things are beyond the person's body and can be played by anyone.
@@gengarvenom1180 I think that stories about someone transitioning are a bit of a grey area, mostly since their body has to start looking one way and end up looking another way, but 1, most trans characters are already post-everything, so a cis actor would probably look not very different than a passing trans one in them, and 2, it does matter to me that trans representation will be more than just "men/women playing a gender that isn't their own", because this is kinda already how we're being perceived. Hope we can at least agree to disagree?
I don't think you gave this show the grace that you gave Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is to say, these characters are always, from the start, presented as morally flawed and absolutely not people you root for or emulate.
I have to say, I'm 40 something and until I started watching your videos I hadn't realized how much the media had shaped my notion of transness. Shocking, really, and a bit gross. I'm so happy I've been getting informed by actual trans creators instead of gobbling up all the transphobia that got spoonfed to me throughout my teen and young adult years. Your work is super important ❤
Watching these trans creators are also biased and they might not dig into the jokes deep enough, and judge it superficially instead of dissecting the joke.
the subject is not always the target of the joke, and it's sometimes hard to see, especially if it's about something you get emotional about
Another great one! I don't know if Yu Yu Hakusho is on your list, but there's a terrifying bit of transphobia that really caught me off guard and killed my rewatch.
would you mind specifying the episode(s) this was in? i was going to continue a rewatch soon but want to avoid it if i can
@binxglitch looks like it's episode 25. It's during one of the tournament archs I think, so I'm not sure if there's callbacks in later eps or not.
Scary this released the same day im rewatching arrested development and just watched the altar ego episode and heard the transphobic comment and went “oop”
this is the third title i have seen for this video and you've finally got me
You had me at "well well well' with pictures of wells popping up. One like button pressed later, ok, let's watch the rest now...
Love your outfit for this one! Your hair and scarf look so good together ❤
I was watching an old 80's sitcom called It's a Living and surprisingly they had a Trans episode. While it had a lot of cringey comedy because the 80's, it actually gave the Trans character, a post op woman named Louise, agency.
They gave her a agency?
@@agnessofiacastrocarvalho774 I don't know if "a agency" is a typo or wordplay but yes the whole story is the sleazy piano player starts dating her and so all the other characters are like, he doesn't know does he? Now I believe the agency comes from the fact that she breaks up with him before he finds out. So they avoid his reaction entirely.
Did you ever had heard of an anime called "You're onder arrest"? Originaly called "Taiho Shichau Zo".
It has a transgender character, Futaba Aoi.
Whoa, I loved the OVA of that I had no idea.
100$ the writers think transman is another way to describe a trans woman they’re THAT out of touch. Their writing is just insanely derivative of transphobic jokes from before it’s time, which makes it even more ‘tired’ like damn give some new jokes already if you wanna continue punching low.
It was cringey and questionable in several areas like this when it was running.
But I have been a fan of Arrested Development overall. I was younger and totally didn't understand what the shirt meant at the time.
It is efforts from those like you over the years advocating for more representation that have gotten us to a better place with hopefully more understanding. Biases take a while to unlearn or be able to identify as micro aggressions, but effort is appreciated.
I know you're probably not going to read this but I was brewing Mizzix madness at 1 am when I watched this (my first video on your channel) and thought I was hallucinating
i still think i might be hallucinating
Lily are you going to only cover adult sitcoms or cartoons? I think it would be interesting for a trans perspective on "High Guardian Spice" and their trans character that just announces hes trans in a really awkward way. I would also like to suggest Cleopatra in Space S2E2 "Cyrano" where Brian is taken over by an AI that controls his body for him and ends up changing it in a way that comes off as body dysphoria since Brian as a cyborg wants to pass as male human but not look overly masculine. Near everyone just hates when Brian looks buff too.
What a weird show. Thank you Lily, I appreciate you and your excellent work. I love your writing style and keeping your tangent comments in script, like you embrace them or atleast I feel you do and it inspires me to explore my own tangent thoughts... I don't know how to explain it, but you're the first I have come across.
Love this channel. Growing up watching shows like this one, you easily miss stuff like this, so it's incredibly important to be able to identify what Hollywood did right and wrong. A lot people might not realize the crap they watch might become their first fold in an otherwise smooth brain. Internalized forever.
Never saw this series, but I won't miss a video of yours!
It's hit or miss and some of the humor hasn't aged well. If you don't like it by the end of the second episode, it's probably not your thing. I liked it personally.
It's an incredibly long watch overall but there's significant trans rep both good and bad in the One Piece anime (the bad being older episodes and the good being later on as Echiro Oda has evolved as a manga writer.) There's gnc characters, trans characters, at least one genderfluid character and one that appears to be non-binary and they're almost all important characters that get treated with respect (eventually. Ban Chan was a joke character for a while.)
One notable exception is Kamabaka Island, a place also known as the "island of the queers" where characters who may or may not be trans are drawn very specifically to look like men in dresses. That was the bad rep I mentioned though even then there's a main character who's overwhelmingly happy when he puts on a dress and frolics on the beach with the others until he rejects it. I personally think that character is trans but refuses to accept it because they like women and can't wrap their head around being a woman who likes women but that's just my theory.
Pretty sure there's a list of lgbtq+ themed episodes & or story arcs floating around so you wouldn't have to watch nearly 30 years of content.
For anyone else reading this who wants to check it out a) it's worth watching the whole thing even though it's nearly 1100 episodes at this point and b) the Sabaody / Marineford arc and the Wano arc have most of the trans bits if you don't want to watch all of it. Again I'm sure there's more specific episode guides but I'm all about context.
I know I felt so conflicted with how Iva was overall a really solid character in Impel Down and Summit War and then they get back to the island and all 3D characterization disappears and Iva just becomes another butt of the joke. I’m on the Punk Hazard arc rn so I’m looking forward to when the representation gets less awful
@@Shadeflower15 It gets amazing around the Wano arc. You'll get there fairly soon. Just need to get through Zoa & Whole Cake Island. There's no trans rep afaik on that arc but Sanji's going to redeem himself a bit with his reaction to a secret about a certain character.
Sanji doing geppo to avoid trans not based moment imo
@@WhiteThumbs definitely not Sanji or Oda's finest moment.
Hey Lily, love your videos, been watching them for a while now. You should check out “Dead Like Me,” I forget which episode but that show had the absolute best trans representation I’d seen, for a long time when I was growing up. Might be a good pallet cleanser after sitcoms like this.
I really enjoy your commentary on these shows.
Oh! That scarf :-) I love it!
Gotta live going back to watch old classics only for them to suddenly ambush you with really shitty stuff that was normal back then...
I really didn't remember any transphobia in this. I can't believe I missed it.
This is one of my favorite shows but as I’ve rewatched it recently these have definitely been sticking points for me. Love your breakdowns Lily!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Ouran high school host club
i completely forgot about the transparent episode. so glad they didn't go through with the whole plot arc... i get to keep the things i actually like and remember about this show.
I loved Arrested Development back in high school but i must have completely blocked these bits out of my memory 😂
I love this show and have watched it many times over. I think a lot of it still holds up as a very funny comedy, but it’s a shame it has this element that dates it and taints it a bit.
I can still enjoy Arrested Development (the first seasons) as the characters are supposed to be flawed, offensive and unaware of their own stupidity, including the „straight man“ Michael. None of the Bluths are particularly sympathetic or aspirational so I don’t quite share the criticisms.
Saying that I concede that this kind of humor often didn’t land because it takes place in an equally whacky world.
“Did this plot line get any more development? Well… no.”
You might say its development- *puts on glasses* was arrested.
Hey, that's the name of the show
I watched Arrested Development sometime between Trans Parent being a thing & season 5 coming out, and I had thought up until now that the Trans stuff in season 4 was a reference to the other show.
Looking back on it, I wonder if this show is one of the reason I didn't realize I was trans until after high school. The whole stuff about George Senior having low testosterone & that making him trans, I just sort of assumed that was how people became trans.
Irony is that when they took my levels for HRT, I did actually have abnormally low testosterone for a cis man.
Re: Arrested Development, I think you said it all.
But has anybody told you that scarf is goddamned fabulous?
also when i rewatched the show a few months ago i was legit shocked at how many times they said the r slur. i used to really love the show but im not gonna rewatch it anymore
Lmao, knowing that I use these as background noise was way too on point. Love your videos!! 💜
I hold this show very near my heart for many reasons, one being that I have emetophobia and it’s hard finding comedy shows that don’t have people vomiting a lot, so this rang sad but true.
Probably every red flag was never registered to me as transphobic or homophobic. I know they practically are now, but I do think most of the jokes could be interpreted differently. I never thought the lawyer was looking for trans women, rather drag queens and he just had a lot of internalized homophobia. Tobias being a huge marker for me personally realizing it’s ok to be gay myself, etc. I do wonder how maebes actor feels about all this considering she’s a fantastic activist and wonders if she ever found anything very mean spirited to say the least.
Definitely appreciate you going into detail on those examples, I'd completely forgotten about the Georgina Bluth plot, but that's definitely what they're gesturing at. For a show that's generally pretty well structured, it's interesting to see where their lack of knowledge can take the real impact out of a plot line or joke.
I've never seen most of the comedies you cover, but it's super interesting to see how they've represented trans people (sadly it seems usually not well)
I would like to cast a vote for the 2022 Quantum Leap reboot/sequel to go on that list of projects you may get to someday. I think it's really neat and it has a non-binary main character who really reminds me of the trans and enby people I know, in addition to a dedicated trans episode (season 1 ep 12 "Let Then Play") which made me cry (but in a good way).
Love the work you do and I look forward to watching more!!
I love Ian. They're legitimately my favorite character on the show. Plus one for a positive trans rep episode on modern Quantum Leap.
Oh, and Let Them Play was so amazing. That episode alone is worth a whole essay. (😭 in a good way)
@@Toni-lo9ms Same!!!!!! I love Ian so much. They're amazing. After the first couple episodes they were a primary reason I was so invested in the show tbh
Ok wow Ive never seen "low hormone levels will turn a cis man trans" before. Kinda wild how the rest of it is all extremely tired and repetitive transphobia and then we have such a really out there nonsensical "reason" behind it!
It's nuts how many theories bigots have for what turns you trans when the answer is just "nothing", yknow?
@@Bunni89 wrong. Spy kids made me trans and there is nothing you can say to make me believe otherwise
love your videos and well thought out video essays. i was waiting for one on arrested development as it's a show i did enjoy but find myself unable to return to it due to the transphobia making me uncomfortable. 😔
If you are looking for something that is not a US based family show there's always the series Ranma 1/2. The show/book is about the wacky martial arts hi-jinks of a boy who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water, and reverts back when splashed with hot water. The series is also filled with more than its fair share of romance for our titular Ranma.
Lily, did you watch the show? Did someone else write this script? I’m completely confused at your pronunciation of Gob’s name.
Your channel sure does illuminate so many reasons why my media rotted brain loathed myself for so long! Cheers!