In the imaginary world of “Rodham,” Hill-
ary Rodham writes of her relationship with 
Bill Clinton: “The margin between staying and 
leaving was so thin; really, it could have gone 
either way.” Although the novel is unquestion-
ably fiction, behind this invented statement 
there is truth: Bill Clinton famously proposed 
three times to Rodham, who, uncertain about 
their relationship, declined the first two. On 
the third proposal, she acquiesced, and they 
were wed in 1975.
In Curtis Sittenfeld’s version of the story, 
things go the other way. In 1975, Hillary Rod-
ham leaves Bill after his streak of infidelity and 
moves to Chicago to teach law.
This historical re-writing is the greatest 
selling point for “Rodham.” It’s a bold choice 
on Sittenfeld’s part, who was previously cel-
ebrated for her New Yorker short fiction and 
romance novels, not simply narrating from 
the perspective of political celebrity — Hill-
ary Clinton — but also reimagining that celeb-
rity’s life. Simultaneously, this ingenuity and 
slight awkwardness is what makes the novel 
so appealing to both Clinton’s political follow-
ers and more generic Democrats still aching 
from Clinton’s 2016 loss. It offers the potential 
to revel in a world — for 400 pages — where 
Clinton (or, Rodham?) was not marred by the 
sexual scandals of her husband, was not forced 
to change her last name for his political career 
and was not jostled into dresses as first lady.
From the onset, Sittenfeld finds Rodham’s 
voice with ease. It is rigid, straightforward and 
pragmatic, agreeing with the political accent 
and message heard by millions of Americans 
from debate stages and biographies. It is clear 
that Sittenfeld has done her research, and even 
when the story turns entirely unfamiliar (Rod-

ham’s thoughts towards Donald Trump, say, or 
even those during sex with Bill Clinton), she 
adheres to Rodham’s voice in such a way that 
makes it almost difficult to separate the person 
crafted in “Rodham” from the real former Sec-
retary of State.
Unfortunately, when this voice is utilized 
in the remainder of the novel, the potential 
strength that “Rodham” suggests in its intrep-
id premise is lost. Particularly in contrast with 
“You Think It, I’ll Say It,” Sittenfeld’s collection 
of short fiction that felt near-overwhelming 
with its brisk and thoughtful prose, the writing 
in large margins of “Rodham” feels disappoint-
ingly similar to your grandmother’s 99 cent 
paperback thriller. Sometimes, this comes in 
the form of tiring lines — “the speakers swelled 
with an upbeat pop song by a young female art-
ist.” Other times, particularly near the end of 
the novel, feel as if Sittenfeld is sick of sitting 
at her desk and has crammed six details into a 
sentence for the sake of, well, details.
The problem with this lackluster, unin-
spired writing is that it detracts from the areas 
in which “Rodham” has the potential to make 
excellent points. The book’s most powerful 
section is its first quarter, in which Rodham 
meets, falls in love with and eventually leaves 
Bill Clinton. “Falling in love was shocking, 
shocking, utterly shocking,” Sittenfeld writes. 
As the two move in together, Sittenfeld cap-
tures the moral complexity and distress that 
Bill’s infidelity invokes on Rodham. Like the 
rest of the novel, the chapters are intriguing 
and original. They also offer more than just an 
amusing tale about Rodham: They invoke com-
plex questions on love and relationships with-
out sacrificing writing or soapboxing about 
Rodham’s choices.

7

“If you are a marginalized person, most 
film and television is not made with you in 
mind,” Laverne Cox says about 20 minutes 
into Sam Feder’s new documentary, “Dis-
closure.” “If you are a person of color, an 
LGBTQ person, a person who’s an immi-
grant, if you’re a person with a disability, 
you develop a critical awareness because 
you understand that the images that you’re 
seeing are not your life.” 
This critical consciousness is what “Dis-
closure” aims to impart on its viewers. 
Through a thorough survey of on-screen 
depictions of transgender people, Feder 
captures a long history of scapegoating and 
misrepresentation. If the viewer was pre-
viously unaware of the pervasiveness of 
transphobia in cinema, Feder’s editing style 
quickly makes the viewer aware of it. Over a 
hundred films are included, most of which 
are presented without explicit commentary 
in clips of a few seconds. Small moments 
of transphobia abound in American cin-
ema, ranging from work by esteemed direc-
tors like Alfred Hitchcock to lesser-known 
pop-cultural specimens in talk shows and 
B-movies.
This whirlwind montage is interspersed 
with commentary by trans “creatives” — 
actors like Laverne Cox, Zackary Drucker 
and Jazzmun as well as filmmakers like 
Yance Ford and Lilly Wachowski — which 
serves to counterbalance the work by cis 
wirters and directors. These trans commen-
tators also offer insights on the role of rep-
resentation (good and bad) in shaping their 
own self-perceptions alongside the broader 
cultural consciousness. In one of the first 
sequences in the film, Laverne Cox unpacks 
the character of Geraldine in “The Flip Wil-
son Show,” which her mother would watch. 
“[She] would laugh at that character,” Cox 
says, which relegated anything trans to “the 
realm of humor.” 
Many of the other insights from the trans 
commentators work like this: on-screen 
representation doesn’t match up with the 
actual lived experiences and inner lives of 
trans people. For a trans viewer, this leads 
to cognitive dissonance or a feeling of being 
misunderstood. The actress and writer Jen 
Richards recounts a coworker asking her 
about Buffalo Bill (the transfeminine serial 
killer and necrophile from “Silence of the 
Lambs”) when she said she was going to 
transition. — “her only reference point was 
this disgusting, psychotic serial killer,” 
Richards says. “That was her only template 
for understanding … It hurts, it just hurts.” 
The critic Willow Catelyn Maclay notes 

in her review of the film that “Disclosure”’s 
“political consciousness is that of common 
sense or common decency.” As such, “Dis-
closure” focuses mostly on culturally domi-
nant portrayals of trans people that are 
shocking and violent. We see a geneology 
of the psychotic man-in-a-dress trope, that 
originates in Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” as well 
as the trope of the trans woman as murder 
victim in cop shows like “CSI” and “NYPD 
Blue.” Elsewhere, the film unpacks other 
tropes — transmasculinity as a packaging 
for women’s empowerment in films like 
“Yentl,” revulsion and violence at the reve-
lation of a trans woman’s body or history in 
films like “The Crying Game.” While more 
nuanced (if still problematic) films such as 
“Ma Vie En Rose” and “Breakfast On Pluto” 
are discussed, the scale is overwhelming-
ly tipped toward shocking, stereotypical 
depictions that circle around essentialism 
and violence. The trans commentators fre-
quently say of a clip that it’s “hard to watch.” 
This history is worth confronting, but 
is that all there is? Maclay aptly points out 
that representation is only one aspect of 
what can be considered “transgender” cin-
ema, and that “Disclosure” thus has a nar-
row scope. “Because the film mainly wants 
to offer an antidote to negative representa-
tion and analyze how these images of the 
past have informed modern perceptions of 
transness, there’s no room to address what 
transgender cinema may look like in the 
future,” she writes. The film only passingly 
touches on trans-made cinema (focusing on 
recent work by Lilly Wachowski and recent 
television like “Pose” and “Transparent”) 
and it feels as though a more thorough 
discussion of how trans people represent 
ourselves might have rounded out the film 
better. 
Even barring that, I wish the film was 
better at indicating what negative represen-
tation means. The commentators too often 
stop at calling transphobia what it is, which 
should be obvious to any remotely self-
aware cis person. Self-awareness doesn’t 
transform into a broader consciousness, 
and so the film can take on the tone of an 
HR-style sensitivity training. Why do cis 
people want all of this? The tropes “Disclo-
sure” discusses don’t point toward anything 
in the cis imagination that created them. 
Doing so would undermine the project of 
respectability the film is pursuing, one that 
assumes that “inclusion” in the system that 
created these images is the goal. It can’t 
help but be self-defeating.

Thursday, July 9, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW

JOHN DECKER
Daily Arts Writer

BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW

EMILY YANG
Managing Arts Editor

‘Disclosure’ and the 
trans history of film

Read more at michigandaily.com

Sittenfeld’s ‘Rodham’ 
is unserious but fun

Read more at michigandaily.com

