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