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