Past the halfway point of "Disclosure," a new Netflix documentary chronicling Hollywood's profoundly flawed relationship with and portrayals of transgender life, writer and actress Jen Richards ponders aloud how she would feel about herself, as an out trans person, if during her formative years she had never seen any representation of herself in the media.
On the one hand, Richards observes, she may never have internalized a sense of being monstrous. She might have gone into the world free of the fear attached to the disclosure of her identity and never viewed herself as abhorrent or a punchline. "I might be able to go on a date with a man without having the image [on her mind] of men vomiting," she says.
Then Richards presents the flipside: Would she even know she was trans if she had never seen any kind of depiction of gender variance on screen?
"Disclosure" elegantly captures the complicated in this moment we're living through, when a plurality of Americans appear to be waking up to the nation's unresolved racial animus and its failure to grant equal treatment and protection to every citizen.
It enters the Netflix stream amid tough competition for attention, but its crisp aesthetics and the grace of its subjects place it among the ranks of the easiest to watch and most clearly presented documentary offerings. It teaches us a lot, and it is as likely to devastate the viewer as it is to offer hope and beauty.
"Disclosure" is full to bursting with such contemplative moments as Richards', where its subjects thoughtfully find some small pearl of positivity in a gigantic manufactured lake of insult and pain. She shares this thought in the wake of a barrage of all-too familiar images through which Hollywood has conveyed its vision of the trans experience. Read more via Salon