Oprah's Last Broadcast

After 25 years and over 5000 shows, today is the day that Oprah fans all over the country have dreaded since she made the announcement that 2011 was going to be the last year of this show.

This is the day her last show will be broadcast.

I remember the first time I was introduced to Oprah Winfrey.     It was in August 1986, and I was in Chicago for the funeral of my great uncle Leon.     My Aunt Ruth told us while me and my family was sitting down eating breakfast told us about a sister talk show host she said we just had to watch called  AM Chicago.

We did, fell in love with the show and like everyone else in Chicago watched until it was time for us to fly back to Houston.  The sister hosting that local talk show was Oprah Winfrey

Well, you know the rest of the story.  Former beauty queen from Mississippi after stops in Nashville and Baltimore ends up in Chicago.    The show me and my family watched one month later gets syndicated,  renamed the Oprah Winfrey Show, does its first broadcast on September 8, 1986 and blows up.

Oprah makes enough cheddar to become a billionaire, build a studio on a street renamed for her, buy a magazine, start her own network and become an icon.

She's been a major influence on our culture, our lives, and our politics.   Writers are thrilled when they are selected for Oprah's Book Club because they get a ginormous boost in sales.   A certain African American resident of Hyde Park and his family are now living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because of her endorsement.

Michael Jackson made a 1993 appearance on her show watched by 62 million people in which he revealed he had vitiligo.  Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 on Oprah.  The Little Rock Nine on her stage confronted the white students who heckled them back in 1957.  Recently her stage was the venue for a 50th anniversary reunion of the Freedom Riders.  

Of course she has her critics and straight up haters.   There are some right wing women still mad at her because she strictly enforced her 'no political interviews until after the election' rule and wouldn't do one with Sarah Palin in 2008.   Some rappers can't stand and still hate on her.

While I like her and the show, I still had problems with the fact that when Oprah finally started doing shows tackling the topic of transsexuality, she hasn't interviewed transpeople who looked like her and wrote open letters to her and a few blog posts on that topic.

Despite the fact that we African descended transpeople weren't included in the long list of guests who have appeared on her show over the last 25 years, like everyone else in this country I'm going to be tuned in to the last show.

According to sources, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith will be the last people to ever sit on Oprah's interview couch and close a historic and remarkable Emmy winning television run.

Pam's Ponderings-The T-Girl On Harry's Law

TransGriot Note: The musings of author Pamela Hayes on various issues that affect trans people.

I watched Harry's Law for the first time last night. I only tuned in because I read here at Facebook that they were going to do a trans story. I didn’t think much of the storyline. I found it to be nothing out of the ordinary and quite stereotypical. Hell, in my opinion it was a flop.

The trans girl worked as an entertainer in a nightclub that had transsexuals as regular habitués. She was fired because she was having an affair with the manager or owner of the club. His wife wanted her gone.

I watched quite a bit of it, but I got bored with the whole thing, turned it off and drifted off to dreamland.

But no questions were raised about this man’s sexuality. He was involved with a transsexual, whom I assumed was pre-op. He was married with children and having an affair with a t-girl. It seems that some of those straight characters would have commented on that and raised an eyebrow while doing so.

There was nothing enlightening about the story. Instead of being a showgirl, I would have liked it had the trans woman been a teacher and the school fired her because of who she was. And maybe in court, her lawyer brought forth some of the children’s parents who spoke highly of her. Maybe one of the kids was doing poorly scholastically and via the trans educator’s tutelage, the kid’s grades ascended.

A colleague could have testified that she was astonished to learn that what’s-her-face was trans. But she was a superb teacher, totally devoted to her students and to the profession of teaching. “I don’t pretend to understand why anyone would change their sex. And it’s not important that I understand. It isn’t about me. Such and such is a first-rate teacher and that is all that should matter.”

And I hated that the trans girl was a showgirl in a trans bar and that she was doing the nasty with a married man.

Consider the implications. It suggests that a trans woman is incapable of acquiring a mainstream job and being accepted/respected by her colleagues, that she can only find employment around her own.

Which is bull you-know-what. I’m a trans woman. I have worked in mainstream and paid handsomely. Over the years, I have had a number of people to offer me employment. And the world is rife with trans women who have had similar experiences.

The married man situation suggests that she couldn’t find a single man and have an honest, aboveboard relationship. That a trans woman could only get involved in a sleazy, backstreet liaison. That a trans woman could only be a concubine.

Sigh. Sigh. Trans people need to tell trans stories. Or at least be invited to consult when non trans folks tell our experiences.

Lastly, the gay actor did a great job playing a woman. His voice was believable.

Hollywood Is As Important To Trans People As Washington DC

One of the recurring things I gripe about on TransGriot is the fact that United States based trans people do not get to portray ourselves in film and television roles similarly to what has happened for over a decade in cinematic productions in other parts of the world.

While we've had the occasional film such as Stealth and Bella Maddo pop up for discussion on these electronic pages that has either a trans lead actor or actress or in Bella Maddo's case its all trans cast flipped the script and were playing cis people, the fact remains that many of the films I have talked about in the five years I've compiled TransGriot with trans leads actors are foreign films.

I've discussed films such as the Brazilian one Paulista and the Indian Tamil language film Paal that had transwomen playing transwomen.    In the States, it seems as though the pattern has been anyone except a transwoman should play a transwoman. 

What's jumpstarted this discussion again is another situation in which a trans storyline pops up in an American TV show, and it left not only a lot to be desired in its execution,  the person portraying the trans character wasn't even one of us but a gay man.    It has started an interesting discussion on my Facebook page about this topic that got me thinking about the subject.

One of the things I know from my people's history is that image is everything.    In order for us to make progress on the trans civil rights front from a legislative and legal level, we also have to make progress in terms of how our images are portrayed in popular culture.

Hollywood is just as important to the trans rights struggle as Washington DC or your state capitol.

African Americans for a long time were shunted into a few stereotypical roles before our pioneering actors and actresses like Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Sidney Poitier, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll and countless others laid the groundwork in expanding the roles we can play.   In some cases the work that one ethnic group does to break down stereotypes for itself and resist stereotyping others can help open the door for other marginalized groups to tell their stories. 

Civil rights warrior Lena Horne had it written in her contract that she would never play a maid.   She also refused to play a Latina because she remembered the pain she felt when studio execs gave the role of Julie in Showboat, a mulatto character to Ava Gardner. 

But as this year's vanilla scented Oscar ceremony showed, we still have a long way to go before we have consistent representation in Hollywood with all ethnic and marginalized groups in this country.

I'm not saying that an actor of one ethnic group can't  play a character that is part of another ethnic group, a cis woman can't play a trans woman or a gay person can't play a straight one or vice versa.   What I am saying is that it is past time for trans actors and actresses to have the ability and get casted to play trans and cis characters on a more consistent basis.   Because we live those lives and have intimate knowledge of them, we'll play the hell out of those roles.  

Once we establish that we can act and do it well portraying our own lives, hopefully we'll get the opportunities for open trans actors to play roles not scripted specifically for us that we can give award winning performances in.

And don't stop there, Hollywood.   Hire some trans writers (hint, hint)  to write our stories and trans directors to help film those stores    They are toiling away in Tinseltown and would love to not only have the opportunity to hone their craft, but engage in a mutually beneficial partnership that helps everyone make a little money in the process
 

It's no accident that when the show Commander in Chief appeared on network television from 2005-2006 with Geena Davis playing President Mackenzie Allen and Dennis Haysbert playing President David Palmer during the second and third seasons of 24, we ended up having as finalists for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination an African American man and a woman.

Positive fictional roles can also have an unforseen impact on the youth of a minority group as well.    Nichelle Nichols Lt.Uhura character on Star Trek inspired a Chicago girl named Mae Jemison to become a trailblazing astronaut. A New York girl named Caryn Johnson was inspired to become an Oscar winning actress who would have a recurring role of her own on Star Trek The Next Generation.

Rebecca Romijn's Alexis Meade character on Ugly Betty was seen by trans and cis youth   Did Alexis' fictionalized life struggles open some minds to what trans people deal with and probably help us get some trans rights laws passed?    Maybe. 

Did it inspire a trans youth to buckle down in school, improve their grades or maintain them, and set the goal of going to college and become a businesswoman intent on helping our people?   Will it have the same cultural effects inside and outside our community?   Only time will tell.

But as long as the possibility exists and the reality is that art sometimes has a major impact on life, a Hollywood soundstage and the images it creates and broadcasts on our television and movie screens will be as important to the trans rights struggle as a city hall, a legislative capitol building or a courtroom is.

Problematic Casting Of Trans Character

IFGE posted on its FB page a note about tonight's upcoming Harry's Law episode on NBC entitled 'Send In The Clowns'.   One of the storylines in it is about one of the attorneys defending a trans woman in a wrongful termination suit.

Well, what's mine, IFGE's and more and a few trans people's  problem with that?   They have a gay male actor in Queer Eye For The Straight Guy's Jai Rodriguez playing the role of the transwoman.

Well, at least we have a little diversity in this one assuming the character is a trans Latina (and yes, the sarcasm meter is on maximum) . The characters that have been on the small screen have predominately been white ones, and we can't even get a Black transperson real or fictional on the small screen

But back to the post.


What's up with that?    And what's up with Hollywood reinforcing the stereotypes that transwomen are gay men or drag queens? 

No we aren't., and that's another tired meme that needs to die.

If you couldn't get a transwoman to play the role, and news flash, there are transwomen working on the Left Coast as actors in Hollywood such as Alexandra Billings and Calpernia Addams, at least get a cis woman to play the role.


I have to wonder if what Kerry Washington mentioned when she was doing interviews a few years ago about her role playing transwoman Marybeth in the movie Life Is Hot In Cracktown is the prevailing attitude of writers, directors and people doing the casting when their productions have trans characters.

She noted that she almost didn't get the Marybeth role because she was considered by the director as being 'too beautiful' to play a transwoman'.

Really?   How many times do I have to point out there are many of my sisters that are all that and three bags of chips in the beauty department?
.

I may have to take a look at this episode of Harry's Law to see how the subject was treated.

But even if it's written with sensitivity and accuracy in the role, it's still problematic that this episode has a gay male playing the role of a transwoman.