Patel-final draft Transamerica November 1, 2019
Prashant Patel Major Project 2 Gendered Rhetoric Dr. Sonia Arellano PhD
I. Introduction
Cinematic iconography has had a significant impact on changing the attitudes and perceptions of citizens. In contemporary times the movie industry has focused on telling stories of marginalized groups, and individuals that are undergoing both physical and psychological transformation. In the last 25 years such films as The crying game and Boys don’t cry, have had many characters who define themselves as being transgender. However, in films such as The crying game and Boys don’t cry portrayal of transgender characters, are viewed as being a marginalized group in society who are not conforming to traditional conventions of sexual identity.
in 2005 the film Transamerica featuring actors Felicity Hoffman and Kevin Zegers premiered. Transamerica tells the story of Sabrina “Bree” Osborne who transitioning from a male to a female and desires a gender reassignment surgery. Transamerica is a groundbreaking film this is because it is the first major movie or documentary to situate gender reassignment procedures at the center of a storyline. The movie can serve as a case study that examines how the visual image can emphasize rhetorical situations that can instruct how a viewer redefines or reconstructs their thoughts towards issues relating to gender construction.
I will argue that the rhetorical situation is an effective framework to use when examining a visual image of transgender sexual identity. I will connect how the elements of Lloyd F. Blitzer’s rhetorical situation can assist a viewer in deconstructing a visual text that is disseminating transgender identity. However, before I discussed my argument, I will briefly discuss the elements that comprise a rhetorical situation. Moreover, I will mention the importance of visual analysis and the study of gender and language.
II. Methodology
The method that I have chosen for this project is a visual analysis of the movie Trans-America. The movie will serve as a case study of how gender is constructed in specific situational contexts that can be framed and understood by applying the rhetorical situation model propagated by LLoyed F Bitzer in 1967. In my analyses, I will incorporate diverse source material from this course and other courses that have taken in the past as a part of my studies in the writing and rhetoric program at UCF. These methodologies range from analyzing the ideas of Angela Davis in her article “are prisons obsolete and how it serves as an analysis for gender assumption to integrating concepts articulated by Nicolazzo who discusses gender discrimination within the context of institutions.
I selected this approach and chose the supporting documents because I believed that they were insightful sources to include an analysis of how the rhetorical situation can be transferred and applied to a visual medium. For example, in Lawson’s article on a non-normative approach to queer theory, I sought to explain why the movie Trans America, represented a challenge to traditional pedagogical methods of how teaching of gender rhetoric can be influenced by the rhetorical situation.
III. A Brief Discussion of the Rhetorical Situation
When the rhetorical situation was introduced in 1967 its methodologies shifted how rhetoric understood and conceptualized the importance of discourse within contextual terms Lloyd F Bitzer outlined his general principles for a rhetorical situation to be won. (1) A rhetorical discourse that comes into existence in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to questions. (2) a speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation just like a unit of discourse is given significance as ana answer or as a solution by a questionable problem. (3) a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of the rhetorical discourse just as a question must exist a necessary condition for a given answer. (4) Many questions go unanswered and many problems remain unsolved similarly many rhetorical situations mature and decay without giving birth to rhetorical utterances. (5) a rhetorical situation is with the situation thereby altering the nature of discourse capable of participating with the situation and thereby altering its reality. (6) discourse is rhetorical in so far as it functions or seeks to function as the fitting response to a situation and thereby altering its reality. (7) finally, the situation controls the rhetorical response in the same way that the question controls the answer and the problem controls the solution. (Bitzer 5-6).
For this analysis, I will intertwine the general principles of element 5 and element 6.
This point is significant because the author is arguing that rhetoric can be shaped by factors such as visual perception and language. In Lloyd F. Bitzer opinion “rhetoric is a mode of altering the reality, by the direct application of energy to the objects, but not by creating a discourse which changes the reality through mediation of thought and action”(Bitzer 4) In the last analysis, one can argue that the author believes that rhetoric is a medium that can assist the individual to organize him or herself by applying to mean to a particular thing. The existing can include gender, sexuality, or the space in which a person lives.
IV. Argument
The first element of any rhetorical situation is exigency as defined earlier this concept is meant to define the preeminent issue or problem that constructs or creates a rhetorical situation, that then shapes the parameters of a rhetorical dialogue (Bitzer 2). Exigency requires the speaker in any dialogue to define the parameters of the problem and how it can be solved. This formula can translate to the visual image. in the movie, Transamerica the main character Bree is confronted with the problem that she has lied to her therapist about having a son from a previous relationship before she wanted to transition to a man.
Her therapist realizing that Bree has lied refuses to give her permission for Bree to go ahead and have gender reconstruction surgery. After the meeting, the main character is forced to meet and reconcile with her son. This is an example, of an exigent problem, Bree cannot receive gender reassignment surgery until she reconciles with her son.
Bree does not follow the instructions to be truthful and honest with her son about her identity and gender. This is consequential because Bree as the initial speaker that will begin many rhetorical situations has constructed future interactions based upon a lie. In their initial introductions, Bree presents herself as a Christian missionary that identifies and assists troubled youth.
In deconstructing this scene one can appreciate the disappointment of the main character, this is because it forestalls her opportunities to interactions between herself rhetorically and others to socially circulate as a woman. Jones Royster and Kirsch define social circulation as “leverage for understanding complex rhetoric across time and space” (Jones Royster & Kirsch 98). This is important to an analysis of exigency.
if a rhetorical speaker establishes exigency wisely then he or she will be able to persuade others to become agents to assist them in solving the problem at hand. Furthermore, in terms of time and space, the speaker will be able to construct a time or Karros that makes their argument sound essential.”Kairos” is a Greek term meaning the coming together of events at a specific point for particular purposes and ends (United States Naval Academy). In terms of space, Karros allows space for proper decision making to follow the speakers.
In analyzing the first scene of the movie Bree presented herself as a Christian missionary who had the benign intention towards helping Toby. However, in breaking down the initial scene in terms of the goal she wanted to achieve, Bree was unsuccessful. She confined her social circulation by having to use words or rhetoric that did not allow her to establish her true gender identity and this then created problems for her in establishing a Karros later on in the movie when it was required of her to tell her son that she was, in fact, his father. If a transgender person is prevented from being themselves, they will paradoxically take on a new persona to achieve their goals.
the second element that helps determine a rhetorical situation is an audience. The audience is defined by Lloyd F Bitzer as the members of a rhetorical situation that is receiving a particular message. In the end “the audience are individuals in a rhetorical discourse that are influencing the decisions and actions of persons who function as mediators of change”(Bitzer 7). According to the author, audiences are “a part of any rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 7). This idea can translate into a visual medium.
V. Results and lessons learned
I have argued that the typology of the rhetorical situation can be applied to an analysis of how gender is constructed in visual analysis. In doing so, I broke down both the rhetorical and situational elements of certain scenes in the movie and came away with the following conclusions. For example, the scene in the car where Toby asks Bree how she views herself as a woman. I had argued that this a form of audience in that first it forces the characters to create a dialoged between one another propagated from untrue statements, this then causes a viewer of the movie to question how the main character views herself in terms of her gender.
The emotional turmoil that one undergoes as part of the process in searching for their true identity is more volatile than the actual physical one. This is because the character Bree was in emotional turmoil as a result of the fact that she could not establish a functioning relationship with her estranged son Toby. An example of this is in one of the final scenes in the move, where following Bree’s surgery she’s emotional and cannot fully appreciate her transition due to the fact that she strained her relationship with her son, which she believes is irrevocable.
The second significant conclusion that I took away from the film is the point that individual context is important to understand how gender is constructed and what rhetoric is used in terms of defining that context. This can include the element of constraint. For example in discussing the scene in which Bree identifies herself as a male by pointing to a picture of herself pre-transition in conjunction with the fact that she is Toby’s father, this visual image represented a constraint for Bree in that it constructed a rhetorical environment where she had to manage the visual mage or herself as a male and tried to articulate it in her own term that would allow toby to understand and appreciate the broader implications of her transition. However, he could not since he perceived the image as a betrayal of his emotions towards Bree.
Another element of the rhetorical situation that illuminated lessons that contributed to a wider understanding and appreciation or gender construction through the visual form is exigency. exigency again is a discussion or definition of a problem that helps to create first a rhetorical situation and then encourage or convert audiences to help solve it. This element can be witnessed in the movie when discussing the first encounter between Bree and Toby. The exigency here again was the issue of how Bree identified herself as a woman and how she expressed it rhetorically. This influenced the visual form in how a person perceived transgender individuals because throughout the movie certain scenes illustrated a labyrinth of events that prevented Bree and toby from solving the exigency presented.
Work cited
Bitzer, Lloyd F. The Rhetorical Situation. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968.
Caster, Peter, and Allison Andrew. “Transgender Nation: Crossing Borders and Queering Space in Transamerica.” English Language Notes, vol. 45, no. 2, Jan. 2007, pp. 133–139., DOI:10.1215/00138282-45.2.133.
Cavalcante, Andre. “Centering Transgender Identity via the Textual Periphery: TransAmerica and the ‘Double Work’ of Paratexts.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 30, no. 2, 2013, pp. 85–101., DOI:10.1080/15295036.2012.694077.
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete?: an Open Media Book. ReadHowYouWant, 2010.
Miller, Tim. “Trans* in College by Z Nicolazzo.” College Student Affairs Journal, vol. 36, no. 1, 2018, pp. 167–169., doi:10.1353/csj.2018.0011.
Rawson, K.j. “Queering Feminist Rhetorical Canonization.” Rhetorica in Motion, pp. 39–52., doi:10.2307/j.ctt5vkff8.7.
Rose, Emma, and Stephen Lonsdale. “Hidden Identities and Concealed Dangers: Visual Art, Transgender Health, and Wellbeing.” The International Journal of the Image, vol. 7, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–12., DOI:10.18848/2154-8560/cgp/v07i01/1-12.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones., and Gesa E. Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.
“United States Naval Academy.” The U.S. Naval Academy, https://www.usna.edu/homepage.php.
The second significant conclusion that I took away from the film is the point that individual context is important to understand how gender is constructed and what rhetoric is used in terms of defining that context. This can include the element of constraint. For example in discussing the scene in which Bree identifies herself as a male by pointing to a picture of herself pre-transition in conjunction with the fact that she is Toby’s father, this visual image represented a constraint for Bree in that it constructed a rhetorical environment where she had to manage the visual mage or herself as a male and tried to articulate it in her own term that would allow toby to understand and appreciate the broader implications of her transition. However, he could not since he perceived the image as a betrayal of his emotions towards Bree.
Another element of the rhetorical situation that illuminated lessons that contributed to a wider understanding and appreciation or gender construction through the visual form is exigency. exigency again is a discussion or definition of a problem that helps to create first a rhetorical situation and then encourage or convert audiences to help solve it. This element can be witnessed in the movie when discussing the first encounter between Bree and Toby. The exigency here again was the issue of how Bree identified herself as a woman and how she expressed it rhetorically. This influenced the visual form in how a person perceived transgender individuals because throughout the movie certain scenes illustrated a labyrinth of events that prevented Bree and toby from solving the exigency presented.
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