EDIT: since I don’t want the top reply not to mention this, fuck IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan for the incalculable damage he’s done to innocent trans people. He’s a worthless, disgusting bigot.
Honestly, I always found that episode… Weirdly progressive? Even maybe by accident? Consider the following:
The trans woman April is legitimately physically attractive and with a distinctly feminine voice to match.
She’s a legitimately very sweet, intelligent, and earnest person.
She tells Douglas upfront in no uncertain terms that she’s trans (she phrases this as “I used to be a man”, but honestly, considering both 2008 and the fact it was used to setup a joke, I think this isn’t too transphobic? A trans person in 2008 might’ve even said this because there was less of a support network to understand that you always were a woman.)
Douglas gets upset because he thinks he’s been tricked, but 1) he absolutely was not, and the episode makes this crystal clear that it’s because April made every effort and he’s just an absolute dumbass, and 2) Douglas has been portrayed in the show to this point as nothing but a juvenile, overdramatic, chauvanistic sack of shit, and we’re clearly not supposed to be rooting for him.
She’s a fantastic girlfriend and becomes the love of his life. A big part of this is because she has a duality between traditional femininity and an interest in traditionally masculine activities, but I also don’t think this is terrible representation? I have a trans woman friend who carries herself in a traditionally feminine way but hasn’t dropped more traditionally masculine activities that she grew up enjoying.
She throws the first hit at the end, but this is after Douglas dumps her on the spot after they’ve hit it off, had sex, and confessed their love for each other because he was too stupid to listen, he tells her to get lost, he basically calls her gross to her face by talking in a disgusted tone about “that operation you had”, and flat-out denies her existence as a woman.
It’s made very evident that if Douglas weren’t transphobic, he could’ve lived the rest of his life with a woman who’s established to be literally perfect for him.
Douglas ruined a great relationship because he just couldn’t stop himself being a transphobic bigot. Pity Glinner didn’t learn any lessons from his creation.
Glinner is the biggest argument I’ve seen against Death of the Author, because once you know you’re supposed to be laughing at the marginalised character and with the characters mistreating them, it’s impossible to find it funny.
There’s lots of examples of it too. The first time watching the theatre trip episode where a judge in drag opens the play, I’d read Roy’s discomfort with the show being “too gay” as a joke on Roy being out of his element; we were supposed to laugh at his discomfort. But on rewatching it’s hard to shake the idea that actually Roy’s defence of “I don’t want his sexuality rubbed in my face” is meant as something the audience is supposed to identify and agree with, and that far from being a knowing playful nudge at gay theatre the whole thing was a mean-spirited caricature of it. The meaning does get changed whether Roland Barthes likes it or not.
I’m a ciswoman and I actually love April’s ass-kicking. I’m sure it was meant to be a dig at her femininity but it’s the first time in media where I felt like, yes. This is exactly how I want my gender displayed.
Wait THAT’S the trans episode that everyone says is super-transphobic? In the context of being released in 2008 it’s perfectly fine. There’s probably be a few things that should be different if it were made today (and honestly, its been a few years since I’ve seen it so I might be not remembering some important yikes moment or something) but my takeaway was always that Douglas is still an asshole and April is an amazing woman who can do so much better than him
Edit to add: Honestly far worse is the Aunt Irma plotline. Most of the jokes are that “haha these guys are acting like girls” and that plot honestly kinda fell flat because of it
Honestly I think the only way it could have been less transphobic was to actually have a trans woman play the role? The woman that played April was quite fetching. And seemed like a pretty fleshed out person and not just a punchline. It would have been just as easy to find some beefy guy to put in a dress with bad makeup. Make a complete bigoted caricature. But they didn’t. Matt Berry’s character was always the butt of the joke. And in totality in the end still missed her. Honestly short of having a trans actress portray the character it really was one of the most positive and Progressive portrayals ironically at the time. Though I’m sure that has more to do with the staff involved then it does lineham himself.
EDIT: since I don’t want the top reply not to mention this, fuck IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan for the incalculable damage he’s done to innocent trans people. He’s a worthless, disgusting bigot.
Honestly, I always found that episode… Weirdly progressive? Even maybe by accident? Consider the following:
100% agree. It paints trans women favorably and makes Douglas the asshole like he deserves.
Douglas ruined a great relationship because he just couldn’t stop himself being a transphobic bigot. Pity Glinner didn’t learn any lessons from his creation.
Yeah, it’s kind of a Death of the Author moment. Ignore Glinner being a transphobic ogre and it’s actually quite good.
Glinner is the biggest argument I’ve seen against Death of the Author, because once you know you’re supposed to be laughing at the marginalised character and with the characters mistreating them, it’s impossible to find it funny.
There’s lots of examples of it too. The first time watching the theatre trip episode where a judge in drag opens the play, I’d read Roy’s discomfort with the show being “too gay” as a joke on Roy being out of his element; we were supposed to laugh at his discomfort. But on rewatching it’s hard to shake the idea that actually Roy’s defence of “I don’t want his sexuality rubbed in my face” is meant as something the audience is supposed to identify and agree with, and that far from being a knowing playful nudge at gay theatre the whole thing was a mean-spirited caricature of it. The meaning does get changed whether Roland Barthes likes it or not.
I’m a ciswoman and I actually love April’s ass-kicking. I’m sure it was meant to be a dig at her femininity but it’s the first time in media where I felt like, yes. This is exactly how I want my gender displayed.
And her actress was gorgeous.
Wait THAT’S the trans episode that everyone says is super-transphobic? In the context of being released in 2008 it’s perfectly fine. There’s probably be a few things that should be different if it were made today (and honestly, its been a few years since I’ve seen it so I might be not remembering some important yikes moment or something) but my takeaway was always that Douglas is still an asshole and April is an amazing woman who can do so much better than him
Edit to add: Honestly far worse is the Aunt Irma plotline. Most of the jokes are that “haha these guys are acting like girls” and that plot honestly kinda fell flat because of it
Honestly I think the only way it could have been less transphobic was to actually have a trans woman play the role? The woman that played April was quite fetching. And seemed like a pretty fleshed out person and not just a punchline. It would have been just as easy to find some beefy guy to put in a dress with bad makeup. Make a complete bigoted caricature. But they didn’t. Matt Berry’s character was always the butt of the joke. And in totality in the end still missed her. Honestly short of having a trans actress portray the character it really was one of the most positive and Progressive portrayals ironically at the time. Though I’m sure that has more to do with the staff involved then it does lineham himself.
The fandom has universally decided that douglas did hear her correctly and still did not care and they lived happily ever after