Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision batteries at maximum for THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 7! This week transition goes further than ever, which causes those we love to reveal their true nature!
C’mon, just read PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, and PART 6 first so that you actually understand what I’m saying, okay? Do it for me.
Ok thx. Moving on!
54:51 – Lisa stitches the hand onto Frank. Here in her heart, she rejected the guy who assaulted her. Remember her confusion after it happened, in the “boys will be boys” world we lived in, as a trans man, when she wondered… if she didn’t want to assault women, was she really a man? Could she really be one? Is that really what “men are?”
No. You can be a man and respect women, actually, and here she’s finally rejected the kind of man Doug was. And it brings another piece of the real her to life.
55:27 – Frank goes for another dose of HRT energy in the tanning bed, and Lisa increases the dose to Ultra High. We’re moving up!
55:52 – Frank sits up from the tanning bed, more human than ever before!
And look, this is just my opinion, but his artful shaggy hair, the sideburns, the comfy casual clothes… Frank looks extremely transmasc-coded to me.
56:14 – They embrace, they dance in celebration. Lisa’s starting to really except her inner man.
57:03 – Frank immediately takes to the piano, to express himself. He’s great, and Lisa’s impressed.
57:55 – Lisa: “You had a whole life.” Frank points at her. “Yeah, I guess, yeah, I do. I guess so.” She does now!
58:10 – Frank wants her to play the piano with him, two as one. She says no, the piano is her dad’s, he hasn’t played since her mom died. Her only access to masculinity hasn’t expressed itself since her mom’s terrible reaction to Lisa being trans.
58:22 – She sits next to him, but doesn’t want to play. Clasps her arms behind her back. As they play, look how similar their hair is to each other as they sit side by side. Almost the same silhouette, but reversed. And we were introduced to Frank in the opening credit animation as a silhouette.
Huh.
58:40 – She sings, expressing herself as he expresses himself. They are as one. This is REO Speedwagon’s I Can’t Fight this Feeling.
I’ve been keeping a list, a long list, of popular songs that have really strong trans readings. There will be an essay featuring them someday, and let me tell you this song has been on my list for years.
It one hundo percento reads like a trans person truly accepting themselves.
I can’t fight this feeling any longer
And yet I’m still afraid to let it float
What started out as friendship
Has grown stronger
I only wish I had the strength to let it show
And even as I wander
I’m keeping you in sight
You’re a candle in the window
On a cold dark winter’s night
I’m getting closer
Than I ever thought I might
And I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
And if, to bring this ship into the shore
Come crashing through your door
Baby I can’t fight this feeling anymore
This is Lisa’s transition self-acceptance song!
1:00:04 – Frank sniffles. Yeah! It’s so emotional to finally accept yourself! And live life as your true self. Though, again, the new smell catches her off guard.
1:00:39 – Lisa, to Frank: “You saved me.” Yeah, our true selves do save us. We are the one we’ve been waiting for (THE MATRIX is alllll about this).
1:01:10 – Lisa: “I gotta go change my pad,” Yeah, trans guys may have to do that, “and you gotta get upstairs for the night ‘cause they’re gonna be home soon.” This has been great, but I can only do this when I’m home alone, I can’t come out to my family or let them catch me.
1:01:31 – Look how miserable Lisa is having to hide her true self around her family. But she’s still in black. Though she’s still hiding her true self from them, she’s no longer hiding him from herself.
1:02:43 – Lisa makes a bad excuse to go up to her room (especially because Taffy is going to try and call their mom), and her dad notices her fingernails, there’s blood around them. What have you been doing? She’s suddenly worried she’s been caught.
It’s like when you experiment with gender when you’re alone and try to remove all signs before anyone sees, and maybe you missed a spot (we see this in I SAW THE TV GLOW (and Owen being ashamed of it, trying to wipe and scrape the evidence off of him).
But he’s not even worried she might have hurt herself, he’s agog that she used white out and not a pretty nail polish like she’d been taught. Nails should be polished and pretty and feminine! Never concerned with her well-being, only her appearance.
1:03:20 – Lisa goes into the closet, where Frank is playing with dolls. She laughs. Lisa: “That’s ‘Starlight Rosebud Hella Good Girl Gonna Need a Big Bank.’ But I just call her ‘Nibblets Corn.’ I don’t play with dolls anymore.” Is that… a name a girl who liked playing with dolls might name their doll? And the disdain when she said “I don’t play with dolls anymore”… is that because she’s too old?
Or because she wasn’t into “girly” things like that?
1:04:07 – Taffy calls Lisa from the hall, and Lisa freaks out and quickly closes the closet. Almost caught exploring your true gender again. Terrifying.
1:04:16 – When Taffy says she called her mom’s hotel and she never checked in, Frank thumps the closet door. With overly restrictive, transphobic, forced feminine gender conformity gone, the real us is anxious to finally get out of the closet for good.
1:04:21 – When Taffy’s talking about trying to find Janet in a Milwaukee hotel, note that she mentions Janet had multiple different last names. Forced compulsory cisgender heterosexuality says it’s fine for cis women getting married to change their names, but they balk at trans people doing it.
Remember Janet was a complete hypocrite, so this tracks. Name changes for me but not for thee. Gender affirming healthcare for me and not for thee. Once again, please see CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO, and TRANS KIDS 1: FACTS AND DANGERS (which will show you the very people legislating against surgeries trans kids aren’t getting make carve-outs in the laws to be sure they can force surgeries on intersex infants to make them conform).
1:06:00 – Frank, in a nightgown, uses the magic wand on Lisa’s shoulders. But Lisa is in collared pajamas with pants. With cowboys on it. Distinctively dudes. They have swapped.
1:06:32 – Lisa: “Do you feel anything in your body?” Will being a man make me feel like my body is mine, and that I’m whole? Frank grunts and nods. Lisa: “It must be kind of uncomfortable sleeping in the closet.” Let him out, let him feel.
1:07:21 – Look at them side by side in bed, in the same position, the trans lamp on the bedside table. Here, together in the subconscious, they face transness head-on.
1:08:40 – There’s an electric zap and the lights flicker due to the magic wand, and Lisa cries out “Oh my god!” We know what zaps mean. Life! Transition progress! Sometimes that includes learning how your body responds differently to certain stimuli after beginning HRT.
1:09:23 – Lisa: “After my mom died, everyone was in such a hurry to go back to normal. And they kept acting like I had a problem because I couldn’t stop missing her. Started to feel like I was going crazy. I thought that was gonna last forever but it didn’t, you know? And pretty soon everybody seemed like they were almost excited to move on and forget about her.”
Lisa’s mom’s betrayal wounded her, but everyone else just wanted Lisa to “go back to normal” and act like nothing happened.
1:09:48 – Here we see them drink at the same time, because they’re the same person. Lisa: “They kept saying, ‘time heals all wounds.’ But that’s a lie. Time is the wound. Takes you further and further from that place when you were happy. Makes those good smells go away. People are so afraid of death… ‘cause they don’t know when it’s gonna happen to them. It could be an axe murderer, it could be the flu, but they don’t know and they hate that, so… I’m not afraid of death anymore.”
She’s no longer afraid of transition, even though it is literally making her good smell change.
1:10:46 – They drink at the same time again. Lisa: “But I don’t want to die a virgin.” She wants to experience life, but for real this time. As her true self.
1:11:20 – Lisa asks Frank if he ever had sex, and Frank drinks while she clears her throat. Can’t respond when you’re drinking, y’know! Might make you choke a little.
Frank admits he had sex one time, with a woman he loved. Lisa: “I want that. I want to do it with someone I truly love. Like Michael Trent.” She wants to fully experience life as a gender nonconforming man. Frank grunts in annoyance, because he’s there already, but she still doesn’t feel like she is.
1:11:55 – Lisa says she’s going to “offer her body” to Michael. She’s going to try to make her body like his.
1:12:29 – Lisa’s now in the most black she’s ever been in. Transition is rolling right along. Taffy literally says it’s her costume. Nobody would really dress like that, Lisa.
Taffy’s upset about not knowing what happened to Janet and they switch seats, Lisa’s going to drive. Finally.
1:14:40 – Everyone at school knows Doug’s missing. Taffy’s too upset and says she’s going home, asks her friends if any of them can bring Lisa home after school, nobody wants to.
1:15:30 – Michael isn’t in class, he’s missing.
1:15:40 – Lisa gets called to the principal’s office. A girl student says, “Dress code violation.” Why are you dressing so weird Lisa? Don’t you know how to conform like a good girl? Girls don’t dress the way you do.
A boy student says, “Slut penalty.” You’re too weird for the conformos, you’d have to be a sexual deviant to dress that way!
1:17:31 – Tamara: “She’s off her rocker. She needs help. You know there’s a rumor that she killed her own mother.” There it is. She’s trans, ew. Punish her.
1:17:38 – As Frank walks, an old man disparages a young boy (in a dysphoria shirt!) trying to start a lawn mower. “Pull harder. What are you, a little fruitcake, huh?” Gender conformity comes for you when you’re perceived as a boy, even if you’re not, and even if you are!
1:18:02 – Frank takes a dysphoria club off the steering wheel of Janet’s car, which is yellow (she literally let her fear drive her).
It was locked by dysphoria, but now Frank is gonna drive. The horrible old man objects to Frank’s appearance. “This is my neighborhood. And you don’t need to be here. So carry your ass on out, or me and you gonna go after it right here.” Get out of here you fucking tranny, or it’s violence.
1:18:20 – Frank drives off after we see he laid the old bigot out (and took his clothes?!). The kid in the dysphoria tee waves and smiles happily as he goes. Protect trans kids, babes. And yourself.
1:19:17 – Lisa: “Shit is transpiring, man. You have to take me to Michael’s.” She wants her inner dude to take her to the non-toxic man she wants to be, still not fully comprehending all the red flags she’s seen along the way.
1:19:25 – Look at them sitting next to each other, both looking kind of formal, pseudo-Victorian in dress. They’re approaching the moment of self-actualization, when the inner man truly and finally comes out.
1:19:50 – Frank stops in front of a house with a ton of plastic pink flamingos in the yard. They kind of form a line. Lisa knows the “order” of conformity that she’s been taught, and this is her last gasp at fighting her truth. I’m just a girl who wants to bang a guy and nothing more.
1:20:00 – Frank doesn’t want her to have sex with Michael. You might be attracted to him, but mostly you want to be him, and that guy is right there in front of/inside of you, Lisa. Let him out.
1:20:14 – Lisa: “It’s your fault we’re screwed. You killed Janet, it wasn’t my idea.” We’re in this mess because I have a man inside me and not a woman, and you made me reject stereotypical femininity and the expectations that come with it.
“Okay, going after Doug was my idea, but only because killing Janed felt really good and I was just an accomplice.” You made me want to be the man I am and then I had to reject being the sexist creep that society says is just “boys being boys” because that’s not who I am.
Lisa: “But now you’re out of control. You’re beating people up, driving around in plain sight.” You’re making me see and reject all the lies of society, and you’re out where people can see you aka me! What will people think?!
1:21:20 – Lisa: “You act like you’re happy for me, and you care about me, but you’re not really happy for me.” “Stay in the car. Don’t let anyone see you.” Let the fear box you in, and hide your truth. Don’t let anyone see.
1:21:43 – The house is red. Danger. Taffy’s car is there. Red. Danger.
1:22:07 – The walls and the curtains are all yellow. She’s afraid of what she’s going to find, because she has picked up on the warning signs, even if not consciously.
1:22:22 – Lisa sees Taffy in bed with Michael, blue walls and blanket. Michael isn’t really different from other guys after all, and the despair of that (and of Taffy’s betrayal) is a lot.
As they’re about to kiss, she breaks in with a scream.
Remember at this point Taffy’s said she wasn’t into Michael twice, but those were lies. Michael gave her that hickey. And in fact, he even says he became infatuated with Taffy ever since the party… the party back at the beginning of the film when Taffy was supposedly going to confront him and Tamara about spiking Lisa’s dysphoria drink!
Taffy was going to defend Lisa, but instead just took the guy she was interested in. Just like when she outed Lisa to the other girls at the party, Taffy’s allyship has been PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP and FALSE ALLYSHIP all along. She was never truly on Lisa’s side, Taffy just wanted to feel like she was, so she could think of herself as a good person.
1:23:10 – Michael calls her “kiddo!” Infantilizing her just like her mom did, just like Doug (say it with me, I fuckin’ hate Doug) did. Michael is, in fact, no different from the rest of them.
He says he doesn’t have feelings for Lisa like he does for Taffy. Lisa: “Why? Because I’m not sweet, and simple, like her?” Because I’m not conforming to what society told me to? “Not enough polarity for you, Werner Heisenberg?” She’s name-dropping theoretical physicists now. As with silent film director Pabst, Lisa demonstrates she’s actually smart and knows a lot.
“You want to be the smart one who likes cool stuff, and you don’t want your girlfriend to like cool stuff. Do you know how uncool that is?” Why’s he gotta not be the kind of man she thought he was? The kind she wishes she was (and already really is)?
1:23:45 – Frank comes in to stand up for her, pulls the blanket off of Michael. Look at the blanket colors, there’s pink and blue together. Something trans is going on here.
On the Wings of Love by Jeffrey Osborn plays. Time for some lyrics!
Like a stream running free,
traveling on the wings of love.
On the wings of love
Up and above the clouds
the only way to fly
is on the wings of love
on the wings of love
only the two of us
together flying high
If we again interpret flight as GENDER EUPHORIA and love as the love of self it takes to transition in spite of all society throws at you, here’s the “I’ve found myself and gender euphoria” moment.
And given what’s occurring when it plays…
1:24:16 – This is about Michael’s “manhood,” ie Lisa realizing she didn’t want him, she wanted to be him (or rather, who she imagined he was).
1:24:19 – Lisa is… not horrified to realize what’s going on. She’s… surprised. And excited.
1:24:44 – Taffy screams and is horrified by Lisa’s revelation. Lisa still stops Frank from hurting her. Lisa never wanted to hurt anyone, even when those same people don’t and won’t accept her for who she is.
Remember this kill represents Lisa rejecting what she doesn’t want to be, which makes this one extra monumental (and is why it comes last). For the entire movie she’s been wanting to be Michael, but in learning the truth, that even he was putting on a bit of an act and wasn’t who she thought he was, she’s rejecting that too.
She doesn’t want to be any kind of man that’s dishonest or uses women, she wants to be a sensitive, creative, gender-nonconforming guy. And so she shall.
And as a reminder, we don’t transition to hurt cis people, we transition to relieve our own hurt. If they’re going to make it all about them and act like we lied to them, even though it was them and all of society who lied to us our entire lives, perpetuating SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING, that’s on them.
It’s not on us.
Next week we bring it all home and see if Lisa finally becomes the Frank she is. You might even say… we wrap it all up.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
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