Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Tillyvision dial set to max bronze for THE UNINTENTIONALLY INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF LISA FRANKENSTEIN, part 8! This week, we get all the transition care we need and self-actualization arrives!
For the last time (in this series, anyway), I’m gonna pester you to be sure you’ve read PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, and PART 7 first. I know, I know, it’s a lot of parts. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make this movie! All I did was love it. Yeah!
Let’s get this wrapped up!
1:24:48 – Frank leaves with the trash can that Michael’s penis and testicles landed in. Frank wants those things. And we know Lisa has bottom dysphoria, and Frank is Lisa’s self-actualization, sooooo… you know where this is going.
1:24:55 – Even still, Lisa goes to comfort Taffy, to try and make her feel better. Having to manage the feelings of the cis people in our lives when we come out, even though we are the ones society makes it so difficult for, is a very real thing we have to do. Often. CIS GRIEF rears its head again.
1:25:22 – Inside Taffy’s red car, with Taffy’s red face, Lisa still tries to comfort her, but Taffy pulls away. Horrified by Lisa’s truth.
1:25:58 – Lisa is still trying to comfort Taffy, who’s terrified. Lisa: “Thank you for being nice to me when no one else was. I did notice. It was just that your mom was so heinous that I- I’d already decided that you were, too. You’re the type of person who usually bullies me or looks right through me. But you didn’t. You actually went out of your way to try to tell people I was part of your family. You really actually wanted me to be your sister [emphasis mine].”
Even people who might accept us as nonconforming people of the gender we were assigned at birth cannot handle or accept us once they learn we’re actually trans. See CIS SPOUSAL AND PARTNER SUPPORT for more.
1:26:39 – Lisa gives Taffy her mom’s rosary, those old fears and feelings will no longer hold her back! They do, however, belong to Taffy… now that she’s revealed her true, traitorous self, and betrayed Lisa.
Lisa: “You are, you know? You are my sister. You’re a great person, Taff. And I’m sorry… I hurt you. I love you.” We do love the people in our lives, and we never meant to hurt them. Coming out as trans shouldn’t hurt them, though. And society teaches us that we have to apologize for our very existence, for wanting to stop living a lie and be free from pain, just because cis feelings are hurt. And that’s bullshit.
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf) by Pixies plays. More lyrics? Hell yeah
Cease to resist, giving my goodbye
Drive my car into the ocean
You’ll think I’m dead, but I sail away
On a wave of mutilation
A wave of mutilation
Wave of mutilation
You will think I’m dead, just like Lisa’s mom did, but Lisa’s going off to be her true self. And she won’t drown under the water of dysphoria, she’ll sail across it. With the body modifications she needs, which a whole lot of cis people sure view as “multiation.”
1:27:22 – Lisa picks up the axe (used to sever and obtain Michael’s genitalia), seemingly to go kill Frank? Cis grief has made her feel so bad she’s going to try to kill her true self for good.
1:27:51 – Lisa ducks under the yellow fear tape to get to Frank. But she’s now crossed the line of fear, it’s behind her now… and she can’t kill Frank. She can’t kill her truth. And so:
1:28:06 – She embraces her true self! Lisa: “You love me?” (do I love myself enough to do this?) “You love me?” She does. He does. I do. (marriage!)
1:28:36 – Lisa: “Listen, we’re running out of time. Make love to me.
1:28:44 – Frank looks down, then grunts in discomfort.
1:28:54 – Frank puts Lisa’s hand on his crotch. Lisa: “Oh. Oh. Oh!”
1:29:12 – Lisa’s asking herself if she can transition and be the man she wants to be without the thing our sexist gendered society says you need to be a man. And she confirms it to herself.
HERE COMES THE TRANSIEST THING IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE:
Lisa: “That’s okay. We can… I mean, you don’t need one of those to be a man.”
YOU DON’T NEED A PENIS TO BE A MAN.
Genitalia does not determine gender. You don’t have to get bottom surgery to be a man.
Lisa: “It’s actually like the least important part, really. We can do other things and it’s fine, it’s fine.”
1:29:23 – But Frank has Michael’s junk. You don’t need bottom surgery to be a trans man, but if you’re a trans man who needs bottom surgery then you should get it.
But either way, it’s not the thing that determines the gender you know yourself to be.
1:29:29 – Lisa: “You cut it off for me?” Yes, we will get gender confirmation surgeries if it’s what we need. And sometimes that means modifying our bodies in ways we need to live authentic lives.
Cis people do this allllllllllll the time, even while being horrified by, and legislating against, trans people doing the very same things. Again and again this comes up, please read it: CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO.
1:29:31 – When Lisa and Frank are closer than they’ve ever been, a police officer, aka the people who literally police gender in our society, comes in to break it up. “This is an active crime scene. You guys can’t be here.”
Women don’t belong in a grove for bachelors, this is unacceptable! (It’s worth noting actual cops are, as a group, incredibly hostile to trans people).
As in THE MATRIX films, police (and security guards, and Agents) are the tools the system uses to oppress trans people.
1:29:43 – Frank drops the cop in a grave. Your “rules” in support of THE FALSE DICHOTOMY and oppression will not stop me. They no longer apply to me. I’ve seen through the lies.
1:29:54 – Lisa, in what is intentionally a very sexually suggestive pose, attaches the genitalia her true self needs. Bottom surgery. Note the large “penis” grave drawing we saw earlier is right next to them. And what’s to the left of that? A women in old-timey high-fem clothing, like Lisa was wearing in her dream, but it’s in negative, the black and white are reversed. That’s the opposite of what she wants.
REO Speedwagon’s I Can’t Fight this Feeling Any Longer plays, but it’s a cover with a woman singing… a perceived gender change.
1:30:12 – On the black wooden cat behind Frank, it says “Feed the kitty.” Which, ummmm, may be a thing Frank can do after bottom surgery, if you… follow the euphemism.
1:30:23 – They come out of the shed with the magic electric tanning bed, the surgery, and the HRT, are complete.
1:30:29 – Frank kisses her hand. Acceptance. Thanks. And a goodbye to the person he was, who got him here. Look how Frank is now more human in appearance than ever.
1:30:38 – He puts a candy ring on Lisa’s finger, the two are now one. Their marriage. Their union. Frank will be all there is.
1:31:14 – Another kiss of self-acceptance.
1:31:53 – They change positions. He is now where she was.
1:32:01 – Returning to the opening animation style, they ride a rocket to the stars together.
1:32:07 – Their rocket crashes into the man in the moon and they walk across his surface, over and beyond. She did it. He did it. They’re here, and going further than they ever dreamed they could.
1:32:28 – After consummating their union, and gaining full acceptance, Lisa: “There’s no other way. No, don’t cry.” They kiss each other’s hands to cement the transition. His tears don’t smell now. Or, perhaps, she’s grown to like that smell as it affirms who she is.
1:32:36 – “I don’t know how I was ever afraid of you.” We spend our lives terrified of what’s inside, of who we truly are, because society teaches us to do exactly that.
But they, we, were never anything to be afraid of.
They’re about to kiss when police sirens interrupt them. Society’s policing of gender roles is still coming for them.
1:33:17 – Sitting on the edge of the tanning bed (which again, looks like a coffin), she hands Frank a note and uses her thumb to move a kiss from her lips to his, his face awash in trans lighting. For our true selves to live, our old selves must die. I SAW THE TV GLOW also uses this metaphor to great affect in its allegory.
1:33:35 – As Lisa lies down inside, ready to fully become her true self, the final kiss of self-acceptance.
1:33:47 – She’s bathed in the dysphoria light. It, too, will die with our old selves, as we live authentic lives hopefully free of the dysphoria that plagued us.
1:34:13 – Lisa’s not afraid now. This is what she’s been waiting for, and what she needs to do.
1:34:19 – The sparks from the final transformation knock over a pillar with one of Taffy’s tiara’s on it. A pillar of femininity is falling.
1:34:27 – The tanning bed erupts in flames, the past is destroyed. Frank’s still a little sad and emotional about it.
1:34:38 – Frank opens Lisa’s note. “Death is temporary. I’ll love you forever.” She did not sign her name, for “Lisa” is no more. There is only a lightning bolt, a symbol..
…of the thing that allowed her to become him.
1:35:15 – The shed goes up in flames. A kid looking on: “Bitchin’.” Yeah kid, transition is bitchin’!
Worth noting that I SAW THE TV GLOW also uses flames, and even emergency vehicles showing up at a house, in the same way. We “burn down” falsehoods and society treats it as an emergency and a crime.
1:35:24 – Taffy and their dad visit Lisa’s grave. She’s dead to them. I SAW THE TV GLOW and THE MATRIX (specifically the Animatrix short “Kid’s Story”) also use this metaphor for how many cis people see us when we transition… we’re dead to them.
1:35:43 – And yet, Taffy’s and Dad’s flowers are explicitly pink, white, and blue. As if, in death, perhaps, they could finally acknowledge Lisa’s truth. Maybe. But Taffy wear’s Lisa’s mom’s rosary, so she’s still chained under all those false beliefs.
And if you watch, Lisa’s dad doesn’t even leave the flowers he brought for Lisa. He takes them with him! Ugh c’mon man.
1:36:45 – But look at the flowers Frank left for her. They are, in fact, the very same flowers Lisa brought to Frank’s grave in Bachelor’s Grove back at 6:30 into the movie!
Frank was “dead” and had no way to know what she would have left him… unless he and Lisa were always the same person at two ends of transition.
Also, uh… didja catch what it says down on the bottom of Lisa’s tombstone? Beloved wife.
Transition: achieved. Self: Actualized.
1:36:51 – Frank is now on the bench, reading aloud. He has a voice. Finally!
He reads the poem “To Mary,” by Percy Shelley, who was… well, he was a lot, but he was married to Mary Shelley, who wrote the original Frankenstein (possibly as an excuse to get away from him for a while).
O Mary dear,
that you were here.
With your brown eyes
bright and clear.
And your sweet voice,
like a bird
Singing love to its lone mate
In the ivory bower disconsolate;
Voice the sweetest ever heard!
And your brow more than the sky
of this azure Italy.
Mary dear, come to me soon,
I am not well whilst thou art far;
As sunset to the sphered moon,
As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.
O Mary dear,
that you were here;
The Castle echo whispers ‘Here’
Very much a longing for the one we love, the one we wish was here. And if you again view people in a romance as a person loving their true self enough to transition, it’s also perhaps a final goodbye. To the person we were, to the costume we wore, to the part we played. None of them our truth, but they persevered long enough, until we could be free. And real.
1:37:20 – Lisa is all in red, now she’s nothing but love. And she’s all bandaged, like a mummy (the poster in her bedroom/subconscious), like the papoose blankets she wrapped herself in, here at Papoose Lake. Even her brooch is a heart.
Notice again that the hat (which Frank gave her) has a flower on it, and she accepted it. Remember the opening credit animation, and how that indicated the perceived woman accepting the gift of Frank’s existence, but it disappeared when she rejected him? Well… here it is again. For good.
And her face is all white, going through the reversal of what we saw Frank go through. This is her end, and why Frank is saying goodbye.
And just look at his rainbow suspenders, he’s out and proud.
As we close out, I Call You Mine by The Zombies plays. Here’s some lyrics one. More. Time!
Though you and I would dance and laugh and play
Walk in the light of day and talk the night away
Could you see, baby, you understood then
That I loved you, how I loved you?
I couldn′t chance to break the spell we had
The happy times we had and yet the times were sad
Just for me, baby, you understood then
I was afraid to try to call you mine
But now, you’ve come to me (I′ll call you mine)
You’ve brought your love to me (I’ll call you mine)
Welcome, new real me. I’m here to stay.
And farewell, old me. You were never really me, but thanks for holding on long enough, and loving yourself enough, to get me here.
So! What’s your verdict? Was the incredibly deep transness in this film unintentionally intentional? Was it intentionally intentional? I think I’m leaning more toward the latter, but it’s up for debate!
But what’s not up for debate is that this is the most explicitly transmasc allegory I’ve ever seen, in a film that’s not only fun and a delight to watch, but that has so much to say about the ways society forces conformity on us all, and the damage that does to us.
Maybe at some point you got close to figuring yourself out, but then got scared, or hurt, and put the real you back in a box and buried them deep in your heart.
But Zelda Williams, Diablo Cody, Kathryn Newton, and Cole Sprouse are here to remind you that you can always let them back out. And you should.
It might just feel electric, and it might just make you whole, and a more real person than you’ve ever been.
Thank you for joining me on this installment of Tillyvision, and for accompanying me on the choppy seas as we ring the bells to keep the monsters away.
Transition saves us, babes.
And you’re worth saving.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com