Vantage Points: On Media as Trans Memoir

Documentary filmmaker Joynt (Boys Don’t Cry) delivers an original meditation on trauma and transitioning. Drawing on the media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s writings to reflect on surviving childhood sexual abuse, Joynt juxtaposes episodes from his life with McLuhan’s insights, creating meaning through literary montage. For example, he relates McLuhan’s assertion that “humans are continually massaged and worked over by media” and recounts how he was only able to remember how old he was when his uncle abused him because he recalled that Sarah McLachlan’s album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy had recently come out and was playing in the background. Elsewhere, Joynt notes McLuhan’s observation that scientists conceptualize biological processes as communication networks and discusses how when he began transitioning in his 20s, he relied on “a network of trans men exchanging testosterone for trade in the parking lot near the local Safeway.” Joynt’s precise reasons for weaving together snippets about his absentee father, television coverage of the Gulf War, and Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Blow Job can be elusive, though the author’s observation that “as trans men, we are constituted by the men whom we fear” provides enough of a cipher that dedicated readers can draw their own conclusions. Enigmatic yet evocative, this demands to be read on its own terms. (Sept.)