2021
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Documentary
The wordplay at work in Vice’s series Transnational is, perhaps, all too obvious as a collection of reported stories that spotlight various trans communities around the world: from the ballroom scene in Detroit to a government-sponsored safe haven in Mexico City, with stops in the UK and Indonesia along the way. But in grouping them together and cutting across them—building, as it were, a trans-national collective—Vice’s team has wisely pushed back against any notion of the global trans community as being any kind of monolith. There are, for sure, similar struggles for trans and gender nonconforming folks globally; but in highlighting specific struggles and modes of communion, Transnational finds a way to honor collectivity in individuality, the many in the few. Moreover, even as it focuses on on-the-ground activists and their hard-earned victories, each episode also celebrates the joy that can exist within resistance. There’s an agency to the reporting here; no doubt a byproduct of this GLAAD Media Award-winning endeavor being fronted by a team of trans journalists, including on-camera talent like Freddy McConnell, Alyza Enriquez, Eva Reign, and Rana Thamrin. For treating global trans issues with the dignity, respect, and rigor they deserve, offering audiences a wide-ranging snapshot of a community that is so often defined by the crises hoisted upon it, Transnational receives a Peabody.
