Queering Ethnic Rites of Passage: Transparent and One Day at a Time

Abstract

Abstract I take account of queered ethnic rites of passage in the popular television series Transparent (2014-19) and One Day at a Time (2017-20), shows through which directors Joey Soloway and Gloria Calderón Kellett explore the intersections between queer youth and Jewish and Latinx identities, respectively. Transparent uses flashbacks to character Ari’s decision to forego their bat mitzvah in such a way that is inexorable from both their vexed relationship to their family’s immigrant history and their burgeoning queer (and later nonbinary) identification as a twenty-something in the series’ present. Likewise, One Day at a Time presents character Elena’s process of coming to terms with whether or not to celebrate her quinceañera, which she perceives as a misogynist, patriarchal tradition, as she duly grapples with coming out. Both series include gendered rites of passages, the Latinx quinceañera and the Jewish bat mitzvah, in a way that shows sexuality and ethnicity to sit uncomfortably with one another for queer adolescents whose grandparents immigrated to the United States. The two storylines share a family as a site of compulsory heterosexuality, adolescent characters who negotiate their sexual identities as they grapple with a rite of passage, and the use of humor as a tactic to question, resist, and at times reify patriarchal norms.