What’s the Cultural Impact of Transgender Characters on TV? – Newsweek

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

In 2014, Time magazine declared American culture had reached a transgender tipping point, with transgender people achieving unprecedented media visibility.

However, in light of recent policy shifts such as the White Housesrollback of federal guidelines that supported transgender studentsand Trumps July 26Twitter pronouncementthat the U.S. military will no longer allow transgender service members some have questioned whether this visibility has actually meant greater acceptance of trans people.

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The cast of 'Transparent,' the acclaimed Amazon original series. Transparent/Amazon Prime

Studies have shown thatentertainment has the powerto shape attitudes on health and social issues, fromorgan donationto thedeath penalty. But little research has explored the impact of portrayals of transgender people.

For this reason, we wanted to see how transgender TV characters might influence the attitudes of viewers. Specifically,we testedwhether political ideology plays a role in how audiences respond to these potentially polarizing depictions.

Transgender Media Visibility

Times transgender tipping point from a few years ago was attributed to fictional trans characters in shows like Transparentand Orange Is the New Blackandnews coverageof controversial policy issues, such asdiscrimination lawsuitsabout school bathrooms. In April 2015,nearly 17 million peoplewatched Caitlyn Jenner come out as transgender on 20/20.

It was in this context that the USA Network drama Royal Painsincluded a storyline about a fictional transgender teen named Anna who experiences complications while transitioning from male to female. Although Annas subplot lasted only 11 minutes, it grappled with numerous issues: the medical professions historical treatment of transgender individuals as mentally ill, parental rights regarding adolescent transitions and the risks of hormone replacement therapy.

Actress Laverne Cox, left, and writer Janet Mock embrace each other at the 23rd annual Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards in New York March 24, 2012. Andrew Kelly/Reuters

We first learned of the upcoming Royal Painsstoryline in early 2015, when the shows writers contacted Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S), a USC Annenberg-affiliated program that gives entertainment industry professionals accurate and timely information for storylines on health, safety and national security. (Erica is a researcher at HH&S.)

HH&S facilitated conversations between the writers and an expert in the medical treatment of transgender youth. The resulting June 23, 2015 episode, "The Prince of Nucleotides, receiveda 2016 GLAAD Media Award, with transgender activistNicole Mainesmaking her acting debut as Anna.

Media Bubbles

Before we could study the impact of Annas storyline, we wanted to make sure that the audience was mixed in its views on transgender rights in other words, that the show wouldnt simply be preaching to the choir.

Since the 2016 U.S. election,countlessstorieshave explored the media bubbles in which Americans live. This trend toward fragmentation permeates news, social media andentertainment. TV shows with broad audience appeal tend to address hot-button social issues relatively infrequently andsuperficially. Regular viewers of boundary-pushing series, on the other hand, may alreadybe left-leaning.

Research by GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) indicates that transgender characters have appeared primarily on streaming platforms and premium cable channels, while broadcast network showswhich have larger audiencestend to feature transgender characters only in brief storylines, if at all.

This means viewers disinclined to watch a show like Transparent,which features several trans characters, might still encounter such characters in minor storylines in mainstream programs.

Royal Pains(2009-2016) was about as mainstream as TV gets today. The show had no real history of addressing LGBTQ issues, so Annas episode was unlikely to attract a particularly trans-supportive audience. For us, this made it the ideal show to study transgender portrayals and how they might influence viewers across the ideological spectrum.

Do Minor Subplots Make a Difference?

Because HH&S had consulted on the storyline, the members of USA Networks social media team were open to helping us with our study. They posted links to our survey on the shows official Facebook and Twitter accounts following the episode. We supplemented this sample by recruiting Royal Painsviewers from market research panels. Only those who had seen the episode or one of the two prior episodes were eligible. Of the 488 viewers in our study, 391 had seen Annas episode.

Because there were several different shows at the time featuring transgender characters, we asked viewers which of these they had seen. We also measured their exposure to transgender issues in the news, including the unfolding Caitlyn Jenner story.

Finally, we examined several important variables that are known to impact viewers. These includeidentificationwith main characters, a sense of being drawn into the world of the story (what media scholars call transportation) and theemotions evokedby the storyline.

We foundthat Royal Painsviewers who saw Annas story had more supportive attitudes toward transgender people and policies, and we found a cumulative effect of exposure to transgender entertainment narratives. The more portrayals viewers saw, the more supportive their attitudes. Neither exposure to such issues in the news nor Caitlyn Jenners story had any effect on attitudes. In other words, the fictional stories we examined were more influential than events in the news.

Consistent withprevious research, in our data, political conservatism strongly predicted negative attitudes toward transgender people and lower support for policies that benefit transgender people. However, exposure to two or more transgender storylines cut the strength of this link in half. That is, politically conservative viewers who saw multiple shows featuring transgender characters had more positive attitudes toward trans people than those who saw just one.

Political ideology also shaped viewers responses to the Royal Painsnarrative. Those who were politically liberal were more likely to feel hope or identify with Anna, whereas those who were politically conservative were more likely to react with disgust.

Beyond the Bubble

Hollywood is not a panacea for healing our nations deep partisan and ideological divisions. To influence attitudes on a broad scale, entertainment storylines must first reach audiences outside cloistered media bubbles.

However, our research suggests nuanced portrayals of transgender individualsparticularly in mainstream forms of entertainmentcan break down ideological barriers in a way that news stories may not. Cumulative exposure across multiple shows had the greatest impact on attitudes, but even a relatively brief storyline had a powerful effect too. While politically conservative viewers were more likely to react with disgust, such reactions were tempered by seeing trans characters on a variety of shows.

At a recent GLAAD-sponsored panel,trans actress and activist Laverne Cox noted:

Weve got to tell these stories better because lives are on the line. Trans people are being murdered, are being denied health care, access to bathrooms and employment and housing because of all of thesemisconceptions that people have about who we really are.

As the future ofthousands of active duty service membershangs in the balance, its more imperative than ever to understand how the public responds to media representations of transgender people.

Erica L. Rosenthal is a Senior Research Associate, Hollywood, Health & Society, University of Southern California.

Traci Gillig is a PhD Candidate in Communication, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

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What's the Cultural Impact of Transgender Characters on TV? - Newsweek