Centering Transgender Identity via the Textual Periphery:TransAmericaand the “Double Work” of Paratexts

Operating on the textual periphery, paratexts such as film reviews, movie posters, and director commentary on DVDs have the ability to neutralize and domesticate potential threats a narrative poses to a social or cultural status quo. Using the film TransAmerica (2005) as a case study, I illustrate how, despite the intent to shut down certain possibilities of textual decoding, what I term “paratextual domestication,” paratexts create spaces that explore, validate, and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) life and subjectivity. As a result, I argue paratexts perform a complex “double work.” In the case of TransAmerica, although the film's paratexts subordinate transgender themes and advance certain reductive tropes and stereotypes, they also facilitate wider discussions about gender and sexuality, represent transgender individuals as part of the national family, and focus attention on the everydayness of being transgender.