In Goddard and Hoggs’s words, “trans representations on television and elsewhere should not just be seen as a “progressive signposting of liberal inclusion and celebration of more “mature” and realistic depictions of trans lives’, but as a veritable ‘transing’ of existing television genres and conventions” (Goddard and Hogg, 2020). The last Elite’s season tries to do its bit by introducing a trans character in its show. Unfortunately, this is not enough. It is not more than a drop in the ocean.

Although this TV show produced by Netflix is mainly consumed by hispanian viewers, it is globally renowned. Since the beginning of the show, script writers have introduced racial and LGTIQ+ characters, coming on board of contemporary sexualities and representations in the mainstream culture. However, this was not the main topic in this soap opera starring by —supposedly— teenagers: murder cases and differences between social classes summed up Élite’s plot.

Nevertheless, what we are going to find in this new season are sort of propaganda discourses agglutinated through chapters. We could say they are even sketches. Each scene is almost created independently by the others, and the main goal is to reflect questions which our society is still struggling with: transphobia, homophobia, machismo, racism, classism and more besides.

We should accept that capitalism appropriation could lead us to this kind of content. Unfortunately we just can judge this show playing the same game they are playing, in other words, by its way of representing stereotypes (even when they try to demolish them).
Consequently, we should be thankful because they have chosen a male transgender character in their casting (their audiovisual visibility has been always being limited). Sadly, being trans is the only reason why he plays a role in this show.

Taking into account what we mentioned before, is trans visibility in TV enough? Why we do not feel pleased in this case? The reason is simple: they are not numbers, they are not a check in a “to-do-list”, and more important: it is not mandatory to learn from them. If we reduce their representation in paternalistic perspectives, we do not make them humans. And this is their main right.

We should be careful about this kind of representations in the mainstream culture. Not just because they do not make a great different in the audiovisual sphere, encouraging stereotypes and deepness characters, but in our society development. 

By Clara Heras Aguilar

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References: 

· Michael Goddard and Chris Hogg 2020, ‘Introduction: Trans TV Re-evaluated part II’, Trans TV Dossier 3, Critical Studies In Television 15: 3

· Montero, Carlos. Élite. 2022. Zeta Producciones and Netflix. Netflix.