Changing the reflection: re-visions on the trans mirror scene

Abstract

ABSTRACT The mirror scene that produces an eerily mismatched reflection is a staple of both trans and speculative films. Jay Prosser and Jack Halberstam have examined this trope, the latter asserting trans mirror scenes allow a disruptive ‘trans look’ for a non-trans audience. This essay takes up the trans gaze, but the process reverses. Rather, non-trans characters can become readably trans by way of a new trans look, one that takes account of asymmetrical mirror images as well as formal cinematic devices that collectively comprise an expanded trans aesthetics, proposing that the formal device itself, a mirroring split, is the trans mediation. Thereby, all misattuned mirror scenes (not only those confined to attempting trans representation) are fundamentally trans. The mismatched mirror reflection elicits an uncanny discomfort that is dysphoria. When characters control or align with mismatched reflections, films take a trans imaginary seriously, but unintentionally. The combination of trans technical and visual aesthetics made possible by mirrors, moving cameras, and a floating, disconnected view, both visualize and enact a trans point of view. Like the images reflected within the scenes’ mirrors, mirror scenes (trans and non-trans) are slightly altered reflections of each other.