Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change by Eliza Steinbock (review)

Reviewed by: Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change by Eliza Steinbock Eli Anderson Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change by Eliza Steinbock. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, 234 pp., $95.52 hardcover, $25.95 paper. Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change by Eliza Steinbock critically engages trans film through the concept of the shimmer, broadly defined as a glimmer, a flicker, or an abrupt and flashy change. Steinbock also roots the idea of the shimmer in the theoretical work of Roland Barthes, arguing that as a device, the shimmer is both an aesthetic and explanatory tool of trans cinema. Steinbock situates their conception of trans-ness in earlier discussions by queer theorists such as Jack Halberstam, Susan Stryker, and Sandy Stone, arguing that trans ways of being "are process-oriented, rather than object-oriented" (12). Borrowing from Stone, they consider transgender persons as a genre rather than a strict definition and seek to embrace the ambiguities and nuances of trans experiences (14). To account for the multiplicity of trans experiences and their overlaps with the experiences of queer and intersex individuals, they use the term trans-inter-queer to describe the various embodiments and ontologies reflected in the films they investigate. In their first chapter, "Shimmering Phantasmagoria," Steinbock compares trans experiences of embodiment with early phantasmagoric films, arguing that both are created through a mixture of scientific advancement and are often considered fundamentally illusory to outsiders. The phantasmagoric aesthetic, which began in proto-cinema, utilizes the shimmer as part of its trick; this parallels many mainstream conceptions of trans-ness which consider medical transition as illusory, as "wavering on the tip of deception/astonishment" (32). Steinbock contends that the phantasmagoric aesthetic, with its emphasis on this shimmering, provides a method for understanding and revealing other ways of being outside of the gender and sex binary, which often renders the lives of those who do not have, or in some cases even desire, a "definite true sex", as unliveable (34). Borrowing from Walter Benjamin's theory of "cinema-as-surgical theatre", Steinbock notes that the process of cutting and gluing celluloid stills mirrors the process of surgically cutting and suturing the trans-inter-queer body (35). The surgical altering of physical bodies is akin to the editing of early cinema, [End Page 257] which relies on tricking or fooling the audience via this suture. Steinbock points to the early work of filmmaker George Méliès, who used this literal cutting of celluloid to turn men into women and back again on screen; Steinbock uses this cinematic sex change to argue that this "transsexual logic" has been a part of the cinema "since its inception," bringing new meaning to Susan Stryker's notes on the cinematic qualities of trans embodiment (36). Steinbock further contends that the literal stop-motion qualities of the camera provide a method of conceptualizing gender "based on montage and assembly" rather than relying on the body's supposedly natural sex (40). Continuing this point, Steinbock also points to the photo montage qualities of Lili Elbe's transition story in Man into Woman, arguing that a reading of her story in terms of trick effects reveals a story of trans embodiment of two differently sexed bodies appearing in the same person. Steinbock prioritizes this reading over a more linear story of transition, in which Elbe's male persona is killed off to make room for the female Lili. Steinbock also turns to contemporary trans "hirstories" which utilize similar tricks to early phantasmagoric film: Zachary Drucker and A.L. Steiner's "BEFORE/AFTER" (2009) and Yishay Garbasz's "Becoming" (2010). Both photographic projects depict the physical transition of their subjects, the former using camera tricks such as double exposure and the latter using a flipbook technique to depict the contradictory one-ness of the pre- and post-transition subject. In chapter two, "Shimmering Sex," Steinbock turns to trans pornography, noting along the lines of trans scholars such as Kate Bornstein, Sandy Stone and Susan Stryker, the importance of sex and sexual pleasure to trans narratives and embodiments. Steinbock starts this chapter by borrowing the term transreal...