Super-Change Agent
Susan Stryker is changing the conversation on transgender issues and more at UA Institute of LGBT Studies
by Mari Herreras
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/super-change-agent/Content?oid=3649371Stryker, associate professor of gender and women's studies and director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the UA, says she wants to change how we think about queer media with this project. Jorgensen wasn't the first person to change genders. But in 1952 she became a celebrity because of that decision and the times in which her transition took place.
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"This is a multimedia experience. It's going to be more about using Christine Jorgensen's story to explore the relationship between embodiment and image, and between cinema and surgery, than just a typical bio-pic. Jorgensen is a really interesting case," Stryker says.
"She was trained as a photographer and film editor before she became a celebrity for being transsexual. What I see when I look at her is somebody who knew how to make images whichever side of the camera she was on. Some of her appearance-making practices involved cutting film, and some involved cutting her body. I want to look at the relationship between those practices in my media project, and make people conscious of the different 'cutting' practices going on in her work through how I present her story. I want people to interact with the media in lots of different ways, not just seeing an image on a screen."
