“Framing Agnes” (2022) is a mixture of a participatory documentary, which captures the interaction between the filmmakers and their subjects, and a performative documentary, which focuses on the filmmakers’ relationship with the subject. It is a short, but ambitious undertaking and expands on a 2019 short film of the same title. The film recreates sociologist Harold Garfinkel’s interviews with six transpeople in the mid-twentieth century. Instead of setting it on the academic grounds of UCLA, it uses the talk show format of that era, specifically imitating “The Mike Wallace Interview,” by shooting the recreations in black and white and utilizing a stark, black-box theater style studio. The filmmakers intercut these recreations by shooting in color the interviews with actors who share their personal experiences as transpeople and reflections on playing the real-life characters. The documentary also offers a platform to American historian Jules Gill-Peterson to provide broader historical context to these interviews.
“Framing Agnes” chooses the talk show format because the filmmakers and participants first introduction to transpeople was through talk shows. These talk shows ranged from syndicated tabloids to more respectable shows with hosts like Joan Rivers. It is a provocative and subversive framing technique to adapt archived research interviews, which may add to the viewer’s initial confusion when starting the film.
“Framing Agnes” has at least three filmmakers. Writer and director Chase Joynt plays an onscreen role as the interview or “Host” during the black and white recreations of sociologist Harold Garfinkel’s interviews with transpeople in the mid-twentieth century, offers personal commentary and interviews the participants as himself either on set or in a green room, backstage to the studio. Writer Morgan M. Chase also appears on screen to interview actors outdoors or in a dressing room Sociologist Kristen Schilt conducted research with Chase in uncovering Garfinkel’s lesser-known interviews and co-interviews Gill-Peterson on set with Chase.
Even if my editor did not assign “Framing Agnes” to me, it is the kind of documentary that I like to watch, but as someone not well-versed with famous trans actors, historians and filmmakers, trans people’s role in sociology and history, it took me a couple of views to wrap my head around the economical, comprehensive, but fast-paced documentary. Before the second viewing, I decided to look up anything or anyone that I did not know so I could appreciate what I did not understand the second time around.
The filmmakers present the subjects as if the audience already knows the titular Agnes (“Transparent” Zachary Drucker), a transwoman who represented herself as an intersex to get corrective surgery then subsequently revealed to doctors that she was assigned male at birth and is familiar with Garfinkel’s research. Then they introduce the five lesser-known subjects: Barbara (Jen Richard), a transwoman and community builder, Georgia (Pose’s Angelica Ross), a married Southern black transwoman, Henry (author and poet Max Wolf Valerio), a memoirist transman, Denny (director Silas Howard), a blue-collar transman, and Jimmy (Stephen Ira), a fifteen-year-old transboy.
If you saw “Framing John Delorean” (2019), “Framing Agnes” narrative structure will not be as confusing for you as those used to be more traditional documentaries. The film gives clear visual cues when we are seeing an interview with an actor (shot in color, contemporary dress, setting), a recreation interview (shot in black and white, period dress), a fictional recreation of an imagined moment in the life of historical subjects (shot in color, period dress, sometimes in the style of a home video) or interviewing a scholar (color, white room or in ordinary or academic spaces). Before the audience is familiar with the participants’ voices and the visual cues, the film creates some dissonance by using the historian’s voice, but shows a quotidian Agnes scene, which can be confusing. By the time that you get your bearings, you could miss a lot, so you must be focused, well-rested.
“Framing Agnes” has a thematic narrative since the interviews were conducted in a restricted period. It starts by introducing Garfinkel’s work, the film’s framing choice, the historical figures, the actors, employment challenges for transpeople, the limitations of classification for transpeople, the blurred line between performance, cross dressing and existing, the relationship between being vulnerable and existing in public and private spaces, romantic relationships, the limitations of historical scholarship and authentic versus performance of identity. Each of these subjects could have a whole documentary devoted to them. The filmmakers succeed at not giving them the short shrift treatment.
Often when famous people appear in a documentary, they are there to attract people to buy tickets to see a documentary about a subject matter that they may not ordinarily see. The famous people gild the lily and are extraneous, often distracting from the subject, In contrast, “Framing Agnes” features famous people who are unknown to the mainstream. If the filmmakers had given more background on the actors, it would have diverted focus from the subject, but I did leave the documentary hoping that if there is a DVD version, that it would be part of the special features. I hate the idea of people leaving the documentary ignorant that they were watching history makers in the flesh.
While “Framing Agnes” may require repeat viewings for acolytes willing to learning more about an underrepresented population, it is important to remember that it was made before there was another global, genocidal push to eliminate transpeople, which is cyclical; however, it is the first time in the twenty-first century. It is not that transpeople never existed. Their history is not preserved. Providing an American historical account of how transpeople navigated mid-twentieth century is an important point to refute the fictional argument that transpeople were a recent phenomenon and a choice. This documentary recovers lost, neglected, overlooked and forgotten history. Now that US states are enacting legislation to erase history of underrepresented people, further criminalize people for existing and deny health care to people for being different, these accounts need to be heard to prepare for the next round of persecution.
“Framing Agnes” also asserts that lack of representation should not be equated with not existing. Being invisible could be a positive and permit transpeople to live full lives, which is why Agnes is an antihero. Agnes is a practical person who rejects professional and societal standards of morality to get what she wants then reveals to them that she tricked them and vanishes to resume living her life once she gets what she wants. She is not singular. The documentary shows how each trans person finds ways to ridicule their interviewer for the professional treatment of transpeople. They are the experts, not the cis man judging them.
“Framing Agnes” does not reveal that Garfinkel thought of his research as different or at least complementary to sociology as one of the pioneers of ethnomethodology, and I do not understand how or if it is different from anthropology. He was more interested in how groups categorized themselves instead of theorizing and ascribing meaning to the group’s behavior. He was well-intentioned, but still fell short. While most people may relate to the underdog, we probably have more in common with Garfinkel.