Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Vantage Points

On Media as Trans Memoir

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A provocative book by an acclaimed writer-filmmaker that combines memoir and media as seen through a trans lens

Following the death of the family patriarch, a box of newly procured family documents reveals writer-filmmaker Chase Joynt's previously unknown connection to Canadian media maverick Marshall McLuhan. Vantage Points takes up the surprising appearance of McLuhan in Joynt's family archive as a way to think about legacies of childhood sexual abuse and how we might process and represent them. To do so, Joynt stages a series of vignettes that place memoir in the context of other sources, media, and stories to create a tapestry—a montage-like experience of reading with surprising and revealing juxtapositions.

Joynt writes about difficult pasts and connects them to contemporary politics and ways of being, employing McLuhan's seminal Understanding Media as an inciting framework. Vantage Points is a kaleidoscopic reckoning with the impact of media and masculinity on the stories we tell about ourselves and our families, a unique and highly visual approach to trans life writing, and an experimental move between gender and genre.

With black-and-white illustrations.

This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A book with many images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 8, 2024
      Documentary filmmaker Joynt (Boys Don’t Cry) delivers an original meditation on trauma and transitioning. Drawing on the media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s writings to reflect on surviving childhood sexual abuse, Joynt juxtaposes episodes from his life with McLuhan’s insights, creating meaning through literary montage. For example, he relates McLuhan’s assertion that “humans are continually massaged and worked over by media” and recounts how he was only able to remember how old he was when his uncle abused him because he recalled that Sarah McLachlan’s album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy had recently come out and was playing in the background. Elsewhere, Joynt notes McLuhan’s observation that scientists conceptualize biological processes as communication networks and discusses how when he began transitioning in his 20s, he relied on “a network of trans men exchanging testosterone for trade in the parking lot near the local Safeway.” Joynt’s precise reasons for weaving together snippets about his absentee father, television coverage of the Gulf War, and Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Blow Job can be elusive, though the author’s observation that “as trans men, we are constituted by the men whom we fear” provides enough of a cipher that dedicated readers can draw their own conclusions. Enigmatic yet evocative, this demands to be read on its own terms.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read

Languages

  • English

Loading