The day after 2024 choiceI stopped looking at the news. Sure, I will still read articles from different stores and come with online, but after several years you spent with journalists who had become personalities and testimonials who were only interested in getting their sound bite I could no longer escape the feeling that these people rarely Knew what they were talking about – or worse, was straight up.
In a time when information is weapons and facts are discussed at that point of meaninglessness, the media has served as both an indispensable tool and a rally rop for which page you choose to support, a fact that makes journalism more about running a specific message than actually seeks the truth. This conflict is at the essence of CommunitiesS Legal Documentary ”Increased review“Who captures ACLU lawyer and transgender rights activist Chase Strangio as he prepares to argue in front of the Supreme Court in the case of the United States against Skrmetti.
The Skrmetti case originates as a challenge for a Tennessee team that prohibits transgender people from accessing certain forms of gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, but Strangio clarifies the whole film: If this law is maintained by the Supreme Court, it will lead to a complete attack on transidentity in America. Not only for children, but also adults who would have to meet a legal system that would effectively give states the right to remove gender -affirming care based on information that is largely not founded. Where does this information come from? When “Increased Review” takes care of posting, a lot of anti-trans bias is circulated through mainstream media, and not just from right-wing sources such as Fox News, but in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and many more supposedly liberal publications.
Strangio’s preparation for the case is composed against sounds of his oral arguments before the Supreme Court on December 4, 2024, and the questions asked by various justice at that time, as well as direct-to-camera pages from Trans and Cisgendered journalists and experts. From Jelani Cobb, author and current dean at Columbia School of journalism, to Gina Chua, CEO of Semafor and Board member of the Trans Journalist Association, “Height Review” calls perspectives not only affected directly by the type of propaganda mainstream Media Spy out, But who has spent their lives and careers gathering information to expel these lies. Given Skrmetti’s potential impact on transdom, the documentary begins by confronting the question in the heart of this case: what about the children?
For eternity, this issue has been used as a dog whistle pipe against parents who are afraid of losing control of their children, but in addition, it has been a tool for authoritarian regimes in factionalizing populations. In the leadership up to 1967’s Loving v. Virginia case, which considered laws that prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional, many tried to ask the same question, as to say that children would be worse to have parents of different breeds than they would be with parents who had the same color. Just as there was no factual basis for this statement in 1967, “increased review”, so also claims that this claim has no water when it comes to the choices made by the parents of Transgendered youth today. In fact, removing the parents’ right to raise children in a way that honors their growth and well -being spit with all American freedoms that we claim to hold so dear and speaks to the government as the kind of overly obstructive power so many conservative politicians can publicly work towards , but private support.
When we look at Strangio’s everyday life, we get a sense of how it must feel to be a transgender in America today, not only when it comes to the pressure he is down to prove his value, but in the constant battle to be seen as a human To be rather than any mistake in need of protection against people who are not even willing to get involved with them. In a scene involving the School Board in Manhattan, which is responsible for the education of Strangio’s children, board members who are facing grounds from the community to support trans young people do not even look at the speakers they should represent, instead you choose to ignore them and focus on their phones . It is a blood boiling picture that points to the overall apathy of society towards minority groups, but one that further fuel Strangios struggle.
To bring it back to how the media creates an environment for society to feel threatened by the trans community, strangio and other contributors also share their frustration on how the mainstream press is more likely to knit a flame than to defend those that are burned. Transpan life is threatened every day, not only in the meaning of direct violence, but also as enemies in a legal system as seemingly intention to eradicate their being. This is not hyperbole, as federal cuts in clips from CPAC conventions that have politicians who explicitly use this type of language. At the same time, actual parents of trans children such as Alberto Cairo, Knight Chair in Infographics & Data Visualization are shown at the University of Miami, breaks down in tears because he not only defends his child’s right to live and is seen as they want to be seen, but also his own responsibility to support those he looks appropriate.
In the Feders 2020 -Documentary “Revealing” – a movie that should be required for anyone working in entertainment – the filmmaker traces the development of how transliv is represented on the screen, from malicious depictions in films such as “The Crying Game” to more rounded depictions in the FX series “Pose.” With “Increased Review” – which also includes trans actress and activist Laverne Cox As an executive producer and contributor on the screen that she was with “revealing”-Feds Feds another convincing argument against trans shift, albeit one that is immediacy proves to be much more difficult. After only packing the film less than two months ago, released it during the time between when Strangio delivered its arguments to the Supreme Court and when the justice will ultimately decide on the matter (probably June 2025) seems to be a choice that could only have been made with the intention of changing perceptions and building a coalition that swings public opinion.
Outside to include hop-horror clips containing Armie Hammer’s work and right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh and difficult to swallow flashbacks to the election all-all-mentioned 2024, “Increased review” succeeds with its mission to educate a public whose senses have been damaged by the weaving of fiction which is presented as truth. Even fair Sonia Sotomayor, one of the Democrat -appointed Bench members, references figures under Skrmetti from articles that have no basis in fact and which are easily contested by Strangio, which once again points to the media as a permeable part of our culture that exists in desperate need of re -adjustment. Towards the end of the film, but all the anger and disappointment that is built up from being constantly presented as a danger gives way to renewed determination when Strangio is seen to get a tattoo of the poem “Prophet” of civil rights and legal researcher Pauli Murray. The poem reads …
“I sing by a new American
Separately from all others,
Nevertheless expanded and reduced by all others.
I am a child of kings and servants, liberators and slaves,
Have neither superiors nor subordinates,
Offspring in all colors, all cultures, all systems, all beliefs.
I have been enslaved, but my spirit is unbound.
I have been thrown aside, but I sparkle in the dark.
I have been killed but live on in the river of history.
I am looking for no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge:
I am looking for only discovery
Of the harmless heights and depth in my own being. ”
For a long time I sought hope to look at the news and thought that one day something good would finally happen that would turn our modern horror and lead us towards a brighter future. What “increased review” reminded me that the hope is inside us, and that only through coalition building and helping others who need it most will really be fulfilled.
Rating: A-
“Height Review” premiered at 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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