Living in these times is confusing, to say the least. We’ve got people we once looked up to deciding to completely turn their backs on the queer and trans community, and we’ve got numerous jerks in power deciding that erasing our existence is the most important political issue of our times.
But what if we could ask figures of the past how they feel, and where they’d stand? What if we could recruit some of the greatest minds of the 20th century to our cause?
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Bob’s roundtable reads are going down in reality TV history.
That’s precisely what comedian Jules Starn just did in a brilliant sketch that has Citizen Kane filmmaker Orson Welles saying “trans rights” with his whole chest.
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Thanks to the Internet, Welles has enjoyed a long second (and third, and fourth) life in the public eye for the immense tweetability of some of his later-in-life appearances—namely that famous Paul Masson wine commercial.
Using what we know about Welles—that he was incredibly outspoken and forward-thinking for his time, especially concerning racial justice—Starn, along with “Manhunt” and Cuckoo” writer Gretchen Felker-Martin, crafted a pitch-perfect monologue in which Welles stands up for trans rights against the idiot masses who would have us erased from modern life and history.
“Where do I stand on the…transgender question?” Starn begins. “A group of millions is not a question, but a demographic.”
Starn continues to harness his exceptionally on-point Welles impression to school the masses on just how long trans people have been here. “The Romans had their castrated priestesses, the Hindus their Hijras, but my God, let us take to the barricades if Uncle Al comes to Thanksgiving in a skirt and pantyhose!”
Starn continues to roast transphobes, including professional anti-trans comedian Dave Chappelle, who’s been leaning into the bit during his comeback years. “One joke, stretched so you can hear its joints popping like some poor bastard on the rack, ‘Oh I identify as a car, my bird has pronouns.’ The laziness of it, it’s shameful.”
What’s brilliant about it—along with the writing, the performance, and the 1970s talk show filter—is that it’s so completely believable. Welles might not be here to defend us in person, but he stands up for us in spirit, even from beyond the grave, as so many other ghosts probably do watching this from the sidelines.
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