Body modification to the extreme

This month, three cable documentaries plumb the most recondite corners of identity chaos and body modification.

“Since I was young, I always had this feeling I didn’t want my left leg,” says Kevin, an English university professor and one of the subjects in Melody Gilbert’s “Whole,” which premieres at Monday at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel. “Not because I didn’t like it, didn’t want it, [or] it looked wrong. I just had a feeling it was superfluous.”

In his famous 1831 analysis of American democracy, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville noted a connection between social equality and “the idea of the indefinite perfectibility of man.”

When a citizen is born into a rigid class or rank, he wrote, “no one seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of his destiny.” Whereas, “as castes disappear and the classes of society draw together, as manners, customs, and laws vary because of the tumultuous intercourse of men, as new facts arise, as new truths are brought to light, as ancient opinions are dissipated and others take their place, the image of an ideal but always fugitive perfection presents itself to the human mind.”

And this from a guy who never even heard of “The Swan.”

The notion of perfectibility is such a seductive collective American fantasy it has made mass entertainment from voluntary self-obliteration.

Taking the ideal and running with it straight off the edge of the Earth, “The Swan” has finally succeeded in doing what advertising has long dreamed of; turning run-of-the-mill unattractiveness into a pathology to be surgically and cosmetically “cured” on TV.

“The Swan” also reminds us that the parameters of psychiatric disorders can be as fluid, shifting and elusive as standards of perfection. Do the ladies of “The Swan” unilaterally suffer because fate has dealt them a cruel hand, booty-wise? (And, oh, how they suffer before ecstatically submitting to the knife.) Or because they have failed to adjust to reality? Do perception and desire ever trump physical materiality? If so, when? And who gets ultimate say when it comes to determining identity?

“Whole” explores a psychological disorder that causes otherwise healthy sufferers to feel as though they possess one limb too many. The condition -- which can cause those afflicted, as it did two of the film’s subjects, to devise rudimentary leg-removal methods at home -- is so rare and mysterious it has yet to be decisively named. (Nor is it listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official What’s What of noodle afflictions, an inclusion that would most certainly result in at least one prescription drug.)

Immediately after “Whole” Monday night on the Sundance Channel is “American Eunuchs,” a mostly prurient, often upsetting look at men who seek voluntary castration. Of the three, only this project, directed by Gian Claudio Guiducci and Franco Sacchi, fails to inspire empathy or promote understanding.

Showtime’s “The Opposite Sex,” a his-and-hers set of original documentaries, follows a biological woman and a biological man as each undergoes a sex change. “Rene’s Story,” which premiered May 3 (it repeats Tuesday and May 22 and 30), trails a cocky, hyperkinetic truck driver who was born a girl but stopped copping to it by age 8. “Jamie’s Story,” which premieres June 23, observes the life of a small-town Michigan mechanic and builder with a wife, a daughter and shoulders like a pommel horse, in the year following his momentous decision to become not just a woman, but a hot pants-wearing platinum blond.

“The Opposite Sex” has an intriguingly hi-lo pedigree. It was directed by Josh Aronson, who was nominated for an Oscar for “Sound and Fury,” a documentary about the controversy in the deaf community over the use of cochlear implants (some worry they will eventually eradicate deaf culture); and executive produced by Dr. Bruce Hensel, Emmy-winning NBC medical correspondent, and Stuart Krasnow, responsible for such knuckle-scrapers as “Dog Eat Dog,” “The Weakest Link” and “The Ricki Lake Show.”

Despite some of its less-than-stellar connections, “The Opposite Sex” is a compassionate and thorough account of what life is like for people who suffer from gender identity disorder and the fallout for those close to them. Through extensive interviews with the subjects, their spouses, family members and friends, we gain insight into what it’s like to feel, as Rene does, “that your body is lying to you.”

At the same time, we learn what it is like for the families of those going through this transition. Rene’s 12-year relationship with Wona, a heterosexual woman he started dating when she was 16, starts to unravel after he is outed by the pastor of their church and ostracized by their religious community.

After losing his brothers and most of his clients, Jamie, nee Jim, desperately clings to his marriage to Brenda; though she reluctantly stands by him throughout his transformation, she feels grief and betrayal at the same time.

Unlike transgendered individuals, who, though they face rejection in their personal lives, are not without recourse in the medical establishment, “wannabes,” as aspiring amputees are called, have few places to turn.

(Currently referred to as Body Integrity Identity Disorder, the overwhelming desire to amputate a healthy limb is better known by its old Greek name apotemnophilia. According to Dr. Michael First, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who’s featured in the film, this term “focused on the sexual component of the condition and ignored the central issue of the condition, which is the issue of identity.”)

“This is a disorder which is completely off the map with respect to the psychiatric and medical community and the community at large,” he says. “The central thesis, really, is that this is a disorder of identity. It’s very much like gender identity disorder, and we’re using that kind of as a model.”

It’s a testament to both “The Opposite Sex” and “Whole” that their subjects come across as uniformly empathetic; especially considering that “The Opposite Sex” contains scenes many will find distasteful.

Both films raise interesting questions about who gets ultimate say in another person’s sense of identity and what, as far as doctors are concerned, constitutes “doing harm.” Dr. Robert Smith, an established Scottish surgeon who amputated two healthy limbs to protect psychologically tormented patients from DIY home amputations, was later barred from performing the operation in the United Kingdom.

“American Eunuchs,” on the other hand, resolutely fails in the task of making us understand the motivations of its subjects -- indeed, they are so wildly different you come away with overwhelming impression that they are suffering from four completely different conditions that only happened to lead them to the same place.

On the flip side, it does look at what happens when people are forced to resort to back-alley medical procedures. Featured is Philadelphia’s own Dr. Weird -- a freelance gland extractor aptly named Dr. Spector -- who, after castrating several customers in an unsterile room in an inner-city apartment, finally loses his medical license.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that, in “Whole,” it’s only the European subjects (and, in particular, the Dutch guy) who enjoy the support of their wives and families.

Like “The Opposite Sex,” which hammers home its tolerant bona-fides with a civilized, pro-acceptance panel discussion at the end of the first installment, it reminds us to what degree identity is both contextual and consensual; others must agree with who you are for it to fly.

In the process of becoming their “true” selves, Rene, Jamie and a twice-divorced Florida amputee named George made their old lives obsolete and seemed to have to unwittingly illustrated de Tocqueville’s wary prediction: “Aristocratic nations are naturally too liable to narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations, to expand it beyond reason.”

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‘The Opposite Sex’

Where: Showtime.

When: Next airs Tuesday at 9 p.m.

Rating: The network has rated the documentary TV-MALD (may not be suitable for children younger than 17, with advisories for coarse language and graphic dialogue).

Director, Josh Aronson. Executive producers, Dr. Bruce Hensel and Stuart Krasnow.

‘Whole’ and ‘American Eunuchs’

Where: Sundance Channel.

When: “Whole” airs Monday at 9-10 p.m.; “American Eunuchs” airs Monday at 10-11 p.m.

Rating: The network has rated both films TV-MA (may not be suitable for children younger than 17).

“Whole” directed by Melody Gilbert. “American Eunuchs” directed by Gian Carlo Guiducci and Franco Sacchi.