Top Whatever Queer-Friendly Visual Media!
Jun. 30th, 2015 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glitter_n_goreSince I did a similar thing last year for Pride Month *just* before running out of time, I'm counting down my Top Whatever Queer-Friendly Movies/TV Shows.
Also like last year, I'm narrowing this down a touch to reflect the sort of things I actually watch. Matter of fact, when I started thinking about this I actually had to scale it back some. I'm choosing to see that as a good sign. Here are my parameters:
A) Visual media with canonically LGBT+ characters, as opposed to that awful, pandery bullshit known as queerbaiting. So no Supernatural, BBC Sherlock or Hannibal*. This tends to happen a lot with geek-centric shows trying to catch fans of SFF and Horror.
B) Completely fictional stories, as opposed to ones based on real-life events, which disqualifies Milk, The Normal Heart and The Imitation Game. (Although I highly recommend all three.)
C) Things I've actually watched and enjoyed, which disqualifies Lost Girl, The Legend of Korra and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but they are all on my list.
*I do enjoy Hannibal, but the only canon gay character we've seen so far is Margot, and she wound up in a hetero sex scene. So no, I'm not including it for *this* Top Whatever list.
First, an honorable mention:
The Dreamers
This is one of only two NC-17 movies I've watched multiple times (the other is the original Evil Dead, obviously), and one of VERY few romances I've actually enjoyed. It reminds me a lot of Before Sunrise--it has the same casual pacing and naturalist dialogue, only with lots more nudity. I got the impression very quickly that Michael Pitt's character, Matthew, is bisexual, but I've seen arguments made that Matthew is only romantically involved with Eva Green's character, Isabelle. You could read it that way, since all the "romance" between Matthew and Theo is implied, never shown, but I disagree. The book this was based on had a polyamorous triad as the central relationship, and was very much present in the original script. That said, it's ambiguous enough that you could go either way here.
(20th Century Fox)
I just realized two of my choices here include Eva Green. Interesting.
Orphan Black
Tatiana Maslany's science geek clone, Cosima, is the first TV lesbian since Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I felt like I could really relate to and look up to. She wears dredlocks, cool glasses, plays Dungeons & Dragons-style tabletop games, and has enough genius-level experience points to decode her own genetic sequencing. Cosima is awesome. I don't care for her love interest, Delphine, at ALL, however, and I don't know if we're ever going to get a substitute. Bah. Cosima is still awesome.
Felix, played by Jordan Gavaris, is also awesome. Everyone loves Felix. How can you not? He has that sassy-fabulous streak I've come to associate with Hollywood Gay, but he's much more complex and unique than that. He's an integral part of the story, a sounding board and confidante for Sarah and the rest of her clone-sisters, and a solidly entertaining example of a comic relief type character who still feels like a real person, rather than a stereotype.
Doctor Who
Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart) are a somewhat controversial choice to put on this list. I've spoken to real-life LGBT people who adore them, and real-life LGBT people who can't stand them, and I've fallen on both sides of that myself depending on the episode. But honestly, these two are a great example of queer characters whose orientation is purely incidental. They are a married couple who investigate crimes in Victorian London, and go on adventures with the Doctor when he comes by, who just happen to be two women. The jokes and male-gazey-ness can get a bit awkward at times, and the weird power dynamic between them is a problem for ALL the romantic relationships in Stephen Moffat's stories, but I'm glad they exist, and I want them to have their own spin-off show.
Speaking of spin-offs, let's talk about Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Here's a character who was introduced and consistently depicted as omnisexual and constantly flirting with anything that moves. But that's not the beginning or end of his character. Captain Jack is brave, funny, and a little bit sad when you realize what his fate's going to be. (I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen Series 3 yet.) I haven't seen his spin-off, Torchwood, but Barrowman's fans are many and deeply devoted, for good reason.
Interview With the Vampire
Here's an example from a source rife with LGBT+ characters. I'm not sure any of the vampires in The Vampire Chronicles are straight, come to think of it. Rebuttal, anyone? Anyway, since I'm talking about visual media here, let's focus on the movie--and mostly, let's focus on Louis. Only because I've talked about Lestat kind of a lot, and after reading Prince Lestat again, I remembered how much I adore Louis as a character. Brad Pitt's performance has become the textbook example of a brooding, reluctant vampire who doesn't like to kill people. He's easy to make fun of because of that, but he also owns his inner demons to the point that they nearly consume him, and comes across as dangerous and not somebody you want mad at you. He's not just whiny and emo--he's "tortured" in a more classical sense, and sells it without becoming obnoxious. It helps that he has Lestat to balance him out and jar him out of his moods once in a while.
Interesting to note: there is one line in The Vampire Lestat where someone asks Lestat about his orientation, and he responds with confusion, as if he doesn't quite get the question. Eventually he says, "I've always loved both men and women," which I've pointed out to people who insist the VC vampires can't be queer because they don't have sex the way humans do, an argument I've always found willfully dismissive and insulting. But the point is, in this fictional universe, gay/straight/bi/etc. isn't even a thing, and by extension homophobia isn't even a thing. No one acts surprised or scandalized by the relationships these characters have. I'm glad that's present in the movie as well, which is mostly run on subtext, but clear enough you can read it without any trouble.
(Geffen Pictures)
And then the Queen of the Damned movie came along and wrote every queer character out of it entirely, including relocating the rock concert at the end to Death Valley instead of San Francisco. Subtle.
Batman: The Animated Series
Harley Quinn's relationship with Poison Ivy has been a subject of speculation for years. I honestly prefer her with the Joker, even though he's horrible to her, because he's such a more interesting and dynamic character, and okay I'm biased. What can I say? The fangirl heart wants what it wants. However, until recently the possibility of Harley and Ivy being anything more than friends was pure conjecture and subtext. This being a children's cartoon from the '90s, I guess that's all we could've expected. And yet! DC comics has confirmed that yes, when Harley and Ivy are hanging out together, they are together, so there you go. One of the few things the New 52 did right.
It's worth mentioning that X-Men has a much clearer Mutant as Metaphor message, especially in the movies, and the comics made a big splash this year by outing Iceman as openly gay. I'm sort of excited about that, sure, but honestly the best thing for me about Iceman being gay is it jams a crowbar between him and my OTP. Rogue belongs with Gambit, is what I'm saying. (Do you hear me, Bryan Singer? Gambit/Rogue! Make it happen!) Again, the fangirl heart wants what it wants.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
As most of you already know--and the rest of you probably gathered from the Orphan Black spot--I love, love, love Tara (Amber Benson). She's my favorite character on the show, and I still haven't forgiven Joss Whedon for killing her off in Season 6. Tara is painfully shy when we first meet her, but also talented, patient and remarkably kind to everyone. She's brought in as Willow's love interest in a slow, organic way that makes it easy to tell where things are going if you see it as a possibility. Given the time period and network where Buffy was airing when all this happened, that's kind of amazing. The episode, "Family," is superficially about magic and how Tara's relatives think she's evil because of it, but really it's about their refusal to accept her sexuality. It's a heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting, episode about finding your own support network even if it doesn't include the people you grew up with. I cannot tell you how much this meant to me.
Willow (Alyson Hannigan), on the other hand, is a frustrating character to talk about. While her journey accurately reflects the inner struggle and kneejerk secrecy that results when you realize your orientation isn't quite what you thought it was, it's also one of the most egregious examples of bisexual erasure I've seen. Which is unfortunate, because it's such a well-known, popular piece of work. Willow spends three seasons displaying an attraction to men, and had a long, serious relationship with Oz that lasted for much of that, but as soon as she starts dating Tara, she refers to herself as "gay now." The possibility of her being bisexual is never even suggested. Rantasmo explains what's wrong there better than I could, and while I do love Willow as a character, this way of dealing with her sexuality was a sloppy misstep.
Penny Dreadful
Remember what I said about "queerbaiting" and how it has a tendency to show up in geek-centric media? To the point where there are a thousands of Ho-Yay "shippers" for shows like Supernatural and Hannibal but the homoerotic subtext never really goes anywhere? Penny Dreadful is the polar opposite of that. I had mixed feelings over this show when it first started airing, but it has fully displaced Hannibal as my favorite thing on TV right now. There's a lot to love here--the gorgeous sets and costumes, the exquisite (if sometimes vulgar) use of language that never feels like they're trying to shove Scrabble words in your face, the mystery and story pacing, Queen of the Goths Eva Green--it is awesome and I love it to bits. Also? It is refreshing, unapologetically queer, while still aiming for a general audience. I might have a whole essay in me analyzing the implications of that. In fact, yeah, I'm going to reroute half of what I was going to say here into said essay, so stay tuned.
So far, we've seen at least six major characters who fall somewhere on the LGBT spectrum--that's literally half the cast. One solid plus point is they range from the depraved and insatiable (Dorian Gray, played by Reeve Carney, who is perfect in this role and I'll hear no arguments otherwise) to the compassionate moral center of the entire show (Ethan Chandler, played by Josh Hartnett, who is my hands-down favorite character). In other words "queer" isn't shorthand for "immoral" or "alternative" or "free-spirited" or whatever-the-hell, which is nice. Also, while there is a lot of graphic sex and nudity in this show, the raunchy scenes rarely feel excessive or out of place. Every scene serves to either reveal something about the characters involved, or move the story forward in the exact way the T&A fanservice on Game of Thrones doesn't.
For example:
(Showtime / Sky Media)
There's a lot going on in this scene. Yes, this is the first time we've seen Ethan with another man, and the moment the Tumblr collective realized the show was actually going to GO THERE and they didn't even need to draw fan art. But also, and perhaps more importantly, this happened in the same episode where I figured out Ethan was a werewolf. So there's a whole subtextual metaphor on duality and hidden identity, this part of Ethan that he's afraid and ashamed of, all while the story framing is doing it's best to assure us he's actually a really great guy.
*sigh*
I love this show.
That'll have to do for this year. At least it's still June. Happy Pride Month, everyone!
*throws rainbow confetti*
Also like last year, I'm narrowing this down a touch to reflect the sort of things I actually watch. Matter of fact, when I started thinking about this I actually had to scale it back some. I'm choosing to see that as a good sign. Here are my parameters:
A) Visual media with canonically LGBT+ characters, as opposed to that awful, pandery bullshit known as queerbaiting. So no Supernatural, BBC Sherlock or Hannibal*. This tends to happen a lot with geek-centric shows trying to catch fans of SFF and Horror.
B) Completely fictional stories, as opposed to ones based on real-life events, which disqualifies Milk, The Normal Heart and The Imitation Game. (Although I highly recommend all three.)
C) Things I've actually watched and enjoyed, which disqualifies Lost Girl, The Legend of Korra and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but they are all on my list.
*I do enjoy Hannibal, but the only canon gay character we've seen so far is Margot, and she wound up in a hetero sex scene. So no, I'm not including it for *this* Top Whatever list.
First, an honorable mention:
The Dreamers
This is one of only two NC-17 movies I've watched multiple times (the other is the original Evil Dead, obviously), and one of VERY few romances I've actually enjoyed. It reminds me a lot of Before Sunrise--it has the same casual pacing and naturalist dialogue, only with lots more nudity. I got the impression very quickly that Michael Pitt's character, Matthew, is bisexual, but I've seen arguments made that Matthew is only romantically involved with Eva Green's character, Isabelle. You could read it that way, since all the "romance" between Matthew and Theo is implied, never shown, but I disagree. The book this was based on had a polyamorous triad as the central relationship, and was very much present in the original script. That said, it's ambiguous enough that you could go either way here.
(20th Century Fox)
I just realized two of my choices here include Eva Green. Interesting.
Orphan Black
Tatiana Maslany's science geek clone, Cosima, is the first TV lesbian since Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I felt like I could really relate to and look up to. She wears dredlocks, cool glasses, plays Dungeons & Dragons-style tabletop games, and has enough genius-level experience points to decode her own genetic sequencing. Cosima is awesome. I don't care for her love interest, Delphine, at ALL, however, and I don't know if we're ever going to get a substitute. Bah. Cosima is still awesome.
Felix, played by Jordan Gavaris, is also awesome. Everyone loves Felix. How can you not? He has that sassy-fabulous streak I've come to associate with Hollywood Gay, but he's much more complex and unique than that. He's an integral part of the story, a sounding board and confidante for Sarah and the rest of her clone-sisters, and a solidly entertaining example of a comic relief type character who still feels like a real person, rather than a stereotype.
Doctor Who
Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart) are a somewhat controversial choice to put on this list. I've spoken to real-life LGBT people who adore them, and real-life LGBT people who can't stand them, and I've fallen on both sides of that myself depending on the episode. But honestly, these two are a great example of queer characters whose orientation is purely incidental. They are a married couple who investigate crimes in Victorian London, and go on adventures with the Doctor when he comes by, who just happen to be two women. The jokes and male-gazey-ness can get a bit awkward at times, and the weird power dynamic between them is a problem for ALL the romantic relationships in Stephen Moffat's stories, but I'm glad they exist, and I want them to have their own spin-off show.
Speaking of spin-offs, let's talk about Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Here's a character who was introduced and consistently depicted as omnisexual and constantly flirting with anything that moves. But that's not the beginning or end of his character. Captain Jack is brave, funny, and a little bit sad when you realize what his fate's going to be. (I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen Series 3 yet.) I haven't seen his spin-off, Torchwood, but Barrowman's fans are many and deeply devoted, for good reason.
Interview With the Vampire
Here's an example from a source rife with LGBT+ characters. I'm not sure any of the vampires in The Vampire Chronicles are straight, come to think of it. Rebuttal, anyone? Anyway, since I'm talking about visual media here, let's focus on the movie--and mostly, let's focus on Louis. Only because I've talked about Lestat kind of a lot, and after reading Prince Lestat again, I remembered how much I adore Louis as a character. Brad Pitt's performance has become the textbook example of a brooding, reluctant vampire who doesn't like to kill people. He's easy to make fun of because of that, but he also owns his inner demons to the point that they nearly consume him, and comes across as dangerous and not somebody you want mad at you. He's not just whiny and emo--he's "tortured" in a more classical sense, and sells it without becoming obnoxious. It helps that he has Lestat to balance him out and jar him out of his moods once in a while.
Interesting to note: there is one line in The Vampire Lestat where someone asks Lestat about his orientation, and he responds with confusion, as if he doesn't quite get the question. Eventually he says, "I've always loved both men and women," which I've pointed out to people who insist the VC vampires can't be queer because they don't have sex the way humans do, an argument I've always found willfully dismissive and insulting. But the point is, in this fictional universe, gay/straight/bi/etc. isn't even a thing, and by extension homophobia isn't even a thing. No one acts surprised or scandalized by the relationships these characters have. I'm glad that's present in the movie as well, which is mostly run on subtext, but clear enough you can read it without any trouble.
(Geffen Pictures)
And then the Queen of the Damned movie came along and wrote every queer character out of it entirely, including relocating the rock concert at the end to Death Valley instead of San Francisco. Subtle.
Batman: The Animated Series
Harley Quinn's relationship with Poison Ivy has been a subject of speculation for years. I honestly prefer her with the Joker, even though he's horrible to her, because he's such a more interesting and dynamic character, and okay I'm biased. What can I say? The fangirl heart wants what it wants. However, until recently the possibility of Harley and Ivy being anything more than friends was pure conjecture and subtext. This being a children's cartoon from the '90s, I guess that's all we could've expected. And yet! DC comics has confirmed that yes, when Harley and Ivy are hanging out together, they are together, so there you go. One of the few things the New 52 did right.
It's worth mentioning that X-Men has a much clearer Mutant as Metaphor message, especially in the movies, and the comics made a big splash this year by outing Iceman as openly gay. I'm sort of excited about that, sure, but honestly the best thing for me about Iceman being gay is it jams a crowbar between him and my OTP. Rogue belongs with Gambit, is what I'm saying. (Do you hear me, Bryan Singer? Gambit/Rogue! Make it happen!) Again, the fangirl heart wants what it wants.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
As most of you already know--and the rest of you probably gathered from the Orphan Black spot--I love, love, love Tara (Amber Benson). She's my favorite character on the show, and I still haven't forgiven Joss Whedon for killing her off in Season 6. Tara is painfully shy when we first meet her, but also talented, patient and remarkably kind to everyone. She's brought in as Willow's love interest in a slow, organic way that makes it easy to tell where things are going if you see it as a possibility. Given the time period and network where Buffy was airing when all this happened, that's kind of amazing. The episode, "Family," is superficially about magic and how Tara's relatives think she's evil because of it, but really it's about their refusal to accept her sexuality. It's a heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting, episode about finding your own support network even if it doesn't include the people you grew up with. I cannot tell you how much this meant to me.
Willow (Alyson Hannigan), on the other hand, is a frustrating character to talk about. While her journey accurately reflects the inner struggle and kneejerk secrecy that results when you realize your orientation isn't quite what you thought it was, it's also one of the most egregious examples of bisexual erasure I've seen. Which is unfortunate, because it's such a well-known, popular piece of work. Willow spends three seasons displaying an attraction to men, and had a long, serious relationship with Oz that lasted for much of that, but as soon as she starts dating Tara, she refers to herself as "gay now." The possibility of her being bisexual is never even suggested. Rantasmo explains what's wrong there better than I could, and while I do love Willow as a character, this way of dealing with her sexuality was a sloppy misstep.
Penny Dreadful
Remember what I said about "queerbaiting" and how it has a tendency to show up in geek-centric media? To the point where there are a thousands of Ho-Yay "shippers" for shows like Supernatural and Hannibal but the homoerotic subtext never really goes anywhere? Penny Dreadful is the polar opposite of that. I had mixed feelings over this show when it first started airing, but it has fully displaced Hannibal as my favorite thing on TV right now. There's a lot to love here--the gorgeous sets and costumes, the exquisite (if sometimes vulgar) use of language that never feels like they're trying to shove Scrabble words in your face, the mystery and story pacing, Queen of the Goths Eva Green--it is awesome and I love it to bits. Also? It is refreshing, unapologetically queer, while still aiming for a general audience. I might have a whole essay in me analyzing the implications of that. In fact, yeah, I'm going to reroute half of what I was going to say here into said essay, so stay tuned.
So far, we've seen at least six major characters who fall somewhere on the LGBT spectrum--that's literally half the cast. One solid plus point is they range from the depraved and insatiable (Dorian Gray, played by Reeve Carney, who is perfect in this role and I'll hear no arguments otherwise) to the compassionate moral center of the entire show (Ethan Chandler, played by Josh Hartnett, who is my hands-down favorite character). In other words "queer" isn't shorthand for "immoral" or "alternative" or "free-spirited" or whatever-the-hell, which is nice. Also, while there is a lot of graphic sex and nudity in this show, the raunchy scenes rarely feel excessive or out of place. Every scene serves to either reveal something about the characters involved, or move the story forward in the exact way the T&A fanservice on Game of Thrones doesn't.
For example:
(Showtime / Sky Media)
There's a lot going on in this scene. Yes, this is the first time we've seen Ethan with another man, and the moment the Tumblr collective realized the show was actually going to GO THERE and they didn't even need to draw fan art. But also, and perhaps more importantly, this happened in the same episode where I figured out Ethan was a werewolf. So there's a whole subtextual metaphor on duality and hidden identity, this part of Ethan that he's afraid and ashamed of, all while the story framing is doing it's best to assure us he's actually a really great guy.
*sigh*
I love this show.
That'll have to do for this year. At least it's still June. Happy Pride Month, everyone!
*throws rainbow confetti*