Entries tagged with pride

Current Music: AFI, "Summer Shudder"

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Pride Watch Finale! Thor: Ragnarok

A couple days late, but who's counting?

When I first saw this movie back in November 2017, this is what I had to say:

“Ragnarok is a queer space opera pride fest made of rainbow fireworks and lightning and I need to see it ten more times.”

Having achieved that (I think--I lost count of my rewatches at 7), I am still not tired of this movie, I still love it to bits, and I want to live in it.

But what I was going to say has been slightly overshadowed by one Tessa Thompson, aka Valkyrie, aka Real Life Badass Warrior Queen, COMING. OUT.

GIF Valkyrie power-walking down the rainbow bridge as fireworks go off behind her
Source.

THAT'S how you drop a mic at the end of Pride Month.

( Read more. . . )

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Pride Watch: Nanette

Everyone stop what you’re doing and watch this right now. No, really, right now.

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One of the remaining virtues of Twitter, and the reason I’m not quite ready to quit it entirely, is because the TL occasionally puts awesome content like this in my path. Hannah Gadsby’s un-comedy special Nanette is witty, brilliant, and breathtaking, and I did not know I needed it so much.

There are a few unspoken assumptions about being an out queer person that I’ve never really seen anyone else talk about the way Gadsby does here. The first is the way we’re obliquely introduced to “our people.” Namely, parades, marches, and other loud, boisterous, crowded events. Her question, “Where do the quiet gays go?” is one I have been asking for YEARS. Because it can be disorienting to say the least to have the only Pride events happening in your city (assuming your city has any at all) be parades and marches, when you’d be much happier at home, under a blanket, with a cup of tea. (I do like the flag though.)

Where do the “quiet gays” go? I’d be all over a Pride Book Club or a Pride Recipe Exchange or any other much lower-key things like that. Just throwing that out there. *ahem*

And then there’s the darker, even more hard-hitting aspect of her show. The persistence of shame. You don’t go from Closet to Proud in one awkward conversation with your parents. It takes decades, and internalized homophobia does not wear off easily. I am always happy to see out and proud folks being out and proud, and I love them for it, but you never see what it took for them to reach that point. The long, hard, slog to self-acceptance is always past-tense. Even when it is still ongoing, it’s treated as if it’s past-tense.

I’m actually struggling with a conundrum in my fiction writing right now, because I keep hearing that we’re supposed to be over the stage of telling stories where queer characters fight to be comfortable in their own skin. And while I’m all for having more happy, contented, proud characters in stories, that other story? The one where the queer characters have to deal with homophobia and self-loathing in real time, and overcome it? I’m not ready to stop telling that story yet. I am still living in that story, and I need fiction to work out a lot of those feelings.

And this. This helps tremendously.

So, Hannah Gadsby: Thank you for your story. Thanks for making me laugh and cry. Thanks for reminding “our people” that we are not alone.

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Pride Watch: The Neon Demon

Back to the Pride Watch! Today I'm talking about The Neon Demon.

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There's a scene in the beginning of this movie where our four central characters--Jesse (Elle Fanning), Ruby (Jena Malone), Sarah (Abbey Lee), and Gigi (Bella Heathcote)--are discussing lipstick colors. Ruby says that, according to market research, women are more likely to buy lipsticks if the name evokes either sex or food. They then ask Jesse what her color would be: "Are you sex, or food?" This is more on the nose on the second watch, by the way.

But just for fun, let's go through Rhoda's favorite lipstick colors and see if this is true:

-Air Kiss (hot pink, glossy)
-Pink Passion (Barbie pink, glossy)
-Red Velvet (classic red, matte)
-Sugar Plum Fairy (deep purple, matte)
-Dare Devil (black, glossy)
-Cherry Bomb (classic red, glossy)
-Gladiolus (classic red, glossy)

...and one with the label worn off that I can no longer read. So, about half and half. Although, fun story: I once got a pack of lip gloss that had NO names, and immediately went through them and gave them names like, "Victorian Seance" (iridescent gold), "Ectoplasm" (no-tint shimmer), and "Carrie's Prom Dress" (shimmery pink). I am still searching for a red lipstick called "Blood of My Enemies." It's out there somewhere. I shan't give up!

This movie's . . . weird. However, I think it’s pushing the proverbial envelope about half as far as it could have. That line where Jesse talks about being a “dangerous girl” is mostly symbolic in context. She’s “dangerous” not because of anything she’s done, but because people become envious, insecure, possessive, and suspicious just by her merely existing as a stunning natural beauty. In other words, Jesse has very little agency. She’s young and beautiful, and people react to her being young and beautiful. Which disappoints me, because I was hoping for a Dorian Gray or Elizabeth Bathory type situation where she had done something unspeakable--and possibly supernatural--to stay that way.

The queerness comes into it when Ruby confesses her feelings for Jesse, but then Jesse doesn’t reciprocate, and that’s when it starts to get ugly. Which is so disappointing, because I was hoping they would actually get together, and I don’t know why director Nicolas Winding Refn decided they shouldn’t. To be fair, changing Ruby and Jesse’s relationship so the attraction isn’t one-sided would completely change the ending, and I do rather like the ending, but here’s the other thing: I’m convinced there are at least two movies in this movie. One is about a young girl trying to make her way through the cutthroat fashion industry, and finds happiness in a sweet romance with a tough and wise makeup artist. The other is about a struggling but ruthless supermodel who devours her competition to stay on top. Literally. I would watch, and love, both of them, but I’m not sure they belong in the same movie.

The Neon Demon is highly stylized and was met with sharply divided opinions when it came out. I’ve watched it twice and I’m not done unpacking it yet. Check it out, and see what you think.

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Pride Watch: My Summer of Love

Starring Emily Blunt and Natalie Press, My Summer of Love (2004) is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a summer fling love story that just happens to be between two girls. This is one of those rare, but extremely appreciated, cases where the fact that the romance is queer is completely incidental. It’s also interesting that, given the quirkiness and eccentricity on both sides of the romance, in a hetero love story either of them could be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who shakes up the boy’s boring life and shows him how to enjoy himself. They are both messy, flawed, compelling characters who happen to find each other and fall in love.

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That said, the plot summary is so vague and deceptive I wonder if they’re trying to hide the romance on purpose, and why. The blurb on the DVD cover ends like this: “[W]hat started as a magical friendship soon becomes laced with deception and danger.” This is the Focus Features “Spotlight Edition” DVD I’m looking at, if that makes a difference.

Two points. 1) They call the relationship a “friendship.” See, there’s this thing in media where if two women are depicted in a romantic setting with each other, the narrative has to pretty much hit the audience over the head with it in order for them to acknowledge it as anything other than a friendship. See also: Heavenly Creatures, which was blurbed in a similar way; and the Harold They’re Lesbians meme. This movie has multiple kissing scenes, sex scenes, and breathless declarations of love. It could not be more blatant.

2) That “deception and danger” thing made me think again of Heavenly Creatures, in which the two girls become so desperate in their desire to stay together that they straight up murder someone. Yeah, that doesn’t happen here. Tamsin and Mona are both rebellious, impulsive, and have a bit of a mean sense of humor, prone to sometimes destructive pranks, but their actions mostly fall under the umbrella of Rebellious Shenanigans. They don’t get into any serious trouble, basically ever. Which is fine with me, but I wonder if there was some underlying sense of menace that I completely missed. Or maybe this blurb-writer thinks getting high and then crashing Mona’s Bible-thumping brother’s praise band meeting is a more serious offense than I do. Who knows?

Those weird false advertising speed bumps aside, this is a compelling, hazy, and dreamlike depiction of a brief but spellbinding intersection of two lives. Their romance is dazzling and beautiful, but as with all summer romances, doomed to drift away like dandelion seeds.

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Pride Watch: Pariah

Happy June!

I’m actually taking this month off from most social media stuff for several reasons, but I do have a watch list, and many things checked out from the library or queued up on NetFlix, so we’re going to have a marathon.

First up: Pariah. Directed by Dee Rees in 2011, this movie is a coming-of-age / coming out story for Aleke, aka “Lee” (Adepero Oduye), who knows she’s a lesbian but doesn’t know how to live her truth yet. This hits a lot of familiar beats for a coming out story--the homophobic parents, the experimentation with someone who wasn’t really that into it in the first place, the struggle with what to tell people at school--but it also feels fresh and organic. We have dozens of coming out stories. But we don’t have another one quite like this.

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More specifically, we have a lot of coming out stories centered on white, cisgendered men. The fact that Lee is a butch lesbian from a Black family with traditional Christian roots creates additional nuance and texture for her background. There are expectations on her that I didn’t have put on me, being a white kid from a middle class family. Although I will say that the struggle to choose my own clothing is . . . ongoing. What is this thing certain parents have against tom boy type clothes? Lee sneaks different shirts, hats, and jackets into her school bag to change as soon as possible, and fights for her right to wear pants instead of skirts, and I feel her frustration.

Lee’s also a writer trying to find her voice. Her favorite teacher is incredibly supportive and encouraging, and she pushes Lee to go further, dig deeper, try harder. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got writing-was to write about what scares you. Finding your own voice, owning it, and sharing it with the world is scary. That’s what Lee does in the end, and while it does scare her, it also brings her joy and purpose.

Now honestly, I was half-dreading watching this that something irreparably awful would happen. I always have this fear watching new-to-me movies with explicitly queer characters, because it seems to be inevitable so much of the time. And while there is definitely a fair bit of angst and some tense family scenes that are difficult to watch: this has a happy ending. This is a burst of positivity and light. If you haven’t seen it yet, add it to your watch list.

Current Music: Belinda Carlisle, "Heaven Is a Place On Earth"

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We Need To Talk About "San Junipero"

Hi! Happy Bisexuality Week! It’s been a while.

As you may have noticed, I sort of left that Werewolf Pride series hanging. It was meant to end with Ruby and Dorothy from Once Upon a Time as my last post for Pride Month about bisexual werewolves in visual media. No, I’m not picking it up again here. I always meant to, but then the time stretched out and it got awkward and I got busy writing about other things . . . and then there’s the real reason.

I seem to have a mental block when it comes to writing about queer women. Despite or possibly because I am one. I can do it, but it’s agonizingly slow and anxiety-inducing. I’ve also noticed I don’t often like stories about queer women, especially in visual media. There is almost always something about the way the story is told, or the dialog, or the characterization that bothers me. Either I don’t quite see myself in the characters, or I suspect the story is meant for the straight audience members so they can learn a Very Important Lesson about tolerance or something.

Then this happened.

GIF of two women dancing in a crowded 80s club
Source.

And then they give it an Emmy.

( Ooooooh baby do ya know what that’s worth? )