QS304 Project Blog

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

Week 11

Queer representation is becoming less and less afraid of being sexual, but there is still a long way to go. The problem with queer castration mostly lies within the realm of queer characters who are guest starring in straight films. Queers can be as sexual and explicit as they want, so long as they stay within their own spaces. When they venture out into straight spaces, anything beyone hands brushing is considered to be too explicit and garners backlash. This is very easy to see in the form of Disney's First Openly Gay Character, which has been at least a dozen different background lesbian couples and single gay men over the years.

[yaoivsyuri]

comments from unhinged lesbian hosts disney’s “first gay character” olympics by Rowan Ellis 

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

The standards are so low for queer characters that Disney can get away with calling two women standing next to each other queer. No sex, no romance, no lines.

[starsandsupernovae]

[brain-deadx0]

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

We have made a lot of progress in normalizing queer relationships in media aimed at children, but somehow we have not yet penetrated (ha) Disney for decent queer characters. "Disney's first gay character" is just a person who's single by choice or looks at a character of the same sex for 0.3 seconds, while straight characters make out incessently. Positively Victorian standards for queers. God forbid we show any ankle while the heteros wear thongs and pasties.

[callmemebyurname]

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

The infamous peach scene from Call Me by Your Name. I think that if there was ever a weirdly sexual and uncasrated mainstream gay movie, this is it. They didn't even make the sex vanilla and don't ignore masturbation, which adds to the queerness of it all.

[senshidaily]

eternal appreciation Look, they both have rings on their ring fingers! Did they get married?

[moonlightsdreaming]

sailor moon crystal | haruka & michiru favorite scenes

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

The case of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune is an interesting one. In the original Japanese series they were lesbians, but when the series was adapted and dubbed into English for American Audiences the couple was transformed into a close set of cousins. None of the lesbianism was actually removed, of course, and they simply read as incestuous cousins to deeply confused young American girls. However, in Crystal they have been un-castrated and are once again allowed to be a non-incestuous couple. This is a step in the right direction for American media and a good sign for faithfully adapted foreign media.

[unwelcome-ephestion]

La Cage Aux Folles was the first gay musical on Broadway or in the West End, beginning its New York run in 1983. It won Best Musical at that year’s Tony Awards, and ran for four years. Its lyrics and music were written by Jerry Herman, openly gay composer of Mame and Hello, Dolly!, and its book was written by Harvey Fierstein, who performs I Am What I Am, the show’s most famous number, in the video linked.

La Cage Aux Folles is based on the 1973 French film of the same name, though anglophone audiences will know the American remake, The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, better. It’s a wonderful, joyous farce, much of which takes place in drag, celebrating queer families.

The show flopped in the West End in 1986, despite its Broadway success, something which is normally attributed to the AIDS crisis - AIDS was not well known in 1983, when La Cage opened on Broadway, but by 1986 the unfettered, happy depiction of queer families met with increased homophobia. In later interviews, Herman admitted that the AIDS crisis affected the musical in another way, which was that much of the cast was ill as well. Herman himself contracted HIV in this period, but incredibly survived until only a couple of years ago, when he passed away at 89.

Since then, La Cage has been revived multiple times, including a particularly wonderful 2005 cast starring Kelsey Grammar that I’m listening to right now, and received boatloads of awards. La Cage doesn’t deal with the heavy side of homophobia, preferring to combat prejudice with comedy and farce - what is easy to miss is that, in the 1980s, that happiness was radical and was part of what made the show so controversial. Long live La Cage Aux Folles!

[mgmpluto]

The Birdcage (1996) as per usual, I couldn’t decide which one I liked best so… enjoy both!

[fistful-of-fandom]

The Birdcage (1996), dir. Mike Nichols

[adaptationsdaily]

The Birdcage (1996) dir. Mike Nichols

[hayscodeviolation]

The Birdcage (1996) dir. Mike Nichols

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about The Birdcage. I think that its queerness as a piece of media offsets casting Robin Williams as a gay man. It is severely a product of the 1990s, but it pulled no queer punches and had Robin Williams opposite an actual queer actor (Nathan Lane) as his husband. It has camp, queer fashion, drag, gay men in a committed relationship, delicious found family, and a character who falls down when he wears shoes. It turned the traditional coming out to straight parents trope on its head within the first ten minutes and only ramps up its mockery of conventional heterosexuality from there.

[p-spidey]

“God knows I want to break free.”

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

Rami Malek undeniably had fun with this role, but the scripting of Freddy Mercury's life was less than acceptable. The villain of the film was effectively Mercury's queerness, rather than the society who struggled to accept him or even the AIDS that ultimately took his life. There is no benefit of increased visibility for queer lives in this case that can be given as a consolation prize to fictional characters. Everyone who saw this film knew who Freddy Mercury was.

[dailylgbtq]

Love, Simon (2018) dir. Greg Berlanti

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

While it was a landmark piece of media in terms of normalizing queer romance with a happy ending, much of Love, Simon reads as inauthentic and flat through a queer gaze. Why? Because it is nothing more than a straight story with a queer veneer. The only reason it has been accepted by queer people is that it doesn't end in outright tragedy, and the only reason it has been accepted by straight people is because they constantly reaffirm the idea that Simon is just like everyone else aside from his sexuality. And he is. He is queer in name only, with none of the transgression that lives in the art created by the hands of real queer people.

[northernitaly-1983]

Einar Wegener: The fact is I believe that I’m a woman.

Gerda Wegener: And I believe it too.

Warnekros: The surgery has never been attempted before.

The Danish Girl (2015) dir. Tom Hooper

[editsteven]

stevonnie icons

[niceprophecies]

[queer-and-here-and-angry]

The angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, the protagonists of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 1990 novel and 2019 miniseries are both canonically nonbinary and in love.