#looking hbo

[zanephillips]

Looking 2.04 "Looking Down the Road"

[userarmand]

Russell Tovey in Looking: The Movie (2016) & Plainclothes (2025)

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

The ongoing shift in how gay films and series are advertised is quite an interesting phenomenon.

Traditionally, Hollywood tried to de-emphasize the homosexual aspect of gay media in promotional material — an effort to make these works more palatable to a wider audience and increase their chances of profitability.

This sometimes produced awkward items, such as these posters for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and A Single Man (2009), which appear to present those films as heterosexual dramas:

As a matter of fact, the distributor of A Single Man went further and also released a controversial trailer that emphasized this perspective:

A comparative study of the trailer that Ford’s production company released as the film premiered at the Venice festival (where it won the Queer Lion Award for best gay film), and the trailer just released by The Weinstein Company tells quite the tale. The new trailer uses the same music and mostly the same shots, except it adds in a bunch of quotes that not-so-subtly emphasize the film’s Oscar buzz, leaving out a few choice shots – pretty much all of which are suggestive of the film’s gay content. (x)

Even the posters for Looking (2014–2016), a niche HBO series focused on gay subculture, are rather tame and ambiguous:

So, basically, gay media that achieved commercial success in this context did so despite their gayness, not because of it.

Now, take a look at these posters for Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) and Heated Rivalry (2025). Not only are they not afraid of showing skin, but they also make the homosexual aspect of these stories very clear and obvious:

That's because, unlike the older examples, gayness is the main selling point for this content. It's what their viewing audience is looking for, and they are commercially successful because of it.

Gay media reaching mainstream visibility in such an unapologetic way represents an entirely new scenario in the Western world. It remains to be seen whether and how this trend will continue.

[gayzing-away]

Jonathan Groff in Looking (2x08)

[providence-park]

Jonathan Groff & Murray Bartlett

LOOKING: THE MOVIE (2016)

Dir. Andrew Haigh

[gayhoediaz]

“People are surprised to see two men having sex face to face. They’re surprised to see kissing and eye contact.” […] “It’s interesting that that’s still shocking to people, because that’s just what intimacy looks like.”

- Jonathan Groff (regarding the television show Looking), Vulture, 2014

“People were surprised that the sex scenes were tender.” […] “There was surprise that two men would have sex facing each other, looking at each other, being emotionally present.” […] “That says more about what audiences have been trained to expect than about what gay intimacy actually looks like.”

- Matthew Lopez (regarding RWRB), various press interviews, 2023

(like dude it never ends. TEN years later. do straight people get it yet? jfc.)

[bad-at-lov]

[k-wame]