There have been whispers across the internet that the two female characters in Bend It Like Beckham were meant to end up together. One source of this information is a soccer blog that tears the film apart, brushing off its international success citing the film’s “snappy title” and the success of a television show about…
MOONLIGHT’s Win: Restoring a little hope for humanity
If you watch the Oscars, or if, like me, you don’t and you just look at the cringey and meme-worthy parts that pop on the internet the next day, you know that something amazing happened at the 2017 Academy Awards. For years, the Academy has received criticism for being composed of old white men who…
The Kids Are All White
The Kids Are All Right is a 2010 film starring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as Jules and Nic, a married lesbian couple with two children, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Both women used the same donated sperm to conceive a child, and now that Joni has turned 18, Laser wants her to…
Pariah: A bird with no feet finds her tree
Queer film is often about “crumbs,” or movies with sub-par or even offensive and harmful representation. Queer characters are often given tragic or unsatisfying storylines. Many queer characters are shown suffering from adversity, and many times (Brokeback Mountain, Boys Don’t Cry, The Danish Girl) they don’t survive the movie. Pariah is not one of those…
BROKEBACK Vs. WEEKEND
x Brokeback Mountain was the first queer film I can remember watching, and this past week I rewatched it for the first time since my initial viewing. I’ve joked in the past about how sad/bad the movie is, but I’d forgotten how truly crushing the movie is. It was almost funny how sad it was….
Brandon Teena and BOYS DON’T CRY
The story of Brandon Teena is one that continues to remind us of the horrors faced by transgender people. Transgender individuals experience disproportionate levels of violence, murder, “poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.” In 2013, 72% of hate-fueled homicides were perpetrated against transgender women. According to a 2014 study of suicide attempts among transgender adults, “trans women…
The Search for Identity: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
Hedwig and the Angry Inch follows the story of Hansel, a young gay boy in East Berlin, and his transformation into Hedwig, an unwillingly female rock star. Hansel is talked into a sex change operation by his lover and his mother in order to marry the man and move to the US with him. Once…
Harold, They’re Positively Depicted Lesbians in Mainstream Cinema
If you were user of the internet in 2015 you may be familiar with the excitement surrounding the release of the film Carol. Many young, queer people on the internet fawned over the movie, to the point where the movie was referred to not as Carol but the reverent and only slightly ironic “Carol (2015)…
Tragedy Versus Camp: “The Danish Girl”
Me watching The Danish Girl. source There is a difference between criticizing a movie and disliking it. Many films that I criticize I enjoy in some way or another, or at least don’t completely dislike despite negative statements the film may be making. In fact, I’m often swept up in a movie’s magic even when I’m…
New Queer Cinema and “Paris is Burning”
source “New queer cinema,” as coined by B. Ruby Rich in New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader, are “united by a common style… there are traces in all of them of appropriation and pastiche, irony, as well as a reworking of history with social constructionism very much in mind.” Rich adds that, “these works are…
Everything You Love is Gay* 