mediaconsumernightwriter

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

The Rampant Success of boygenius

Finishing a sold out tour dressed as the literal Holy Trinity and now coming up to an SNL performance, it’s safe to say boygenius isn’t the underground indie supergroup that they once were. Due to the status of indie royalty that Phoebe Bridgers has acquired the past few years, the group grew in popularity with her.

I have to be honest, my introduction to them wasn’t successful. I first listened to their first project boygenius when I was doing a deep dive into Phoebe’s discography. I had no idea who the other two were and didn’t care much, since I didn’t love the ep. I have changed my mind on a good portion of these opinions.

Everyone on TikTok freaks out about Phoebe (and Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, etc.) so obviously when the new songs came out, it was all I was getting on my fyp. It appealed to my curiosity. So when the record came out, I listened to it. I could give you a detailed list of thoughts on each song, since I wrote them down (just let me know if you’d like something like that for a post), but I won’t. What I will tell you is that after 7 months since the album came out, I sit here with a “always an angel, never a god” tattoo on my leg. How did this happen?

First, I fell in love with certain songs in the record, one of them being Not Strong Enough. I usually don’t listen to lyrics on the first listen but the lines I have tattooed resonated with me. Secondly, they’re sung by Lucy Dacus. A year ago, I wouldn’t be able to tell you who she was. But that’s the beauty of boygenius: I discovered a beautiful soul, singer, songwriter, woman, etc. and usually the gateway for boygenius is Phoebe, as I mentioned, but you end up falling in love with Lucy and Julien. I fell harder for Lucy, since she’s my favourite artist at the moment (and I shamefully haven't listened to Julien’s music).

I think the appeal of boygenius to the main public, even if it’s mostly lesbians in love with the singers in the group, is that they each have their own fanbase, sound, unique voice, and they all bring something different to the table. Every boygenius fan has a favourite “boy” (as with everything) but they support the band because they see how much love and respect the boys have for each other. If you’re wondering why I’m calling them “boys”, you’re just not in the fandom and that’s okay.

Also, the music is good. I haven’t talked much about it, but you put three talented songwriters together and you’ll obviously get good music. The instrumentations are also beautiful and so well put together with the lyrics and harmonies. One of my favourite songs is Without You Without Them and that’s an acapella opening to the record, starring stunning vocals and harmonies from the boys. I’d recommend it.

I’m excited about their performance on Saturday Night Live, since Phoebe’s sparked so much controversy last time. There’s also been a request for “real musicians” to perform on SNL again, whatever that means, but if there is such a thing as real musicians, the boys are it.

I will make a separate post on Lucy someday, maybe focusing on my favourite songs and lyrics, and maybe report to you when I listen to Julien’s music. For now, I leave you with another beautiful lyric that makes me hopeful to fall in love, if not in this life, in the next one. “If you rewrite your life, may I still play a part?”

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

driver's license: A Music Retrospective

2021 was the year. We were still knee deep in the global pandemic and needed some drama to entertain ourselves. Then it came. A newcomer to the music industry, Olivia Rodrigo, dropped her first single (outside of her work in the Disney show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (yes, that’s the real name of the show)) and it was called driver’s license. It immediately resonated with people, especially teenage girls, and her talent was evident in the track. However, people wanted to know, as they always do, who this emotional song was about.

So the people dug through the mud to find him. And find him they did. This person was Joshua Bassett, Olivia’s co-star in HSMTMTS (I’m not writing that full name again). And who was “the blonde girl” Rodrigo sang about? None other than Sabrina Carpenter, who was seen close and personal with Joshua. This is the simple run down of the characters in this piece.

Since it all started with driver’s license, we will start with Olivia’s music. Most of SOUR is about her relationship (and her break up) with Joshua. Some songs really work for me and others not so much. I’m not one for the ballads and “sad girl music”. But some of Olivia’s vocals and harmonies, combined with the simple and direct lyrics, make great sad music. In retrospect, I do like GUTS better than SOUR, but it’s pretty solid for a debut. It is noticeable through her lyricism that Joshua really hurt Olivia, whether he meant to or not.

Next we will examine Sabrina’s responses, plural, because one was more successful than the other. I must say I’ve been a fan of Sabrina since Girl Meets World (another Disney show and, yes, a spin-off of Boy Meets World) and her music really is more my style. So musically, I will be biased to her. However, her first response to this drama was to release Skin, a not so polished song that feels like a diss track against Olivia, including the line “maybe blonde was the only rhyme” (referring to the “blonde girl” lyric in driver’s license). As I stated before, it’s clear Olivia was really hurt by Joshua and Sabrina’s relationship, so releasing a song where you brag about having the man on your arm instead of her doesn’t seem like a smart move. Fortunately everyone forgot about that release and she was able to create her album emails i can’t send and her new response to the drama. And I say “response to the drama” and not to Olivia, because the song this time is much more focused on the aftermath of driver’s license. because i liked a boy is a really well constructed and, more importantly, well thought out song, where Sabrina unleashes her frustrations with what happened to her because of Olivia’s song. Death threats were sent to her and Olivia did nothing to stop them, while Joshua appealed to the goodness of Olivia’s fans. Sabrina’s only crime was, as she sings in the chorus, liking a boy. And she also reveals that “when everything went down, we’d already broken up”. Sabrina’s side results in a near flawless pop album (where not all of the songs are about Joshua) and it’s better than SOUR in my opinion, but it’s almost like she’s been doing it longer than Olivia.

Joshua’s side was the latest I arrived at and, to be honest, I’m glad I did. Let the ladies get their versions out before I analyse the man’s in the situation. When I did research on this topic (because I didn’t know what songs to listen to on Joshua’s part), the song Lie Lie Lie showed up the most. It feels like a slap to Olivia’s face. It’s evident that Olivia was pouring her heart out into her art and Lie Lie Lie just downplays it all. Then, I listened to the rest of Joshua’s discography and found some other songs that could apply to the situation, though I’m not sure they are about Olivia. Only A Matter of Time is also about how this person is lying about a certain situation (“you twisted your words like a knife”) that could be applied to Olivia’s album. Crisis is a more inward look into the drama, claiming Joshua also suffered from this whole affair. The lyrics seem to implicate Olivia’s album and attitude after the release of her music, with lines like: “If you get to tell your truth, so do I”, ”Messing with my life as a career move” and “You sensationalise, keep fanning the flames for the headlines''. And finally, the song SHE SAID HE SAID SHE SAID refers back to the drama, the rumours around the couple and Sabrina and how it’s all “he said she said” and we’ll never know exactly what happened with these three. Musically, Joshua’s side is the weakest, in my opinion, and he doesn’t have the lyricism and production that the girls have. It’s not my type of music, even less than Olivia’s, this style of “sad boy music” is getting tiresome to me.

To finalize this analysis, I want to say that I don’t hate any part involved and if anything good came of this, it was the amazing music. Go stream all of the sides and decide for yourself who “won” this drama, or just enjoy all sides equally. I can’t tell you what to do, I’m not your mother.

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

might do some album reviews here too, with more detail about each song. It'll only work with new albums though (to me) because I clearly can't write about Stick Season

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

Get To Know Me

Name: Sophia

Pronouns: they/them

Sexuality: lesbian

Favorite color: Red

Favorite song atm: Femininemon by Chappell Roan

Currently watching: Buffy The Vampire Slayer and BBC's Dracula

Currently reading: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Last movie I watched: Aftersun (rewatch)

I guess that's it for now. If you'd like to know more, feel free to leave me a question.

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

Turning The Vampire Genre on its Head (Buffy The Vampire Slayer analysis)

The opening scene of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, like many openings do, sets the tone for the whole show, or at least the first season. I would like to remind the reader or inform if you're not in the loop that I've only watched one episode of this amazing series. But I can see how different it will be from other vampire/hunter/action media, just from the opening scene. This will obviously contain spoilers for that scene as I dissect it in detail.

We open the show with "In every generation a slayer is born", etc. After that, the ambience is gloomy, we are in an empty high school, all the lights turned off and... CRASH, a window is broken. We see a fist breaking it. This gesture suggests great strength. We know from the title of the show that we are watching that there are vampires in this universe, so we assume this is one of them. We see a couple, a boy and a girl enter the empty, dark classroom. As soon as we see them, the girl is reticent about what they are doing. She is scared she'll get caught, she is scared of the dark. At the mention of "monsters", she startles. The guy is excited to be here, he wants to do something to the girl, kiss her, make out, have sex, what have you. We all know what he wants. And we assume the worst. If there are vampires on the loose, this might be one of them. Why else would he bring an innocent girl into an empty high school? He clearly has nefarious purposes. She's scared, she jumps at any minuscule sound, we're about to witness a massacre or else a chase scene that rivals the opening of Scream.

But, last minute, everything shifts. "Are you sure we're alone?" She asks. He answers positively. She turns into a vampire about to feed and a man's scream fills our ears.

This reversal of roles was something I did not expect when I first watched this episode and it still astonishes me when I rewatch it. It's so obviously a misdirect, yet I fell for it. This reversal of roles between men and women is a constant throughout the episode (and dare I say, even if I haven't watched it, throughout the whole show). Buffy as a character is a great example of this. She could've easily been a guy, the vampire slayer of the generation could've easily been a man, but we see instead a teenage girl killing vampires. Darla (the vamp from the opening scene) is clearly a strong vampire as her companion at the end of the episode gets immediately vaporized and turned to dust by Buffy's stake while she escapes it and fights back. She even shows up in 5 more episodes AND in the Angel spin-off, so she's a scrappy woman. It also means that she survives both Buffy and Angel in various occasions. I don't know, I haven't watched the shows.

Going back to that opening scene, Darla is the first vampire we see and I think it is indicative of the whole show's premise. The women rule over the men in this one. We see Buffy meet three men in her first time in the new school. One clearly states he is not a slayer and the other two are walking himbos. Meanwhile, Willow is obviously intelligent and Cordelia, even as a mean girl, is socially smart. Darla sets the stage for these incredible women, changing the helpless victim from typical vampire media into the heroin (and in Darla's case, the villain) of the entire show.

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

i have started buffy the vampire slayer. prepare to be sick of me

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

Why Do Gay Men Hate Femininity?: A Giovanni’s Room Rant

This essay will contain minor spoilers for Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin and The Boys In The Band (2020). So, if you don’t want to know anything before reading or watching, go ahead and do that and then come back if you’d like. It also contains triggering content regarding mentions of violence towards women and feminine people, homophobia, transphobia and racism.

I started reading Giovanni’s Room not long ago and was immediately in love with it. The writing is phenomenal and Baldwin captures this immediate passion and consumption and falling out of it with such grace and incredible prose. Now that I’ve praised the book, let me talk about an aspect I didn’t like, though that’s not the fault of the book, because I think it’s made to show us how the real Giovanni is outside of the glamorized vision from David’s eyes.

I’ll start off by saying that, while I don’t really identify as a woman, I’m a very feminine presenting person and will always be perceived to the outside world as a woman. Feminism is very important to me, also. So seeing Giovanni downright hate women so ferociously made me do a double take and reconsider his character immediately. I’ve seen so many people talk about how this book is great and not one has mentioned the outright misogynistic rhetoric that Giovanni spews at one point in the book.

The conversation starts light, with Giovanni questioning David about his girlfriend. “What is she doing, wandering around through Spain alone?” he asks. This quickly turns into a small sexist comment. When David says that Hella (his girlfriend) “likes to travel”, Giovanni replies with “nobody likes to travel, especially not women.” While a small comment, this remark will lead to the more violently misogynistic thoughts Giovanni expresses. When David claims that Giovanni “doesn’t seem to have a very high opinion of women”, he replies with “There is no need (…) to have an opinion about women. Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be treacherous, and they can seem bottomless, you know? - and they can be that shallow. And that dirty.” He admits that he “doesn’t like women very much” but that hasn’t stopped him from having sex with some of them. I don’t need to explain how objectifying this sentiment is. We will continue, for there is more.

Giovanni’s most violent feeling towards women, he feels towards feminist women, who “run around today, full of ideas and nonsense, thinking themselves equal to men”. For them, he reserves the thought that “they need to be beaten half to death so that they can find out who rules the world.” He also admits he’s beaten some women and that “didn’t make them leave”.

David isn’t innocent of this misogyny either. While Giovanni spews his sexist bullshit, David tries to counteract it, but ends up laughing at physical violence enacted towards women. He also seems to have a bad opinion of the feminine men who show up in Guillaime’s bar (“There were, of course, les folles, always dressed in the most improbable combinations, screaming like parrots the details of their love-affairs (...). Occasionally, one would swoop in, quite late in the evening, to convey the news that he - but they always called each other “she” (...) they looked like a peacock garden and sounded like a barnyard. I always found it difficult to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody for a man who wanted a woman would certainly have rather had a real one and a man who wanted a man would certainly not want one of them.”) This aversion seems to apply to the apparent gender non-conforming boy that also shows up at the bar: “There was the boy (...) who came out at night wearing makeup and earrings and with his heavy blond hair piled high. Sometimes he actually wore a skirt and high heels. (...) I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy.”

This misogyny coming from gay men isn’t new (the book is from the 1950s) nor is it exclusive to this book and its characters. Usually, the length of my research for these essays is limited to rewatching a movie or reading a comic book. This time, with a theme as sensible as this, I decided to do more investigation over this topic, since I knew it was something people talked about but not really discussed in the community.

A lot of the conversation about misogyny is centered around the discrimination of cisgender women but it is fundamental to note that trans women and feminine presenting gender non-conforming people also suffer from it, on top of suffering from transphobia. Some of the articles I found talked about the “struggles of women'' as a monolith including only cisgender women, mentioning abortions (which trans men and non-binary people can choose to have), biological clocks and child bearing. I think it’s important to put my foot down and mention that these are not the only struggles women go through and are not exclusive to women only.

But, continuing on the topic of misogyny perpetuated by gay men, in an article by Fionn McFadden on Cherwell, the writer points out that “Cisgender gay men are in no way immune, merely on the basis of their sexuality, from perpetuating the misogynistic power structures and behaviours that oppress women”. They also mention that the misogyny between gay men is rampant “as they believe that their lack of sexual attraction to women, alongside the notion that they share the same struggles, means that they are exempt from misogynistic behaviour and rhetoric”. In this same article, the writer mentions the sexual violence some (mostly white and cis) gay men have enacted on their female friends, which is more common than you’d think, because these assaults are passed off as jokes as, like it was said above, these men are not attracted to these women. The article finishes by pointing out that misogynoir (the intersection between misogyny and racism) is also a big problem in the queer community and perpetuated specially by cis white gay men.

In an article written by Sadie E Hale and Tomás Ojeda, they mention various definitions of misogyny and sexism, but specifically one dichotomy that  “allows feminine traits to be looked upon as weak and inferior to male characteristics, which announce dominance (when displayed by a man)”. I’ve been looking for something to apply to feminine men and gender non-comforming feminine presenting people and this phrase seems to understand what I mean when I say they are also victims of misogyny. Femininity as a concept is looked down upon in every facet of our world. Gay men (as well as straight men and women) also discriminate against feminine men, like we see David do, in Giovanni’s Room (yes, we’re tying it together!).

However, Hale and Ojeda point out, from work by Marilyn Frye, that “women face a double bind, in that they are socially (and potentially physically) sanctioned regardless of whether they behave or dress in a traditionally feminine or masculine way”. Gender non-comforming lesbians and AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) but male or androgynous presenting non-binary people still suffer from misogyny, as well as homophobia and transphobia, and “while behaving in a feminine way will likely lead to social ostracisation or violence for men, behaving in a masculine way will not”.

To call out the hatred feminine gay men are predisposed to, I’d like to bring up one of my favorite movies and plays “The Boys In The Band”. I’ve watched the 2020 version only and read both the original two-act play and the Broadway version, so if I’m missing something from the original movie adaptation, I’m sorry. Anyways, in this movie, there are multiple gay men and one “straight” man. One of the characters is Emory, a feminine gay man, who calls everyone by “she” and is very flamboyant. Another one of these characters is Hank, a very straight-looking, masculine man, who also happens to be gay (or bi depending on who you ask, I personally think he’s gay). The “straight” man, Alan, happens upon this party filled with gay men and the one he makes a beeline to is Hank. They immediately hit it off. Alan gains a disdain for Emory, though, ending up in a violent act. In this case, it’s so obvious how femininity is cause of disgust by the straight man, but it’s also an example of other gay men’s uncomfort with Emory, as his friends, specially Michael and also Hank, make comments and show, again, some disdain for Emory’s disposition.

To finalize this long research piece, the behavior that Giovanni and David exhibit in the book is very current and factual. Whether these were Baldwin’s actual views (talking more specifically of the hatred towards feminine men and femininity as a whole) or characteristics that he saw in the world around him and implemented in his characters, they were uncomfortable to read and that might’ve been the point he was making.

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

Why I think AJ Campos from Crush (2022) is non-binary

There is no real reason to explain this theory. At no point do any characters refer to AJ as anything other than a girl, or use they/them pronouns with her (and there is a character that goes by they/them in the movie).

Could the assumption of non-binary for a non-feminine presenting woman be sexist? She could still be a woman and dress or be less feminine than the rest of the cast in the movie, that is allowed. And she wouldn't stop being a woman because of it. But it boils down to a very simple reason and that is:

She uses she/they pronouns and is non-binary because I use they/she pronouns and am non-binary and I say so.

P.S.: no cis person goes by their initials...

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

Jeff Winger and Abed Nadir: the lifeline of Community

“I see your value now.” One of the first quotes from the show, from the first conversation we see Abed and Jeff have. Jeff just discovered Britta needs a Spanish tutor through Abed and will be using this information to flirt with Britta. He is telling Abed that his value is to inform him so that he can advance in his court of a woman he likes. It’s not sincere, but of course Abed takes it at face value: “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me” he says in return. These phrases are repeated in season 5, of course, when Abed comes back to help the school along with Jeff (who just wants material to bust the school with). But people often forget these lines are repeated another time, in the pilot episode. They’re the last words said in the episode and bring a new meaning to them, because it’s Abed who sees Jeff’s value now. Jeff is overcome with this judgment and proclaims “that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me”.

Jeff and Abed are, to me, the most important relationship in the entirety of Community. I don’t mean they are the best relationship, the most liked, but the most important. It is integral to the plot of the show and everything in Community moves around those two. In this text, I will go down some of their storylines and explain why they are so indispensable to the fabric of this show.

I’d argue both Jeff and Abed are the two main characters of Community. No primary storyline in the entire show happens without one or both of them. They are always the one who needs help in some way and recruits parts of the study group (the formulaic sitcom structure).

The first example of this relationship between Jeffabed (their ship name) and the plot of Community is episode 21 of season 1 “Contemporary American Poultry”. Jeff convinces the study group to fire Starburns from his chicken frying job so that they can get more chicken fingers. Abed works the fryer. Everyone has their own job. At a certain point, Jeff starts to lose control to Abed, who turns the chicken finger business into a way to get the study group things they want. But this is not what is important. What’s important is the scene towards the end where Jeff is going into the kitchen at night to break the chicken fryer. He unexpectedly finds Abed trying out different recipes. They discuss the reasons why they’re there: a need to recuperate power for Jeff; a necessity for friends for Abed. They decide to help each other out with their ailments. This is not the first moment we see Jeff and Abed being close, as a few episodes before Jeff moved in with Abed and they both got drunk together. But this is the first time we see them be vulnerable to each other and to themselves.

Why is this episode important to the plot? Because this is where Community stops being just any sitcom and turns into a marvel of modern television. This episode is a parody of gangster movies, like Abed refers he’d always wanted to be in. Two episodes later, we get the masterpiece that is the first paintball episode, a parody of action movies. And all of a sudden, Community is so much more than a sitcom, it becomes a collection of special episodes one after the other, an amalgamation of the imagination of its creators.

The next example of the importance of this relationship is episode 1 of season 2 “Anthropology 101”. In the climax of this episode, a lot of secrets come out, such as Britta and Jeff having sex on the table they study at or Jeff kissing Annie after the dance. Things are not looking good for Jeff and they get worse when Abed calls him out: “I can tell life from TV, Jeff. TV makes sense, it has structure, logic, rules, and likable leading men. In life, we have this, we have you.” This is the first time in this whole scene where Jeff looks even remotely regretful of what he has said and done.

In “Critical Film Studies” (episode 19, season 2), we see Jeff and Abed be vulnerable with each other again, Jeff when he thinks Abed is being sincere during his birthday dinner and Abed at the failed birthday party Jeff had planned. They both feel comfortable with each other to air out their grievances and display their feelings naturally.

Abed is always there for Jeff, even in his imagination. Both in “Advanced Introduction to Finality” (episode 13, season 4) and “G.I. Jeff” (episode 11, season 5), Abed appears in Jeff’s mind as a way to reconcile with his inner troubles. In the first episode, it’s in the form of a speech that makes Jeff “win” his paintball battle against his evil self, even saying he has “a family”. In the second, Jeff uses the same coping mechanism as Abed did in “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” (episode 11, season 2), creating an imaginary world, an animated one, where he gets to ignore what is happening to him (turning 40 years old). 

Abed is not one for physical touch and if we see him hug someone it is usually initiated by the other person. However, there’s two people he lets touch him with no worries: one of them is obviously Troy (Trobed for life!!), but the other one is Jeff. In “Intro to Recycled Cinema” (episode 8, season 6), Jeff is freaking out that everyone will leave Greendale and forget him there and once again he finds comfort in Abed. They hug and Abed doesn’t seem too uncomfortable with this much touch with Jeff.

We get now to the last episode “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” (episode 13, season 6), where everyone is really leaving (obviously, it’s the last episode), but I think Jeff is holding on to what Abed told him in “Recycled Cinema” and not having too much trouble with it. Until Abed says he’s leaving too. Then Jeff, after hearing this, gets a glassy look in his eyes and runs away. All his friends are leaving him. He is not comforted by Abed this time, but by Annie, who’s also leaving. I would’ve loved to see what Abed would’ve told Jeff in this moment. But we still get the Jeffabed moment we desired and, in my opinion, the one who demonstrates that Jeff and Abed really are the most important relationship to the show and to both of them. They hug at the airport, where they’re saying their goodbyes. Jeff also hugged Annie before, but he hugs Abed a second time. He needs that second hug. He knows that they will be apart for a long time and he knows that he needs Abed with him.These two characters mean a lot to me, separately but, most importantly, together. They are the driving force of Community, giving the show its course and its storylines. We watch these only children become each other’s brothers, which they both needed so much.

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

The Idyllic Sapphic World of Crush (2022)

Crush is not a perfect movie, not by any means, but there is one thing it gets right. It transforms our heteronormative world into a sapphic paradise. All the relationships seen in this movie (apart from the secondary couple who’s already together and the creepy relationship between Paige’s mother and the track coach) are sapphic ones. Every single girl (or non-binary person) is outwardly queer and into women. The relationships the main character is pursuing are both with out-of-the-closet sapphic women.

This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s already unusual to have a sapphic main couple at all, since most of queer media focuses on white cis gay men. But a world full of sapphics? Unheard of. It’s so hard for a queer woman (and I’m including myself in the label of “woman” simply for this example) to date, because it’s difficult to understand if the person in front of you is gay or just has a septum piercing. In this world, it’s made easy. It’s almost like it has homonormalized the world. It also helps that there seems to be no homophobia anywhere near this world.

Maybe this is why this silly little movie meant so much to me. It’s no different from other teen rom coms I’ve watched before, except for the fact that it is so gay and so unapologetic about it. Does it make some “an adult wrote this pretending to be a teenager” jokes and references? Yes, but that’s because it was an adult writing this pretending to be a teenager. I didn’t say it captured the teenage lesbian experience well, which I can’t even judge because I’m not a teenager, but it is unapologetically gay. In its approach to relationships, to background characters’ sexualities, to queer identities, etc.

Another thing that is very refreshing is that these sapphics are all out of the closet already. No one needs their big coming out moment with the crying and the self consciousness. In fact, the one coming out we do see is very easy, nonchalant and accepting. Everyone knows they’re queer and everyone is cool about it. At least now (AJ tells the story of her coming out and how her mother didn’t react at first, but it is assumed that she now accepts her).

I think pretty much everyone making out at the party scene, from the people being interrogated by the girls to the ones who start making out on top of AJ, is sapphic. Just another interesting way to build a sapphic-filled world. There’s some male looking gay people in there as well, but they are given less focus than the sapphic relationships. In the seven minutes in heaven portion, there are multiple queer couples (women loving women AND men loving men) and also multiple groups of what I assume to be polyamorous relationships. This doesn’t prove my point but I also don’t care because that’s when we get the main characters’ kiss and that makes me happy enough.

The last thing I’d like to focus on is how the bisexual character’s sexuality is not questioned in any way, especially after she’s with a woman. It would’ve been so easy for the writers to include a joke about how she was actually really a lesbian, but she stays bisexual throughout the whole thing, because that’s her identity. It doesn’t change if she’s with a man or a woman or a non-binary person. She’s bi for a reason.

For a movie that describes in the script the track team as 60% queer, it shows a lot more than that percentage of queer people and relationships on screen. It is a queer person’s paradise world, especially if you’re a sapphic person, like myself. So yes, I really like this movie a lot.

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

What’s More Important: Celebrity or Being Nice?

I went to watch Banshees of Inisherin for the second time today. All because of one scene. I needed to watch that scene in a theater again (though I had watched it at home twice already) and fortunately my cinema was still showing it. For 5€ on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, promotion on all the Oscar nominees until the ceremony.

The scene in question is one where Colin Farrell’s character (Pádraic) gets drunk and accuses Brendon Gleeson’s character (Colm) of not being nice anymore. It has made the rounds on TikTok. It is more than that to me, though. It proposes an existential question: what is more important, to be remembered in 50 years for your accomplishments or to be remembered by the people that surround you for “being nice”?

The whole movie centers around this question and I think answers it quite plainly, if not in its story, then in its abundant usage of the word “nice” in its script. It’s there from beginning to end. Pádraic is described as nice for the whole of the movie (until he breaks) by everyone who knows him. Colm is only described as such by Pádraic in this scene, in the past tense (“You used to be nice”). A lot of what he does is described as “not nice” actually.

Let’s talk about both options the way they do in this scene. Colm makes the case for celebrity, for being remembered for your music, your paintings, your poetry. Leaving art to be remembered by the future generations, like he appreciated Mozart after two centuries. Of course being celebrated in 50 (or, let’s say 100, because I hope I’m still alive in 50) years would be a very good thing, having made such an impact in the history of humans that you are remembered by millions after you and all your loved ones die.

But, while watching this scene for the first time, the answer was so obvious it startled me. I want people to remember me for being a good person, like Pádraic. I found myself agreeing with him no matter what he said, because in my heart I felt that it was right. The fact that “niceness doesn’t last” didn’t scare me. I wanted to be remembered as “nice” to the people around me. I wanted my mother to remember me as nice, my dad, my friends, people I encounter at the grocery store. I try to be the least annoying person a service worker will encounter that day. To me, all that Pádraic said was ultimately true.

You know what doesn’t last? Us. What good does remembrance do to a dead body? How many artists we remember today lived and died in poverty? How many people who made art, who accomplished something in their lifetime, do we not remember anyway? But the people we love are here now and we are here now and we should strive to be the best people we could for the people around us.