#what if a murder cowboy was both gay and genders | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whispersofthecryptid · 2 years

Text

Tumble’s Natm ocs - the Wild west🐴🍀

They’re here! All 8 of them! Why is there so many of them!

Meet my chaotic pile of cowboys and girls! This collection of characters includes both my very first natm ocs - and my newest ones :)

Characters:

Chance A. Merrick

Chance is an honest man and prefers to say what he thinks – even if it hurts someone’s feelings. He’s not the most trusting person, but tries his best. Doesn’t mind an adventure but prefers to stay out of doing stupid things. He works as a horse trainer, sometimes he even seems to prefer the company of his steeds to other miniatures. Laid back around his friends, cracks jokes and tells stories. Even though he does make it clear when he doesn’t like someone, he usually prefers to be friendly with people.

Owns a shire horse named Bug.

Gender & Pronouns: cis man, he/him

Sexuality: gay

Relationship status: hardcore crushing on Bruno

Death in real life: fell off his horse and got trampled by it, breaking his neck and spine

Bruno Regulus Maximus

Bruno is a former Roman soldier, who found his true home with the cowboys. He’s a bit too curious for his own good and struggles with anxiety – but that doesn’t stop him from making friends and having fun. While he’s prone to getting himself in dangerous situations, he makes up for it with hard work and dedication to help both of his families find perfect peace with each other. Hates the idea of fighting, prefers diplomacy.

Bruno enjoys arts – he writes poems and plays instruments such as lyre, guitar and piano. He’s hesitant to share them with bigger audiences, but often plays or reads to Chance or his friends.

Gender & Pronouns: cis man, he/him

Sexuality: omnisexual

Relationship status: has a major crush on Chance

Death in real life: murdered by his father after losing his ability to walk to an infection/illness

Jessabella “Jessie” Oakley

Jessie is adventurous and likes taking risks. She’s positive most of the time and always looking for something to do. Most of the time works with horses together with Chance, but enjoys working at the railroad as well. Clever and quick-witted, always finds a way out of a tough situation. Actually very interested in the Romans and enjoys visiting their diorama with friends. She’s had some romantic flings with Flavia in the past and the two are still good friends.

Gender & Pronouns: cis woman, she/her

Sexuality: lesbian

Relationship status: dating Mariana ( @sushire ‘s Roman oc!)

Death in real life: died of dehydration caused by a severe fever that wasn’t treated

Sawyer “Sawy” Schuyler

Sawyer is a quiet and somewhat introverted man, who prefers listening to others to talking. He works as a bartender and is the most comfortable there, where he can talk with his regulars and listen to the wildest stories people come up with. Likes to play match maker from time to time, though is quite bad with his own love life. A hopeless romantic. Sometimes, when you get him to talking, he can go on and on for hours – usually about the gossip he’s heard during work.

Gender & Pronouns: trans man, he/him

Sexuality: asexual panromantic

Relationship status: has an on/off thing with Leon – but has really strong feelings for them

Death in real life: bled out after having his head bashed against a wall in an assault

Neakita Grahams

The mother hen of the squad. A very caring and kind woman, Neakita is always looking out for others. Whether you need to vent, have an injury that needs taken care of, want a hug or just want to gush about your new crush, Neakita is there to listen and help out. She condemns any kind of bullying and will stand up to others, even if she doesn’t quite know them. While she seems peaceful, when angered, she’s a fierce warrior that might need someone to hold her back – lest you want her to commit third degree murder.

Gender & Pronouns: cis woman, she/her

Sexuality: bisexual with a heavy preference for men

Relationship status: married to Marshall

Death in real life: childbirth gone wrong

Marshall Grahams

No one knows how this man has managed to get so skilled at handling guns – Marshall is awfully clumsy and seems to have a personal cloud of bad luck following him wherever he goes. He’s prone to getting himself hurt, but doesn’t really mind it; he’s just happy to be alive and see the wonders of the museum. Most of the time he’s relaxed and chill, though he knows when to get serious. Acts as a father figure to many of his friends.

Gender & Pronouns: cis man, he/him

Sexuality: straight (gotta have that token straight lol)

Relationship status: married to Neakita

Death in real life: fell into a river and drowned

Madeleine “Maddie” Grahams

A bubbly, classy young lady with a positive attitude. A bit of a diva and dramatic, sometimes whines about tings that aren’t that big. Very social, enjoys talking to people – and about people, as she’s very into gossip. Maddie gets excited very easily and her attention span isn’t the best. They aren’t very good with helping people out with emotional troubles and isn’t too experienced with comforting others. Tries her best though.

Marshall’s twin sister.

Gender & Pronouns: cis woman, she/her, they/them

Sexuality: bisexual

Relationship status: single

Death in real life: bitten by a rattle snake

Arizona “Firefly” McCoy

Most of the time, Firefly is very blunt and short tempered and comes off as unnecessarily harsh. She doesn’t really trust anyone and prefers to keep its distance to people. The only exception seems to be Maddie – the two are polar opposites, but get along quite well. Firefly has a habit of going rogue and getting itself in trouble, but nearly no amount of danger can get her to admit that she’s in need of help. If you think you know what’s going on with it… no, you don’t.

Gender & Pronouns: trans woman, she/her, it/its

Sexuality: confusion

Relationship status: single

Death in real life: shot multiple times in a robbery

#Tumble's natm oc galore #wild west is here y'all!!!!#Bruno and Chance are the ones that started it all...#So many ranch people #Bruno and Chance need some assistance with their relationship :')#lore spoilers... Sawyer deserves better than Leon #we'll see when that happens #if it does #Firefly and Maddie qpr in the future?👀#I could talk about these guys for days

3 notes · View notes

vikingqueer · 3 years

Text

music recommendations because i have some thoughts™

i don't wanna be that person who's like "my music taste is so weird lol" but i find that very often most of my friends don't really care for the music i like so i thought i'd just make a long ass post about it on tumblr instead. Fair warning, I'm very passionate about MIKA and The Mechanisms and so this very quickly got VERY long because it is part of my ongoing campaign to convince people to listen to mika and the mechs.

1) MIKA in general, but especially My Name Is Michael Holbrook (2019) and No Place In Heaven (2015) (especially the Deluxe version!!)

MIKA is a kind of British singer (half Lebanese, grew up in France blabla), and you probably know him for Grace Kelly and Relax, Take It Easy from his first album Life In Cartoon Motion from 2007. He writes a lot of FUN music, interspersed with the occasional slightly sadder song, especially when looking at an album like No Place In Heaven, which contains a lot of songs with gay themes, resulting in some songs that are just a little bit ouch. He's originally classically trained and has a frankly RIDICULOUS range and idk he just writes very good pop music. Also I have so much respect for that time he talked about how a lot of pop is very fake, with like expensive cars and stilettos and mini skirts in the snow and said "Because I walk down the street, and I don't see any of that. I see fat women and gay men. I don't know... That's real". He's written 5 albums; My Name Is Michael Holbrook (2019), No Place In Heaven (2015), The Origin Of Love (2012), The Boy Who Knew Too Much (2009), and Life In Cartoon Motion (2007).

For starters, I recommend listening to Last Party, Origin Of Love, Grace Kelly, Blame It On The Girls, Blue, Happy Ending, Pick Up Off The Floor, Last Party, Underwater, Tomorrow and Tiny Love (yes this is a long list but i REALLY love MIKA). If you want a slightly broader palette that's not just my favourites, I recommend the Mika starter pack on spotify.

2) The Mechanisms. I warn you. I am making this a thing. I have been obsessed with the mechs since last march.

Boy, where to start? The Mechanisms were a British 9 member space pirate story-telling cabaret that "died" in January 2020. They rewrite songs to fit retellings of various stories. I don't even know what genre I'd describe them as, but probably folk but steam-punk?? Their 4 "main" albums are concept albums, and I honestly just recommend listening to the from beginning to end in chronological order. A good way to get into the mechs is also to listen to UDAD and then watching the live show on youtube or alternately try giving Death To The Mechanisms a listen, to get good quality live show audio of TBI and various other stuff. Also, it was streamed on YouTube and someone combined the footage with the album audio and it rocks. Really, I think the mechs' best selling points are honestly just their concept albums:

Once Upon a Time (In Space) Their first album from 2012. I'd say this is the most "easily digestible" for the general public, since it's a retelling of various fairytales. So, what if Old King Cole was in fact not merry, but rather a cold-blooded dictator, intent on colonising as much of the galaxy as possible. What if Snow White was a general, looking to avenge what King Cole did to her sister, Rose. What if Cinderella was to be wedded to Rose the day that King Cole attacked in order to kidnap Rose? But y'know, In Space and also like every other mechs album it's a beautiful tragedy. Fave songs are Old King Cole, Pump Shanty, and No Happy Ending.

Ulysses Dies at Dawn You guessed it, it's a story about Odysseus, or Ulysses because I guess Ulysses is easier to rhyme or fit in the meter or something, idk. Ulysses is a war hero of unknown gender who is said to keep something that could take down the corrupt Olympians, meanest families in the City, in a vault to which only they know the passcode. Oedipus, Heracles, Orpheus, and Ariadne have been hired by Hades, who happens to be The Mechs' quartermaster Ashes O'Reilly, to get into Ulysses' vault. I didn't care much for udad at first, but honestly it's got some real bangers and the story is really good. UDAD weirdly stands out as the only of the concept albums to not feature any gay relationships, per se. Fave songs are Riddle of the Sphinx, Favoured Son, and Underworld Blues.

High Noon over Camelot This is my favourite mehcs album. So basically, this is Arthurian legend, but it's a space western and Jonny D'Ville does a bad southern accent. This is the story of the cowboy lovers Arther, Lancelot, and Guinevere searching for the Galfridian Restricted Acces Interface Login, or GRAIL, in order to stop their world from falling into the sun. Meanwhile, Mordred and Gawaine are ruling Camelot, and Mordred has convinced Gawaine to try to establish peace with the Saxons by whom Mordred was raised, but Gawaine hates viciously. If you love getting your heart broken and songs by a fucking off the rails batshit preacher I HIGHLY recommend hnoc. Fave songs are Gunfight at the Dolorous Guard, Blood and Whiskey, and Once and Future King. Honorary mention for Hellfire because it awakens something animalistic in me.

The Bifrost Incident TBI is the frankly only good adaptation of norse mythology I've ever known of, and I say that as Dane who was literally forced to learn things about norse mythology in school because it's my heritage or whatever. I've been listening to TBI a lot lately because it's VERY good. It's definitely the most refined of the mechs' albums (because it's the newest) but also I just love a little bit of cosmic horror. 80 years ago, Odin, the All-Mother, ruler of Asgaard, launched a train through the wormhole Bifrost that would reduce the travel between Asgaard and Midgaard from 3 months to 3 days, but things didn't go quite as planned. Lyfrassir Edda of the New Midgaard Transport Police is trying to solve the case of why suddenly the train has arrived 80 years late; to figure out whether it was accident or maybe it was sabotaged by Loki, who was allegedly sentence to death her murder of Baldur, by the Midgaardian resistance led by Loki's wife Sigyn, or maybe by Thor, who was to take over after Odin, and who holds quite the grudge because he used to be a friend of Loki's. You might've heard the song Thor from this album, it's apparently quite popular. Fave songs are Loki, Ragnarok III: Strange Meeting, and Ragnarok V: End of The Line. Yet again an honorary mention: Red Signal because while Lovecraft was a bitch, his invocations are fucking RAW.

Basically, the Mechanisms do all of their performances in character as captain first mate Jonny D'Ville, quartermaster Ashes O'Reilly, pilot DrumBot Brian, master-at-arms Gunpowder Tim, science officer Raphaella la Cognizi, doctor Baron Marius Von Raum (neither a baron, nor a doctor), archivist Ivy Alexandria, engineer Nastya Rasputina, and The Toy Soldier, who is, as usual, present. You can find very obscure lore about the crew of the Aurora here, tidbits on Tales To Be Told and TTBT Vol. 2, such as One Eyed Jacks, The Ignominious Demise of Dr. Pilchard, Gunpowder Tim vs. The Moon Kaiser, Lucky Sevens, and Lost in the Cosmos.

If you feel like listening to a full 40-50 minute album to find out if you like a band is a bit much, I recommend listening to one of the mini stories Alice, Swan Song, or Frankenstein, which are about 12, 5 and 9:30 minutes respectively.

3) The Amazing Devil You know that guy who played Jaskier in the Witcher? I got into The Amazing Devil from spotify recommending them because I listened to the mechs, and apparently Joey Batey from The Amazing Devil is the same Joey Batey who was in the Witcher. Both him and Madeleine Hyland are VERY talented singers and songwriters and their second album The Horror and the Wild makes me go out into the forest and SCREAM. I listened to it on repeat for like a month straight. I guess they'd also be considered folk, but like. New Folk. Also yes, this is another British artist, I don't know why I'm like this. I've never really gotten that into their first album, Love Run, but King slaps. As I understand there's this whole lore about the Blue Furious Boy and Scarlet Scarlet, Joey and Madeleine respectively, but unlike the Mechanisms it's actually possible to find out things about the actual real people and harder to find the obscure lore? I'm open for people to please help me. Fave songs are The Horror and the Wild, Farewell Wanderlust, and That Unwanted Animal, which is literally a third of their second album, but again. I haven't really listened to Love Run that much, and I just LOVE the harmonies on THATW. (also im gay and dramatic leave me alone)

4) dodie I have so much love for this woman. Like many others, I first knew dodie as doddleoddle on youtube. I think I first stumbled across her in probably 2015, because I distinctly already knew her before she released her first EP Sick of Losing Soulmates in 2016. I think I watched probably every video she's ever made in the span of a few weeks. I just loved her quiet sound and was absolutely HOOKED. Also she's actually the reason I got into MIKA originally, so thanks for that. Dodie just realeased her first album Build A Problem (in addition to her three EP's; the one mentioned above, You, and Human) and it slaps. Yes dodie is also British Fave songs are probably Monster, Rainbow, and In The Middle.

5) Cladia Boleyn Unfortunately, Claudia Boleyn only has three singles and that's it. She's been making content on youtube for quite a while, and that's how I first discovered her. I don't know what genre her music is, but I like it. The songs are Celesta, George, and Mother Maiden Crone, of which the latter is my favourite. I'm not saying Claudia Boleyn invented women in 2017 when she released Mother Maiden Crone, but she did. Also you guessed it, Claudia Boleyn is British.

6) Hozier I'm not about to tell you about Hozier. You know who he is. Listen to Nina Cried Power, Angel Of Small Death & The Codeine Scene, and Shrike. Also Hozier isn't stricly British in that he is definitely from A British Isle, but Ireland is not part of the UK. Give me a break.

7) Oh Land Oh Land IS DANISH. I like her early music best, because I'm not that into the electronic sound. I guess Oh Land is just you regular old pop, but with the occasional weird vibe? Oddly enough, I like her first album Fauna best. Unfortunately I haven't really listened to her newest album Family Tree much, but it seems good? Fave songs are Frostbite, Love You Better and Family Tree. I cried on the bus, first time I listened to the Danish version of Love You Better, Elsker Dig Mer because my mother tongue always just hits harder. Also Frostbite is Oh Land doing a duet with herself which is pretty cool.

8) Oysterband This is a live recommendation. I mean they're a decent folk band and all, but they're a fucking experience live. If you like folk and you ever get the opportunity to see Oysterband live, do it. Unfortunately, yes. They are British. Either way, they are incredible on a scene and I think they deserve a mention for that.

9) Ben Platt Honestly don't know much about this guy, but he's not British and he was in Dear Evan Hansen. He released an album in 2019, Sing To Me Instead, and I just think it's a good album, there isn't really not much more to it. Fave songs are Grow As We Go, Bad Habit, and In Case You Don't Live Forever.

and thats all for now. this has been a ramble. shout out to you if you actually read all of this, especially the mechs part.

#music stuff #amalie.txt #music recommendations #mika #the mechanisms #the amazing devil #dodie #claudia boleyn #hozier #oh land #oysterband #ben platt

47 notes · View notes

tc-doherty · 2 years

Text

Describing some of my WIPs in very silly terms:

Dragons don't understand fashion or feudalism.

Fairy tale quests do not have gender, actually.

In order to be gay, you must both do crime and fight crime.

Is it too risky to send 'per my last email' if my boss is a literal man eating troll?

I can't believe impersonating my dead sibling for several years has backfired on me, who could have possibly seen this coming?

It's all fun and games until your BFF frames you for murder.

Be gay, do horse related crime.

This is exactly why you don't elect a Pisces to a position of power.

I'm a taxpaying adult, what do you mean I have to go on another fated, magical adventure?

Please help, I think my boss is trying to take over the world?

Took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, and somehow ended up married to a dragon, how’s your day going?

Cowboys are gay, sorry I don't make the rules.

What to do when your bad breakup turns into a fetch quest.

#writeblr #writing

2 notes · View notes

uncloseted · 3 years

Note

Hello! would you like to recommend some interesting movies and shows that you like? I want to watch something nice but I don't know what

Yes! I have recommendations! Here are some of my favorites:

For live action TV shows:

If you like Skins, try the Norwegian show Skam (or one of its remakes) and the Australian show SLiDE. Both of them are a little hard to find but they're totally worth it. They're both character-focused dramas that center on the lives of high school students.

Euphoria a beautifully shot teen drama in the vein of Skins that deals with issues of mental health, gender, sex, and violence.

Pushing Daisies a mystery-of-the-week black comedy about a piemaker who raises the dead so that he can collect reward money for discovering how they died.

The Good Place is a philosophical comedy about a woman who is sent to heaven by mistake after she dies, and her quest to become a more moral person.

Ted Lasso is a comedy-drama about an American football coach who is sent to the UK to coach a professional football/soccer team. It's charming and optimistic, and is fun to watch regardless of whether or not you like football.

Gilmore Girls is a comedy-drama about the lives of a mother-daughter duo who are best friends. It's witty and whimsical.

Wandavision is a Marvel Comics mini-series about Wanda Maximoff/Scarlett Witch living in what appears to be a TV show. I won't say too much about this show, but it's one that ends up being deeply philosophical.

Schitt's Creek a sitcom about a wealthy family who loses their money and must move to the small town of Schitt's Creek, where they live in a motel.

Community is a sitcom about a group of friends who attend a community college together and the hijinks that ensue. It's a very quirky show. that's heavy on pop-culture references and meta-humor.

Only Murders in the Building is a newer mystery-comedy show about three strangers share an obsession with true crime and suddenly find themselves wrapped up in one.

Westworld is a philosophical dystopian science fiction neo-Western television series about a theme park where guests can indulge their wildest fantasies using lifelike androids. It deals with questions of artificial intelligence, consciousness, ethics, and free will.

Veronica Mars is a teen neo-noir mystery-of-the-week series about a high school student who moonlights as a private investigator.

Reality TV:

Great British Bake Off is a really low-key British competition show where contestants complete three baking challenges each week in the hopes of being dubbed the best amateur baker in the UK. The contestants are genuinely really nice and helpful to one another, so it's pretty chill.

Terrace House is a reality TV show where six strangers move into a house together. It's a dating show, kind of, but it's also about people making friends and following their personal and professional aspirations. It has a group of celebrity panelists who watch the show with you and then comment on what people are doing. How real it actually is is up for debate, especially in the later seasons, but it's a fun watch nonetheless.

Queer Eye is a reality TV show where five gay men give makeovers. It's focused on representation, gay culture, and self-improvement, and has a lot of really heartwarming episodes.

Anime:

Space Dandy, a Shinichirô Watanabe space opera that follows the misadventures of Dandy, an alien bounty hunter who is “a dandy guy in space”. It's mostly a comedy, but it has some episodes that I think are actually really profound.

Cowboy Bebop (the original, not the Netflix live action remake), a Shinichirô Watanabe space western that also follows a group of alien bounty hunters, but this one is in more of a neo-noir style drama that deals with themes of existential angst, loneliness, and a person's past.

The Tatami Galaxy a parallel universe show by Masaaki Yuasa that follows the adventures of a student at Kyoto University.

Night Is Short, Walk On Girl an anime movie by Masaaki Yuasa that exists in the same world as Tatami Galaxy. It's a romantic comedy and is super life-affirming. It's one of my favorite movies of all time.

Fullmetal Alchemist is a dark fantasy about teenage two brothers who are alchemists searching for the philosopher's stone.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: a cyberpunk spy/thriller that follows the adventures of a law enforcement unit that investigates cybercrime and terrorism cases. This has one of my favorite episodes of TV ever, Kusanagi's Labyrinth, which I really recommend everyone watches on its own even if you don't end up watching the rest of the show.

Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! A slice of life, teen comedy that follows a group of high school girls who have an eizouken (film club). This show is a love letter to the process of making animated movies and it's so, so beautiful.

Western Animation:

Adventure Time is a surreal, coming of age, fantasy-adventure comedy-drama that follows the adventures of brothers Finn the Human and Jake the Dog in a magical, post-apocalyptic world.

Movies:

Before Sunrise is a romantic drama that follows Jesse and Celine as they meet on a Eurail train and disembark in Vienna to spend the night together.

Amelie is a whimsical romantic comedy film that follows Amelie, a shy waitress who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better while struggling with her own isolation.

Her is a science-fiction romantic drama about a man who falls in love with his artificially intelligent virtual assistant.

Anything Taika Waititi, especially Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Boy. Both are slice of life, coming of age movies. They're sentimental, whimsical, and angsty. Boy is about a young boy's life and his relationship with his ex-con father. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is about a juvenile delinquent who was abandoned by his mother and goes to live on a remote farm.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a comedy-drama film about a centuries-long romance between two vampires.

5 notes · View notes

glenngaylord · 4 years

Text

OUTFEST 2020 FILM REVIEWS: The Rest Of The Fest

As the curtain closes on another Outfest, this one presented under extremely unusual circumstances, I sit in awe of the filmmakers and of the staff who put together not only a great group of films, but managed to creatively bring them to its audience online and at drive-in screenings. Typically, you find yourself having to choose one film over several others, but with this new format, you have a great chance of seeing everything you want. In past years, I found myself lucky if I saw 15 films. This year I saw 23 features and 4 shorts programs out of the 160 on the schedule.

As it’s impossible to get full reviews submitted for everything while the festival is still chugging along, I wanted to write capsules of the remaining films not covered at TheQueerReview.com . Please visit the website for all the other reviews I wrote as well as those by my colleagues.

THE OBITUARY OF TUNDE JOHNSON ★★★★★

Melding a Groundhog Day-style concept with police violence against black people, this stunning film could not be more prescient and emotionally overpowering. A black gay teenager relives his moment of murder over and over again, with slight shifts in the narrative taking us to someplace unexpected and earned. Director Ali LeRoi directs his first feature as if he’s been doing it all of his life and has interpreted Stanley Kalu’s ingenious script with a great cinematic approach. Gorgeously framed, beautifully acted, written, and directed, this is one of the most powerful films of 2020.

TWO EYES ★★★★★

I can’t form sentences here so I’m gonna vomit out words: Instant classic. Glorious. Set over three centuries seamlessly melding a triptych of stories about gender identity. I’m a blubbering mess. Fantastic and very funny last line. Travis Fine is a very gifted filmmaker who screams love child of Terrence Malick and Kelly Reichardt. Heartbreaking. Inspiring. Unforgettable. Montana is so beautiful. Barstow is not. A perfect film for anyone who wants to find their place in the world. I wouldn’t complain if TUNDE and TWO EYES both received Best Picture Oscar nominations.

DRAMARAMA ★★★★

Theater nerds rule in this incredibly endearing, early 90s set film about a group of high schoolers discovering themselves in one night at a ridiculous Murder Mystery-themed party. Hilarious script, vivid and wonderful performances, and the opposite of a “Coming Out” movie in the best possible way. Jonathan Wysocki has given us The Breakfast Club for air-kissing, mid-Atlantic accented freaks and geeks.

CICADA ★★★★

What happens when a traumatized, bisexual man who has more sex partners than any standard montage can contain slows things down to concentrate on one kind but also traumatized young man? This elliptically told film has a fun, flirty side but carries its heaviness with great ease. A terrific feature debut for director/writer/editor/lead actor Matthew Fifer.

THE STRONG ONES (LOS FUERTES) ★★★★

From Chile comes this sexy, moving story of two men at cross purposes who form a beautiful bond. Set against some stunning scenery and mining the chemistry between its two leads for everything it has, I am half-jokingly calling it Brokeback Andes. It’s so much more than that trite, hackneyed comparison.

MONSOON ★★★1/2

Director Hong Khaou’s followup to Lilting sets its sights on modern day Vietnam as Henry Golding’s character visits to find a suitable place to distribute his mother’s ashes. It’s a terrific mediation on a gay man finding a sense of belonging in a place he’s never been and Golding proves himself to be a subtle, compelling actor. Perhaps a little too quiet and reflective, the film makes up for what it lacks in narrative drive with its awe-inspiring cinematography and immersive qualities.

P.S. BURN THIS LETTER PLEASE ★★★★1/2

What an unexpected surprise. Michael Seligman and Jennifer Tiexiera’s documentary about a treasure trove of letters dating back to the 1950s brings us into the world of drag queens from almost 70 years ago. With many of its subjects not only alive but in fine form telling their stories and the dishiest voiceover readings ever to grace a film, I was not only thoroughly entertained, but I didn’t expect to weep like Laura Dern at the end. Oh, this is so so so so good.

MINYAN ★★★★

Eric Steel’s feature debut has its own unique tone and a star making performance by Samuel H. Levine, a spitting image of a young Al Pacino/Sylvester Stallone hybrid. With its 1980s Jewish Brighton Beach backdrop, this powerful yet subtle film about a young man coming to terms with his sexuality as well as his place within his religion, it’s a stunning debut. Ron Rifkin is stellar as Levine’s charming grandfather and Alex Hurt (William Hurt’s son) has his father’s intensity. Fantastic, lived-in production design which feels like its decade without resorting to the usual candy colored tropes and a evocative score makes this a memorable experience. Reminiscent at times of On The Waterfront, this film puts a fresh new spin on a coming of age tale and finds so many moving moments from first sex to an elderly gay couple hiding in plain sight. A must-see.

SHIVA BABY ★★★★

Writer/Director Emma Seligman must have studied Rosemary’s Baby quite a bit with this angsty story set mostly at a memorial service. Rachel Sennott is fantastic as a young lesbian who moves from one cringe-worthy moment to the next in an attempt to avoid as much conflict as possible. The great supporting cast includes Polly Draper, Fred Melamed, Dianna Agron, Molly Gordon, and Jackie Hoffman, all note perfect. Less a comedy and more of an emotional horror story, Seligman knows how to make the best of a cramped space and throw up an endless variety of obstacles. You just want Sennott’s Danielle to get her goddamned bagel with lox and cream cheese, but the fates have something else, something better, in store.

COWBOYS ★★★★

Steve Zahn gives a career best performance in this moving story of a father with mental health issues and his trans son escaping into the Montana wilderness. Sasha Knight makes an impressive debut as Zahn’s son and Jillian Bell expertly walks that fine line between villain and empathetic character. Its comparisons to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid are not coincidental. Not perfect by any stretch, it may feel fairly conventional, but it’s tackling a vibrant subject matter. Extra points for giving Ann Dowd a role where we don’t hiss at her.

BREAKING FAST ★★★

Solid romcom with a Muslim backdrop, this very tight, deceptively simple script provides just the right amount of sparks between its charming leads, Haaz Sleiman and Michael Cassidy. While structurally not breaking new ground, the entry point into a world we don’t see enough of on screen coupled with food porn for days makes this a fun, funny, goes down easy delight.

ASK ANY BUDDY ★★★1/2

Q: Daddy! Daddy! What were the 70s like down at the Piers in NYC? A: Oh shut up and watch this movie.

An experimental collage of vintage gay porn and archival footage from the disco, pre-AIDS heyday gives this film a mesmerizing, museum installation quality. While technically without a story, you feel like you’ve gone on a journey nonetheless. Would pair well with William Friedkin’s Cruising.

DRY WIND ★★★1/2

Slow cinema meets voyeuristic gay porn in this one of a kind Brazilian exploration an arid small town, a workers’ union crisis, and a man obsessed with the Tom Of Finland drawing come to life who motors into his life. Overlong and a little too obtuse as it goes along, it’s worth watching this Alice In Wonderland takes a quaalude, gets a very hairy back, and has a lot of sex in the dirt.

NO HARD FEELINGS ★★★★

This year’s Teddy Award Winner at the Berlin Film Festival, Faraz Shariat’s film uses its backdrop of a refugee camp in Germany to tell the story of Iranians and Irani-Germans searching for a better life. Its three leads bring a spark and youthful energy to a story with devastating undercurrents. A wrenching glimpse into the emotional effects an oppressive culture has on its people, yet told with a driving pulse.

LILY TOMLIN: THE FILM BEHIND THE SHOW ★★★

A look behind the scenes as Lily Tomlin and wife Jane Wagner workshop their legendary 1980s Broadway show, The Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe. It’s great to see these two at the top of their game and get a glimpse of their creative process, but this documentary is almost devoid of incident and feels more like a sweet gift to the fans than a fully realized film.

SHORTS: WHAT A BOY NEEDS ★★★1/2

A mixed bag here of people searching for excitement, I found a couple of gems here nonetheless. Not to take away from the shorts I don’t mention, I want to single out two exceptional films. Ruben Navarro’s Of Hearts And Castles looks great, has a beautiful vibe, and shows us a lovely connection forming right before our eyes. Kiko’s Saints proves highly original as we follow a female Japanese artist on assignment in France become obsessed with a gay couple who have a lot of sex on the beach. Combining animation with fairly explicit sex, I loved seeing the male gaze from a female perspective.

THE CAPOTE TAPES ★★1/2

I love Truman Capote. I grew up at a time when smart authors found themselves on talk shows and were treated like superstars. I’ve read his books and always have been in awe of his ability to be himself. Featuring never-before-heard tapes of Capote’s friends being interviewed by George Plimpton, unfortunately, I don’t think this repetitive documentary gave me anything all that new. It’s still touching at times and for the uninitiated, this is a great overview of his life, but I was watching the clock.

OUT LOUD ★★★1/2

A moving look at the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles as they prepare for their first public performance. With its ticking clock storyline, director Gail Willumsen expertly interweaves storylines of its founder and members. As such, you really learn what’s a stake and what it means to them. I was lucky enough to see the chorus perform David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust a few years ago and basked in the power of its mere existence…and was also ridiculously entertained.

TWILIGHT’S KISS (SUK SUK) ★★★1/2

This quiet charmer form Hong Kong shows us something we almost never get to see on film - two elderly gay men meeting and falling in love. The fact that both have been married to women doesn’t stop them from exploring their feelings. A little to gentle by half, I still was in awe of this rarity.

23 notes · View notes

pynkhues · 5 years

Note

I’m sure you’ve already gotten a bunch of asks since Manny’s Crime King interview! I’m just like confused about him saying he’s enamored by her world but honestly like how is his different (besides his obvious commitment to the game) he lives in a nice loft, takes his kid to baseball, drives a fancy car, and plays tennis at the club. It’s not like he’s living the life of a thug. I guess I’m not getting the exact contrast of their worlds.

(Rest of my ask) I’m probably missing some obvious point here which is why I’m asking you lol helllppp

I do think Rio’s enamoured with Beth’s world, yes! I think that really boils down to the fact that while on paper Beth and Rio aren’t living dissimilar lives in terms of their roles as parents, and while they obviously now share parts of the criminal world, I do think the show is actually pretty specific in how it represents those worlds, particularly in terms of the masculine / feminine, and how a part of the curiosity around each other is in viewing one another as a key that both compliments their own world, while also unlocking the other’s one for them.

The gendering of spaces in storytelling – but particularly films and TV is, hilariously, a topic that I’m incredibly passionate about and have both written it a lot in my original work, and written about it a lot for magazines, journals and media sites (I’m actually writing an essay at the moment for a literary journal about LGBTQI cinema and how lesbian romances are highly domesticised [i.e. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Handmaiden, The Favourite, The Kids are Alright] while gay romances are usually very pointedly about keeping away from domestic spaces, moving and traveling [i.e. Brokeback Mountain, The Talented Mr Ripley, Moonlight, Midnight Cowboy, even Call Me By Your Name is heavily focused on being Americans abroad aka away from home] but that all feels like a different story, haha).

Luckily for me, Good Girls is actually about as obsessed with the gendering of spaces as I am. It’s a major, major throughline throughout the show for many of the characters, but particularly Beth and Rio, and their intrigue with the other’s spaces – her interest in his powerful, highly masculine one, and his with her deceptively innocent, strongly feminine one – is really central to their intrigue with each other more broadly.

So to talk about this, we probably need a little bit of context.

(Under a cut because this is literally 4,000 words)

Gendering Spaces in Cinema

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone here, but places and spaces in stories are about as gendered – if not more gendered – as they are in daily life. In particular, cinema’s visual and textual language has historically been very clear:

The inside is female. The outside is male.

This concept has really been around since the beginning of cinema but became very popularised through Westerns in the late 1920s onwards, and really underlined by war films particularly during propaganda cinema in WWII. Men are outside, battling the elements and other men, claiming land, building outwards, while women are at home – either literally or figuratively (if they’re actually out at war, like in the utterly fabulous So Proudly We Hail!, they’re at the ‘home base’ as nurses) – building inwards. Men protect the home while women create it.

Westerns feature these images very potently and very literally. Almost every single western dating back to the 1910s will have some combination of these two shots:

a) Woman at home, looking out into the wild:

b) Man leaving home, stepping out into the wild:

(These two stills are from John Ford’s The Searchers which is generally regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time. It’s………very racist and misogynistic, as many were and still are, but in terms of technicality and visual language, it’s a very well-made film, albeit not one I enjoyed).

The purpose at the time, of course, was steeped in historic sexism and invested in maintaining that culture, particularly westerns and war films which are heavily devoted to ‘macho’ narratives. Women were passive, men were active, but these images really set the stage for how the ideas of ‘space’ continues to exist in cinema. A fact that’s bolstered by broader social discourses that still exist today – schools, grocery stores, laundromats are inherently ‘female’ spaces because they are seen as an extension of the home, while police stations, car dealerships, warehouses, are inherently ‘male’ spaces because they’re about work, protecting and providing for a home, and being pointedly outside of that domestic space aka ‘the wild’. It’s not an accident that the girls are robbing grocery stores and day spas, but I’ll get back to that, haha.

These ideas of gendered spaces underpin everything we watch, no matter the genre.

Sure, these ideas can be subverted to varying degrees of effectiveness (often it’s steeped in my least favourite trope – the ‘not like other girls’ heroine), but you can’t subvert a trope without actually acknowledging it exists. Sometimes these subversions are done brilliantly too – like in Legally Blonde which was not just about Elle existing in a space that was quintessentially coded as male, but embracing her femininity and womanhood within that space; and often brutally too in films like Winter’s Bone, Room and The Nightingale which all brutalise women in ‘male spaces’ while simultaneously weaponizing female spaces against them – usually the home. The lead character of Winter’s Bone is going to lose her house unless her absent father shows up in court, the lead character of Room creates a home that is simultaneously a sanctuary and a mockery of a sanctuary to try and protect her son from reality and survive, the lead character of The Nightingale has her home invaded, her husband and baby murdered, and is horrifically raped within that home.

Hometown Horror: a divergence

This is a slight aside to where I’m going with this overall, but please indulge me, haha. I’m a big fan of horrors and thrillers, which explore this in a really stark way. In that, the invasion of a home or a domestic space – whether by ghost, demon or serial killer, is, generally speaking, synonymous with the invasion of a woman’s body and the violation of her as a person.

Films that focus on a female survivor or a ‘final girl’ are very generally focused on the invasion of her home as much as it’s focused on the invasion of her body. Think The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Scream, The Babadook, Hereditary, The Conjuring, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Panic Room. The violation of a woman’s home is the invasion of her, because cinema relies on over 100 years of movies telling us that a house and the woman who lives in it are symbolically the same thing.

Horror films that focus on men are very rarely centred in the home. It’s men travelling, or men visiting a woman’s home, or men who’ve been taken. Think of the first Saw movie which takes place in a mysterious basement, Hostel which is at a hostel, Dawn of the Dead at a shopping mall, An American Werewolf in London while two men are on holiday, The Evil Dead is in a cabin, Get Out is at his girlfriend’s family home.

There are exceptions, of course! Family home invasion films like The Purge, Funny Games and The Strangers are rooted in the violation of that home, but still. You’ll generally find that it manifests differently narratively speaking for men and women. Rear Window too takes place entirely in a man’s apartment – but it’s interesting to note that most of the ‘horror’ comes from him spying on somebody else’s home – notably a woman’s, The Descent too is very much about women and is set during cave diving. Still! These are all exceptions, not the rule.

Good Girls and Gendered Spaces

Every single space in Good Girls is gendered. It’s actually one of the things I seriously love about the show because it’s thoughtfully done, and it is deliberate. We know it is, because they tell us explicitly in the writing multiple times. I mean – hell, think of Ruby telling us (well, telling Rio, haha) way back at the end of 1.04 when they’re selling him on the idea of washing cash through Cloud 9 – “Nobody thinks twice about a woman buying her husband a TV or new tires for the minivan.” A store like that is gendered, and Ruby’s reinforcing it by saying it’s a place women go to build a home. It hasn’t been weaponized yet - - but our girls know how to weaponize it. They’re playing on the fact that people think women’s spaces are effectively impotent, and they’re telling Rio – and us as an audience – that they’re going to exploit it.

This is an idea the show revisits frequently. Women’s spaces are – both in life and in storytelling – spaces that are viewed as passive because they are representative of women, and what the show is – I believe – very invested in, is showing how those spaces are fundamentally active. If you want a house to represent a woman – well, okay. Then you get to see what’s under the rug, y’know?

I’m going to come back to the home thread – because I really do think it’s very important, and I think the way the show depicts people in those spaces (and invading those spaces) is significant – but it’s not just homes that are looked at in this way. The show is very specific about having feminine spaces and masculine spaces, with only a few in between (and usually those in-between spaces are very specifically for Stan and Ruby, showing just how in-sync they are with each other and how much they operate within a shared space). Beyond the women’s homes, there are the kids’ schools, Fine & Frugal (very important here to note that Annie emasculates Boomer in what is an associated female space and that he retaliates by attempting to rape her in her own home aka not only another female space, but a space that is symbolically Annie, something he repeats later with Mary Pat – a violation on essentially every character, narrative and symbolic level, again), the waxing salon, Nancy’s day spa, Jane’s dance recital (and actually the physical object of the dubby – being a highly feminine object lost in a very masculine space), and already what we know of s3, with Ruby being at a nail salon and Beth being at a paper / card store.

The show also has very masculinized places – I’d argue Boland Motors is one of the biggest ones – very much about ‘boys and their toys’, which is why Beth pointedly feminising it when she takes over is so significant and symbolically indicative of Beth’s claiming of that space; but also spaces like the police station, the drug dealer’s house in 2.07, the hotel suite Boomer briefly occupies, even to an extent the church. When the girls are in these spaces, there’s a distinct feeling of encroaching on territory that isn’t theirs, or being in spaces that they don’t belong in. This is often done as a two-hander too – the police station and the church Ruby doesn’t belong in anymore, not necessarily as a woman, but as a criminal.

Nothing though, from a technical standpoint, is more masculine than the spaces that are shown to be Rio’s. From the warehouse spaces to the bar to his loft to his car, Rio’s ‘places’ are distinctly masculine and generally placed in direct contrast with Beth’s femininity. But I’ll come back to that point too.

Home, Identity and Invasion

Almost every female character on this show has a very defined domestic space, from Beth, Ruby and Annie, to Mary Pat, Marion and Nancy. These spaces are representative of not just who they are, but who they are as women, and really comes to routinely represent the interior lives of these characters. This is probably the clearest in 2.09 when Beth is uncharacteristically messy following Dean taking their kids, and in 2.06, when Beth and Dean switch roles, and Dean is incapable of maintaining that domestic space because it’s not his. But let’s not start there.

Let’s start with Annie.

Annie’s apartment is fun, feminine (but not overly so), youthful, sweet, and generally a bit of organized chaos. It’s often underequipped – there are several mentions of the pantry being understocked – but it’ll always do in a pinch. More than anything though, Annie’s apartment comes to life when her son is in it. She’s happiest when he’s there, and when he’s not, her loneliness drives her to pulling people into the space with her, whether that’s the electronics guy, Greg, or Noah.

This is particularly significant when Annie’s forming bonds with people. The show has symbolically relied very heavily on Annie’s moments of vulnerability and connection being grounded in her apartment or an extension of it – usually her car. There was her reconnecting with Greg over YouTube videos in s1, there was Nancy and her talking about pregnancy in 2.02, and there was Noah settling in across season 2. These are all substantial moments in terms of Annie’s interior life that are represented through her home – she lets them all in. Which is why it’s significant what people do when they are in. Particularly the show marrying Noah getting to know Annie while simultaneously rifling through her belongings, trying to know specific things about her.

This is only reiterated by Noah’s scenes with Sadie later in the season – always at home, reiterating just how much Noah’s invaded Annie’s life, how much he’s inside her, how much he’s using everything and everyone who’s important to her, and how much he’s a threat to all of that too.

Ruby and Stan are a little different. Ruby’s house is the only one that’s genuinely shared with somebody, and the show represents this across the board – Ruby and Stan wear similar colours, the house feels like theirs, and the parts of their worlds that are separate are still frequently pretty defined by each other (even when Ruby’s acting away form Stan, the show makes it clear that Stan’s at the forefront of her mind, and vice versa). This indicates their partnership, but the house really still is symbolically tied to Ruby. This is particularly represented by the effect of having Turner in the house, but, more than that, it’s underlined symbolically by Turner arresting Stan at home. If the home symbolically carries the meaning of the woman, Turner arresting Stan there is starkly about Turner taking Stan away from Ruby. That image would not hold the same weight if he was arrested at, say, the park or the police station, because the locations don’t hold the same meaning.

It’s also why there’s significance in Stan and Turner’s showdown narratively speaking happening at the police station. It needs to, because symbolically it should occupy a masculine-coded space, because that showdown isn’t just about who they are as people, but who they are as men.

Beth and Beth’s house is very, very different to Annie and Ruby’s, and holds a more substantial narrative and symbolic function. From the very first episode, the potential of losing her house is key to her arc, and key to her identity as a character.

Beth is a lot of things, but a recurring image with her as a character is that she is invested in projecting a dated idea of ‘perfect womanhood’, and, within that, actually pretty perfectly creates parts of it for herself. For Beth – as somebody who was a housewife for roughly twenty years – her house really is her in every sense of the word. Every threat to that house, every disruption, every wrinkle, every intrusion, every theft, every invitation is personal. Dean might have at least two rooms in the Boland House, but that space is Beth’s on almost every symbolic level. When people pop into it, it’s a direct invasion of her.

This is something that the show has revisited time and time again, particularly when it comes to Beth’s bedroom. When people want to be close to Beth, that’s where they go. Annie slept there across season one when she was vulnerable and lonely, despite Beth telling her to go home, Jane broke into Beth’s closet there when she felt she was being neglected, Dean’s constantly trying to sidle into it (and – pointedly – only really in it when they’re fighting and Beth is revealing something / letting him in on something – that they’re out of money, that she has Rio’s money, that she knows about his affairs). When Beth has been at her most vulnerable, she lets Ruby and Annie into it. That said, the only character who’s been explicitly invited into it has been Rio – significantly both in fantasy, and in the show’s reality.

It’s not just about inviting people in though – when she kicks somebody out of it, the act is loaded.

She’s not just pushing somebody out of a space, she’s pushing them out of her.

It’s not just her bedroom of course (although I do think that’s the most significant space on perhaps the whole show). Rio and Turner between them have regularly invaded Beth’s living room, dining room, her kitchen, her yard. These are often distinctly tied with her doing something domestic and / or distinctly feminine. She’s bringing groceries home, she’s baking, she’s trying on jewellery, she’s mothering her children. Symbolically, this is often when Rio and Turner both are at their most masculine and their most threatening, which just serves to underline the invasion of Beth’s space.

It’s not just the girls though, as I said above. Female domestic spaces on this show are significantly coded as belonging to women, even if they share those spaces. Think about Nancy and Greg’s house – which is Nancy’s space, not Greg’s, and throughout season 1, Annie was pitted as the outsider to that. She’s a smear of hair oil on Nancy’s perfect couch. It’s made all the starker when Nancy kicks Greg out, and when Annie helps Nancy give birth in that house – a distinctly female, intimate act, that not only operates as a significant feminization of that space, but also about Annie fighting for Nancy to let her in again.

These spaces all keep secrets for the women they belong to too – Mary Pat’s husband’s dead body, Boomer’s very much alive one – because, again, symbolically, they are these women.

Rio’s loft is a really interesting one to look at in this context, because not only is it hyper masculine, but the show underlines that it does not hold the same significance that the girls’ places have for them. Beth does not learn Rio by being inside him – something made stark through their game of twenty questions. In fact, being in Rio’s loft, in his space, only serves to point out how much Beth doesn’t know him. Not only that, but Beth’s inability to lose her house (which is really central to her arc) is paralleled exactly with how easily Rio can separate from his.

The domestic space is not male.

Rio exists outside of it.

Beth x Rio and the Feminine x Masculine

Rio and Beth are basically at polar opposites of the masculine / feminine spectrum, and it’s something that this show often casts in a really stark light through dialogue, visual language, character coding and symbolism.

Beth epitomizes the old archetype of femininity and the female world in a way that I don’t think Annie and Ruby do (although I do think Ruby does in some respects). This is coded into almost every part of her character – from her long history of domestic servitude and marital submission (letting Dean control their finances, not working, keeping the house, etc.) to her fertility (four children!) to the way she dresses in floral, bakes, to certain traits, namely her nurturing tendencies, overt empathy and guilt (not being able to kill Boomer). Even in terms of the casting – Christina is somebody who has a very distinctly feminine body.

On the other hand, Rio, in many ways, epitomizes the old idea of masculinity and the masculine world. He’s coded that way almost as much as Beth is coded as feminine – he’s physically strong (beating up Dean, holding Beth up while they were having sex), assertive, dominant, capable and collected. That’s not even touching on the fact that the golden gun is incredibly phallic, haha.

The show loves to place Beth’s femininity in direct contrast with Rio’s masculinity in a way that it doesn’t do with the other girls or – in fact perhaps more notably – with Beth and Dean (if anything, Dean’s frequently emasculated around Beth, but that feels like a whole other thing, haha), and it does this frequently, and often even in the same shot.

Most notably, think of her pearls on the warehouse door handle:

Their cars parked side-by-side:

Her necklace, his gun:

Her light, his darkness:

Her floral, his solid colours:

Interestingly though, these things are very rarely in competition or combative (although occasionally they are – Rio trying to use her femaleness and his maleness / their sexuality to literally bend her over a table in 2.06 being the clearest example of that). Generally speaking, the show’s visual language though shows us how these things compliment each other. They occupy different gendered spaces, so they can ‘crime’ in different ways – Beth using the big box stores, the secret shoppers, robbing the day spa, are all things that are highly feminised, and give Rio by proxy access to a world he ordinarily wouldn’t (albeit it’s not always a world he’s interested in – like it wasn’t with the botox), and the reverse of that is that Rio gives Beth access to spaces that are highly masculinised and that she ordinarily wouldn’t have access to (again, not always a world she’s interested in either). It’s why when they’re working together, and acknowledging they have different departments, they actually become something really whole, comprehensive and effective.

It’s the exploration of this that I find really intriguing generally, and particularly a thread that I think is reiterated where Beth’s usually at her worst and her most ineffective when she’s trying to emulate Rio’s masculinity. We saw that at the end of 1.10 and the start of 2.01, and I think we saw it at the tail end of season 2 too. When Beth’s succeeding, she’s typically doing something that revels in the strength and power and the underestimation of femininity and female spaces, and turns places that are typically viewed as passive into active ones.

The Secret Shoppers (which worked briefly! And fell apart because she couldn’t handle Mary Pat. Notably almost every scene with them was inside Beth’s house):

The day spa heist:

The Boland Motors takeover / reclamation that focused on feminising the place:

Pretending to be somebody’s mum to get into the kids’ space (which would’ve worked if Beth and Ruby hadn’t started fighting):

Breaking into Rio’s loft:

Again, this is something that seems to be being teased out already in s3 with the paper store and the nail salon, and I’m sure we’ll see it coming up again and again beyond that.

But yes! Your question, haha. I think Rio is enamoured with the strong, feminine space and the untapped female world that Beth exists in, and the ways that she is actively capable of utilising her femininity and her womanness in a way that is completely impossible for him. She can manipulate these spaces – either those already female, or those she makes female aka Boland Motors – in ways that he can’t, and in a way that, at the end of the day, lines his pocket, in the same way that giving her access to his powerful, masculine world lines hers. It’s market development, y’know? But it’s also something that could be a true and successful partnership if they could stop, y’know, playing games and trying to kill each other, haha.

I think it’s worth noting here too that the show has shown us explicitly that Beth absolutely gets off on Rio being highly masculine, and while I think Rio absolutely gets off on Beth being a boss bitch too, it’s also important to note how he responds to her when she’s displaying vulnerability in a way often defined as very feminine – namely crying – and how that display of femininity not only affects him, but often makes him want to touch her (and more and more, follow through on touching her).

Basically I think they’re as obsessed with the contrast between the two of them as we are, haha.

113 notes · View notes

joeal-kaysani · 4 years

Note

ask meme - uh, those dudes from the bisexual polyamorous cowboy movie you keep writing essays about

fhjakfhaskjdfhsaf 💕💕💕

(black sails spoilers below, so skip the paragraph about butch’s notp if you haven’t seen it)

Butch Cassidy:

Sexuality Headcanon: This might be a little controversial, but I tend to headcanon Butch as a gay biromantic (though I totally get seeing him as bisexual.) Even though he’s more of the womanizer of the two from what we see in the movie, it always feels sort of performative? Very much in line with how I feel a charismatic gay man would behave in the late 1800s if he were trying to convince everyone around him he wasn’t gay, considering how he easily drops it without a word of complaint in Bolivia. While he obviously loves and cares about Etta, I’m not sure sexual attraction plays nearly as big a role in their relationship as hers with Sundance did, and I think it’s just incredibly convenient for both of them to have a healthy emotional relationship with each other in a way they might both struggle to have with Sundance. I also don’t think he’s averse to sex with women (especially Etta, and especially in the context of their triad), but that if he existed in a later time period where it wouldn’t be a death sentence to be openly gay, he would probably identify that way.

Gender Headcanon: Cis male, perhaps one who would be more in touch with his feminine side if, again, he lived in a time and place where it was safe to explore that.

A ship I have with said character: Butch/Sundance and Butch/Sundance/Etta

A BROTP I have with said character: Butch/Etta

A NOTP I have with said character: Butch/Etta without Sundance in the picture. What’s funny is I actually think the Butch/Etta relationship would be the healthier one if Sundance died (and that’s the only way I could imagine this happening, because Sundance is obviously not leaving Butch by choice or he would have never gone to Bolivia when it would have been safer to split up) rather than the other way around, which is not unrelated to their emotional connection being stronger than their physical one. I just don’t think it would be romantic in nature so much as two people who very much love each other living together platonically and mourning their shared husband, à la Flint and Miranda from Black Sails.

A random headcanon: I’m actually having trouble thinking of one for Butch but they DID make it to Australia and you can tear that from my cold dead hands.

General Opinion over said character: Baby boy. Baby. Has just three brain cells and he uses them to respect women, be gay and do crime. Absolute icon.

The Sundance Kid:

Sexuality Headcanon: [NSYNC voice] baby bi bi bi

Gender Headcanon: Cis male.

A ship I have with said character: Sundance/Butch and Sundance/Butch/Etta

A BROTP I have with said character: Sundance will only speak to two human beings voluntarily and he’s sleeping with both of them, so there’s not a lot of room for BROTPs with him.

A NOTP I have with said character: Sundance/Etta without Butch wouldn’t be as hard to swallow as Butch/Etta without Sundance, so I don’t really consider them a NOTP, but I’m also just not hugely interested in their story without Butch, either.

A random headcanon: To quote my favorite Butch Cassidy fic ever, Turn of the Century, “Sundance liked to sit and drink and say things so rarely and so deadpan most folks didn’t realize he was the second funniest guy in Wyoming.”

Also, he really wasn’t cheating in the opening card game and was dead serious about killing Logan if Butch lost that knife fight.

Also also, as a side note, I have a half-finished fic from Sundance’s POV where they get caught in a snowstorm and Sundance is internally roasting Butch for being from Utah, where it doesn’t get nearly as cold as Atlantic City. Then I Googled Utah’s average temps vs. Atlantic City’s and found out it’s actually much colder in Utah, but the mistake felt so fitting for Sundance’s character that I left it in.

General Opinion over said character: How can you not stan the bi-est man to ever live? Love him. Absolutely exhausted at all times and ready to murder someone at the drop of a hat and I can 100% relate.

#butch cassidy and the sundance kid #butch cassidy #the sundance kid #kidbutch #cassundetta #sorry i saw ''the bisexual polyamorous cowboy movie you keep writing essays about'' and then i blacked out and wrote another essay #fhakfjhasfjaf #a-green-bean #ask #long post #oc

16 notes · View notes

qupids · 6 years

Text

plotting call / character re-intro . ( because sometimes you go on month long hiatus and emotionally. die.) + like 4 a starter.

re-introducing. manon gwynn. professional liar, stealer of hearts, and the basis for tinkerbell from peter pan (1953).

25 / biggest fucking gemini / mutant fairy / 5′10 / magenta eyes & plum hair big fan of tarot & dancing -- great at blowing bubblegums former x-man turned white collar thief turned borderline x-men again & also bartender @ karma klub more insecurity complexes than friends; wants to be the best like no one ever was.

kin list: gina linetti. tinkerbell. sailor mars. coolgirl. carmen sandiego. olive from easy a.

tv tropes: 10 minute retirement. / action fashionista. / adaptational jerkass. / allergic to routine. / beauty, brains, brawn. / believing their own lies. / big sister instinct. / career ending injury. / cool big sis. / kid hero all grown up. / know when to fold them. / lovable alpha bitch. / proud beauty. / secretly selfish. / silly rabbit, idealism is for kids. / stealth insulter. / what you are in the dark. / will not be a victim.

tl;dr bio: grew up at xaviers / alpha bitch, made everyone like her because she demanded it. much like most x-kids became borderline x-men due to the need to survive. but compared to other students she wasn’t that powerful, and began a habit to lie, compulsively, to make her seem better than she actually was. when she was 18 she was picked for an actual roster // which she was on for 3 years before she had her pixie wings torn from her back. so embarrassed she lowkey ran away for 4 years, solo training, developing skills, signing part of her soul away to get her wings back, and also joining a chaotic good robin hood style crime ring. she came back to paragon after their little sibling, aeron, got pregnant, to come be the big sibling and also wine aunt.

points: lies constantly, has deffinitely been in like 7 ponzy schemes, linked to 27 unsolved crime sprees and murders, always dodging absolutely any question to her, elusive, loves disappearing in crowds whilst making direct eye contact with someone across the way, her coffee order is a half caf cold brew with no fat almond milk and one pump lavender syrup. demi girl, also bi but leaning towards girls. swings both ways, however, violently. with a bat. sets things on fire just for the banter. speaks in fake accents becaus she can.

powers: manon is 3/4 fae, 1/4 mutant and her powers just ... hybrid from both: - fae physiology ( pointed ears / wings / black and magenta eyes / purple hair ) - lie detection ( the ability to know when someone is lying - ? probably her mutant power. ) - pheromone control ( the ability to produce spores from her wings that alter the moods of those around her.) - illusions & basic magic ( fae power / limited magical ability and also basic illusions enough to disguise herself & slight of hand but nothing as crazy as like . .. her grandfather, but probably stronger than a standard far because of this. )

connection ideas. ( some will be made wc. for the wc page i’m just lazy n the wc page is ... . . . busy. )

- gaslighted: someone who’s a victim to manon’s chronic lying - a toxic friendship in which manon takes advantage of the other :/ please call her out and end it. - girlsquad: those untouchable bitches, the plastics, all very horrible people that are friends by being mean to each other - toxic romances: current and past. any gender. - someone who is genuinely just a better person than manon trying to stop her from being such a fucking bitch. - the one relliable bitch/or male version of a bitch, who’s an absolute ride or die but never rides and is probably the most taurus person and manon just crashes on their couch, shows up w/out warning and leaves the next day - could prob lead from an ex relationship. - someone .. she is soft 2. the one cowboy she is honest 2. from a childhood friend, someone who saw through one of her lies one day and was like dam . . . i respect u bitch.. - be very cute if a small nb or gay had like an idolisation crush on her tbh .. . very hot n sexy . . . ..

in conclusion: please give me antagonistic relations & also ones who help her 2 grow thank u

#sidekick.startercall #ok ty .. . ndxt ^-^

1 note · View note

bifaq · 7 years

Text

Bisexual Media Masterpost

Someone sent us a message asking whether we know any media containing bi characters and I thought “hoo boy time for another masterpost.” So here it is. Add your rec + at least one sentence describing it in the reblogs or responses and I’ll update the post to include them! [these titles] are ones that don’t actually label characters as bi but where a character has relationships with people of more than one gender and isn’t really labelled otherwise. These are ones that have been suggested by our followers.

TV Shows and Webseries

Brooklyn Nine-Nine - Police squad turned chosen family fighting crime and occasionally each other (in ridiculous bets).

The 100 - Post-apocalyptic space society decides that for some reason, a bunch of teen delinquents are the best people to repopulate the earth. Except earth already has inhabitants. (cn: bury your gays, tragedy porn)

Black Mirror, specifically the episode San Junipero - Shy awkward gay lady meets bubbly bi lady for dancing, sex and technology-based hide-and-seek.

Orange is the New Black - BamBi discovers that being rich doesn’t (reliably) keep you from going to prison and that other people have real problems.

How to get away with murder - Black bi law professor cannot believe what her students get themselves into.

Orphan Black - Clones try to find out how many fucking roles Tatiana Maslany is capable of playing within the same plot.

Lip Service - Scottish The L Word, which reminds me

The L Word - I really don’t know how to adequately describe this if you’ve never heard of it, please google it.

Dear White People: A bunch of black college students have very different ideas about how to deal with on-campus racism.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend: Woman thinks moving to a new town to be close to her ex-boyfriend will cure depression, surprisingly finds that this is not the case.

Couple-ish: Nonbinary bi artist and their lesbian (?) roommate have to fake a relationship for visa purposes.

Greys Anatomy has a strong female bisexual main character called Callie Torres who is AMAZING but there is a lot of seasons of it

The O.C. - During the second season of this teen drama about a boy from a poor, troubled family being taken in by a wealthy family with problems of their own, a bisexual recurring character is introduced as a love interest for one of the main characters. [The Legend of Korra - Sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, follows teenage Avatar Korra as she tries to keep the world and herself in balance with some help from her friends and mentors. (Although the label bi is not used in the show, the creators released a statement explicitly using the word right after the finale aired and it may be in the sequel comics.)]

Shadowhunters - 18 year old girl finds out about her destiny of being a demon-fighting Shadowhunter and goes on a journey to find herself and defeat evil

Movies

[Cloudburst (2011) - adorable old sapphic ladies take a roadtrip to Canada so they can get married before their grandkid can put one of them in a home and split them up.]

[Margarita with a straw (2014) - Talented writer with cerebral palsy discovers that she deserves to be more than people’s token disabled girl, leaves behind unsatisfying boy crushes and (temporarily) her family to go to college in the states and fall in love with a blind lady.]

Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Bisexual shepherds get mistaken for gay cowboys.

Appropriate Behavior (2014) - Confused twenty-something tries to reconcile being a model Iranian daughter with being a bisexual woman with a live-in girlfriend. (I’m pretty sure there’s some transphobic language, but unfortunately can’t recall the details.)

[When Night is Falling (1995): College professor is torn between boyfriend/colleague and local mysterious circus lady.]

3 (2010) - Midlife-crisis-y couple begins separate affairs with the same guy. (I’m not totally sure if this film is available in English, it’s originally German. It might be my favorite movie ever, though, and I strongly recommend you watch it if you ever have the chance.)

[Frida (2002) - A visually stunning biopic on bisexual painter Frida Kahlo. I recently learned that Salma Hayek was pressured by Harvey Weinstein to include a sex scene with another woman, and honestly don’t know how I feel about that. Not wanting to include a scene that confirms a historical figure’s bisexuality seems not super great, but forcing women to perform sex scenes for the voyeuristic enjoyment of gross dudes in power positions is super disgusting, so.]

RENT (2005) - Struggling artists do their best to (not) pay rent. Instead, they sing a lot (like people in musicals tend to do.)

Books (fiction)

The Second Mango (plus sequels), by @shiraglassman: Lesbian jewish Disney princess goes on magic quests, finds bi working class girlfriend and (platonic) bi royal consort/baby daddy along the way. Includes many more queer characters as well.

Rewriting the Ending, by hp tune: Sapphic broke-writer-meets-rich-heiress fluff. (cn: some unaddressed bi erasure on the part of one protagonist.)

Ex-wives of Dracula by Georgette Kaplan: Cheerleader and dorky girl-next-door develop a thirst for blood and for each other. (cn: grown man trying to hook up with high school girls.)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: Woman gets mistreated by all the men in her life, realizes her husband’s mistress is the best thing in her life. (cn: domestic abuse & rape)

The Light of the World by Ellen Simpson: Local bi woman cannot believe that her grandmother was gay for another lady, enlists help of her friendly neighborhood historian to find out more.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf: immortal person finds life is too long to settle for one gender (both identity- and attraction-wise).

[Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker: A non-linear journey through the lives and thoughts and memories of several connected characters, includes a section featuring the women from The Color Purple.] [Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis: A fantasy in which a boy in our world can for unknown reasons see through the eyes of a bisexual, servant girl in other world every time he closes he eyes.] [Some Girls by Kristin McCloy - a woman in her twenties moves cross country to make a life for herself in NYC despite the wishes of her loved ones.]

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Books (nonfiction)

When we rise: My life in the movement by Cleve Jones - A personal memoir of an activist of the Gay Liberation movement. Not focussed on bisexuality in any way, but good context I think for debates with people who think it makes sense to define our community by “who originally started it.” Spoiler alert: There was no one person or group and also language and identity evolve over time.

Sapphistries: A global history of love between women by Leila J. Rupp - It’s an ambitious project to cover all of human history on the entire planet, but this is a pretty good attempt. Deals a lot with evolving identities and the difficulty of pinning labels on historical figures.

Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner - A radical look at bisexuality - its history, its power, and the responses it provokes in the world. Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith edited by Debra Kolodny - A multifaith collection of essays by bisexual people of faith. Published in the 90s, so some of the language is dated but it still is very relevant to today. Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan - A collection of new and selected essays spanning the entire career of bisexual activist and author, June Jordan. She writes on issues of gender, race, sexuality, violence, writing, politics, etc.

Podcasts

Queery: Cameron Esposito talks to queer people about their identities, feeling ok in your own skin, coming out, and more. (I especially loved the episode where she chats with Stephanie Beatriz who, you guessed it, is bi. There’s also one with Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual.)

The Bright Sessions: Therapy sessions for people with supernatural abilities. What could possibly go wrong?

Love

mod platypus

#bi charaters #bisexual characters #bisexual media #bisexuality in media #bi representation #bisexual representation #media recs

55 notes · View notes

tigertanyx · 4 years

Text

I guess quarantine has made me a regular T10Ter. I also want to set up some summer posts in advance since my housing situation is uncertain, so I might not be able to post regularly starting sometime in May or late April. All books have links to indiebound, where you can order your favourite books online from your closest indie bookshop! T10T is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Sappho Of Lesbos, painted by John William Godward

Sappho

This lesbian poet of ancient Greece- do you really need any more? We get the term “sapphic” from her name.

The Black Tides Of Heaven

This was one of Enby Book Club’s picks, and though I loved it, it’s a difficult book to explain. This is set in a chinese inspired fantasy world where children choose their gender and the twins overthrow their mother.

Carmilla

I may have talked about this once or twice, but it’s been a while. Carmilla is the lesbian vampire classic that came before Dracula and was adapted into a youtube series with the best people.

Everything Leads To You

This is set in LA, following two girls: one who’s a budding set designer and the unknown daughter of a recently dead cowboy actor. it’s a slow burn sapphic romance. Very slow burn.

Heavy Vinyl

This follows a mostly lesbian girl gang that run a record store by day and fight crime by night.

Dear Evan Hansen

This is a soul-destroying novel adaptation of a play. TW: Suicide

The Girl With All The Gifts

The zombie apocalypse- with the zombies in school. There’s a sequel with a boy with asperger’s, although there is a bury the gays.

The Picture Of Dorian Gray

This is gay. Oscar Wilde, need I say it, was gay.

And Then There Were None

This is not gay! *gasp* This is my favourite Agatha Christie following a series of deaths/ murders on an island.

Vicious

The villains are heroes! What is morality! People with NDEs get superpowers- and it makes former besties Victor and Eli mortal enemies after it permanently kills the girl Vicor and Eli both love. Victor is on outside record as being asexual.

This was a really gay list! What does your list look like? What do you think of these books?

T10T: Books I Rarely Talk About I guess quarantine has made me a regular T10Ter. I also want to set up some summer posts in advance since my housing situation is uncertain, so I might not be able to post regularly starting sometime in May or late April.

0 notes

rileyram12 · 7 years

Note

Apollo and Eileen!!

BITCH I LOVE YOU

More about them undER the cut!!

Apollo

Full Name: Apollo Carmen Lovat Gender and Sexuality: Male, and gay As HellPronouns: He/HimEthnicity/Species: He’s Hispanic on his mother’s side, and black on his father’s side… werewolf on his…….., flipside.,.,,,Birthplace and Birthdate: born in a small ass town which I don’t have I name for I just call it Verona as a stand in bc I’m Lazy - His birthday is February 22, making him a Typical Pisces Guilty Pleasures: slightly aged pop like ke$ha, britney spears, etc. when he’s home alone he totally dances to itPhobias: has a hORRIBLE phobia of arachnids, but has gotten it treated so it’s Slightly Better What They Would Be Famous For: probably his looks tbh but also he’s just. the kindest oc I have. but he’s also the most Mary Sue looking oc. boy could easily be a modelWhat They Would Get Arrested For: ppublic indecency. he’s constantly naked. he would end up naked on someone’s lawn after a full moon. or just getting his clothes wetOC You Ship Them With: ACTUALLY @misqnon ’S BEDLAM IS HIS ROOMMATE WHO HE IS TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH HSGSHOC Most Likely To Murder Them: alfieFavorite Movie/Book Genre: probably??? like?? mystery?? he loves cowboy bebopLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: he’s got beef with psychological thrillers and Their Deal, but he also hates the Man Man and Woman In Tight Clothes clichéTalents and/or Powers: he’s really physical and very flexible, his lycanthropy gives him wolverine-like regeneration, and can shift his wolf-likeness and human form. and obviously during a full moon he becomes a Real Life FurryWhy Someone Might Love Them: He’s so SWEET AND KIND and puts EVERYONE BEFORE HIMSELF and is basically a human PUPPY AND he’s SO FUCKIN HOTWhy Someone Might Hate Them: too hot. too niceHow They Change: He learns to not mcfucking bottle up his feelings and emotions and actually learns how to express them rather than be so damn reticentWhy You Love Them: he’s my BOY

Eileen

Full Name: Eileen Everet OdamiGender and Sexuality: Female, and shes my bi kidPronouns: She/herEthnicity/Species: She’s a black mutant (x-men standards)! On both paternal and maternal sidesBirthplace and Birthdate: She was born on September 18, making her my other Virgo (my oc Argus is also a virgo), and she was born on the lower east side of New YorkGuilty Pleasures: SHE LOVES THOSE STICKY HANDS U GET AT THE DOLLAR STORE. LIKE. SHE’S THIS DEADPAN ALOOF FUNNY CHARACTER AND SHE JUST WALKS AROUND STICKY HANDING PAPERS OFF OF UR DESK I LOVE HERPhobias: She.. doesn’t really have any?? She just doesn’t care enough. She probably gets squeamish around heighs.What They Would Be Famous For: Being put in the x-men so fast, or her powerWhat They Would Get Arrested For: Probably protesting, since she’s a very politically active person, and can take it a bit far.OC You Ship Them With: me. I ship her with me. OC Most Likely To Murder Them: completely different universe but argus. there can only be one quiet, emotionally unavailable character here.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she loves historical shit bc she’s Like ThatLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: fantasy. too many Rules and too complicated. just shut up and write a book/movie about a hormonal, relatable teenager like everyone elseTalents and/or Powers: She has a knack for getting kidnapped and/or stolen (bc she doesn’t care). But, her mutation is the ability to spawn Green Ghost Hands™, as well as telepathy and telekinesis.Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s intelligent as hell, as well as deadpan funny, and easy to open up toWhy Someone Might Hate Them: she hates fantasyHow They Change: She becomes WAYYY more responsible and very much a leader, but still retains her humor and Knack For Bein ‘Napped. She also changes her hair into a dread ponytailWhy You Love Them: she’s my oc gf…… i love her and her adoptive witch mom….

#ocs #apollo oc #eileen oc #i love my kids #please......... read abt them................

4 notes · View notes

sexualityinmedia5070-blog · 7 years

Text

WHAT THIS WEBSITE IS

On this website, you can find a list of films. Each of these films- chosen for a reason- are meant to represent parts of the very wide and encompassing discussion of human sexuality. Regardless of the topic, feel free to watch a film you choose and form any sort of opinion you’d like. Love it, hate it, or feel completely indifferent- each film is related to sexuality in some way shape or form. Whether it be with the characters, the environment, or the overarching plot. Of course, the term ‘sexuality’ is a broad one. Going back to the example of John Wayne, there might not be an obvious connection between the classic Westerns that he made famous and the modern concept of ‘sexuality’. Generally speaking, ‘sexuality’ is tied with queerness- gay, lesbian, transgender, and forms of sexuality that seem to ‘deviate’ from the much more commonly enforced heterosexuality. Speaking from a logical standpoint, there should be no assumption made about the world from the media we consume. But of course, people still assume that there is more crime in the country than there actually is- going off of the murders and drug dealing they see on various daytime TV dramas. The average consumer should not also assume that there are so few people of a variant sexuality that straightness is considered ‘normal’ or ‘default’. But when gayness was considered a mental illness well into the 1960s and codes of conduct banned depiction of same-sex relationships as well as limited the depiction of male-female relationships in terms of overt sexuality, the American media constitutes the basis for many assumptions about the way ‘sexuality’ is constructed and viewed.

From a defining standpoint, our website largely addresses sexuality as queerness- queerness acting as an all-encompassing term for the sexuality or behaviors that don’t apply to the standard set by the John Waynes and Brady Bunches that riddle the American family mentality and remove the question of queerness from the ‘family’ eye (Pugh 639). There is a standard, amidst the shows and commercials, that the average American is straight, white, relatively young, and male. Deviation, then, could be defined as anything other than those four standards: women and non-binary adhering individuals, people of any color other than white, older or much younger people, and individuals whose sexuality doesn’t pertain to an attraction to people of the opposite sex. The standard, by its very creation, is an aggressive means of erasure and removal of those that ‘deviate’ from the public eye. Films do not depict gay people or women not because the writers, directors, and producers ‘forgot’ to put them within the narrative, but because their narrative is often viewed as non-valid or less profitable than the straight, white male’s. Whether or not this removal in early media is the cause or the reason behind the absence in later media- the extreme stereotypes we see being the jist of representation or the violent treatment of deviated characters almost as a reminder that they are deviant and therefore deserve to be punished- is debatable by both audiences and theorists. The casual observer, as mentioned, may not see the connection between the violence in Brokeback Mountain (2005) aimed at the two main characters to the violence experienced by the gay community during the ravages of the AIDs crisis or the fear of assault on the street that’s a reality well into the 21st century, but there are connections that can be drawn between the storyline and current LGBT social struggle for recognition. Instead, the film is watered down to being ‘the gay cowboy movie’ and acts as a way that the American audience infamously marginalized divergent sexuality to a simplified binary that either erased or ignored (Chamberlain & Somogyi 129). Other films, such as The Gay Deceivers from 1969, can be read as a completely comedic abuse of the ‘gay’ flamboyant male stereotype that would come to haunt media for the next few decades or an exploratory piece about the changing shifts in the way sex and gender operated openly within the 1960s (Woodman 84). The contrasts between general opinion and perspective on queer movies don’t just end with some of the specific films we’ve placed into our filmography, but with the nuanced topic of sexuality itself. Both interpretations of Brokeback Mountain and The Gay Deceivers are simply that- interpretations. Different understandings of different queerness can bring about new readings about the biological and sociopolitical understanding of the term. Terms like ‘gender normative’ only mean certain things to certain people thanks to a long ranging history of determining exactly how our society is based upon its own assumptions (Weber) and the study of the multiple ways these assumptions can form statements through media is an immersive and wide-ranging experience..

#intro

0 notes

thecastingcircle · 8 years

Link

Republicans are putting on their “smug faces” and scoffing at the raft of celebrity performers, Rockettes and now even a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who are refusing to raise their microphones, kick up their bare-legged heels or otherwise perform for Donald Trump at his inaugural.

Bristol Palin, despite her own tenuous grasp on celebrity status, took to her blog to snipe at the refuseniks as ”sissies”.

But make no mistake, this disdain drips with envy (and Bristol would be snapping selfies with those A-listers in a heartbeat if they’d have her.) Republicans and conservatives know full well that denying Trump the celebrity and cultural imprimatur he so desperately craves matters, and not just because of the awkward headlines after each new rejection.

America is, in many ways, as much an idea as it is a country. And Americans have long marketed that idea around the world through our popular culture. From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view). In decades past, “The Western” defined the image of a cowboy nation; something both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush revived to their domestic political benefit and to the world’s chagrin. The Hollywood of Frank Capra’s era, when Reagan became a minor star, sold the world an image of American pith and patriotism in many ways as defining as the moon landing or the A-bomb.

Our love of Hollywood-style glamour helped elect two presidents: JFK and

Reagan, who fulfilled the prophecy that a country so enamored of actors would eventually make one their president. “All in the Family” chronicled the racial and cultural upheavals of the Nixon era. Bill Clinton captured the zeitgeist of young voters in the early 1990s by playing his saxophone on the “Arsenio Hall” show and survived sexual scandal and impeachment in a country reared on “Dallas” and “Dynasty.” It’s arguable that without the mainstreaming power of entertainment shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and the “Cosby Show” and portrayals of black presidents that became routine in film and on television, it would have been that much harder to get to a real first black president.

Reciprocally, presidents have always sought to rub elbows with celebrities.Actor-singer Gene Kelly served as a master of ceremonies and performed at Harry Truman’s inaugural gala in 1949. Old Blue Eyes crooned “High Hopes” for Jack Kennedy’s campaign and was among the Kennedy boys’ famous pals. Charlton Heston was cultivated by Republicans and the NRA for decades, and not because he looked good hoisting a rifle over his head. Even Richard Nixon relished his Oval Office photo with Elvis Presley, while Ronald Reagan welcomed associations with as varied a bunch of stars as John Wayne and James Brown.

Obama, though, has taken celebrity association to another level. He has been a darling of Hollywood, the music industry and popular culture from the time he declared for president in 2007, when Oprah herself anointed him “The One” and a year later, pop singer/rapper Will-I-Am turned his iconic “Yes We Can” speech into a remixed Youtube hit. Michelle Obama, like Jackie O before her, has become the toast of the fashion world, and a patron of the arts, from Broadway to great American music which she brought into the White House in all its multicultural glory.

As the entertainment world has gone from a bipartisan sphere to an overwhelmingly liberal one, Republicans and conservatives have come to view it with disdain. The Obamas in particular drive the right to distraction. Calling Obama a “celebrity” was considered a real, live epithet during the 2008 campaign, when a bitter John McCain saw his own political star status eclipsed. It infuriates Republicans that this elegant black family is celebrated while, for example, the Palins are ridiculed as rubes and bumpkins (though that could have something to do with the latter’s penchant for street brawls).

Conservatives rail at Hollywood movies that make them feel alienated by presenting capitalists, corporations and moral traditionalists as the villains, and sexual libertines, iconoclasts and the godless (or godlike, in the form of superheroes, witches and warlocks) as the heroes.

They lash out at popular music that they feel coarsens the culture and steers their kids away from Christian dogma. One wonders at the angst in far-right households as their white teenaged children blast hip-hop music on their expensive devices and in their nice cars. It’s a fear of cultural contagion that has driven parents crazy since the sock-hop kids of the 1950s discovered the gyrations of black rock-and-roll.

The Christian right has even been known to attack cartoon characters, from Tinky Winky the Teletubby to Spongebob Squarepants, whom they view as grooming a generation of young Americans to tolerate such presumed sexual heresies as open homosexuality, gender ambiguity and same-sex marriage.

These complaints are not incidental. They’re viewed as part of an existential struggle between traditionalists and an abortion- and birth control-legalizing, secularism promoting, sex-before-marriage practicing, drinks and weed imbibing, “happy holidays” left that long since won the culture wars; and against whom the cultural right has been fighting a half century-long insurgency.

Beyond racial hierarchism and plain old partisanship and hypocrisy, the 80 percent of white self-professed evangelicals who voted for Trump purportedly did so to lay claim to the courts, where they believe they can yet win out on banning abortion and birth control, forcing women back into traditional roles, and undoing gay marriage (or at least exempting themselves from being forced by law to photograph or bake cakes for them.)

Trump, who has spent a lifetime cultivating celebrity status — and not cultivating traditionalists; far from it, in fact — owes his election in large part to the sense of familiarity that being a reality TV star afforded him. That status allowed many of his voters to put aside his misogyny and vulgarity, and to ignore information about his business failings, chicanery and Putinism, because they think that having watched him on “The Apprentice” and at his rallies, they know who he really is.

Now, a man who clearly craves the adulation of the famous; the Queens rich kid who desperately desired the respect of the Manhattan and Palm Beach elite, is being denied it, publicly and in humiliating fashion. The mad scramble by his team to secure famous players for his inaugural festivities coupled with his ad-hoc photo ops with a fading Jim Brown, a bizarre, unmedicated Kanye West and huckster-cum-murderer Don King makes Trump’s existential yearning clear. He can try to deflect with pathetic tweets about really wanting to be surrounded by “the people” on his big day, but the truth is transparent: the germaphobic pouter who lives in an all-gold penthouse built from cheap materials by undocumented Polish migrants wouldn’t wipe his nose on his core supporters. Just look at his billionaire cabinet for a clue.

And yet his vicious campaign, which opened with racism and closed with a bizarre anti-Semitic screed, and which dined out on vows to discriminate against Mexicans and Muslims while unleashing a resurgence of racist hate groups and just plain haters is reaping the cultural opprobrium it sowed. And it’s making The Donald miserable.

Even the proto-Nazis unleashed by Trump’s campaign, some of whom are organizing an inaugural event pitifully dubbed the “Deploraball,” seem to crave pop culture normalization, based on their apparent desire to have Kanye as a special guest performer. One wonders how awkward it would be for the rapper to be on stage when the “Sieg Heiling” begins.

So far, the reaction of the creative community, from Broadway to Los Angeles and from hip-hop to Radio City Music Hall, has been to say a resounding “no” to Trump. It’s not a dismissal born purely of partisanship, but rather a rejection of the entire underlying ethos of his divisive, revanchist campaign. Maintaining a unified front against authoritarianism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny is no laughing matter, no matter how much Trump’s apologists try to snide it off on cable TV.

Ultimately, denying Trump and Trumpism the cultural cosign they crave is an important statement. It does what so far, the collective media have been unable or unwilling to do: rejecting the normalization of the utterly abnormal. It tells not just the country, but the world, that Trumpism may have a hold on our politics, but it doesn’t have a hold on us. America’s ascendant majority will not so easily slink off into that good night, and will not quietly ingest what Trump has foisted on the electorate.

He and his bilious, Russophile Twitter and comment-section trolls, his apologist surrogates and his zombified, partisan enablers on Capitol Hill will have to do their dirty work — including the horrors of disappointment and lost healthcare and social safety net programs soon to be visited on Trump’s own working class supporters — without the shield of popular cultural will.

#love trumps hate #artsy fartsy

0 notes