I know there are a lot of people terrified of a Trump presidency for a lot of reasons, but some of the most vibrant horror I’m seeing is coming from young queer people. These people were in middle school or grade school when Obama was first elected, when Glee came on with its revolutionary act of portraying a blatantly Disney-saccharine gay love story. RuPaul and Ellen are huge tv stars, Sulu owns Facebook. RENT is a musical theatre standby performed in high schools. Marriage equality and bathrooms have been their biggest fights. So this? Looks like the apocalypse.
It’s not. Within my lifetime, a president laughed at hundreds of thousands of people dying of AIDS. Within my lifetime, that was a death sentence, not a footnote on a Grindr profile. Within my lifetime, “transsexuals” only existed as cruel punchlines. The only trans guy I had even heard of at 19 was from a movie about him being murdered. Ellen was a pariah who had lost her show for coming out. Being gay was career suicide if you were anything but a hairdresser. It was automatic dishonorable discharge from the military.
This is not saying Trump couldn’t undo a lot of that. But not all of it. And even if, EVEN IF he did? Queer people survived. Flourished. Got to where it is now. And where it is now includes a younger generation who will not go back, and in another 20 years, will be the CEOs, the senators, the governors, the president.
It’s about this dude Henry who’s an artist living in New York,
and he has to go back to his hometown in Montana to take care of his grandfather who just recently had a stroke and is wheelchair-bound.
Things are all fine and dandy until Henry finds out that his old best friend from high school, as well as object of his unrequited affections that he’s never really been able to let go of is also back in town. His name is Dean. He’s there with his two sons to recoup from a recent divorce from his wife.
Henry is extremely frazzled by seeing his long-time crush after so many years, but they spend a lot of time together over the passing weeks and seem to fall into their old friendship very easily. Perhaps a little too easily….??? hmmm???
And with everything with Dean happening, Henry can’t be blamed that he’s entirely oblivious to Pike, the man who runs the local general goods store.
It’s obvious to us (and the whole damn town) that Pike’s been head over heels for Henry since high school, but is painfully shy. He can barely talk to Henry at all and it’s the cuTEST GODDAMN THING oh lord help me from this movie.
Throughout the movie, Pike can’t seem to help himself from wanting nothing more than to make Henry happy from afar. He’s supposed to be delivering food cooked by one of the older ladies in town to Henry and his grandfather’s house to eat every night, but Pike cooks his own, exceptionally better meals, and delivers those instead and tells no one.
Now, Henry does notice Pike, and something about him catches his attention. Even if he doesn’t understand why yet. He tries to invite him to stay for dinner almost every night in an attempt to get him to open up, but Pike only becomes more closed off when he notices what’s going on between Henry and Dean.
I’ll stop there, as I don’t want to give the whole thing away, but I can’t leave this without talking about the town’s residents in this movie. This place is 100% one of those little towns where everyone knows each other as well as their business, you have nosy little old ladies, dudes who do nothing all day but sit on the porch of the corner store and smoke a pipe, and they all go to church on Sundays.
AND YET, not only is this movie void of any homophobia from any character, basically the whole freaking town is all up in this whole love triangle. They support Pike so much that there’s even scenes where they all play matchmaker with him and Henry. They root for them in the goofiest, most loveable way.
SO BASICALLY, this is a silly romantic comedy, except gay. It’s all super lighthearted comedy with tiny bits of drama thrown in. No one dies!!!! No one is killed or commits suicide and has a 100% happy ending!!! The three main guys are just normal guys!!! There’s not a stereotype to be found here!! anD ONE OF THEM IS NATIVE AMERICAN. No seriously guys it hurts me that not everybody knows about this movie. I discovered it when I was in middle school in our video store’s tiny little LGBTQ section, and must have rented it 20 times throughout the years before I finally bought it. I know this movie almost frame by frame I’ve watched it so many times because it’s just so disgustingly cute and always makes me happy. NOW, this movie isn’t perfect. It’s got some clunky acting, weird.. I guess artsy moments that don’t make sense, and crosses into the line of cheesy quite a few times, BUT, that’s really not important. This is treated exactly as if it were a het romantic comedy. Their being gay has nothing to do with the overall story, and is never brought up save for a small plotline where Henry is guilty with himself for never coming out to his grandfather. But overall, more LGBTQ movies need to be like this, it’s just way too rare.
GO WATCH IT YOU’LL BE GLAD YOU DID. Sadly, the only way I know to get ahold of it is to just buy the DVD. But it’s fairly cheap on Amazon! And even cheaper if you buy it used on there, but either way I promise it’s worth it to own. Like I said, I think I kept our video store in business from my renting it so many times.
Oh, and I hope you enjoy country music to some extent because this has the countriest soundtrack of all time.
@hollowedskin we should watch this, it looks amazingly cute.
when you visist!!! hopefully its on netflix but if not I will connect a series of hdmi cables to my computer so I can download it and we can watch it on the couch ❤
its on netflix!!!
HELL YEAH IT IS
Star Wars, to quote the guy who emailed me, does bring people from diverse cultures and backgrounds together. And everybody of those cultures and backgrounds deserve to be seen on the screen and on the page and in comic book panels. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t glib. This is their lives. Not everybody is you. And as I said before, if you can imagine a Star Wars where Luke Skywalker hates gay people, I got bad news for you, hoss: you watched a different Star Wars than I did. You fell to the Dark Side. You joined the Empire. And I hope one day that Big Gay Luke Skywalker shows up at your battlestation door and he shines his rainbow gaysaber at you and you can do nothing but melt beneath its warm rays of inclusiveness and kindness and you come to realize that love is good and gay people exist and dang, were you a huge asshole.
Chuck Wendig, author of the upcoming TFA comic book adaptation and the novel Star Wars: Aftermath, replying to (yet another) email complaining about the gay people in his Star Wars book. (x)
where’s the interview w/ andy samberg where the interviewer asks about why there’s no jokes made around holt being gay and andy’s face twitches like “don’t do it.” and the interviewer goes on like “we live in such a weird PC culture though!” and andy laughs so uncomfortably i need it for science
The ironic thing is, there are plenty of jokes which involve him being gay. But it just doesn’t register as humor to those people if it’s not making fun of him for it, or using his sexuality as the actual punchline. A show actually respects its characters (for the most part) while still managing to provide top-notch humor and all a lot of people have to say is complaining about “pc culture”
i don’t understand how anyone who’s watched the episodes where ray holt pretends to be a hetero would ever believe that there are “no jokes about him being gay.”
because that’s not the problem. the problem is that the jokes about him being gay are specifically for an lgbtq audience. they’re jokes that heteros don’t understand because for once, we’re not the punchline like we usually are. we’re not being made fun of in a way that tears us down. they’re jokes about the absurdity of our existence. of having to fake being straight, even though a lot of us are actually really bad at it, and having straight people actually believe you.
the other really great example is that one joke ray holt makes in the first season, about how the hardest thing about being a gay black police officer in the nypd is the discrimination. that joke was funny for so many reasons, and yet, not a single straight person really got it when i watched it with them. it feels like there are no jokes because the jokes aren’t intended for straight/homophobic people, where the punchline isn’t all about how they relate to us. it’s about how we relate to them for once, and that’s the greatest thing.
other show’s lgbt jokes are “loltranswomen” or “lol flamboyant gay men”
brooklyn nine nine’s lgbt jokes are “we got married as quickly as we could bc we were worried they’d repeal it” and then footage of Kevin and Raymond not letting the officient finish his sentence before they say “I do”
This is so important. Coming out never ends and acceptance of LGBT people still has a long way to go. It’s details like this that straight people never even think about. They just choose to believe homophobia doesn’t exist any more because now gay people can get married lmao.
Comedy Central’s “Drunk History” tackled an important topic in LGBTQ history this week: the Stonewall Riots.
Narrated by a drunk Crissle West, the story of that night in June unfolds with transgender actresses Alexandra Grey and Trace Lysette playing activist icons Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
West’s hilarious commentary adds an adept comedic touch to the emotional story of the Stonewall riots, during which patrons at New York City’s Stonewall Inn ― primarily queer and trans people of color ― fought back against police, who were constantly raiding the bar, on June 28, 1969.
“There’s all this controversy about casting cisgender actors in trans roles, so it’s nice that [Comedy Central] wanted to be authentic and give that role to a trans person,” actress Alexandra Grey told Out Magazine. “I really wanted to challenge myself to comedy.”
The segment focuses primarily on Johnson, who famously threw the first shot glass that set off the riots. West also paints a picture of how the event led to a greater awareness about the power of queer community and coming together against oppressive forces.
It is great and you must watch it. Watch the video here!
Lemme just talk about Targets diversity and acceptance. A black man. A Hispanic man. A white child. A two-man relationship raising a healthy baby boy with love. I’m so glad that target doesn’t give a fuck about social “norms” and came to the game with no fucks about who it offends or if they lose business. Its beautiful. It’s different. Its brilliant. I’m all for it. My boyfriend works for target and they’re a really good.company to their employees too. Yay target!
Target is like Walmart but with good morals
🙌🙌
what i like about target is that a few years ago when they got in trouble with the LGBT+ community for donating to conservative politicians, instead of just apologizing they actually hired a whole new team to oversee their political donations. additionally, they began to fully come out in support of the LGBT+ community and started making very public campaigns for LGBT+ rights and whatnot. instead of doing what many people do and weakly apologize, they fully acknowledged they were being problematic and wholeheartedly began to become better
They also hire convicted felons who’ve served their time and people who are and look “abnormal,” ranging from mental and psychical disabilities to teenagers with dyed hair / piercings. They’re also trans-friendly.
This is their company policy, and they follow completely in here in NY.
In one of their mor recent ads where I’m from, they’ve not only got a boy playing with barbie dolls, but the girl they’re using to advertise some of their toys has Downs syndrome. A+ for representation and modernity, Target!
They also respect the pronouns and names of their trans hires!
Biromantic asexual, reporting for duty for National Coming Out day. So few people know because it is a pain in the ass trying to explain it.
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