This is your weekly Pop Culture Fix. I’m your co-host, Heather Hogan. I ordered oatmeal with acai berries for two dollars more this morning and let me tell you something: Acai berries are a lie. It’s just blueberries.
Teevee
+Â Women and People of Color Directed More TV Than Ever This Season
+ After NYT’s Louis C.K. story broke, Jen Richards wrote on Twitter: “Welp. I guess I can say this now: I was one of the stars of The Cops. There was going to be an animated trans character, voiced by a trans actress, on network television. The consequences of these actions go far.” Allison Raskin wrote about her and Gaby Dunn’s similar struggle two years ago in a piece for Splinter called Don’t Let Female Creators Be Collateral Damage When Male Abusers Go Down.
We want to make this very clear: Losing a show is nothing compared to the agony of sexual assault or harassment. What we experienced is not even in the same category as the many brave women who came forward about Deen, and the women (and men) who have come forward in the past month. That said, it’s a bizarre, painful thing for your career to be the collateral damage of someone else’s wrongful acts.
+ The Handmaid’s Tale will be back in April with 13 new episodes.
Movies
+ Look, just read Caity Weaver’s profile of Gal Gadot already.
Gal Gadot is very hands-on. As in: When you meet her, she will put her hands on you many times, in many different places. Israeli culture is so touch-oriented that guides for Americans traveling there warn they may feel their personal space is constantly being violated in formal settings. Gadot might wordlessly reach out to brush a crumb off your face while you are eating, or lightly rest her palm on your thigh for half a minute while she tells you a story. She might scrunch up her hands into little claws and tickle you with quick finger flexes, the way you would a baby’s tummy, if something about your demeanor suggests to her that you need to be tickled in that moment. Even as Wonder Woman sequels and spin-offs propel Gadot to new heights of global stardom, she probably will not lose this habit of touching, because she is a charming, beautiful woman, and it will never occur to people to shrink away from her. In speech, too, Gadot has a compulsive tendency to create intimacy, like when, the morning after the beach, she smiles conspiratorially and tells me she is taking me to a little place near her house that she loves, and it turns out to be a small store where she buys laundry detergent.
+ From io9:Â Thor: Ragnarok’s Valkyrie Shows How Far We’ve Got to Go for LGBTQ Representation on the Big Screen
+ Jessica Wiliams charmed JK Rowling into giving her a part in Fantastic Beasts 2 without even trying.
Queer Humans, Out and About
+ Anna Paquin came to Ellen Page’s defense immediately after she posted on Facebook Friday about the abuse she has suffered in Hollywood, especially at the hands of Brett Ratner.
I was there when that comment was made. I stand with you .@EllenPage https://t.co/DEIvKDXeEL
— Anna Paquin (@AnnaPaquin) November 10, 2017
If you can't think of the glaringly obvious reason I remained silent then perhaps you've forgotten that I've been in this victim grooming industry since before I hit puberty.
— Anna Paquin (@AnnaPaquin) November 10, 2017
+ Paquin is also being added to Canada’ Walk of Fame this week.
+ Here is an excellent profile and deep dive into Dee Rees’ work, her chance of seeing Mudbound get an Oscar nod, and all the women she pulled up with her along the way.
+ Out chatted with Patty Schemel, the lesbian drummer from Hole, ahead of the release of her new memoir, Hit So Hard. It’s mostly about Courtney Love, but she also talks about being a queer woman in such a male-dominated music scene.
Once I started to expand my world a bit beyond Seattle, I would go to shows and see girls playing music. I saw Donna and she was in a band called Danger Mouse. She played her bass, and was so amazing and so intense and so right on. I knew she was gay, and it was sort of like a mental acknowledgement and then I felt really safe. Eventually when I joined Hole, I felt comfortable enough to be an out lesbian, because “fuck you” if you had a problem with it.
+ Rosie was on Watch What Happens Live this week where she talked about knowing Whitney Houston was in a relationship with Robyn Crawford. “Everyone sort of knew it,” Rosie said. “I thought it was very surprising when Clive Davis came out and said that he never discussed her being gay, and I was like, ‘Well, I don’t believe that for one minute.’”
+ “Rivals, turned teammates, turned mothers!” This is a good gay story.
