Welcome to your weekly batch of queer-/feminist-themed pop culture news! This week’s column is going to be heavy on links and light on commentary because I spent too much time getting cute with graphics on my Pretty Little Liars recap.Â
Advertising Helps You Decide
+ Dolce & Gabbana are including same-sex couples in their new line of handbags and sweaters that (inexplicably) feature couples on them.
+ Have you seen Abby Wambach all over the commercials during (American) football games lately? I sure have.
https://youtu.be/cUruHNA-25w
+ Black lesbians smooching on a Hallmark ad!
https://youtu.be/rgH6kRPr778
It’s Lady Gaga’s World, We’re Just Livin’ In It
+ Fresh off the heels of her Golden Globe, Lady Gaga will perform a Bowie tribute at the Grammys later this month.
+ Oh, hey, and also she’s performing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl on Sunday.
+ Oh hey hey, and also she’s performing ‘Til It Happens to You — a song she co-wrote for the sexual assault documentary, The Hunting Ground — at The Oscars.
The Atlantic says Gaga is answering that age old question: “Where does a pop star go when they want to take a break from the radio race while remaining relevant?”
If she executes well at each of these events, by the end of February, anyone who’s not impressed by her voice will probably never be. Afterwards, perhaps she’ll settle into a long career of respectable, slow, safe-for-everyone singing. Who could blame her? If she bows out from dancepop for good, expect a Vegas residency by the end of the decade.
P.S. The cast of Hamilton is also performing at Grammys, which seems like something that will make your day.
Teevee
+ Look, I know it’s not queer but it’s the first show I ever loved that always passed the Bechdel test, so I want to celebrate with you that Gilmore Girls is getting a revival on Netflix. Four 90-minute installments penned by Amy Sherman-Palladino herself! Kelly Bishop gave a really sweet and earnest interview to TVLine.
I have to do it. I’d be heartbroken if the show went on without me. I would dry up and blow away like a leaf. This show is so deeply important to me, on so many levels. Part of it is the idealistic actor thing where you just want to do good material and feel proud of yourself. I work with such delightful people. I’m madly in love with Lauren — I was from practically the first day we said hi. It was just one of those situations where I was doing a really wonderful character with amazing writing with really good people.
I wonder if they’re going to kick Pretty Little Liars out of Rosewood because of how it’s the same town as Stars Hollow.
+ Here’s your Broad City season three trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guLt_A9Kl3c
+ I’m really psyched about Samantha Bee’s new show, y’all. Flavorwire wrote up a review after the first taping.
“My point of view is inherently different,” Bee told the press. “I’m steeped in — my woman-ness, quite frankly.” Though she acknowledged that the relative absence, apart from Chelsea Handler, of female late-night hosts was both an unavoidable aspect of her show and a “valid point to make,” Bee instead framed her gender as a point of view that subtly, but definitely, influences her perspective as both a comedian and a person responding to current events. Early in the presentation, she cited the Zika crisis and its impact on Central American women; later, she pointed to TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws as a type of story she may not have been able to do as a correspondent on someone else’s show as opposed to the host of her own.
Movies
+ The New York Times has coined “The DuVernay Test” in Ava DuVernay’s honor, “in which African-Americans and other minorities have fully realized lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories.”
