Welcome to your weekly Pop Culture fix, a time for mixing apples with bananas and seeing what happens next!
+ At Buzzfeed, Shannon Keating asks “Why Are We Obsessed With How And When Female Celebrities Come Out?” Obviously she talks to our very own Stef Schwartz, Self-Appointed Vapid Fluff Editor, as well as other lesbians with vested interest in celesbian gossip. It’s a great piece on a topic that could not possibly be nearer and dearer to our own hearts.
But these conversations also stem in part from queer people’s desire to see themselves reflected in pop culture. The way we talk about queer celebrities is ultimately a way we can talk about ourselves. These celebrities are our avatars, upon whom we can project our complicated feelings about the closet, about queer respectability and assimilation, about how big or small a part of our public identities our queerness should be, about monogamy and domesticity, about life and love. Gossip isn’t always “just” gossip; sometimes, it’s a common language.
+ Angela Robinson “singled out misogyny as the sole reason it took 75 years from Wonder Woman’s inception for the hero to get her own standalone film.” She was also grilled on her decision to make the triad in Professor Marston and The Wonder Women an all-way affair — to make it so that the two women were involved with each other as well as being involved with the same man.
One component of that interpretation that got brought up at the panel was the queer relationship between Olive and Elizabeth. Was that based on research you’d done, or was that just your interpretation?
I mean, it’s both. This is one of those things that’s kind of tricky about history, especially history that has been obscured because of the relationships and because of society and many things. But there’s certain facts that are indisputable about the Marstons’ lives, which everybody agrees on, and there are certain ones that are open to interpretation. You know what I mean? It’s how you choose to interpret those facts. So that’s how I chose to interpret them. That, I don’t know how else to say except that it’s open to interpretation.
The film comes out October 13th and it looks real good!
+ The showrunner for Danger & Eggs talks to The Hollywood Reporter about How to Bring LGBTQ+ Truth to Kids’ TV:
When my show Danger & Eggs got the series order from Amazon, I couldn’t go down the road of delightful nostalgia. I asked our writers to treat the writing more like speculative fiction. Speculative social fiction. What does diversity look like in the modern small-city-in-America park? What is the new shape of the intersections of race, class, ability and gender. I didn’t realize writing LGBTQ+ kids — our show includes trans youth along with gay dads and other queer characters (many voice by LGBTQ+ actors) — and their freedoms of tomorrow would begin to heal my own more traumatic childhood. A healing joy second only to my jealousy of them, which I save for therapy.
+ The Richest is celebrating National Coming Out Day with an insane list that doesn’t make any sense: Celebs Who Killed Their Career By Coming Out And Some Who Helped It. In addition to listing Ellen as somebody who’s career took off because of coming out (when in fact it killed her career for an extensive period of time before she could bounce back), they claim that Adam Lambert, Cynthia Nixon and Amber Heard killed their careers by coming out, which is also not true.
+ I have very sad news for the world today, which is that ‘Survivor’s Remorse’ has been canceled at Starz after four seasons. I’m not surprised — everybody I’ve told about this show has never heard of it, it had a really unfortunate and not-reflective-of-the-show title, and it did lose a lot of what it had going on for itself after the death of Mike Epps’ character Uncle Julius at Season Two’s end. But I loved this show to pieces and I’ll miss you, M-Chuck!
+ The Best Queer Comedy on TV Right Now Is on Facebook:
Created by Mia Lidofsky, Strangers is a genuinely affecting, lovely, and sometimes devastatingly-relatable series that just finished its first season on Facebook’s “Watch” tab (both Watch and Strangers launched the first week of September). The show, co-produced by Beachside and Refinery29, follows newly single Isobel (Zoë Chao), a bisexual woman discovering and exploring her sexuality. After a break-up, Isobel begins renting out her house on an Airbnb-like site and meets a handful of strange and wonderful people (and familiar faces: Jemima Kirke, Jemaine Clement, Shiri Appleby), each who help Isobel navigate her personal life both directly and indirectly.
+ Tegan and Sara on Revisiting ‘The Con’ 10 Years Later: ‘It’s Not a Feel-Good Record’
Was it as emotionally turbulent to revisit the material?
It’s a funny thing, now being in my mid-30s—Sara calls it late 30s, but I refuse to call it late 30s for one more day. Tomorrow’s my birthday and I’ll be mid–late 30s, but today I’m still mid-30s. [Laughs.] I don’t know if everyone agrees with this, but I think your 20s are very self-indulgent. And The Con is very dramatic and self-indulgent record in that perfect 20s way. Going back, it causes anxiety and it makes me feel emotional. It’s good, though, and makes me want to do a really intimate and dark record. It could be the current political situation.
+ The Feminists Making Vampires Gay Again:
I think the story of Carmilla in our universe has always been a love story between these two women, and it was just part of the story. It didn’t need to be introduced, it didn’t need to be explained, as it doesn’t need to be in real life. I don’t think sexuality ever needs to be introduced or explained, or it shouldn’t have to be.”
+ Also here’s another article that I think you’ll like on this same topic: 10 Things We Know About the Carmilla Movie, Straight from Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman at NYCC
+ Gallery: Ari Fitz & Christine Ting Celebrate Black Queer Intimacy: This is hot!
+ Transgender Brazilians Embrace Hit Soap Opera: ‘Now You Can See Us’
+ The Bechdel Test, and Other Media Representation Tests, Explained
+ Reina Gossett on Transgender Storytelling, David France, and the Netflix Marsha P. Johnson Documentary — A really important story we’ll be reporting on next week, to the best of my knowledge.
+ American Horror Story Cult Shooting Scene: Why an Unedited Cut Matters
