Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a rewatch.
The Superheroic: Harriet
Actress Cynthia Erivo snagged an Oscar nomination for this film, which features her in her first leading role. And a hell of a role it is: Harriet retells the life story of famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Born into slavery, Tubman eventually escaped to the Free States, and devoted her life to helping other slaves escape northward to safety. Even more badass, Tubman was a queer woman, having had a passionate affair with the beautiful Marie (played in the film by Janelle Monáe), the daughter of free slaves who comes to aid Tubman in her work.
Director Kasi Lemmons (best known as an actress in such films as The Silence of the Lambs) takes a marvelous, inventive approach to Tubman’s life: she makes her into a superhero. The tropes of superhero epics are by now familiar to audiences, and are all present here: the life-altering event which imbues a hero with a quest; the adoption of a costume and alter-ego (in Tubman’s case, the name “Moses”); the ways in which the quest puts a love interest at risk, and the confrontation with a life-long nemesis. For Harriet Tubman, that supervillain figure takes the form of Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn), Tubman’s former owner. Their final confrontation in the movie carries as much dramatic weight as any standoff between Batman and The Joker or the X-Men and Magneto.
Inventive, polished, unapologetically queer and featuring one Hell of a lead performance, Harriet is exactly the kind of hero all Americans could benefit from knowing. That she plays for our team is just an added bonus.
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Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Streams on HBO Max, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube and VUDU.
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Donston
“Queer media” is at a weird place where the unrelenting hypocrisies and contradictions are too difficult to ignore. You are fine with referring to long dead people who were in hetero marriages and never acknowledged any “queerdom” as “queer”. Yet, you still preach self-identity and are fine with viewing people who admit to a lot of same-sex “entanglements” as “straight”. There’s an acknowledgment of things like fluidity, just how diverse and individual sexuality is, and the gender, romantic, sexual, emotion, commitment spectrum. Yet, these sites still push identity politics above all else. There’s condemnation of homo inferiority, closet pressures, queer insecurities, people who’ll go to any extent to maintain a “straight” image. Yet, there’s still a bunch of eroticism about getting it on with closeted or “straight” guys. There’s still a lot of coveting “straight” dudes and guys who make it clear that they don’t really want a guy.
At this point “queer media” (even beyond shallow sites like this) is just about getting clicks, selling a brand, selling fantasy and making sure you don’t step on any toes.