THE LATEST "LOST CAUSE" OF THE UNCIVIL WARRIORS OF THE RADICAL RIGHT
STILL FIGHTING BATTLES IN A CULTURE WAR THAT WAS OVER LONG AGO
(Above: Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, the stars of Amazon Prime’s Red, White, and Royal Blue, photographed by Josh Wilks for GQ magazine’s special Hype issue.)
The Amazon Prime gay rom-com film, Red, White, and Royal Blue, which writer/director Matthew Lopez adapted from Casey McQuiston’s novel, was the #1 global movie on Prime’s streaming platform during its recent premiere weekend becoming, according to Amazon Prime’s press release, one of the top three most-watched romantic comedies of all time on its platform. Amazon oddly didn’t name the other two. But it did claim that it saw a surge of new signups for Prime directly related to the film. McQuiston’s book, first published by St. Martin’s Griffin in 2019, also suddenly climbed to #14 on its Bestseller list. The film is about the son of the President of the United States - who happens to be a woman from Texas - and a prince from England falling in love and all the political and cultural ramifications that ensue even as so much of the narrative focuses - yes, naturally - on the romance itself between these handsome young men. Lopez’s literary pedigree includes his award-winning six-hour two-part play The Inheritance which used E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End as inspiration to frame a narrative about the post-HIV/AIDS gay generation. He also co-wrote the book for the musical update of Some Like It Hot on Broadway which reimagined the Jerry/Daphne character as a transgender one. In fact, the one Secret Service agent given a supporting role in this Amazon Prime film is portrayed by trans actress and activist Aneesh Sheth. And toward the end of Red, White and Royal Blue, President Ellen Claremont (played by Uma Thurman drawling her way through the part) makes a point in a stirring speech to say, “There are people who will tell you that elections don’t matter. But try telling that to … the transgender high school student in Mississippi voting for the very first time …” The world - including young people in Mississippi and Florida - not only heard those words but also saw a romance between two dashing young men (imagine Robert Redford [who turns 87 today as I write this] and Paul Newman in their heyday pulling off that sting on us when deception was so sadly an integral part of such romances) with all the hallmarks of a … well … Hallmark movie that tug at one’s heart and tear ducts. Red, White and Royal Blue is a kind of fairytale that dares anyone to cheapen it with a bigoted pun for being described in such a way.
(Above: Kit Connor and Joe Locke who play the British high school couple at the center of the Netflix hit Heartstopper. Photo by Victoria Will for The New York Times.)
Another streaming hit is Netflix’s Heartstopper that centers on the puppy love of its two lead characters, a couple of exceedingly cute and likable British high school boys played by Kit Connor and Joe Locke. In its second season’s second week, it is #4 in popularity worldwide with a viewership of over 4 million. This season it also more closely focuses on the couple’s group of friends which includes lesbian girlfriends, a transgender girl and her best friend who becomes her boyfriend, and even a boy who decides that he is asexual. All that, and you also get Olivia Colman as the understanding and supportive mum of one of the boys. There is more same-sex snogging in this show than I have ever witnessed in any pop cultural “television” phenomenon and yet it is also chaste because these teenagers are the best behaved sexually I’ve also ever come across in a series or a film. The Netflix creators of Heartstoppers - the original series of books by Alice Oseman have sold over 1 million copies - have been careful not to have them copulate as a way to cope with their raging hormones; they instead are randy for romance. The show is filled to overflowing with the ache of teenage longing. It is not afraid to show the homophobia inherent in high schools no matter the country in which they are located but it doesn’t allow that to sour the deep sweetness of the show. I kept trying to understand its hold on me since I am now in my 60s. Was it wish-fulfillment for my own decades-earlier adolescence since I came out when I was around 16 in 1972 in Mississippi? Was it relief that it didn’t show any sex since that would be a bit creepy to adore it so much as a 67-year-old gay man? And then it dawned on me. I love the show because it is simply that: deeply sweet. Its deep nonsexual sweetness is itself a political statement because it is letting us know that being an LGBTQ person is not about being only a sexual creature, which is how so much of the right thinks of us in its demonization of us. Being LGBTQ is who we are when we are not having sex. It is our very being, that part of all of us that latches onto longing and fears love even as we spend so much time trying to find it. That is not about our differing sexualities; it is about our shared humanity.
(Above: Good Morning, America’s Robin Roberts, a fellow Mississippian, and her betrothed on GMA this week celebrating their upcoming marriage. Roberts posted this photo on her Instagram account and wrote: “Sweet Amber & I had so much fun yesterday! We appreciated GMA fam throwing us a wonderful party and all the well wishes we received truly touched us…we thank you! It was good to be by each other’s side …)
(Above: Trans actor, Hari Nef, at the Barbie premiere in LA. She plays one of the Barbie iterations in the film who is identified canonically at the Doctor Barbie. But Nef told Vogue that she created a backstory for her iteration because of its “over-the-top, fashiony, crazy costumes.” She decided that she “was no child’s doll. I belonged to a doll collector, a gay man in his 50s who lives in a rent-controlled apartment in the West Village. I feel like every week he has his two or three friends over - maybe he’s a little lonely - and he shows them my new outfit. And I just kind of stay in my box.”)
Although the Republican party circa 2023 - the theocratic white authoritarian fascist party in America - is targeting and demonizing LGBTQ Americans and African Americans and immigrants of color and women who refuse to give up dominion over their own bodies, they are trying to reposition these fights as political battles because everyone knows they have lost the cultural war. Bigotry always finds its way back into the political fray - that’s as American as a wormy apple pie - but it also always loses and falls back into its crouching position on the wrong side of history, a crouch that is both rightly societally and civically shameful yet always ready for its next thwarted pounce. The GOP in states where they have gerrymandered themselves into power can ban books about Black history and LGBTQ subjects but people - especially the young - will read about it all and find out about it on the internet in all its manifested streaming platforms and Google searches. They have even themselves streamed in droves - along with their parents and grandparents - into old-fashioned movie theaters to see director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie - another target of the radicalized right - making it the most successful film ever domestically released by Warner Bros., having surpassed director Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Barbie’s worldwide box office take has now passed the $1.2 billion mark. From banning books to bemoaning Barbie - none of this is about protecting youth. It is instead about cynically demonizing “the other” to appeal to a bigoted base of voters. It is not about others being “woke,” but purposefully closing your own eyes so you can be willfully blind to what the world is really like around you. I often feel angry about it as a gay man but then I just find it pathetic - in the way that I find it sad when sad sacks too fascinated by Americans at war with each other play at being soldiers as they reenact Civil War battles - or, as those who conflate with the GOP, call it: “The Lost Cause.” The cultural war is just another one they keep reenacting.
So nice to have something to celebrate, especially at the expense of the bigots. The indeed have lost the culture war and losing the political war is now visible.
Amen!